Great coaches don’t just win games, they expose the opposition in the process.
That has been Kyle Shanahan’s modus operandi for nearly two decades as an offensive play-caller in the NFL.
But on Sunday in Minneapolis, Shanahan wasn’t the one winning the X’s and O’s battle.
No, it was the Vikings’ play-callers, head coach Kevin O’Connell and defensive coordinator Brian Flores, who looked like masterminds in a 23-17 Minnesota win.
“I think he had a very good game plan against us,” George Kittle said of Flores.
“You can feel it when you’re playing a really good coach who knows what they’re doing,” Nick Bosa said of O’Connell, who worked with Shanahan in Cleveland and in his first year running the 49ers.
Indeed, you can. And Sunday’s loss has the Niners feeling spun.
The NFL is a copycat league. What works for one team in one game will be replicated by the entire league a week later.
And if you can put on tape a scheme that can beat the reigning NFC champions, you can bet your top and bottom dollar that the rest of the league will try to do the same thing when they play the 49ers.
Yes, the coaching mismatch on Sunday was so significant—the Vikings’ game plan so illuminating—that it likely created a blueprint for the rest of the league to replicate.
The Niners couldn’t handle what the Vikings threw their way Sunday. They better get used to seeing it a lot more in the coming weeks.
Worse yet, the 49ers knew what was coming, at least when their offense was on the field.
Last year, quarterback Brock Purdy couldn’t handle the chaos Flores calls for in the Vikings’ defense — a scheme that loads up the line of scrimmage before the snap with linemen, linebackers, and even safeties. You don’t know if any, or all, are coming at you until the ball is snapped.
Purdy might have finished the game with a nice, gaudy stat line — 28 of 36 for 318 yards and a touchdown, but he had two turnovers (a lost fumble and interception) and was sacked six times. The Vikings forced mistakes, particularly in key situations, and it left the Niners looking like a shell of the offense that was No. 1 in the NFL last season.
Even Purdy’s success was hard-earned. He had to complete some passes inside absurdly tight windows, often challenging two, three, or even four defenders.
It wasn’t a formula for sustainable success, and it showed in the final scoreline.
The NFL’s player-tracking data showed that Purdy completed 8 percent more passes than should have been expected—an elite number.
Even so, the result was a QBR rating of 41 out of 100. That’s downright awful — the third-worst mark of his career.
The Niners’ 24-year-old quarterback has played 16 regular-season games against NFC opponents. His only two losses have been to Flores’ Vikings.
Flores has Purdy’s number.
And now the rest of the league has access to it, too.
When you look at Purdy’s six career losses in games he has finished healthy, you see that three of them have come against a “chaos” defense — the two versus Flores, plus last year’s Christmas debacle against Mike Macdonald’s Ravens defense, the worst game of Purdy’s career (7.3 QBR).
Macdonald is now the Seahawks’ head coach.
You want to beat Purdy? Load up the line of scrimmage. Not only does it leave Purdy confused, but it stresses the 49ers’ offensive line, which outside of left tackle Trent Williams has serious pass-blocking issues. Purdy was lucky to only be sacked six times Sunday as the Vikings consistently put center Jake Brendel on the ground and spun left guard Aaron Banks.
Shanahan said the Niners lost the game because of “football things.”
Football things like consistently submitting to the aggression of the Vikings’ defense on third and fourth down Sunday. The Niners were 3-for-13 on such plays, killing drives, turning the ball over, and giving the Vikings a win that was much more comfortable than the final scoreline suggests, as Minnesota was a yard away from taking a 27-7 lead in the third quarter.
“They have a very good blitz scheme, [that] caused a lot of confusion,” Shanahan said of Flores’ defense. “They mix it up a ton, and we made some mistakes that cost us. And when it’s like that, and you can’t overcome those turnovers and blocked punt, things like that, it’s just credit to [Flores].”
“Obviously, with their disguises and stuff, it can be tough,” Purdy said. “They do a good job of making it look like one thing, and it was another. … They did a lot. That’s on us. That’s on me.”
The Niners weren’t much better on defense on Sunday, either.
If Shanahan is considered a top-of-the-line offensive mind, then O’Connell, who shares his scheme, also shares that perch. With Kirk Cousins, Josh Dobbs, Nick Mullens, some guy named Jaren Hall, and now Sam Darnold, he has posted a 22-14 record in three seasons, with consistently impressive offenses.
The Vikings’ formula for success is the same as the Niners’: Attack the weak.
On Sunday, the Niners’ weak points were weak-side linebacker De’Vondre Campbell and safeties Ji’Ayir Brown and George Odum.
The play of the game was a 97-yard passing touchdown from Darnold to All-Pro Justin Jefferson. It was a tactical mismatch from the snap, with Odum defending the best receiver on the planet 1-on-1 and Brown, who was caught flat-footed for a touchdown last week, playing as the single-high safety, the last line of defense.
Jefferson beat Odum down the field with ease. A run-fake from Darnold caught Brown flat-footed again. A beautiful 55-yard rainbow throw over the coverage resulted in the second-longest touchdown from scrimmage in Vikings history.
The Vikings’ second touchdown, coming after a Purdy interception, was a 10-yard pass that put Brown in a state of confusion again.
They were shockingly simple plays; they just attacked the weak to the tune of 14 points.
And whereas the Niners couldn’t do anything on third down, Darnold and the Vikings converted 7-of-12 on Sunday. How? They attacked Campbell, who has lost more than a step from his All-Pro days, and the weak points in the 49ers’ zone defense.
Darnold was rather pedestrian on Sunday: He had a lower QBR than Purdy (35.6).
But he came through with “football things” in the big moments thanks to his head coach and offensive coordinator, who was masterful in the win.
If not for middle linebacker Fred Warner, who turned in one of the best performances at the position you’ll ever see (a sack, an interception, nine tackles, and a forced fumble at the San Francisco 1-yard line), this game would have been a blowout.
The Niners are still one of the NFL’s elite teams, but with that status comes a bullseye. Everyone is trying to knock this team down from its perch.
In back-to-back seasons, the Vikings have now shown the rest of the league how to do it.
“We had to learn the hard way,” Purdy said of Sunday’s performance.
And it likely won’t be long until they’re tested again.
