Bills 34, Niners 24
Yup, that’s about right :/
![This guy tied a career-high in catches [Christian Petersen/Getty Images]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1607474050096-5S6MVXDWBGM67SZA7ER9/diving+bills+TD.jpg)
This guy tied a career-high in catches [Christian Petersen/Getty Images]
It’s hard to say what was the most telling stat of this game: was it the 449 yards allowed, the 31 first downs(!), the near-ten minute disparity in time of possession against a team that averaged 3.0 yds/carry, or the sixth straight game where we’ve had at least two turnovers?
All that matters is that all those things happened, and it resulted in a game that was a fledgling shootout until it wasn’t. Now, the Niners’ margin of error for making the playoffs is practically zero.
OFFENSE
Save for two clunker drives in the first half—one ending on third down with an open Jordan Reed incidentally blocking the pass to an open Kendrick Bourne—our offense moved the ball very effectively in this game. With 402 yards on 60 offensive plays, we actually had more yards per play (6.7 to 6.6.) than the Bills did, but in what ended up being a purely offensive affair, we simply didn’t capitalize on enough opportunities.
The Run Game. On our first drive of the game, it looked like we were going to shred the Bills on the ground. Even though we started the drive from our own three and had our ill-fated third down and fourth down runs get stuffed short of the goal line, we had 10 carries for 44 yards on that drive—more than half of our total rushing yards on the day.
But when you look back at the film there are some pretty clear reasons for the Niners’ apparent lack of success in the ground game. First off, we got down in a hurry in the second half so game flow dictated we get away from the run. We threw a pick on the second play of the drive following our half-opening field goal, meaning we were looking at a 17-point deficit by the time we got the ball back. This in a game where the opposing offense was methodically dicing us up and had shown the ability to milk clock without an effective run game. Naturally, we had to lean more pass-heavy. While our first drive featured just over half of our rushing yardage on the day, it also featured just under half of our total carries. That’s clearly not what we wanted.
Secondly, our raw stats of 21 carries for 86 yards on 4.1 yard/carry don’t hop off the page, but the efficiency rate is deflated due to the many carries we had inside the opposing 5 and the issues we had with those—which we’ll get to a bit more further below. Take out the runs inside the five yard line, which amounted to a troubling six carries for 0 net yards, and you’re looking at a healthy 5.7 yd/carry. While you could do the same for any team and help their averages—after all, the potential for yardage is hard-capped by the yardage that’s left on the field before scoring—it at least helps differentiate our problems in this game from “run game” to “short yardage run game.”
For the former, we had our opportunities for bigger runs, with issues on the interior forcing at least three edge runs to be turned upfield early for short gains and a few edge block miscommunications/mishaps—including Aiyuk’s difficult-yet-horribly executed attempt at a seal block which led to a 9-yard loss from Tevin Coleman (poor Coleman came in for two plays and got buried on both)—cutting down our yardage as well.
Here’s a toss right that shows a number of those issues all at once,
It’s a four yard-gain. Not terrible by any means. But now let’s look at how it had potential to be much much more.
We’re in your standard I-form with a wing TE, running a lead toss to the strong side. Wide of the frame on the right side is Deebo, who will join us later. As discussed before, our goal on these toss plays is to hook everyone and ride them laterally down the line of scrimmage. The best case scenario is that we create a runway for Mostert. Otherwise we allow him to find a hole on the backside and gash up the middle for a good gain.
As you can see here, the majority of our offensive line has put themselves in strong position, with their hips and shoulders positioned the correct way and taking away the outside of each defender. Deebo has also come in along the right side, ready to work up on the safety. The path Mostert wants to take — a rocket launch outside of McGlinchey, is in red, and was very close to actualizing if not for two problem areas, circled in blue:
First off, on the edge, Charlie Woerner (who had his first NFL catches on Sunday 👍) has great initial positioning. But the ensuing handoff between him and Juice—one of them is supposed to work up to the edge defender while the other is supposed to stay on the edge man—gets muddled. Both of them end up passing the edge man to work up to the second level, meaning Mostert would have had to weave inside an unblocked man on the line of scrimmage to fit into the outside hole. While possible, it’s not what we’re looking for.
