49ers' Kyle Juszczyk a sounding board for offense

SANTA CLARA - When fullback Kyle Juszczyk talks, Jimmy Garoppolo listens.

Both in games and during practice, when the 49ers finish a drive, Garoppolo finds Juszczyk and they hash it out. The television broadcast often catches them chatting on the sideline. Juszczyk speaks and Garoppolo nods with a stern expression. He looks like a golfer taking advice from a caddy.

“He’s not your average fullback,” Garoppolo said Tuesday in the 49ers auditorium. “He talks the same language as me, even if it’s just routes or how he sees the coverage and how I see the coverage. It’s good to talk that way.”

Juszczyk is bright - he went to Harvard. He has a panoramic view of football, sees the big picture, just like a quarterback.

“Because I’m involved in so many different things, I’m able to talk to Jimmy about so many different aspects,” Juszczyk said Tuesday while standing alone at his locker. “I’m involved in the run game, the pass game, the pass protection. There are just so many similarities there between him and me because we both have so many responsibilities. We have a lot to talk about. And we have fun with it. This past game, he would tell me half of the play call and I would have to say the rest. I was pretty good at it, too.”

Juszczyk and Garoppolo clicked as soon as they became teammates.

Before Garoppolo became the starter, Juszczyk didn’t make an impact for the 49ers. He blocked, carried the ball seven times, fumbled twice and averaged merely 13 receiving yards per game.

During the five games Garoppolo was the starter, Juszczyk gained more than 60 receiving yards twice. And in Week 16, when the 49ers had their biggest win of the season, 44-33 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Juszczyk had a team-high 76 receiving yards.

The fullback is Garoppolo’s secret weapon.

“I think it’s tough for a defense,” Garoppolo said. “It’s a look they don’t see very often compared to 11-personnel.”

That’s one running back, one tight end and three wide receivers - the most popular personnel group in today’s NFL. Most teams use it more than 70 percent of the time. Some teams use it almost 100 percent of the time. This is the evolution of NFL offense.

Defense has evolved, too. To match up with the three-wide-receiver formations, teams use nickel defenses - five defensive backs. Now, a team’s nickel defense plays far more than its base defense, which has become almost an afterthought.

Head coach Kyle Shanahan likes to attack the base defense. And he uses a fullback to attack it.

“When a fullback is in there, if you want to run the ball, you can,” Shanahan said. “You have the right type of blockers and the numbers to dictate how the game goes. I think defenses know that, so it limits a lot of stuff they do.”

In other words, Juszczyk makes the base defense honor the run, which makes the base defense vulnerable against the pass and eventually just plain vulnerable.

That’s why the 49ers made Juszczyk the highest-paid fullback of all time. He earns $5.25 million per season, more than twice what the second-highest-paid fullback earns.

“Kyle has been better than I hoped for,” Shanahan said of his fullback (maybe Shanahan has a weakness for Kyles). “Kyle was someone we were going to get. We thought he was the best fullback in the league and we were going to go get whatever that market dictated. I know we had to compete with a few other teams, but we thought he was going to be very important.”

Note: Juszczyk played his first four seasons in Baltimore before the 49ers signed him as a free agent.

“I think some people thought maybe he was going to lead the team in stats and things like that,” Shanahan continued. “If he was, he wouldn’t be a fullback. He would be treated like a second halfback or a second tight end. He is a fullback because he’s a very good blocker, which makes defenses honor that. But, the versatility, how smart he is that he can go out and catch passes and line up anywhere without a ton of reps, that allows us to do anything we want.”

When Shanahan talked about the lack of reps, he was referring to the complexity of his offense. During a game, he often calls variations of plays he never has called before, not even in practice. Based on the play call, he expects his players to know where to line up and what do. Juszczyk knows. He gets the offense.

“I like that it makes sense,” Juszczyk said. “It took a year or so to fully appreciate it. You don’t realize the little nuances that are playing off each other and how that all pieces together. Once it clicks, Kyle can call anything and you understand what it is, even if you’ve never run the play before. Just the way he has set it up, there are rules. He can call a play, and you know what you need to do based on those rules.”

If a teammate doesn’t know, just ask Juszczyk. He’ll explain.