25 in 2025: How the famed Shanahan tree has evolved as NFL defenses adjusted to it

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The “Shanahan offense” has turned into a phrase that has entered the vernacular of NFL fans over the past decade. The disciples of the Shanahan tree have long been associated with the outside zone run concept, which emphasizes linemen moving laterally and the running back reading blocks to find an open lane, as their preferred offensive hub, with the bootleg, screen and play action spokes sprouting off of the core run concept that could, in theory, be run against any type of defensive front.

What we call the “Shanahan offense” was a merger of West Coast passing principles and an Alex Gibbs-coached outside zone scheme that was introduced in Denver by Mike Shanahan in the '90s and early 2000s, and polished by Klint Kubiak in Houston a few years later. When Shanahan went to coach Washington, the young staff that he assembled ended up being full of future NFL head coaches.

The names on that staff — Kyle Shanahan (49ers), Sean McVay (Rams), Matt LaFleur (Packers) and Mike McDaniel (Dolphins) — are still currently head coaches and have been in the football cultural zeitgeist long enough that their staff photos in Washington are at a meme level by this point.

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The growth of the Shanahan offense, and the names involved, has been discussed and dissected ad nauseam. But as the branches continue to sprout from this coaching tree, it’s interesting to see how some have evolved to survive as the NFL ecosystem adapted to attack back. Other branches, like former Houston Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik. withered away as they were stuck in a system that felt barren compared to the operation that others had added so many layers too.

While it seemed like any offensive play-caller in Kyle Shanahan’s orbit could be plucked, anointed as a head coach, and microwave a top-10 offense instantly, each of those play-callers sustained success by the adjustments they made with their personnel and team strengths and weaknesses. Each play-caller took on their own distinct flavors or dialect coming from the same mother tongue, which means the Shanahan offense is really more an offensive system (i.e. play call verbiage, use of cadence, pass protection rules, route running details, etc.), rather than a singular call around which every coach structures their entire offense. (Some, however, still bow to the altar of outside zone.)

Why Shanahan tree was primed to succeed a decade ago

Kyle Shanahan had his best season as a coordinator with the 2016 Atlanta Falcons, where he coached with many of the same names as his old Washington staff. Outside zone was still the main portion of the run game menu, and it was perhaps the perfect time to be a outside zone aficionado in the course of NFL history, because right before the Shanahan offense spread across the league, the en vogue unit and philosophy was the Seahawks' Legion of Boom and their Cover 3-based defense.

While a coverage might only seem like it applies to passing plays, the safety structure has ramifications on how the offense attacks it, or prefers to attack it. A single-high structure (i.e. man coverage, like Cover 3 or Cover 1) means a safety is, when the defense declares intent, rotated down "into the box," or at a linebacker’s depth. Adding that additional body into the box means it’s another person that the offense has to account for if they want to run the ball.

Some offenses just resorted to the path of least resistance when going against single-high coverages by checking into a pass and throwing the ball. And if the defense does play two-high, run the ball when you can. But that simple black-and-white declaration of attack led to predictability from the offense, along with the obvious issue that the offense might run into if they had sub-par quarterback play.

While it became apparent over the years that it was hard to emulate the Legion of Boom’s single-high-only defensive philosophy without future Hall of Famers at the key positions and a deep, deep pass rush, the defenses that used that Seahawks' philosophy could still find success against archaic offenses that kept using more traditional answers. So offenses either had to field a real quarterback that could constantly find answers every dropback, or find run plays that can work against Cover 3.

What single-high generally coverages do, besides load the box, is limit the valid runs that can attack them, at least in their most stripped-down forms. But outside zone, a Shanahan tree specialty, is what’s considered a “run-it” run, meaning that it can be run against any type of defensive look. There are other runs that are considered that too, but the beauty of majoring in outside zone is that it can adapt and be run out of so many formation and personnel looks, while also helping raise the floor of offensive lines and offer play action concepts that can be run off of it, too.

So as more teams looked to base their defenses on having a faster front seven with a single-high structure behind it, it was the perfect time for offensive play-callers to base their entire football dogma on such a “run-it” run. And after the 2016 Falcons offense exploded into one of the best the NFL has seen, Shanahan went to the 49ers as head coach the following offseason and brought his doctrine with him. And more coaches started to get hired from this tree that seemed ripe for the plucking.

Shanahan tree members evolve and add wrinkles

Kyle Shanahan's 49ers

As defenses became well-versed on the songs from the Shanahan Tree's Greatest Hits, McVay, Shanahan and others added new wrinkles like late motion to change up the strength of the run play at the last moment, and even protection wrinkles like sliding tight ends and wide receivers across the formation to help out, all while still tying to their base run plays. It wasn't the pure outside zone and boot system with which John Elway won back-to-back Super Bowls, but instead new adaptations because the league had started to catching on to some of the tried and true favorites.