Secondly, Colton McKivitz has gotten turned and lost outside positioning. Look at his shoulders and hips compared to every other lineman engaged or approaching their blocks. If this was a second or so later and Mostert had time to stretch the defense out wide, then we’d have had alleys to run through and it may not have been as big a deal. But since this happened so early in the play, we lose that horizontal stretch that thins out the defense and Mostert has to cut upfield far earlier than he’d have liked to.
Mostert is athletic enough to bend inside of McKivitz and plunge forward, but with the timing and blocking angles thrown off, the unblocked trailer on the backside is able to get first contact, and other defenders—who were being blocked correctly based on play design—are able to help finish the job. The result is a 4-yard gain instead of what would have put Mostert—with a ten yard head start—on a single cornerback in the open field. That’s a house call more often than not.
As for our short game, our problems in short-yardage runs were largely due to interior dudes missing blocks on the second level and linebackers, without the threat of misdirection, committing hard to shooting gaps. And—of course—one glaring weakness…
The Goose. People who know me know that, when it comes to football, the one thing I have in common with your drunk uncle whose best advice is for “somebody to hit somebody” is that we both believe heavily in the QB sneak. When it’s crunch time and you’re inside the one, get outta the gun. That’s why, when the Niners’ opening 97-yard drive was stuffed on the goal line after a failed fourth down run out of shotgun, I was beyond myself.
That is, until I saw Mullens’ attempt a QB sneak in the second half. Six starts into this season, Mullens’ two most notable sneaks have been one where he jab-stepped off the snap and the false start that was sandwiched between an overturned KB touchdown and the ensuing pick in the end zone that effectively ended this game. Needless to say, neither were effective.
I get it, the Niners have had a rotating door at center and now have Daniel Brunskill, who was listed at 260 pounds(!) by some outlets as recently as earlier this year, manning the position. QB sneaks also rely on your guards to get push, and while Tomlinson is surely built for that, I think we can all agree that right guard is a problem spot. That said, we need to get better at QB sneaks. If for no other reason than to present enough of a threat that the defense will condense three dudes over our interior OL and open up other things when we line up under center. Things such as:
While there was zero chance the Bills were expecting a sneak on first and goal from the six, the reasoning behind going under center still stands. While I’m not necessarily against goal line shotgun snaps—except for inside the one, where I am almost always against them—our run game in the 80 yards between the 10’s is aided by space and misdirection. There’s inherently no space near the end zone, but when we’re under center we can better take advantage of the aggressive downhill play of linebackers via play action.
Even if we’re not gonna sneak. Which we should get better at.
Roll the Dice? While Mullens is never going to be the most consistently accurate quarterback—the announcers made the very correct claim that if he’d led his receivers near the goal line the Niners would have scored instead of turning the ball over—he’s taken clear steps forward since his early-season goings.
Yes, he fired out of the gates by pantsing the now-actually-decent Giants, but it’s only recently where he has seemed comfortable enough both to execute the offense and for Shanahan to give him the opportunity to sling it a bit more. Against the Bills, he moved around in the pocket very well, made off-schedule throws, wasn’t sacked once, and his QBR—which, as a stat, is probably slightly more legitimate than you would think given Trent Dilfer was consulted in helping build the metric—was 70.4, less than 5 points shy of Josh Allen’s.
The Niners want to run the ball, but teams continue to commit all their resources to stopping just that. We’re not heading the way of the Air Raid, but it’ll be interesting to see if we get more spurts of the hurry-up, wide-open style of offense that Mullens was piloting deep in the third quarter. The same offense which led to three straight drives of 70+ yards, each lasting under three minutes in length.
We always knew that we’d need an uptick in the passing game to open things up on the ground. Perhaps mixing up tempos and letting Mullens get the ball out quick and with confidence out of more open sets will become a more routine change-up moving forward. While we don’t want to get away from the core strengths of our offense, it’s not hard to see how those adjustments could both help our ground game and even keep Juice involved, albeit split out wide a bit more often.
We should know sooner rather than later. The Racial Slurs, who have a claim to the best defensive line in the game, are up next, and it will be tough sledding on the ground.
