The San Francisco 49ers are taking on the Arizona Cardinals this weekend, getting another divisional test early in the year after beating the Seattle Seahawks 17-13 in the season opener.<\/p>\n
San Francisco has started the year 2-0, beating the Seahawks and the New Orleans Saints in close games on the road. In both games, they\u2019ve had clutch offensive and defensive plays, but one aspect that hasn\u2019t really gotten going is the run game.<\/p>\n
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The 49ers have averaged just 3.2 yards per carry over the first two games, with both Christian McCaffrey and Brian Robinson Jr. averaging 3.5 yards per attempt. San Francisco has been fairly consistent in the run game, but they have not been able to create any explosives.<\/p>\n
So far, their longest rush has been 13 yards. Have they been executing as they\u2019ve wanted to so far?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the numbers aren\u2019t crazy. They\u2019re not going to wow you,\u201d offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak acknowledged this week. \u201cBut when you really watch it on tape, I think we\u2019re doing a good job in the run game. We\u2019re running the ball efficiently. We\u2019re doing what we kind of want to do. And then there\u2019s been some opportunities where we\u2019re a hair off for one reason or the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s one block we don\u2019t finish or just a back making a guy miss or making a cut differently. But we\u2019re close. But, I\u2019ve been happy with our run game and we haven\u2019t had negative runs. We\u2019ve had efficient runs, which is good. And if we keep doing that, and we need to keep doing that, I think it\u2019s a matter of time before we do pop some and we get some of those explosives, but we\u2019ve been good. We\u2019ve got to keep getting better though.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The 49ers haven\u2019t gotten those negative plays, but the explosives are a must.<\/p>\n
One big issue has been running the ball in the red zone. San Francisco has been one of the more active rushing teams inside the 20-yard line, but they\u2019ve failed to muster any success. Christian McCaffrey is currently fourth in the NFL in red zone rushing attempts with nine, but he\u2019s only gotten five total yards on those carries.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, when they were the best red zone team in the NFL, McCaffrey averaged 3.1 yards per carry in the red zone, while easily leading the league in touches. That number bumped to a respectable 4.3 yards per carry between the opponent\u2019s 10 and 20-yard line.<\/p>\n
San Francisco\u2019s passing attack has had the answers when needed so far. But that rushing attack will need to grow and start generating for more explosives for the 49ers to be a more balanced team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco 49ers are taking on the Arizona Cardinals this weekend, getting another divisional test early in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2081],"tags":[390,9763,4124,7,55,6,1161,252,238,237,261,2635],"class_list":{"0":"post-383683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-seahawks","8":"tag-arizona-cardinals","9":"tag-brian-robinson-jr","10":"tag-christian-mccaffrey","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-new-orleans-saints","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-san-francisco","15":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","16":"tag-seahawks","17":"tag-seattle","18":"tag-seattle-seahawks","19":"tag-seattleseahawks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115238480471126904","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}