Defenses adapting was only one reason why these offenses started to evolve. The coaches from this tree, like any good coach in any sport, adapt to their personnel and situation. Kyle Shanahan himself has implemented different types of runs during his tenure in San Francisco. His variations of outside zone are still a key component of what the 49ers run. But which ones he prefers have slightly changed from just getting under center and running the football.

The 49ers have become one of the better teams at pulling blockers on trap and gap-scheme plays. Run plays that used to be Shanahan’s equivalent of a knuckleball have become more entrenched on the weekly play-call menu.

Sean McVay's Rams

Sean McVay’s version of the offense originally preferred to stay in the same 11 personnel grouping (one running back, one tight end, three wide receivers) on every single play, and then use run and pass concepts that are all tied together from very similar formation and motion looks. The 2017-2018 Rams were almost the purest, most distilled version of this type of offense. The entire mantra of the Shanahan offense was tying the run plays with the play-action plays off of them. And McVay had the entire offense tie together.

Every single aspect. There was no rotating of personnel. All 11 players were asked to take snap after snap to not give the defense any indicators to key in on. Every formation had a version of outside zone the offense could get to ,perhaps with a jet motion to loosen up the defensive box. But sometimes the ball was handed off to the jet motion on a sweep play. And sometimes it wasn’t a run play at all, but a play action that looked like another zone run. And sometimes the play action was actually a screen to the running back. And sometimes the ball wasn’t handed off to the jet sweep, or to the running back, but it’s faked and THEN thrown to the tight end or back to the wide receiver on a screen. And oftentimes this was all run from a hurry-up offense with McVay able to tell quarterback Jared Goff what play to get to over the headset.

That first iteration of McVay’s Rams ran into a wall built by Vic Fangio and Bill Belichick, who used “6-1” defensive fronts to neuter outside zone runs by taking away all possible double-teams. I have written about Sean McVay’s evolution with the Rams offense before. They've gone from one of the biggest practitioners of outside zone (think of Todd Gurley running wild in 2018) to becoming a “duo” team, which is a run concept that is more vertical and physical compared to zone runs. (Think of a duo run with vertical blockers and a running back that gets horizontal, and a zone run as horizontal blocking with a running back that gets vertical.) McVay has even employed burly blockers on his offensive line, a far cry from the undersized scrappy wonders that the Shanahan father-son duo employed in the past.

The Rams have stayed a run-first team and still use zone runs to complement their physical main concept, but the type of runs and how they base their play-action concepts off of them have changed. Bootlegs, which get the quarterback out of the pocket and complement zone runs nicely, have given way to more vertical fakes with more vertical routes attached to them.

There were other factors that have given the Rams their own distinct way of doing things. The biggest one of those was the addition of Matthew Stafford. The former No. 1 overall pick was traded to the Rams in 2021 and led them to a Super Bowl victory in his first season. And it was in a very different way than how McVay first had success in Los Angeles.

Stafford was often put alone in the backfield, with the Rams constantly attacking downfield while defenses were put on islands for Stafford to pick apart. Since that 2021 shredding, the Rams have morphed into an offense that has combined Stafford’s excellent arm talent with a run game that bops defenses on the nose with five-yard Kyren Williams runs.

Matt LaFleur's Packers

Matt LaFleur, who was an assistant for Shanahan at multiple stops and for McVay, also figured out how to merge separate worlds into a successful attack. Like McVay with Stafford and Shanahan with Matt Ryan in Atlanta, LaFleur had to find the perfect balance between running the system and also complementing a talented signal-caller. In this case, it was Aaron Rodgers, who for years was the system for former head coach Mike McCarthy’s Packers offense.

LaFleur merged the run game staples while also allowing Rodgers the freedom to signal route adjustments to his wide receivers when he ever felt the inkling. It was wildly successful and Rodgers ended up winning back-to-back MVPs. When Jordan Love took over as the Packers QB, the offense morphed yet again like a symbiote taking the powers of its signal-caller and personnel. The Packers offense now features a physical run game with plenty of play action and backfield motion.

And the play-action concepts are aggressive, with downfield routes like dagger, which features a deep dig route that’s run around 20 yards.

Mike McDaniel's Dolphins

Mike McDaniel’s Dolphins offenses took the league by storm in 2022, using every type of pre-snap motion under the sun to pop the brains of defenders trying to sort out number counts.

