How Do Modern Shanahan Systems Correlate to Fantasy Football Scoring?

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The Mount Rushmore for the original Shanahan scheme might include Mike Shanahan, Gary Kubiak, Alex Gibbs, and Rick Dennison for their work in creating and sustaining the Denver juggernaut of the 1990s and 2000s (a truer Mount Rushmore would probably actually include Bill Walsh over Dennison as a progenitor, but I digress). The four pillars of the modern Shanahan system are undoubtedly Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur, and Mike McDaniel.

Of the 32 head coaches in the NFL, 13 either are or have worked directly under these eight men. Among offensive coordinators, 15 – roughly half – worked beneath one or more. A significant number of coaches are tied to Andy Reid and Mike McCarthy, West Coast Offense alums who use several of the main tenets. By now, almost every team in the NFL aspires to use many, if not all, of the main concepts of the modern Shanahan system. Teams seeking to fill play-calling or head coaching vacancies race each offseason to find people who have touched the hem of Shanahan’s garment. The takeover is complete.

Shanahan Protégées, Offensive-Based Head Coaches:

Bengals Browns Colts Titans Panthers Vikings
Head Coach Zac Taylor Kevin Stefanski Shane Steichen Brian Callahan Dave Canales Kevin O’Connell
Mentors McVay and LaFleur Gary Kubiak Sean McVay McVay and LaFleur Kyle Shanahan Sean McVay

Shanahan Protégées, Additional Head Coaches and Offensive Coordinators

A Brief History and Overview of the Shanahan Offense

The West Coast Offense, credited to longtime 49ers Head Coach Bill Walsh, was a highly innovative approach that utilized higher passing volume and shorter targets. From it, quick slants and early mesh-type route concepts focused on creating quick conflicts near the line, giving receivers open shots in the middle of the field, emphasizing run after catch, and nebulous positional assignments. Of its many acolytes, two primary offensive innovators emerged: Mike Holmgren and George Seifert; one of Seifert’s offensive coordinators was Mike Shanahan.

In San Francisco from 1992-1994, it was a wrinkle, not a base, but Shanahan began to incorporate some zone concepts. It wasn’t until he was hired as the head coach of the Denver Broncos and collaborated with offensive line coaching legend Alex Gibbs and Offensive Coordinator Gary Kubiak that the wide zone became the systemic base for an entire offense; together, they invented a whole new way to play the game. The basic tenets of the West Coast Offense remained, but on most rushing plays, the offensive line would run in sync almost sideways, then up the field, leaving an unblocked defender behind. Backside offensive linemen would cut block, creating massive lanes. Running became universally easy for any and every RB in Denver during that era – among them, Clinton Portis, Mike Anderson, Olandis Gary, Selvin Young, Reuben Droughns, Tatum Bell, and above all, Hall of Famer Terrell Davis, who dominated the era.

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Mike Shanahan’s second tenure in Washington gave his son, Kyle, an opportunity to coordinate the offense. Kyle added new wrinkles like the zone read and incorporated more play action and motion, including motion concepts designed to throw off defensive leverage – modern updates to the Shanahan scheme. PFF interviewed the elder Shanahan in 2021 in a video that gives an excellent explanation of the scheme and all its wrinkles in a tight six minutes with video references.

Who Runs the Modern Shanahan System Today?

By now, no system creates more conflict in defensive schemes than the modern Shanahan offensive scheme. There are seven primary tenets of the modern Shanahan scheme:

  1. Wide Zone Running Scheme
  2. Play-Action Passing
  3. Pre-Snap Motion
  4. Efficient Short-to-Intermediate Passing Game
  5. Versatile Skill Players with Nebulous Skillsets
  6. Creating Mismatches Through Formations and Misdirection
  7. Sometimes Quarterback Mobility

Each coach leans on different elements more, and even the four pillars of the modern Shanahan scheme have abandoned certain tenets, such as QB mobility. This leaves it somewhat challenging to define who is running a version of the offense to the letter of the law. There are select newer coaches like Zac Robinson or Klint Kubiak, first-time play-callers, and the tenets they may or may not incorporate are yet unknown. Gary Kubiak ran older versions of the system in Denver and Houston, but modern updates were folded in when he returned to call plays in Minnesota in 2020. Of those we’ve seen call plays, these 10 offensive play-callers have demonstrated the greatest faithfulness to the modern Shanahan scheme as we know it:

Many run offenses that incorporate several of the elements. I have a personal speculation that the most overrated component at this point is the zone scheme itself and that modern power schemes, adjoined with an abundance of misdirection, motion, short passing, and play-action, can be just as potent, so I’m tempted to include a play-caller like Zac Taylor or Ben Johnson. However, I’ll remain faithful to the modern Shanahan scheme for this study.

What Effect Does the Shanahan System Have on Key Fantasy Players?

