Oh, Hey There! How much blame does Kyle Shanahan deserve?

The 49ers have scored 15.6 points per game so far this year

After three games, the 49ers are 1-2, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. There has been inconsistency at quarterback, drops, poor blocking, turnovers, and more. The 49ers’ bad offense bingo card is practically full right now. On today’s Oh, Hey There! podcast, Leo Luna and Jason Aponte wondered how much of the slow start falls at the feet of Kyle Shanahan.

There’s no denying the problems on offense. In three games, the 49ers have scored just 47 points, which is tied for 28th in the entire NFL. To his credit, Kyle hasn’t tried to deny his responsibility for the poor offensive production.

“Anytime a player makes a mistake, you look at it as yourself too,” he said this week, “Your position coach, the coordinator, me as the play caller, what we put them through in practice, I thought we made way too many mistakes across the board and that consistently, to me, starts with coaching. And it goes to the players, they’re the ones who have to execute it, but we’re the ones who prepare them for that.

So you look at it through the whole course of a game where there’s too much stuff going on like that. We have to make sure our guys are more consistent and give better chances in that way. And that always starts with me.”

A lot of people were questioning the play-calling with Trey Lance under center, but Jimmy Garoppolo certainly didn’t seem happy with things at one point on Sunday night (if you believe the amateur lip-reading).

Shanahan himself admitted after the game that there were a couple of play calls he’d like to have back, but there were some good ones, too.

Ultimately Aponte came down on Team Shanahan.

“For Kyle Shanahan right now, he’s trying his best. What do you do when you scheme a guy wide open, and the quarterback doesn’t throw it? What do you do when the you make the right call on third down, and the quarterback throws it at his feet? I’m not sure. I’m not ready to heap blame on Kyle Shanahan when there are guys running wide open that the ball should have been delivered to. Deebo Samuel should have legit had like 50 or 60-yard catches like three times. He got the ball once. That play should have been way longer, but the ball took forever to get down there.”

Regardless of where you place the blame, the offense is clearly the problem with this team right now. Point totals of 10, 27, and 10 in the first three weeks are simply not acceptable on a team with as much offensive talent as the 49ers possess.

We’ve seen them turn things around against the Rams before, so anything is possible, but things are going to have to improve in a pretty dramatic way in Week 4.

Other topics in today’s show

• Jimmy Garoppolo has no excuses for how he played (2:40)
• Why did the 49ers pick on Patrick Surtain so much? (7:46)
• This defense is as good as we thought it could be (9:37)
• Jimmy G. doesn’t win as much as people think (11:28)
• Could the Rams game be the start of the 49ers’ turnaround? (13:48)
• Why the defense may start to resent the offense (21:56)
• Where do we go from here? (27:31)