While McVay and LaFleur added size and strength to their offensive repertoire, McDaniel’s Dolphins teams fully invested in speed. The players are fast. The motions are fast. The ball gets out fast. McDaniel figured if the scheme can get players in space so well, why not make every play a potential house call? This version of the Shanahan offense has the key components taken to the extreme. A finesse-based run game that eschews physicality altogether to add more jet fuel. And while there have been some stretches where the offense ran loops around defenses, including a 70-point bonanza against the Broncos in 2023, McDaniel's have faced some speed bumps as injuries impacted their seasons and defenses have caught onto a few of their staples.

The Dolphins are often dared to drop back repeatedly to find answers when the game script isn’t favorable, which has been a traditional drawback of this offense if installed in its purest sense. The investment in a run concept and its complementary concepts means some parts of the offense aren’t as nurtured. And a common negative brought up about this system is the lack of an extensive dropback offense, along with the quarterback’s lack of control in the pre-snap operation. The rationale is that the quarterback pausing to reassess the defense would slow down the motion and pre-snap flow of the offense, with any pressure issues in the passing game being solved by built-in “hot” routes that the quarterback can find in case of emergency (something that Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo took advantage of a couple of Super Bowls ago).

That merging of letting the quarterback dictate his perfect play or just trusting the offensive play given is the balance that McVay, Shanahan and LaFleur have had to find with Stafford, Ryan, and Rodgers. But it’s not a coincidence that those teams had some real high-end success, including several Super Bowl appearances and MVPs, when that balance was found.

Shanahan tree's reach is still extensive in 2025

The Shanahan tree extended beyond these names, too. McVay has his own burgeoning branch developing. Liam Coen spent 2018-2023 shuttling back and forth between Los Angeles and Lexington with assistant coaching roles with the Rams and at the University of Kentucky, getting play-calling reps before having success in Tampa Bay last year and now taking over at head coach of the Jaguars. Even Coen’s offenses in Kentucky felt very Rams-esque, with plenty of under center, zone runs, jet motions, and all the good stuff.

Zac Robinson’s first year in Atlanta had a run game that felt very Shanahan; the Falcons ran outside zone on 51.5% of their plays in 2024, per FTN, and no other team was above 35%. They did it to great success, too, finishing with the most efficient run game, in terms of success rate, of the entire new millennium (tied with the 2004 Chiefs offense, per TruMedia). And Robinson did it by spamming outside zone with his talented running back pair in Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier

Kevin O’Connell realized very quickly his best player is wide receiver Justin Jefferson. And while there are still the bones of a Shanahan offense with the Vikings, his tenure in Minnesota has been a changing of personnel to take advantage of one of the best players in the NFL. Defenses started to play more Cover 2 against the Vikings and Jefferson, a softer coverage that can nullify an isolated wide receiver with a cornerback and safety essentially playing over the top. The best way to beat Cover 2 is to simply run the ball (remember the box count discussion with single-high) or to throw to other pass catchers who should, in theory, have easier places to attack.

The Vikings weren’t quite able to take advantage of it in 2022, but they've since added Jordan Addison, TJ Hockenson, and now multiple running backs and offensive linemen to help bolster their run attack. O’Connell has turned his offense into one that is super aggressive and is constantly attacking downfield, no matter who his quarterback is. A fireworks-laden version of this system that is constantly putting pressure on defenses.

Zac Taylor is an often-forgotten member of this tree. His original Bengals offenses looked very much like a carbon copy of what McVay was doing with the Rams at the time. Plenty of 11 personnel (they still major in it, but there have been some small changes recently), plenty of under center zone runs, and plenty of jet motion.

After the Bengals drafted Joe Burrow and it was apparent that he was able to handle a high usage of offense, the Bengals' offense shifted to a version that looks absolutely nothing like what Taylor first implemented in Cincinnati. The offense is spread out and mostly out of the shotgun. It allows Burrow to be a supercomputer with a few core passing concepts, with a vertical duo-based run game to take advantage of spread-out defenses. And the remnants of the under-center zone world were slowly weened out once it became apparent in 2022 that it was making the offense too siloed from the pass-heavy spread attack it had morphed into.

The Shanahan offense is still going strong. The branches and twigs and leaves of this coaching tree keep reaching to new places, even if it looks different than when it started to proliferate throughout the NFL. But in a league that never stays static, the users of this offensive philosophy change along with it.

Nate TiceStaff writer

A former University of Wisconsin quarterback, Nate Tice analyzes NFL trends and draft prospects. Tice was previously a coach and scout in the NFL before writing and podcasting professionally.