The All-22: San Francisco?s complex offense is about far more than a running quarterb

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NEW ORLEANS -- There's been a lot of talk about the San Francisco 49ers' quarterback-based run game, and justifiably so -- Colin Kaepernick has given that offense new life and a host of new options with his dynamic mobility and deep arm. But when you talk with people in the NFL about what makes San Francisco's offense really go, it's all about the most multiple run game people have seen in a very long time. Under head coach Jim Harbaugh, offensive coordinator Greg Roman, and offensive line coach Mike Solari, the 49ers present opposing defenses with a dizzying array of options, predetermined to make any defensive guess the wrong one. Every aspect of that run game has it antecedents -- from the old-school Wishbone, to the trap blocks favored by the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s, to the counter plays defined by the Washington Redskins of the John Riggins era, to the read-option favored by so many college teams, to the Pistol offense invented by Nevada head coach Chris Ault, and run in college under Ault by that very same Mr. Kaepernick. But the ways in which the 49ers put it together are very different and quite befuddling, even to NFL defenses that are primed to stop just about anything. ESPN analyst Mark Schlereth, who won three Super Bowls as an offensive lineman with the Denver Broncos and Washington Redskins, told me this week that the real problem with defending what the 49ers do is that you never really know what to key on. Defenses live and die with their ability to read keys and trust what they see, and the 49ers use that to their own advantage. "I think it's different in that ... you look at the other teams, like the Washington Redskins, who run this, or the Seattle Seahawks ... Seattle's line coach, Tom Cable, was a teammate of mine at the University of Idaho, and he was tutored in that zone system under Alex Gibbs, the Godfather of the zone running system," Schlereth said. "They and Washington run their read-option and Pistol stuff out of zone running concepts. The 49ers are much more of a trap/counter/power team. And when you run that, you're going to double-team on the front side, and you're running a guard or fullback or somebody over there as a trap guy." This poses serious issues for any linebacker, because when you're a linebacker standing over a left guard gap and reading the blocking, you expect to come up and fill if you see a trap or a counter. Zone slides off the read-option, where most or all of the blockers are traveling one way, make easier reads. What the 49ers do -- and this is really Greg Roman's baby -- is to show the same types of blocking concepts for several different types of run packages -- including the ones in which Kaepernick takes off. "As a defensive lineman, you've been taught your whole career that when that trap comes at you, you trap the trapper and constrict that hole," Schlereth said. "But now, you can't be aggressive on that. Because if they run the exact same blocking scheme, but run read-option out of it, and you go to trap the trapper, Kaepernick will run around the edge for 60 or 80 yards, like he did against Green Bay. It's really difficult to defend, especially when you're playing San Francisco, because everything you've ever been taught about how to defend power and counter goes out the window. From a personnel and formation and execution standpoint, it makes it really tough -- it all looks identical. You don't know if it's read, or trap, or power. It all looks the same, but it's completely different. "The beauty of that ... if I'm part of this offense, it doesn't change what I do at all. A double-team on the front side is a double-team on the front side. It doesn't matter, because technique-wise, I'm doing it all the same. But conceptually, the play is completely different."

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