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In Week 16, two of the most disappointing teams in the NFL, the San Francisco 49ers and the Miami Dolphins, will go to war as the two teams attempt to add a few more nice moments to the end of the year.
Soon, the student will take on the master, and fans will get to see who is the master of the Shanahan System, Mike McDaniel, or his former boss, Kyle Shanahan.
But despite coming from the same coaching tree, it seems like the two teams looking for different things in offensive players, right? Well, reporters asked Shanahan that question on Friday and got a very interesting answer from Mike's son.
“No, I think it's a statement of what you get. What I like is the biggest, strongest, fastest, most aggressive player possible who's extremely smart and very natural at football. So I'd love all those types of guys to build it around. What I'm trying to say is you always get the best thing that you can get, whether it's in a draft, but you never like going into something and say, ‘Hey, I need a guy with a good 40 time,' or ‘Hey, I need a really tough guy.' You need a good football player who can be the best starting running back you have, the best starting tackle, the best quarterback, the best receiver, rusher, whatever it is.
“And then how do you get that guy? It's through free agency. It's through the draft. It's through guys who are already on your team, building them, improving them, and then you put together a scheme that goes with that. When you're going to bring your scheme to another team, yeah you bring like what you believe in your foundation of football, but your scheme is based off of the players that you have around you and how you give those guys the best chance to succeed.”
Interesting stuff, right? Well, wait, it gets even better, as Shanahan had plenty more to say about his offense becoming the in-vogue look in the NFL.
Kyle Shanahan has come to terms with people using his offense
Asked how it feels to see almost half of the NFL use his scheme, Shanahan said he accepts it, noting that real coaches need to adjust to their players, not the other way around.
“It just is what it is. When they say they do what we do it, the team's motion a lot more now, they believe in play action a lot more. I think that comes from defensive coordinators and defensive coaches pushing that on offensive guys. I think the more young guys that come in the league that's what they see a little bit more of. That's kind of how it goes.
“When I got in the league, you see certain things and I ran a certain offense at Houston when I was there, went to Washington, tried to do a real similar offense and it was totally different personnel and I realized I couldn't run that same thing and I had to adjust and each year was different. Then we got [Washington Commanders former QB] Robert [Griffin III] in there, which was a quarterback who had a running element, then I had to do stuff that I'd never done before. Not because you're just reinventing yourself or trying to change the league because you're trying to figure out what can help the guys that you have be successful. And that can change all the time depending on the player's skillset. But, I'd say as a coach that if you want to make it in this league and you want to have some success in this league you better be able to adjust to anything or you're only going to be successful when you have the perfect situations.”
Will the Shanahan system eventually fall out of vogue? Potentially so, but for now, it's hot, and the 49ers have the man for the job running the show.