SANTA CLARA — Last season, the 49ers had the best red-zone offense in the NFL. They scored touchdowns 68 percent of the time they reached that area of the field.
Thank you, Christian McCaffrey.
This season, their red-zone conversion percentage has dropped to 50 percent. Losing McCaffrey has been a big reason for the drop in efficiency. But 49ers offensive line coach and run game coordinator Chris Foerster won’t use McCaffrey’s absence as an excuse.
Instead, Foerster blames himself for the red-zone issues. Here’s what he said about them on Thursday courtesy of the 49ers’ p.r. department.
FOERSTER: “I can speak to the run game and say we’re not running the ball as well down there. Whatever the looks are, whatever’s been happening, I don’t want to talk about. But there’s been some things that just, we haven’t been, and I blame myself, number one. We had a call the last three weeks, Minnesota, L.A. and New England. Three calls that we made early in a series, in the red zone that just were bad calls on my part to suggest to have them on the list, to even think we could run the plays. Not having enough foresight to think they might do something different. And that’s what they did. We had plays prepped for what we thought they were going to do, they came with something different. They were bad calls. And so, not Kyle’s fault, my fault. I put them on the list as the number one call. I said, ‘Call it.’ Stayed to the list, and then they show up with the defense, it doesn’t work out. And so we end up with some, it doesn’t take much, right? Red zone, there’s so few possessions, so all of a sudden, you have one bad call, you’re behind the eight ball, the next play, you don’t quite complete the pass, and then third down, you are where you are. So we just had some, it’s been a combination of everything. But at least it’s 50%, it could be worse right now. 68 is a very high percentage and we need to get back to that. But again, it starts and ends, I think, with the running game. We’ve got to be more consistent. We’ve had a lot of rushing touchdowns over the last couple years. I think we need to keep working hard at that.”
MY TAKE: I don’t think that Foerster truly believes he is 100 percent responsible for the red-zone issues, but I appreciate that he blamed himself instead of anyone else. That’s leadership. I’d love to see Kyle Shanahan do that one time. Just once.
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