Former NFL quarterback Sage Rosenfels was one of Kyle Shanahan’s first students. The two were together from 2007-08 with the Houston Texans, where Shanahan directed Rosenfels as both a quarterbacks coach and an offensive coordinator one year later.
Rosenfels has launched a second career in the media, where he often studies tape from Shanahan. He joined KNBR’s Drew Hoffar and Kevin Frandsen on Wednesday to explain exactly how Shanahan builds his offense during a training camp, and why practice is so important.
“He sort of has a process that he goes through, he sort of builds this offense,” said Rosenfels. “It starts with the running game, both the inside and outside zone. Once you start to master that, then it leads into the bootleg and play-action concepts. And then obviously, the basic three and five-step passing game. And as that installation over the course of nine or 10 days, things get more complex and things start to work together. A run play then fits in very well with the play-action. When you start with one play-action and when teams start to compensate, you do something else to compensate for that. There’s a building process that goes on.
“Then when you get about halfway through camp, then he sort of starts it over. And you go back to the basics. You start rebuilding the whole thing again. Once the season gets underway, you can just pick plays right out of the hat basically and start to manipulate them, change formations, change motions. But at the end of the day, he’s got these really solid concepts that are generally fairly easy reads for the quarterback.”
Rosenfels went on to say Brian Hoyer’s previous experience with Shanahan in Cleveland will prove to be valuable this season in San Francisco.
“It’s huge. There is a lot of verbiage in the offense. There’s a lot of things he tries to do in the offense. And as the season goes on, things get more and more complex. So to have a quarterback that’s been in it before, heard those long play calls in the huddle, be able to distribute that information along to your teammates is very, very important. It’s sort of like having another coach. It’s vital to this offense.”