Kyle Shanahan’s decision to try an onside kick vs. the Eagles was the right call.
[jwplayer RBM9SWQx-ThvAeFxT]
49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan came under some fire after the team’s 25-20 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. There were questions about the team’s choice to onside kick with 2:02 left and two timeouts rather than kicking it deep and earning better field position should the defense come up with a stop. He offered a logical explanation for his choice Monday in his press conference with reporters.
San Francisco’s onside kick attempt failed, the Eagles went three-and-out, and their punt pinned the 49ers at their own 12. Had they kicked it away and this exact scenario played out, they might’ve earned themselves a 20-plus yards of field position.
Shanahan’s onside kick choice came because of something that happened a few plays earlier though.
“I totally planned on going for the touchback when we scored with 2:09,” Shanahan said of a play where wide receiver Kendrick Bourne appeared to score a touchdown to get the 49ers within 5. “We were sitting there, I called the play that we were going to go for two on and I was sitting there saying, ‘All right, I’m going to kick it off. It’s 2:09. So, we’ll get the two minute and we have our time outs, so we should get it back with good field position.’”
A review nullified the score though, and left the clock running with the 49ers facing a third-and-goal at the 1. They needed the two-minute warning to stop the clock since they only had two time outs. If Philadelphia got the ball inside the two-minute warning, the 49ers would’ve only gotten the ball back with very minimal time left.
San Francisco did punch it in on the next play, but there was just 2:02 left, leaving a razor thin margin for error on the game clock. That led Shanahan to change his mind and try the onside kick.
“I thought if we would have kicked it in the end zone, regardless, I know what I would’ve told them. They’d better run it out because if they run it out, they didn’t have to worry about the two-minute warning,” Shanahan said. “Then we lost all that and then we ended up maybe losing a chance. So, once it went to 2:02, that kind of thought process was off. I was still shocked that we were able to kick an onside kick and get it to stop at 2:01, which was nice, but yeah, I was totally doing that before when it was at 2:09 and then changed my mind when it went to 2:02.”
The 49ers could’ve tried getting kickoff man Mitch Wishnowsky to launch the kick out of the back of the end zone, but kickoffs aren’t where Wishnowsky excels. His 51 percent touchback rate was among the lowest in the league last year, and had the Eagles caught the kickoff, they’d have run it out and burned the two-minute warning and effectively iced he game.
That led them to try the onside kick where they’d have at least a minute chance of getting the ball back. They didn’t field the kick, but they did have the good fortune of only one second running off the clock and keeping the two-minute warning in play.
The chances of getting the ball back with the onside outweighed the chances of no time running off on a deep kickoff. San Francisco also preserved the clock with the short kick. Shanahan’s made some questionable decisions in his career, but onside kicking vs. the Eagles was not one of them.
