The Shanahan-McVay Offense Took Over the NFL. Here's Their Guiding Principle.

Half of the NFL is going to be running a Shanahan-McVay offense. It sounds crazy, but here is the proof.

AFC East: Bobby Slowik (MIA)

AFC North: Zac Taylor (CIN)

AFC South: Liam Coen (JAX), Nick Caley (HOU)

AFC West: Mike McDaniel (LAC), Klint Kubiak (LVR)

NFC East: Sean Mannion (PHI)

NFC North: Matt LaFleur (GB), Drew Petzing* (DET), Kevin O’Connell (MIN)

NFC South: Zac Robinson (TB), Kevin Stefanski* (ATL)

NFC West: Kyle Shanahan (SF), Sean McVay (LAR), Mike LaFleur (ARI), Brian Fleury (SEA)

*denotes connection only through the Gary Kubiak side of Mike Shanahan’s tree. Others run through Kyle.

I would be hard-pressed to believe football has ever seen an offense take over quite like this. What is so special about this offense? In high school, we often talk about defense being easier when you see the same type of offense most of the season. 6A teams in Texas might see 11P Y-Off 10 times a year while a 1A team might see one and have a schedule with every wing and bone offense too. Which DC has a harder job? I would argue the 1A DC. If NFL DCs see this scheme this often, why do most of them seem to have no answer? I believe this article from Ted Nguyen (The Athletic) contains some insight.

The article is ranking the top 10 playcallers in the NFL. Spoiler - Shanahan & McVay are 1 & 2, respectively, and the tree makes up 4 of the top 5 and 6 of the top 10. Two quotes about Sean and Kyle stood out to me.

On Sean McVay: “McVay runs his core concepts, but his system has answers for whatever defenses throw at him.”

On Kyle Shanahan: “He has enough answers within the play design.”

A common thread between the leading faces of offense in the sport: answers.

That’s really what we hammer here at Wide Zone Warriors. The season iss coming around, and if you’re new here, we break down how one of the offenses in the tree runs one play many ways over the course of a football game.

The effectiveness of “one play, many ways” is compounded when it’s a play with built-in answers. It makes play calling a lot easier when the call doesn’t have to be perfect. There’s no need to call a Cover 4 beater and hope the defense runs Cover 4, or maybe add a Cover 3 beater on the other side of the formation and hope they don’t roll into man. A play like wide zone, power, or counter has ways to get good angles against any front. A pass concept like sail or cross has someone who should come open regardless of coverage. Instead of teaching a large volume of plays, the goal becomes getting elite at a small number of them — teaching the decision-makers within the play what tool they have inside the structure of the scheme, whether that’s an offensive lineman executing a different block against a different front or a quarterback throwing to a different receiver because it’s a different coverage.

That level of answers isn’t possible with a large playbook. A large playbook can work, but it relies on making the right call at the right time against the right look. A run concept built to attack a 3-technique, like trap, can turn into a bad play fast if there’s no 3-technique on the trap side on that down. The goal is to build answers and outlets into each scheme so the offense is never sitting in a bad play call. That’s the real value of the Shanahan-McVay system.

If you want to learn more about the system, you’re in the right place. You can get three months of the paid tier for under $3 by ordering a copy of The Shanahan-McVay Zone Run Manual and leaving a review. That gets you access to the book — 37 run concepts diagrammed against six fronts and explained in depth — along with the paid tier of Wide Zone Warriors, where we discuss the offense itself and how to apply its lessons to the high school level, even for those who don’t want to run the system.

The Shanahan-McVay Zone Run Manual

For coaches who do want to run it, the Wide Zone Warriors Offensive System tier includes nearly six hours of video installs, formatted so an assistant could use them to teach my version of this offense at the high school level.

Regardless of subscription level, thank you for reading Wide Zone Warriors. It’s fitting that we just crossed 4,000 subscribers as we finish year four on Substack. Looking forward to year five, and to studying all those offenses with you.