The Bears can’t have Kyle Shanahan, so they have to go find one of their own: an elite offensive play-caller bound to the team by the weight of a head coaching contract.
That was clear by the end of Sunday’s shellacking in Santa Clara, Calif., where Bears brass saw first-hand the impact of Shanahan being perfect in a imperfect situation. As a play-caller, he put on an absolute clinic.
The 49ers were missing future Pro Football Hall of Fame left tackle Trent Williams because of injury Sunday and, by the middle of the first quarter, were down to their third-string left guard. Running back Christian McCaffrey, the reigning Offensive Player of the Year and future Hall of Famer, was out too. So was his backup. And, by the middle of the fourth quarter, his backup’s backup. The leading rusher on the 49ers’ active roster entering Sunday’s game was quarterback Brock Purdy.
Shanahan had plenty of reasons he could have struggled Sunday. What he did instead was call one of the best halves of football the Bears have seen in years. The 49ers averaged 8.6 yards per play in the first half Sunday. They posted touchdown drives of 70, 64 and 71 yards and marched 69 yards for a field goal. They led 24-0 at halftime and won 38-13.
Purdy, who had 94 passing yards in the snow the week before, had completions of 33, 32, 32, 27, 23, 23 and 20 yards in the first half against the Bears. That’s a total of 190 yards on seven plays.
Shanahan used misdirection and play-action to suck in the Bears’ linebackers, then threw over the top of them. He called screens at the best possible moments against Bears coordinator Eric Washington, who was calling a regular-season defense for the first time in six years.
On the fourth play of the game, the 49ers threw a screen to tight end George Kittle against a nickel blitz from Kyler Gordon. When Kittle caught the ball, he had two blockers in front of him with only one Bears defender — linebacker TJ Edwards — outside the left hash marks. Kittle rumbled for 33 yards.
In the second quarter, the Bears dropped nose tackle Byron Cowart into coverage — and right into the teeth of a middle screen to Kittle. Two blockers hit the big man and kept running, and Kittle gained 23 yards. He finished with 151, the most ever by a tight end against the Bears.
“Kyle Shanahan is one of the best play-callers in the league,” Bears defensive lineman DeMarcus Walker said after the game. “I feel like him knowing our strengths, he definitely changed a lot of things around. The defense would have to key their guys and just react instead of having a lot of things out in your face. I think he did a great job calling the game.”
The 49ers gave the Bears a few new looks — they ran a read-option run for the first time thisd year, Shanahan said — but otherwise fooled the Bears are the margins.
“They ran some pretty good plays,” Kevin Byard said. “Some scheme plays and stuff like that. But I wouldn’t say it’s something that we weren’t prepared for.”
It’s rare that players single out opposing play-callers by name. Cornerback Jaylon Johnson did that last month when the Bears were preparing for the Packers’ offense, which is run by head coach Matt LaFleur.
“Making things look the same and then mirroring different routes and different concepts of it,” he said then. “That, and the timing of certain calls. When you pressure, it seems like he knows to run screen passes and things like that. He’s really smart in the timing.”
The Bears need someone like Shanahan or LaFleur, and the only way to guarantee a play-caller stay for the long term is to make him head coach. It won’t be Shanahan — both he and his general manager shot down any chance his marriage with the 49ers would end any time soon. The Bears need to find their Shanahan.
It won’t be easy. For every team that thinks they’ve found an elite offensive mind to be their head coach — the Bears’ next opponent, the Vikings, might in Kevin O’Connell — are 10 teams that whiffed. Matt Nagy was supposed to fit the bill. So was Marc Trestman.
Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson checks those boxes. Like Shanahan, he could be the play-caller on a Super Bowl team that doesn’t accept a head coaching job until the day after the game. Perhaps Commanders coordinator Kliff Kingsbury makes sense too — with the added bonus of having head coaching experience. The Texans’ Bobby Slowik, who mentored C.J. Stroud, is another young offensive play-caller on the rise.
Thomas Brown could be on the list, too, but it would take an act of faith: the interim coach’s debut went about as disastrously as possible.
The Bears could look to veteran coaches who don’t call plays and try to build their team around more amorphous claims of culture. But wouldn’t you rather pick someone with the perfect play call on third-and-7?
A two-time NFC champion, Shanahan is a rare talent. Finding another like him won’t be easy. But the Bears can’t land the next Shanahan unless they at least try.