SANTA CLARA — Something weird is going on with the 49ers.
They keep collapsing late in games in which they’ve led the majority of the time. And when they collapse, they almost always pass the ball when they should run it.
Their players seem to have noticed. So after their latest collapse, Nick Bosa said this:
“It’s pretty simple. In the NFL, turnovers and not playing complementary football (will hurt you). This organization since Kyle Shanahan has taken over has found ways to win. It’s not about how good your players are or how explosive an offense is or how good a defense is. If you’re turning the ball over and you’re not making those plays on defense in crucial moments, you’re going to lose in the NFL”
Bosa seems like he’s saying in a nice way that the 49ers need to run more and pass less when they’re leading by multiple scores in the second half. To me, complementary football means running the ball and shortening the game to help a dominant defense close out the victory.
Kyle Shanahan disagrees with that definition.
“Complementary football is something I talk about a lot, so that’s probably why you hear it from those guys,” Shanahan said on his Monday conference call. “But it’s not something that you teach complementary football. You teach playing each play the best that you can. And when the offense is doing it and the defense is doing it and the teams are doing it, that’s when you get some very easy victories and it’s usually out of hand in the fourth quarter. When one side of the ball’s hot, but the other side’s not, that usually keeps guys in the game and you can’t really put people away until you play more complementary football, which is another way of saying all three phases are playing at the top of their game at the same time, not taking turns doing it throughout a game.”
I completely disagree with Shanahan’s definition. And I believe he’s being intentionally obtuse. He knows what Bosa meant. He’s just pretending he doesn’t.
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