Super Bowl preview: Kyle Shanahan-Steve Spagnuolo schemes, 1 player decides Chiefs-49ers
Patrick Mahomes and Brock Purdy. They’ve gotten the marquee billings in Vegas.
That’s what quarterbacks get entering the Super Bowl.
Yet Super Bowl 58 Sunday between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers just off the Las Vegas Strip will be determined largely by a game within the big game. By a strategic chess match between two men who aren’t even playing in the NFL’s championship.
Steve Spagnuolo versus Kyle Shananan.
Spagnuolo, 64, is the defensive coordinator who has turned what had been Kansas City’s weakness into the strength that got the Chiefs to this Super Bowl.
How the veteran schemer combats the Shanahan’s offensive formations and play calls for the 49ers will mostly determine who wins Sunday.
Shanahan, 44, is ending his seventh season as San Francisco’s head coach. He’s an offensive wizard. He’s renowned as the sport’s premier game planner. Shanahan puts San Francisco in winning positions for plays and games by the formations he uses, and the motion within them just before the snap.
Spagnuolo has earned a reputation as one of the NFL’s best big-game defensive coaches.
His Chiefs unit just throttled league MVP Lamar Jackson and the top-seeded Ravens in the AFC championship in Baltimore. A week before, Spagnuolo’s defense held Bills star quarterback Josh Allen to just 186 yards passing in Kansas City’s divisional playoff win at Buffalo.
And Spagnuolo came up with the Giants’ defensive game plan that throttled Tom Brady and the previously undefeated New England Patriots in New York’s massive upset win in Super Bowl 42. Sunday he is trying to become the first four-time Super Bowl-winning coordinator in NFL history. It’s his sixth Super Bowl as a coach, his fifth as a defensive coordinator.
In 2018 Spagnuolo transformed a Chiefs defense that ranked 24th in the NFL in points allowed and 31st in yards the season before he took over in Kansas City. He’s made it one of the league’s best units.
Mahomes had been winning despite K.C.’s defense during his first NFL seasons. This season, Mahomes often won because of K.C.’s defense.
While Andy Reid’s and Mahomes’ offense sputtered at times with receivers who led the league in dropped passes, Spagnuolo’s blitzing and changing won the Chiefs games. Kansas City this season was second in the NFL in total defense, second in scoring defense and fourth in passing defense.
Sunday, Shanahan will be giving Spagnuolo and the Chiefs their toughest test yet.
Not that Shanahan is saying he sees it that way.
“If you try to square up against a creative play caller, you’re going to mess it up for your whole team,” Shanahan said Monday in Las Vegas during the league’s annual Super Bowl Opening Night event. “It’s about studying what they do and trying to give your players the best look possible.
“If you’re trying to be creative just to be creative, it’s going to end up looking pretty dumb.”
San Francisco and the fullback
What Shanahan does best is dictate to defenses. Specifically, he does that by his use of a position forgotten in the NFL and college football the last decade.
You remember the...fullback?
There were only 24 true fullbacks in the league this season. There are 32 teams in the NFL.
The Seahawks were one of many that didn’t have one — unless you count Nick Bellore. But the Pro Bowl special-teams captain practiced every day with the defense, at linebacker.
The NFL used “21” personnel — two backs (a fullback with a halfback) plus one tight end and two wide receivers — on just 7% of all plays in the 2023 season. That includes short-yardage, goal line, everything.
Shanahan employed “21” with a fullback plus halfback Christian McCaffrey, the NFL’s rushing champion this season, on 38% of San Francisco’s plays.
The only team that used 21 personnel more? Miami (42%).
That figures. The Dolphins’ head coach is Mike McDaniel. He was Shanahan’s running-game coordinator in Shanahan’s first four seasons as the 49ers’ coach, then his offensive coordinator in 2021. Miami hired McDaniel after that season.
The Seahawks? They used 21 personnel a whopping 1.4% of plays this season. They also ran the ball the second-fewest times in the league. That’s partly why Seattle didn’t make the playoffs.
Shanahan described last month to the 49ers’ radio play-by-play man Greg Papa of NBC Sports Bay Area and KNBR in San Francisco why the fullback is so central to the Niners’ offense.
“Just the fullback position...when you have a fullback out there, that’s the only time an offense can fully dictate what’s going on,” Shanahan said. “If you don’t have a fullback in there, there are certain things a defense can do where you have to throw the ball, or you are going to be outnumbered in everything you do. They can hit you in the backfield. So having a fullback always protects that.
“It doesn’t mean you’re going to (run the ball). But it allows you to do it if you want to. So you don’t have to audible as much. You don’t have to change things that the defense puts you in.
“But,” Shanahan added, “you also have to have a fullback that doesn’t just play fullback.”
He does. His name is Kyle Juszczyk.
Kyle Juszczyk in this Super Bowl
More than Mahomes versus Purdy, Juszczyk (YOOS-chek) is the key player in this Super Bowl.
