Film room: Breaking down the 49ers and Rams usage of the "wind back" zone.
The Shanahan and McVay offenses have been among the league's best when it comes to innovating and evolving the run game and adapting old designs to fit new personnel groupings and meet new challenges.
I’ve written a lot about the outside zone running game under Kyle Shanahan. For primers on those run designs, see here and here. The entire 49ers offense is anchored around the outside zone running game principles.
The run design sets up the play action by getting the defense to aggressively flow horizontally toward the run or toward the line of scrimmage downhill, which opens the crossing routes or in-breaking routes behind the defense. The use of pre-snap motions and condensed formations on running plays and drop back passes adds in another layer that the defense must diagnose and account for post snap.
Everything in this offense is sequenced in a particular way based on the opponent and their tendencies. In 2019 versus the Cincinnati Bengals, the 49ers primarily relied on gap scheme run designs like counter and power to neutralize the aggressive upfield pursuit of the Bengals defensive line. Sometimes head coach Kyle Shanahan will call plays in a sequence to keep the defense honest while taking advantage of certain tendencies.
One way they do this is with the use of the wind back or zone wrap run design. Wind back zone is a misdirection zone running concept that looks like counter, where the running back takes a counter step in one direction, but is blocked like a split zone running play. The exact play call is “14/15 Lightning” where “14” denotes a run to the right, and “15” denotes a run to the left (Even numbers to the right, odd numbers to the left).
49ers wind back zone
The 49ers do not run this play a ton like the Rams do but when they do, it is a back breaker for a defense. Since the 49ers “cross sift” block a ton with their traditional running game concepts, it can be quite effective at sealing off the backside defensive end who might be inclined to crash upfield on the sift blocker a bit more aggressively.
In 2021 week seven, the 49ers used this play early to gain chunk yardage versus the Colts on Sunday Night Football. The play is designed to take advantage of defensive ends that like to get up-field aggressively. The run action itself looks like counter with the running back taking a counter step before cutting back the other way.