If it makes you feel any better, here’s a clip of Brandon Aiyuk dusting dudes down the field. He needs to improve his hands, particularly in traffic, and he could do a better job of high-pointing on deep balls to draw flags (which would have assured a penalty in the first clip instead of leaving it up to the refs), but he is getting the attention of DC’s across the league.
In each clip, he’s the furthest outside receiver at the top of the screen.
DEFENSE
After back-to-back masterful game plans and performances, our defense fell back to earth quite a bit on Monday. That’s not to say we’re no longer a strong defense, but is to say that there’s a pretty clear formula for putting up points when offenses can execute it: no pass rush + high-level QB who can throw on the run.
Pass Rush. There have been a handful of instances this year where our pass rush has been nonexistent, and we’ve been absolutely diced up by a high-level quarterback. The Packers game certainly comes to mind. The Seahawks game to a lesser extent. But this was the clearest evidence yet that there is only so much you can do when you truly have no pressure on a quarterback who is comfortable throwing both on- and off-script.
Josh Allen entered this game averaging the second-most time to throw (TTT) in the NFL (3.02 seconds/dropback), and if anything this contest improved his ranking. The game plan was clearly to take away the deep ball and force the Bills to move methodically down the field, which is exactly what I would have done given the matchup. However, the strategy simply doesn’t work when the offense can drop back comfortably each play, deliver second-level passes on-time and in-rhythm, and—when they feel any hint of pressure—calmly flush out of the pocket and complete those same passes off-script.
Saleh attempted to change things up by sending extra men, but these blitzes were largely picked up with ease—many not even accelerating the clock beyond what our four-man rush had been accomplishing. Which unfortunately, wasn’t a lot.
Of the 31 first downs we allowed, 26 were through the air. That should tell you all you need to know about how we defended the pass in this game.
Curl-Flat 4Ever. I’ll admit, the announcers were pretty spot-on in this game as to what the Bills were doing. While they started out by attacking the seams a bit more and working deep crossers, they eventually realized that the Niners had no real solution to simply attacking the soft spot in the curl-flat repeatedly.
In essence, the Bills leaned into what the Cardinals did back in week 1. While the path to get there was different (and much more effective), they played off the big-play reputation of their wideouts, let our cornerbacks bail, then threw all manner of passes underneath them that were too wide and/or too deep for the curl/flat defender to get under.
Unlike in the game against the Cardinals, the Niners have grown more accustomed to playing man coverage, which was a change-up they used sparingly in this contest. However, in that game against Arizona we had Dee Ford and Nick Bosa. In this game, we clearly did not. While the commentators believed that the Niners could have shifted to man earlier—then quickly pointed out that they were getting beat in those looks regardless—the defense was put in a bind by the fact that (A) man coverage is useless without a pass rush as all deep crossers are likely to be open and there’s only so long you can cover a receiver, and (B) we had a late-week scratch that put Dontae Johnson in the slot in lieu of Emmanuel Moseley.
I’ve been hard on Dontae in the past, but to be clear, he did not play poorly in this game. He was active near the line of scrimmage and willing to mix it up in a largely foreign position. But as a 6-2, 195-pound corner who hasn’t played meaningful snaps in the slot since 2014, he is a boundary corner through and through, and the fact that dialing up more man coverage would often mean he’d be locked one-on-one with Cole Beasley—who pieced us up en route to a career game—likely deterred Saleh from leaning too heavily into man coverage until he absolutely had to.
Pretty much just a mustache with glasses. While we’d excelled at disguising our coverages in the past few games, this time it seemed like the Bills had all the answers. On a short week when so much was going wrong on defense, I’m not gonna dive in to try and see what exactly were keying, but I can make some guesses. If we’re accepting the idea that we were leaning away from man coverage until forced into it later in the game, then the Bills’ game plan of hitting us with second-level completions along the sidelines is largely effective regardless of what zone we were in.
As stated before, when it comes to coverage we are inherently a top-down, cover deep-and-play forward type of secondary. We want to stop the deep ball first. We’ve had our current run of success in part because we’ve been able to oscillate between Cover 3, quarters, and man, but if you take away that last option, things change quite a bit. While disguising Cover 3 and Quarters makes it difficult for offenses to diagnose and throw deep down the field, both coverages have a natural weak spot on ~10-15 yard passes along the sideline. If you know you have the time to throw it, have the speed outside to create a cushion, and believe the defense is unlikely to lean heavily into man-coverage, it becomes pitch-and-catch rather quickly.
