San Francisco 49ers: 5 Things to Look For Saturday vs. Broncos

Will we see any new wrinkles to the 49ers offense?

No coach shows all his tricks in the preseason, particularly a new one. We certainly didn’t see much of the offensive playbook last Sunday, but we did see a much faster 49ers offense.

The 49ers ran a total of 78 plays, including doubling the Texans plays in the first half (50 to 25). Time of possession, which has been a topic of conversation under a Chip Kelly offense, finished at 27 minutes for the 49ers compared to 32 minutes for the Texans.

NFL.com’s Conor Orr believes we didn’t see a 49ers offense which matched the old Philadelphia offense:

"While Kelly’s offense didn’t look identical to the one he ran in Philadelphia, he could just be operating a more vanilla version of the scheme for the sake of the preseason — something he didn’t necessarily do as head coach of the Eagles."

The pace ran by the offense was efficiently operated by the first-team offense – zero pre-snap and motion penalties were called. This was a great performance for the first preseason game.

Whilst the 49ers offense totaled 409 yards for the game, they still only managed to score 13 points, which failed to match last season’s NFL-worst 14.9 points per game average.

Saturday’s game against the No. 1 ranked Broncos defense will be difficult to score points on. However, the 49ers offense first-team offense must show the ability to move down the field, but once in the red-zone convert the field position to touchdowns.

Even if they can score two offensive TDs this week will be a measure of success, no matter how vanilla the game plan is.

We won’t see a whole new offense by any means, but expect to see a little more opening of the playbook by Kelly to test the vaunted Broncos D.

Next: What position will Anthony Davis play?