When Shanahan became the 49ers’ coach in 2017 following two seasons as Dan Quinn’s Super Bowl offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons, he targeted a fullback in free agency to make his new offense go in San Francisco. He signed Juszczyk in free agency from Baltimore in his first months as the 49ers’ coach in the spring of 2017.
How valuable is Juszczyk to Shanahan and San Francisco? The 33-year-old veteran has a $27 million contract. No other NFL fullback has a deal worth even half Juszczyk’s; Alec Ingold of McDaniel’s made-in-Shanahan’s-mold Dolphins has a $12.2 million deal.
How valuable is Juszczyk to Super Bowl 58 Sunday?
For all Spagnuolo has improved with Kansas City, the Chiefs’ weakness on defense this season was stopping the run. They were 18th in rushing defense (more than 113 yards per game). They were 24th in the league in yards allowed per carry (4.5).
San Francisco was second in the NFL (to Miami) in total offense this season and third in rushing offense.
Shanahan is going to show Kansas City many two-back run looks with McCaffrey (1,459 yards, 14 touchdowns rushing in 2023, 188 yards and four more scores running in two playoff games) charging right at Spagnuolo’s Chiefs.
How many defenders Spagnuolo chooses — or Shanahan forces him — to put near the line of scrimmage to combat McCaffrey will often depend on how often Juszczyk is on the field.
That’s exactly why Shanahan uses a fullback.
And as Shanahan says, Juszczyk isn’t just a fullback. He lined up this season as a tight end in the 49ers’ varying formations more than he ever had. He had 14 catches for 119 yards and two touchdowns this regular season.
Here’s another way Shanahan with Juszczyk and San Francisco’s 21 personnel can affect Kansas City in the Super Bowl:
Spagnuolo had the Chiefs blitzing at the fifth-highest rate in the league this regular season, 37.5%. K.C. had the NFL’s second-most sacks (3.4) and second-most quarterback hits per game (7.4).
Two backs and the threat of run may change how much Spagnuolo blitzes. It may have Spagnuolo thinking about putting more defenders in the box closer to the line of scrimmage to take away Shanahan’s runs.
Bill Belichick put six men on the line against the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl 53 five years ago — and Sean McVay’s offense scored just three points in New England’s 13-3 win for the title. It remains the lowest-scoring Super Bowl.
Shanahan has answers those Rams with Jared Goff at quarterback did not. If Spagnuolo puts six men on the line, Shanahan will have Purdy throw over them to Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk, McCaffrey, Jusczcyk...you get the picture.
And if Spagnuolo decides to blitz Purdy? Well, Purdy was one of the league’s best quarterbacks against blitzes this season. He completed 69.2% of throws for 1,488 yards, 15 touchdowns and just two interceptions (a 132.3 passer rating) versus five or more pass rushers this regular season.
On a Thursday night in September, San Francisco’s week-three game against the Giants, New York blitzed Purdy on a mammoth 84.6% of his drop backs, per NFL NextGen Stats. That was the highest blitz rate NextGen Stats had ever recorded for a defense in a single game.
Getting the ball out in the fastest time to throw in the NFL that week (2.34 seconds, per NextGen Stats), Purdy completed 20 of 31 passes against the Giants’ blitzes, for 247 yards and two touchdowns (110.5 passer rating). The Niners blew out New York, 30-12.
When the Lions pressured Purdy in the NFC championship game two weeks ago, he ran out for the game’s biggest yards in the second half. Purdy had 48 yards on five scrambles. San Francisco rallied from a 24-7 hole to beat Detroit 34-31 and get back to the Super Bowl for the second time in five seasons.
“This is not a quarterback that is managing and all of those tags they put on him,” Spagnuolo said, talking about Purdy to reporters in Las Vegas this Super Bowl week. “He’s for real. He makes all the throws and is really, really smart.
“And then what I didn’t know — because I hadn’t seen enough of it — is how athletic he is.
“When you cover everything, he can find a pass-rush lane and take off and get positive yards. That puts a lot of strain on us defensively.”
The News Tribune’s prediction
Shanahan will have the formations, the motion, the plays and the answers for Spagnuolo’s schemes. McCaffrey is going to run wild against Kansas City’s iffy rushing defense, perhaps for 150 yards or more.
But the Chiefs have Mahomes.
He’s been to six consecutive conference championship games in the six seasons he’s been the Chiefs’ starter to begin his NFL career. Only Tom Brady had a longer streak of conference title games started.
With Brady safely retired, there is no quarterback on the planet who is more clutch when the most is at stake. These are the biggest stakes in the sport Sunday.
Mahomes beats McCaffrey, Shanahan, Juszczyk, Purdy and the 49ers to win his third Super Bowl in six years. Almost by himself.
Chiefs 31, 49ers 27
This story was originally published February 9, 2024 at 10:19 AM.