The good news? We’re still not eliminated from playoff contention. The bad news? We need to win AT LEAST our next three games (potentially all four if the chips fall the wrong way), in order to make the end-of-season tournament.
Go Niners 👍🏈
Preview: Wk13 vs. Bills
polarizing the people with his play, celebrations, and tweets since 2018
![We can only hope this is the precursor to a “suck it” [Kevin Jairaj/USA Today]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1606874898843-7JJGRJ8M7SFS9TZKY8BH/josh+allen+dance.jpg)
We can only hope this is the precursor to a “suck it” [Kevin Jairaj/USA Today]
Opponent: Buffalo Bills (8-3; 1st in AFC East)
Date: Monday, 12/7
Location: Glendale, AZ (lol)
Kickoff: 5:15 PT
TV: ESPN/ABC, or wherever you stream it illegally
Everyone says they put effort into their relationships, but few can compare to the Bills’ commitment to Josh Allen. In the past two off-seasons the Bills have added three tight ends, four wideouts, and eight(!) offensive linemen—all in an effort to stoke the fires of their highly-polarizing first-round quarterback.
And it totally worked.
The Bills, a franchise whose last few decades have been shaped by the occasional strong defense, a perpetually middling (or worse) offense, and consistent sadness (which is only in part due to the fact that they’re in Buffalo), are now in a dog-fight with the upstart Miami Dolphins for the AFC East crown. And their team’s success is largely due to the explosive arm of their third-year signal caller.
INJURY REPORT
Everyone on the COVID list is expected to return this week, which means Brandon Aiyuk, D.J. Jones, Tom Compton, and Jordan Willis will be back from their double bye week. This marks just the third game this season where Aiyuk and Deebo will both be fully healthy and playing at the same time… Tevin Coleman almost played last week, so I’d assume he’s back in time for a Monday night kickoff… K’Waun Williams, whose PED suspension was overturned, is not healthy enough to return this game. He’s still a few away. Moseley is expected to start in the nickel… Ben Garland won’t be back this week either… on Tuesday, Shanahan said that he didn’t see Weston Richburg, Dee Ford, or Ronald Blair returning to action at any point this season. Oddly enough, it may be Blair—whose yet to play a snap this season and is on a one-year deal that expires in the spring—who has the highest likelihood of returning to the Niners next season. Barring any massive contract restructuring that is… a very very rough timetable has been set for the return of Jimmy Garoppolo and George Kittle, although if we see either of them at all likely depends on how we do in the next three games. It seems like the earliest the Niners are expecting either of them back is week 16 against the Cardinals, in a matchup that could have serious playoff implications.
OFFENSE
Josh Allen was widely panned entering the league because he was an uneven performer at a mediocre Group of 5 school, his accuracy wavered tremendously, and his decision-making seemed suspect at best. Even the most bull-ish Allen supporter would admit that he was a very raw prospect, but the Wyoming product got drafted 7th overall in 2018 for a very clear reason: he is perhaps the most physically gifted quarterback in the NFL.
Many teams would see a quarterback with tremendous physical talents and some (ahem) questionable decision making…
…and build an offense that was meant to protect him from himself, and the Bills—for Allen’s first two years—did just that. Until this season, when they decided to do the the exact opposite.
The Bills lead the NFL in first down passing rate (60%) and their 66% success rate is wildly ahead of second place (Dolphins, 63%). They want to, and will, huck it every single down if they need to, and this spread out attack that throws all the time has emphasized Allen’s physical tools while letting him learn and improve on the fly. It was a bold schematic change that—to their credit—has worked amazingly well.
Allen has the strongest arm in the NFL, which he proves on a regular basis. Unsurprisingly, this cannon attached to his shoulder allows him to stretch the field vertically, which you can see here as he casually hucks 80-yard bombs at the combine, causing draft analysts to go from six-to-midnight.
