Kyle Shanahan and Mike McDaniel spent years together scheming ways to exploit NFL defences.
Now split apart with McDaniel in his second season coaching Miami and Shanahan in Year 7 in San Francisco, the two offensive coaches have their teams threatening records with their early season domination.
The 49ers and Dolphins rank 1-2 in several key offensive categories, from scoring to yards per play to success rate to passer rating to first downs.
Miami is the second team in NFL history to average at least 500 yards of offence a game through five games, with its 513.6 beating out the previous record of 505.4 set by the Rams in 2000.
The Dolphins are scoring 36.2 points per game for the best total at this point of the season in eight years, as defences have had no answer for the speed of players like Tyreek Hill, De’Von Achane, Jaylen Waddle or Raheem Mostert.
Miami has seven of the nine fastest speeds for ball carriers tracked by NFL NextGen stats, led by Hill’s 22.01 mph on a 64-yard catch last week. Hill also reached a speed of 20.95 mph on a 69-yard TD against the Giants last week that gave him five TDs on the season and tied him with Lance Alworth for fifth place with his 19th career TD of at least 60 yards.
Achane has been on a record-setting pace of his own, with his seven TDs in his first four games ranking second in NFL history to Bill Paschal’s eight in 1943.
Achane has rushed for 100 yards and a TD in three straight games, tied for the second-longest streak ever for a rookie since the merger behind Franco Harris’ six-game streak in 1972. He is averaging 12.1 yards per carry on the season.
Achane will have to wait a bit to have a chance to tie Harris’ streak after getting placed on injured reserve Wednesday with a knee injury.
Mostert leads the NFL with eight TDs, making the Dolphins the second team ever with three players with at least five TDs from scrimmage in the first five games of a season. New England did it in 2011 with Rob Gronkowski, Wes Welker and BenJarvus Green-Ellis.
The Niners have been more dominant overall, becoming the ninth team in the Super Bowl era to start 5-0 with a point differential of plus-99 or better. Six of the previous eight teams to do it made the Super Bowl, with Washington (1991), the Rams (1999) and Saints (2009) winning it all.
San Francisco is the sixth team to score at least 30 points in each of the first five games of a season and its eight-game regular-season streak of scoring at least 30 points ranks fifth-longest ever.