New 49ers offensive coordinator Mike Johnson has a simple plan Sunday in Atlanta and beyond: Get the ball in the playmakers' hands and let them take the offense from there.
It's not like fired offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye didn't have the same stated goals in terms of getting Vernon Davis, Michael Crabtree and Frank Gore involved. It's just that Johnson thinks the best way to do that is to flood the field with other personnel and different looks and make use of the grass outside the numbers.
"The way I look at that, Jimmy Raye left a great foundation," Johnson said in his first press conference Thursday. " I correlate it to two women wearing the same dress. You have football plays, you have an offense but you can have two women wearing the same dress and look totally different. What I'm going to try to do is get the ball to the players on our offense that can make plays, to utilize the talent and the potential that we have here as an offense and get our quarterback and our skill athletes the ball in space where they can do something with it and run."