Allen’s arm strength (and velocity) allow him to be a tick slow on a read or a release yet still complete difficult passes on the NFL level. At the combine he was hucking the ball at 62 miles per hour, the fastest mark in combine history. At the Senior Bowl he was clocked with a pass over 66(!) mph. While someone like Brees or Brady needs to anticipate openings and get the ball out quick into tight windows, Allen’s arm has so much juice that he can hold the ball longer, see the play develop later, and still get off a forty-yard pass while under intense pressure.
On top of his bazooka arm, Allen has great size and athleticism, which he uses regularly on both scrambles and designed runs. In only 38 career starts, he has 22(!) rushing touchdowns, and has rushed for 1400+ career yards on 5.3 yards/carry. Allen doesn’t have nearly the speed or the quicks of someone like Lamar Jackson or Kyler Murray, but at 6-5 238 pounds, he brings a bit more power to the position.
Through the first month of the season, he was the MVP front-runner, torching teams that showed him man coverage and dared him to throw deep. But after that scorching start, his production fell off in the second month of the season. Teams started playing top-back zones, forcing him into underneath passes, and a few bad weather games depressed his raw stats.
Since then, he’s found himself oscillating somewhere in between those two levels of play. He put on an absolute clinic against the Seahawks, torching them for 415 yards and three scores on only 31 completions, then followed that up with ho-hum performances in a loss against the Cardinals and low-volume, mediocre efficiency game against the lowly Chargers.
Allen is far from a finished product, and the uneven results reflect that, but his scrambling ability makes him hard to pressure and his arm strength allows him to get away with throws that few others could even reasonably attempt, much less complete.
Surrounding him are a trio of wideouts with very clear roles. John Brown is the outside receiver who goes deep. Cole Beasley is the inside guy who works underneath and across the middle. Stefon Diggs is their alpha, lining up everywhere and soaking up the majority of their targets as a true three-level threat.
One of the drawbacks of running such a pass-happy scheme is that if Allen doesn’t play well, the Bills offense falls off the rails. That’s largely because their non-Allen running game is often non-existent. Outside of Allen’s scrambles and designed runs (yes, we will have to account for those in our scheming), the Bills average only 75 yards/game. While it’s usually a low-usage, low-efficiency affair, the team has flashed the ability to run effectively—namely in a snowy win over the Patriots where both Devin Singletary and Zack Moss rushed for 80+ yards and last week where they randomly ran train on the Chargers—but the ground game is far from our primary concern in this matchup.
Their offensive line is a solid unit. Mitch Morse has held it down for years at center while both Dion Dawkins and Daryl Williams have had strong seasons at the bookends. If there’s a weakness, it’s at the guard position. Cody Ford failed to take the second-year leap before going down to injury last week and current starters Jon Feliciano and Brian Winters have yet to prove they’re anything more than stop-gap options/reserves in the NFL.
DEFENSE
Head Coach Sean McDermott built the Bills up into a contender on the back of a stout one-gapping 4-3 front with a defensive line that applied a ton of pressure without the need for blitzing. This year, that unit has taken a step back.
Once the strength of this defensive, their line has seen sizable regression practically across the board. Second-year pro Ed Oliver—who burst onto the scene as a rookie first rounder with five sacks in a rotational role—has seen a steep decline as a full-time starter. Stanford-alum Trent Murphy still has some pass rush juice, but has struggled against the run. Speed man Jerry Hughes is the only guy who hasn’t seen a real drop-off, but his 11 QB hits and 4.5 sacks across 11 games doesn’t make for great raw stats for a leading edge rusher. With his speed, Hughes is always dangerous, but the Bills’ drop-off in pass rush has led to a sharp decline in pressure rate (23rd) and has forced them to blitz much more than they’d like to—often to mixed results.
While the underperforming defensive line has led to issues against the run (22nd in rushing defense DVOA), the linebackers certainly haven’t helped offset any of those woes. Tremaine Edmunds was always a size/speed project, but now—in year three—he’s pointing more bust than anything. While I hesitate to lean too heavily on PFF rankings, especially when it comes to linebacker play as it features some of their sketchier grades, the wild trends in the Buffalo linebackers make the grades at least worth mentioning.
