(Photo credit: Chris Mezzavilla)
Well that was pretty cool. Sunday’s two-quarterback system implemented by Kyle Shanahan was not so much a surprise in concept as it was in frequency. We knew Shanahan was going to try play both quarterbacks with the first team offense. We knew that might involve swapping Garoppolo and Lance during the same series to run different play sets. But the two QBs trading snaps every couple of plays? That was quite the surprise.
An effective surprise at that, even if it was against the Raiders reserve defense. But is this really something Kyle Shanahan is going to try in the regular season? Was Sunday’s maneuvering a precursor for what Week 1 vs. the Lions will look like, or was it Shanahan trying something wild in a meaningless game?
Longtime 49ers beat writer Matt Maiocco believes it was the latter, but that Shanahan did it for a calculated reason beyond “trying something wild.”
“My guess is very little they did yesterday will be implemented during the regular season, but I think there will be packages in every game where Trey Lance has something in the playbook where he can go out there.
“What I think Kyle was doing yesterday was kind of like doing that on steroids. ‘We’re going to be doing this occasionally, so let’s just do it a lot right now. Let’s let the Lions think out of a 65 snap game, Jimmy’s going to be out there 40 snaps and Trey Lance is going to be out there 25. Let’s let them go ahead and spend a lot of time game planning for stuff that they’re not going to see.’”
In addition to getting both players comfortable sharing time, Maiocco believes that swapping QBs to the extreme serves as a competitive advantage for Week 1. Put simply, the Lions don’t know exactly what to prepare for, meaning they’ll have to prepare for a whole lot.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to Kyle about budgeting time as coaching staffs. You cannot possibly prepare for everything. Good defensive teams don’t prepare for everything because they can’t prepare for everything, but they know what their principles are, and they know the adjustments to make with anything the other team shows during a game.
“I just think that yesterday was, ‘this game doesn’t matter, we’re preparing for September 12 vs. the Lions, so let’s just do a lot of these different things. So if I do feel the need at some point early in the season to do something similar to that, you already know the mechanics of it.’ You know how one guy running onto the field will be hearing the play call and has to be able to articulate that to the 10 guys in the huddle. You know the formality of one quarterback running off, one quarterback running on. So I think that that’s what that was more than anything.”
Overall, Maiocco thinks that splitting QB time evenly like the 49ers did Sunday is just too abnormal to work in the macro.
“I just think it’s way too gimmicky to do that in a regular season game. That’s kind of how I read it.”
Listen to the full interview below.
