49ers film room: How Christian McCaffrey fits, and what he brings to, the 49ers offense part 2: the passing game

A look at how Christian McCaffrey might fit into the 49ers passing game.

In the passing game, McCaffrey is a player who can line up anywhere on the field and run the entire route tree. He will never be asked to do that because his skillset is best utilized in open space where McCaffrey can win certain matchups versus slower interior defenders or by getting the ball in the space created by the route concepts.

The 49ers do run a lot of the same concepts that the Panthers did with McCaffrey, whether out of the backfield or lined up in the slot. We’re likely to see some variation of concepts like four verticals, choice routes, and Shanahan’s “arches” concept as the 49ers offense gets accustomed to their new star player. The 49ers have already used him on screens and passes out of the backfield too.

Four Verticals

The 49ers have made four verticals a regular staple of their passing game and other variants of the concept as well. It is an efficient concept, especially when run from heavier personnel groupings, which the 49ers will typically do because their skill position players are faster and more athletic than most of the interior defenders they face week to week.

One variant of four verticals we could see is “all go HB seam.” The play itself is a basic four verticals concept with a slight twist. Instead of running basic four verts from 2x2 or even 3x1, the offense will motion a receiver over to a create a 4x1 strong and run three verticals from that alignment with a jet motion player to the flat, putting the seam/curl/flat defender in conflict to open up space for the vertical behind him.

The Panthers jet motion a receiver to the trips side of the formation where that receiver runs a swing to the flat while McCaffrey, lined up in the backfield pre-snap, runs up the seam, putting the strong hook defender in conflict.

The defender initially comes up to play the swing route, giving McCaffrey all the space he needed to get open down the seam. Baker Mayfield is able to layer the pass over the defenders and McCaffrey climbs the ladder to snag the pass for a touchdown.

The 49ers have run this in the past too, sparingly, and the last time they did, they used Deebo on the jet motion to create space for tight end Jordan Reed.

The Bills linebacker has to widen with Deebo while the strong hook defender has to widen with the hash vertical to compensate for the space lost by the curl/flat defender. This gets Reed open over the middle on the bender route.

Arches

Perhaps the most consistently used play for McCaffrey out of the backfield is on Scott and Norv Turner’s “525 H Post,” something the Shanahan coaching tree calls “arches.” 525/arches is a two route concept that is essentially two follow routes or shallow crossers.

The first receiver across takes an inside release, and the second crosser, the “arches” route, takes an outside release before cutting inside.

The play is primarily designed to get McCaffrey in space or matched up on a slower linebacker. In 2017 versus the Green Bay Packers, McCaffrey scored a touchdown over the middle after the Packers defense, specifically Clay Matthews, thought they were running a wheel route with McCaffrey.

To be fair to Matthews, certain route adjustments on 525 in Carolina’s offense do let the H-back carry his route more vertical up the seam. But not on this one.

Pre-snap Matthews alerted his defense to the wheel route based on something they saw on tape prior to this game. But 525 is a nice change up and tendency breaker off a similarly designed concept and formation.

Arches is a regular staple of the 49ers offense and they run it from a variety of formations, usually a trips bunch but here below, it is being run from the backfield.

Matt Breida is running the “arches” out of the backfield here in 2018 versus the New York Giants. George Kittle is running the shallow crosser that opens the window for the arches route by Breida out of the backfield.

Choice

There are a variety of ways to run choice routes and McCaffrey can run them out of the backfield and lined up in the slot. Choice routes give a receiver the option of working opposite of the leverage of the defender lined up over them. They give receivers three options to cut inside or outside off the leverage or sit in the zone.

McCaffrey has run these routes from both the slot and out of the backfield. In the slot, he can draw match-ups with nickel defenders and safeties. In the backfield, he can draw match-ups with slower linebackers.

Here in the slot, McCaffrey is working from the trips side as the #3 receiver inside. The play call is “HOSS juke” and McCaffrey is running the jerk route. On the jerk route, he attacks the outside leverage of the defender and sits in the zone.

As soon as the defender breaks to him, he gets the defender to overcommit with a quick jab outside with his outside foot and by his head and shoulders going the same direction. He creates separation by driving off his outside foot and explodes out of the cut over the middle of the field.

The 49ers run “hoss juke” sparingly, or what Shanahan calls “Smack F/Y Option,” sbut have run it a half dozen times since 2017.

Garoppolo typically throws the outside “smack” or curl route but a couple of time has hit the juke route.

From the backfield, he sets up the defender with a different move than he used on the jerk route. Here, he uses an open field crossover where he chops his steps to signal to the defender that a cut in or out is coming. Choice routes ideally break to the inside and that’s where McCaffrey wants to go here.

He gets the defender to turn his hips outside by first planting his inside foot, another jab with his outside foot, head and shoulders follow, before driving off the outside foot and exploding over the middle.

His usage so far in the pass game through one game with the 49ers has been interesting. He’s lined up in the slot, backfield, and out wide to run routes.

He caught two passes for 24 yards on a quick screen in the slot and a flat route on the “dragon” slant/flat side of a quick passing game concept out of the backfield.

Outlook

As he gets more familiarity with the playbook and routes, we should see his role in the passing game start to increase each week. The only thing we do not know is in what ways he will be used to create space for other players and how other players like Deebo will create space for McCaffrey but there should be some interesting pairings in the coming weeks.