The 49ers' most spectacular highlight against Cowboys was years in the making
No play summed up the 49ers' dominance over the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football than Brock Purdy's second-quarter touchdown pass to George Kittle. It was not Kyle Shanahan scheming an offensive weapon wide open in typical fashion, with Purdy hitting Kittle down the right sideline on a flea flicker after Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel […]
No play summed up the 49ers' dominance over the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football than Brock Purdy's second-quarter touchdown pass to George Kittle.
It was not Kyle Shanahan scheming an offensive weapon wide open in typical fashion, with Purdy hitting Kittle down the right sideline on a flea flicker after Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel had executed an end around.
McCaffrey was involved the previous occasion the 49ers attempted to run the play, though it was considerably less successful as it was during the NFC Championship Game last season when he was forced into an emergency quarterback role following injuries to Brock Purdy and Josh Johnson.
But the 49ers have been desperate to call the play and have it produce the desired impact for several years. Their motivation to do so was only heightened by seeing the Lions score on the exact same play in beating the Panthers earlier on Sunday.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan said of the play, called toss 18 flea flicker, in his post-game press conference:
"We just walked through it once. It's been in for a while. We ran it in the NFC Championship last year, didn't look as good. Christian was at quarterback, that was second half. Detroit ran it earlier in the day. They scored to [TE Sam LaPorta] on it. So, something that we've had in for a little bit. We just walked through it every week and keep it up for when we needed to call it."
Shanahan confirmed he had seen the Detroit touchdown and, asked if that encouraged him to call it, he replied: "It was based off what we were going against today. We planned on calling it, but definitely seeing it work for someone else gives you more confidence.
"We installed it a couple years ago. It's something we saw, I think [Assistant Head Coach/Running Back Coach] Anthony [Lynn] suggested it to us last year. We carried it for a while, never used it until the NFC Championship and it's up every week and just brought it out today."
For recipient Kittle, it was the end of frustrating wait to have the play called in a favorable situation.
Said Kittle: "It's just always up and I'm like 'dude can we call it?'. We called it in the NFC Championship Game with Christian, didn't throw because I was like quadruple covered, didn't really have much of a threat throwing last year.
"It was fun, I was sitting on my couch and I saw LaPorta scored on it with the Lions and I sent to my tight end coach, ‘dude they ran our play, how did they know?' He was like 'don't worry we're going to run it better', and it was 10 yards further out so I guess that counts."
Having put a successful version of the play on tape, teams might be wise to the 49ers trying it again in coming weeks, but the Niners know they have it in the bank as a call that can produce explosive results. As San Francisco plots a course that they hope will end in a Super Bowl berth, it might not be the last time the NFL world sees the Niners call toss 18 flea flicker.
George Kittle was on the same page as every 49ers fan after Cowboys beatdown
His celebration went down very well