When looking at this chart it’s important to note that all grades are out of 100 but anything in the mid-70’s or above is very good and stuff in the mid-50’s is on the lower-end of middle-of-the-pack. Everything sub-50 needs work. This has been reflected in the color-coding.
This all points to a crop of linebackers with a lot of plus blitzers and some serious issues stopping the run. While everyone’s going to defend the run a bit better against us because they DGAF about our passing game, this is a contest where we really need to have success on the ground and have the matchup to do so.
In the secondary, Tre’Davious White is their top cover guy. He’s probably somewhere in that Shaquill Griffin area in terms of caliber, but when he’s on he’s very on. The healthy return of Levi Wallace shores up their other outside corner spot, while both their safeties are solid performers on the backend. This is a talented secondary; the only real potential weak spot is their nickel corner, Taron Johnson.
MATCHUP
While the Bills have undoubtedly had a better season than we have, this is actually—as far as games against division leaders go—a decent matchup for us. This Bills passing attack is always scary, and stopping the deep ball must be the number one priority. But with Richard Sherman back in the fold, Jason Verrett playing lights out, and Tarvarius Moore patrolling center field, we should have the ability to limit the deep ball and force underneath throws. Additionally, our ability to hide coverages has proven devastating against less-seasoned quarterbacks and will be key against the much-improved-but-still-young Allen. If we can take away the easy stuff, we have a better shot of getting Allen out of rhythm early, which could then allow our defensive line and a few well-timed blitzes to apply pressure on their suspect interior line.
The Bills have been spotty against the run, and a strong blend of misdirection in the run and pass game could give us favorable matchups on the second level both on the ground and through the air. Taking advantage of mediocre linebacking corps was considerably easier with Kittle in the fold, but with Juice available and our wideouts regularly moonlighting in the box out of tight splits, there are still ways for us to force the kind of mismatches that can jumpstart our passing attack. Brandon Aiyuk’s return should help in that regard as well, as Nick Mullens has yet to see the field alongside a fully healthy Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel.
We’ll need to have success in the air because without Kittle or Jimmy G, it’s pretty clear that teams—even those with the most suspect of run defenses—will 100% sell out against our ground game if we can’t punish them through the air. There’s no run play that works against a numbers disadvantage and a box full of defenders who are flying forward with not a worry in the world that they’ll get beat over the top. We need to give our backs room to run, and that means passing effectively early in this game and shoring up our turnover problems. We’ve had 11 giveaways in our past four games and our mark of 20 on the season is fourth-worst in the NFL. It should go without saying that for us to win on Monday night (and beyond), that trend can’t continue.
When you’re a super talented team, you can pivot on a dime and win games in a variety of different ways. When you have an off-day you’re still in games and when teams with bad records come along, you know that you’re more than likely able to beat them regardless of their strengths and weaknesses. But when we’re this year’s 49ers, in our current hobbled state, we have to rely more on matchups, and despite the Bills’ impressive record, this is a matchup where we can potentially force an advantage. At this point in the season, we have little room for error, but if we can upset the Bills on Monday night, the path to the playoffs suddenly becomes much more realistic.
Go Niners 👍🏈
Niners 23, Rams 20
These are the kind of matchups we like to see
LUL
Despite becoming NFL vagabonds as they boarded the flight to Los Angeles, not knowing the availability of key starters until game time, and surviving an onslaught of ugly turnovers, the 49ers did just enough to execute yet another brilliant game plan against the Rams—asserting that (A) the Shanahan/Saleh duo really really has Sean McVay’s number, and (B) the Niners are somehow still within realistic striking distance of the playoffs.
As of now, the Niners are a single game outside of the final spot in the NFC playoffs and will share a temporary residence with the current seven-seed—the Arizona Cardinals—before battling them again in week 16. There’s a lot of football to be had between now and then, and—by virtue of a deep roster, competitive spirit, and strong coaching—the Niners run the risk of falling just shy of the playoffs while damaging their draft positioning just enough to put a potential first-round QB out of the picture. But that’s something to worry about for another day. For now, the Niners just swept the NFC West’s division leader and did so in impressive (albeit sloppy) fashion.