The first thing I did was figure out all of the places where these 10 play-callers have called plays and compile a list of year-specific teams; here’s what I landed on:

My correlations run back to 2015, so l pruned the first few entries and started with 2015 data to match. Next, I ran a correlation between these systems and half-PPR or any other stats for which I wanted to see the relationship. This gave me a correlation coefficient for each stat relative to modern Shanahan offensive schemes.

I got positive correlations from the Shanahan scheme to PPR.N1 (the following year’s fantasy points, which is a common way to measure the predictive nature of a stat rather than correlating to same-year PPR); that’s the short version. The more in-depth version? They were not overly strong. I was surprised by this. I honestly believed there would be a strong correlation. However, I did notice a slightly stronger correlation when selecting efficiency stats. For QBs, they were passing fantasy points over expected (paFPOE) and passing yards per attempt (YPA). For RBs, it was evident in rushing FPOE (ruFPOE) and rushing yards per carry (YPC). With receivers and tight ends, it came through in receiving FPOE (reFPOE) and receiving yards per target (YPT). I expected to see a boost in efficiency with RB receiving metrics, but these were not evident.

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paFPOE YPA ruFPOE YPC TE reFPOE TE YPT WR reFPOE WR YPT
0.255 0.225 0.103 0.121 0.103 0.155 0.107 01.140

I don’t want to overstate these. These are not what anyone would call strong correlations, but they are consistently positive. The connection to efficiency stats seems consistent and logical. We can state that modern Shanahan systems do correlate to increased efficiency at all fantasy positions. Additionally, if isolated against all other pertinent fantasy stats, paFPOE and YPA correlate better relative to Shanahan systems than any other stats in my database, including many advanced metrics we hold dear. Passing efficiency alone is positively affected by modern Shanahan offensive schemes.

With rushing efficiency and receiving efficiency metrics, correlation isn’t the strongest with modern Shanahan systems. However, Shanahan systems still rank among the more correlated data points relative to these efficiency stats. Even though there are more robust relationships between rushing and receiving efficiency and a few other stats, the simple association with the modern Shanahan scheme still ranks very high in comparison.

Simply put: the modern Shanahan offense boosts player efficiency all around. A look at the top 30 players at any position on the RotViz Weekly Stat Explorer for 2022-2023 total FPOE confirms this:

RotViz Weekly Stat Explorer for 2022-2023 total FPOE stat table

In San Francisco and Miami, and to a lesser degree, L.A., Green Bay, and Houston, there are more instances of sustained high FPOE since these play-callers have taken over their respective teams. As such, there is a temptation to isolate Kyle Shanahan, McVay, LaFleur, McDaniel, and possibly Slowik. However, if we do this, the dataset becomes too small to be reliable. Talented players like Christian McCaffrey, Tyreek Hill, Brandon Aiyuk, George Kittle, DaVante Adams, Cooper Kupp, and Todd Gurley, among others, could affect small sample sizes like this. However, there is reason to believe some may run superior versions of the system than others, and their players will consistently rank higher in fantasy scoring and these same efficiency metrics.

We can also see the trend show up with simple subtraction if we apply yearlong totals for the selected stats, averaging all players playing within modern Shanahan schemes together, then subtracting the average of those playing without. The results confirm the superiority of the modern Shanahan scheme in producing heightened efficiency metrics.

paFPOE YPA ruFPOE YPC TE reFPOE TE YPT WR reFPOE WR YPT
In Modern Shanahan Systems +9.77 7.43 +3.75 4.6 +4.54 7.84 +7.21 8.5
Out of Modern Shanahan Systems +1.57 6.91 +0.08 4.2 +1.02 7.16 +1.65 7.9
Yearly Difference 8.20 0.52 3.67 0.4 3.53 0.68 5.56 0.6

Fantasy Action Plan

The modern Shanahan offense yields superior efficiency. The effects of this may be somewhat minor, especially as they relate to PPR.N1. The samples are still kind of small, and there would seem to be better results from select play-callers. We have seen hyper-efficiency from several players on the 49ers and Dolphins in the past two seasons, and we have seen slightly reduced but still outstanding efficiency from several players on the Rams and Packers. The Texans are off to a good start in joining the elites; Cleveland and Minnesota have provided encouraging signs, but there has been little stability with the QBs in these two cities for the past two seasons.

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The main takeaway is that the modern Shanahan system correlates directly to increased efficiency. There are many clear signs that we should take sustained heightened FPOE and per-attempt statistics seriously as they pertain to teams that run these systems. As such, we may want to take FPOE regression a little less seriously with these particular play-callers.

Unfortunately, as the years go by and the system continues to spread, the uniqueness of the system will likely wane. If there are any edges, they may be fleeting as it is possible, if not likely, that well over half of the NFL’s play-callers will run some version of the system one year from today. Others, like Ben Johnson, Andy Reid, Mike McCarthy, and Zac Taylor, run closely related and very good offenses; some also have higher efficiency stats despite less frequent use of the wide zone running scheme.

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