Coach Kyle Shanahan met Saturday with his staff in a hotel room in Jersey City to finalize a list of 12 run plays and 12 pass plays to be called early in Sunday’s game against the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium.
It is a process that plays out the morning before every 49ers game, as Shanahan puts together the 24 plays he scripts as his “openers.”
Shanahan begins the process Friday night. Before going to bed, he pulls out certain plays he likes from the team’s vast game plan. Then, he compares it the next morning to the ideas compiled by his assistant coaches, including offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak.
“I come in Saturday and I have what I’ve done,” Shanahan told NBC Sports Bay Area on the latest episode of “49ers Game Plan.” “I look at everything that they’ve done, and then Klay and I sit together and we put together a new one of 24. Then, we go out and walk through it with the team.”
The list of plays serves as a rough outline for how Shanahan wants the first portion of the game to play out. It does not include third-down calls, second-and-long situations, red zone or plays backed up in bad field position. Shanahan said it rarely works out that all the plays are even called during the course of a game.
He believes it puts the team’s offensive players in a good mindset to open the game, as they have an idea what to expect when the game begins.
It did not work last week in a 26-15 loss to the Houston Texans, as the 49ers’ offense had difficulty finding any rhythm in the first half.
The 49ers must get off to a better start Sunday against the Giants. And it will all begin with those plays Shanahan has highlighted on his call sheet.
“I think it really helps the players,” Shanahan said. “You got over 100 things in, and they can really isolate on 24 plays.
“They still got to study their third downs and everything, but they kind of get an idea. And then we’ll talk about what we’re thinking in the second half, but I think it really just gives a player stuff to isolate on.”
Shanahan said he uses those first two dozen plays to gain information about how the defense is reacting to the 49ers’ personnel groupings, formations, shifts and motions. The first portion of the game will shape how Shanahan calls the game from that point forward, he said.
“By the time we get to that second half, usually I’m off that (play sheet) and we got a different idea where we’re going,” he said. “I’ll pull stuff from there, but it’s a big call sheet, so it just depends where I’m looking.”
The 49ers have yet to get their running game going consistently this season, and that figures to be an emphasis on Sunday. Christian McCaffrey has averaged more than 3.2 yards per carry in only two games this season.
Meanwhile, the Giants’ run defense gave up an average of 5.7 yards per rushing attempt through the first eight games. Coming off a game in which the Philadelphia Eagles averaged 8.4 yards per rushing attempt and gained 276 yards on the ground against the Giants, they could take extreme measures in hopes of slowing down McCaffrey.
The first few plays of the game should give Shanahan a strong indication of how the Giants plan to scheme against the 49ers on base downs.
“That’s part of what the openers are,” Shanahan said. “But, also, you know what you see in the openers, offensively and defensively, that people are doing that to set things up and adjust as the game goes. So there’s never just a consistent answer. You got to always be playing that cat-and-mouse game.”
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