Kyle Shanahan explains 49ers’ play-calling approach with McCaffrey-Deebo duo

There has been significant discussion surrounding Kyle Shanahan’s play-calling approach now that he has two explosive, versatile offensive weapons in running back Christian McCaffrey and wide receiver Deebo Samuel. However, the San Francisco 49ers head coach isn’t changing as much as some might expect.

“I’m real excited,” Shanahan admitted during a Thursday interview on KNBR’s Tolbert & Copes show. “It doesn’t change up just everything. It just makes you more excited about everything. I feel like we’ve always had, in our five eligibles, we’ve had some real good players, and when we haven’t, we’ve had some real serviceable players.

“We’ve always, I think, been able to spread it around and do things, but it’s always nice, the more people you spread it around, who have ability to score touchdowns, and an ability to make some big plays. The more people you have like that, the more fun it gets, and usually, the production gets better.

“It’s not like, ‘All right, let’s reinvent the wheel because we have all these guys.’ It’s more like you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You’ve got to be smart. You’ve got to be sound. You’ve got to look at what you’re going against. You’ve got to make it as simple as you can for the guys while giving these guys every opportunity to get the ball in their hands.”

While Samuel’s production is on pace for a significant drop compared to his breakout 2021 campaign, maybe the presence of McCaffrey can open things up for the fourth-year wideout.

“It’s so crazy how much firepower we have on this offense now, with adding [McCaffrey] to the team, along with all the other guys we’ve got on our team,” Samuel said after Thursday’s practice. “It’s going to get crazy. It’s going to be hard to cover everybody out there, and it should be real fun.”

The talent level on offense left McCaffrey in awe when he first entered the 49ers huddle.

“I was just kind of smiling, looking around, like, ‘Man, these are some really good players in this huddle,'” McCaffrey said Thursday. “Obviously, Deebo, you can line him up anywhere, and he’s elite anywhere you put him. So it definitely puts a lot of stress on the defense. I’m lucky and happy to be able to suit up on the same team.”

Shanahan notes that not trying to force things in the play-calling gives the 49ers a better chance to win because the chances of making a mistake, like a costly turnover, are reduced. However, having more explosive weapons gives you a better chance of making big plays, even without trying to force them.

“Sometimes, getting too creative with the weapons ends up backfiring because you just make it too hard when it’s [really] you better get real creative when you don’t have as many weapons because it’s hard to create space,” Shanahan shared. “So if these guys can create space a little bit on their own, and if you can help to where they don’t have to do it on their own, they’re going to create that much more. And that’s kind of what gets exciting about it.”

The topic of “too many mouths to feed” has been discussed at length over the last couple of weeks. One 49ers player doesn’t see that as a problem, though.

“I think as long as you’re winning games, I don’t think it’s really too many mouths to feed,” tight end George Kittle said. “I think we’ve got a lot of guys who can make a lot of plays, and I think our game plan does a good job of spreading that ball out, and getting the ball to our guys that make those plays, whether it’s Deebo, [wide receiver Brandon] Aiyuk, Christian, [fullback Kyle Juszczyk], me, [running back] Elijah [Mitchell].

“I just think we’ve got a lot of guys out there who are going to make plays, and our game plan this week gives us an opportunity to do that.”