San Francisco 49ers: Top 10 plays from 2018, Weeks 1 through 10
By Chris Wilson
As the San Francisco 49ers enter their bye week, Niner Noise highlights the Niners’ top 10 plays from their first 10 games of the 2018 regular season.
The San Francisco 49ers’ 2018 season has been action-packed, and filled with big plays and highlights from a variety of young and talented playmakers. While fans can be disappointed with the Niners’ overall record, the 49ers Faithful can’t complain about a lack of excitement from the team’s first 10 games of the season.
The ball hasn’t bounced the Niners’ way for most of 2018 — from injuries, to turnovers, to last-minute losses — but the future is still bright for San Francisco, particularly with 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan in charge of the team’s offensive unit.
Despite the season-ending knee injuries of starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and top running back Jerick McKinnon, and both starting wide receivers Marquise Goodwin and Pierre Garcon fighting through injuries for significant portions of the season, Shanahan has found ways to keep the 49ers’ offense explosive.
The second season of the Niners’ rebuild has been both heartbreaking and painful — and at times, a whole lot of fun.
As the 49ers take the week off to prepare for the home-stretch of the season, we’re going to focus on the good from 2018 — so we sifted through game film and compiled the San Francisco 49ers’ top 10 plays from their first 10 games of the year.
We kick off our countdown of Niner highlights with a nifty shovel-pass touchdown from quarterback C.J. Beathard to running back Matt Breida.
In Week 5, Shanahan filled the 49ers’ opening drive against the Arizona Cardinals with misdirection plays and screen passes, which are Beathard’s specialty, thanks to the QB’s willingness to absorb big hits from defenders. To cap off the drive, Shanahan called a shovel pass which was similar to a play we broke down last season.
Just like they did in 2017, the 49ers used play action out of a two-back set to misdirect the defense and allowed the team’s linemen to get to the second level. Since the play action was run to the right side of the field, Beathard used his left hand to pitch the ball forward to Breida, who followed his blockers into the end zone for a 5-yard score:
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