Old-fashioned running game a foundation of 49ers' Super Bowl run

MIAMI — Mike McGlinchey has plenty of friends around the NFL. Many of them, like him, are offensive linemen. Players at that position tend to gather in bunches during the offseason to train, talk shop and compare notes from their experiences with the various teams.

Last year around this time, McGlinchey wasn’t getting a lot of inquiries about what was happening with his 49ers.

“When you’re 4-12, not many people ask you how you do things,” the starting right tackle said with a smile.

That’s about to change.

The 49ers are in Super Bowl LIV, and their offensive philosophies and techniques — though perhaps not quite as dynamic and sexy as those of their opponent in Sunday’s game — are among the biggest reasons they are here.

It’s a downhill, pound-the-ball, control-the-clock thinking. It’s the kind of scheme that can plug in a third-string running back — with the scars from six different practice squad cuts — into its backfield and still dominate the NFC Championship Game. It might even be the best and only way to slow down the Chiefs — by playing keep-away from Patrick Mahomes.

And it’s the kind of football that offensive linemen such as McGlinchey love.

“It’s the best,” he said. “ ‘Impose your will on your opponent,’ that’s an o-lineman mindset, and that’s something we’ve adopted here. These last couple of weeks have kind of shown that. It makes it a lot easier to control the game, control the flow of it.”

What makes it so dangerous, however, is that it doesn’t have to be any of those things. It might seem as if that team personality is as dusty and tattered as the prospectors from a century and a half ago who gave the team its nickname.

Don’t fall for the fool’s gold.

Kyle Shanahan, the 40-year-old football lifer behind the 49ers’ identity, has taken everything he’s learned from being at the knee of his Super Bowl-winning father, Mike, mashed it together with modern-day bells and whistles, and created a wicked polymer that is rigid enough to weather the bruising play at the line of scrimmage yet flexible enough to scoot over and around the mayhem if need be.

Yet he hasn’t blown up the game and started from scratch. He’s recycled it, updating century-old principles with motions and route combinations that seem revolutionary but have a foundation in tradition. Like the Beatles, who took from the musicians before them and shaped music into something new, Shanahan and his staff are taking the familiar riffs of coaches throughout the 100-year history of the league and creating their own spin.

This isn’t a revolution, it’s an evolution. The 49ers aren’t reinventing the wheel, they’ve just made a better bicycle.

“It looks simple,” tackle Joe Staley said, “but it can be pretty complicated.”

Which is why, when Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones said his team “one thousand percent” wants to stop the run and make quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo beat them, the 49ers basically chuckled and said: Go for it!

“It’s great,” Garoppolo scoffed. “Teams have tried that this year.”

None who did made the Super Bowl.

“We’re not one-dimensional,” McGlinchey insisted. “No, we’ve proven time and time again that we can make plays all over the field however they need to be made. That’s what makes it hard, our capabilities in the pass game with the receivers and with [tight end George] Kittle, with the running backs in the pass game, and with our number one guy, Jimmy G.”

The perception, of course, is that Garoppolo is far from the most important piece in the offense. He has thrown only 27 passes in the 49ers’ two postseason games, only eight in the NFC Championship Game. It feels as if he is just along for the ride.

“I think it’s really funny that people say that,” Shanahan said. “Does anyone notice how good we were running the ball? We weren’t just running it to punt and try to win 3-0. There was times, especially in that Green Bay game [a 37-20 win in the NFC Championship Game on Jan. 19], we had a better chance of getting a 30-yard gain running it, just from some of the looks we were getting and things like that. Jimmy should never apologize for us running the ball too well.”

Shanahan then went down the list of games that Garoppolo was called upon to win, including when he converted two third-and-16s on the final drive to beat the Rams in Week 16 and two similar late third-down conversion passes against the Cardinals earlier in the season.

Garoppolo threw 27 touchdown passes and 13 interceptions in the regular season for a passer rating of 102.0. The 49ers know they won because of him, not despite him.

“People have got to just watch the whole season,” Shanahan said, “and they’ll realize that’s not the case.”

The Chiefs undoubtedly have done more homework on San Francisco than watching condensed highlights and subscribing to the impulse to place the team in a neat and tidy run-first box. They know what they are up against.

One of Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s biggest concerns was the pre-snap motion that the 49ers use to confuse teams. He called it “eye candy” because it distracts defenders.

“We have to make sure we don’t get a sweet tooth,” he said.

The 49ers? They’ll be drilling for cavities.

Whether or not the 49ers win on Sunday, there are bound to be plenty of teams around the league that will try to take what they have done and use it. Right now, 30 other teams are disappointed about not being in Miami and are groping for tricks and ideas that can help them get to Super Bowl LV in Tampa next year. They undoubtedly will attempt to break down and recreate what Shanahan has done.

And on that offensive lineman circuit where McGlinchey makes his rounds in the offseason, players from other teams will be trying to pick his brain and figure out how the 49ers did what they did, how they won 15 of 18 games entering Sunday’s finale. They’re likely to be jealous too, not only of the reliance on schemes that are catnip to offensive linemen but of the results.

“Now that it’s been on the national stage, I think they will be,” McGlinchey said, smiling at the prospect of being envied instead of pitied, as he was last year.

He said he’ll be happy to talk to his pals about it, too. At least in broad strokes.

Said McGlinchey, “I’m not ready to give away all of our secrets.”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.