OFFENSE
The Niners were far from pretty on offense, struggling with their running game after the Rams committed to stopping it above-all-else and turning the ball over an alarming three times. But our 348 yards of offense were the most the Rams have allowed since (checks notes) the last time they played us, and the two scoring drives to cap off the game were—if not the prettiest—a statement that perhaps this offense, as banged up as it is, can get to where we need to be to make a late season push.
What a Difference a Deebo Makes. No disrespect to Raheem Mostert and Jeff Wilson who—despite losing a fumble each—contributed far more than their middling stats would indicate, but my god this offense looks different with Deebo on the field.
Deebo has been fully healthy for three games this season. In those two matchups against the Rams and one against the Patriots, the Niners are 3-0 and averaging 402 yards/game—a figure that would rank just two yards per game shy of the Cardinals’ second-best offense if extrapolated over the course of the season.
Deebo’s rare ability to run past and over defenders gives the Niners a horizontal stretch threat that they simply lack with any other combination of players on the field. On both touch passes, screens, and slants Deebo showed the ability to regularly create more yards than a play was designed to get and often in spectacular fashion. His 11 grabs and 133 yards were both career highs, and while his playmaking didn’t exactly open running lanes up on the inside—the Rams committed fully to stopping the run late in the second quarter and dared the Niners to pass—Deebo himself converted enough crucial plays to give the Niners just enough late-game offense to pull out the win.
The Donald Dilemma. Actually, it’s not really a dilemma. The dude just beat the absolute shit out of the right side of our line.
Here’s a a cut-up of four plays from a six-play stretch over the second and third quarters. To be clear, this is four snaps of his over six CONSECUTIVE plays:
Here he is later in the game, making an even bigger impact on back-to-back snaps.
When it comes to Donald there’s only so much that we can do, particularly when forced to drop back and pass because the Rams are committing so heavily against the run. It’s not like we didn’t double team him. We did twice in the above clips and—in part cause of massive off-sets by McKivitz—he split both of them. It’s not like we didn’t try to screen away from him, but he was so explosive off the line he messed that up anyways.
While there’s only one Donald and we won’t have to play him until next year (or the playoffs), the best way to protect against the kind of havoc that he wrecked on our offense in the mid-game is to (a) have your players get better—which is certainly possible given this was McKivitz’s second game playing legitimate minutes and first-ever start—and (b) have the other elements of your offense improve enough to take our offense out of the situations that let him flex as the most dominant player in the NFL.
Mullens Meter: Tepid. I don’t think anyone came out of this game thinking Mullens was the long-term answer at quarterback, but I did exit with more optimism for the next few games until Garoppolo gets back.
Mullens wasn’t amazingly accurate, tossing one pick, gifting another that was dropped on an overthrow, and missing a few open receivers—sometimes on crucial downs. But he also showed some ability to get away from the rush, minimize big losses off sacks, and even create some offense on his own while off-script. Most importantly, he didn’t whither under that pressure—literally or figuratively—and that’s something we can build on.
The turnovers are likely just going to be a thing that happens with Mullens from time-to-time—especially when we don’t have a team totally outmatched talent-wise or schematically—and it would be overly optimistic to assume Mullens is going to become incredibly consistent from week-to-week. But it’s not out of the question that he will get more comfortable in his role and improve. I think he did just that this game, and that was without Brandon Aiyuk in the lineup.
While it wasn’t flashy, Mullens finished the game a quiet 9-of-11 for 87 yards on our final two offensive drives—both leading to field goals that would become the difference between a win and a loss. Against a defense as tough as the Rams, that means something.
Broncos Fiasco. Okay, so what happened with the Broncos—where their entire roster of quarterbacks were pulled off the practice field the day before the game and they had to start a practice squad WR at QB with zero reps—has nothing to do with the 49ers. But after a reporter asked Shanahan if he would think about isolating a quarterback in case of a COVID outbreak (his answer was a resounding “no”), Shanny said that if he had to he’d likely start Jet McKinnon at quarterback. Which got me thinking…
Obviously, we would never actually want to see a non-quarterback have to play quarterback for an entire game, but Jet was an All-American QB at Georgia Southern. Sure, that was in an option offense and he only completed 28 passes over his last two seasons, but he also tossed 11 touchdowns during that time frame. So if the Niners had to play a game without a quarterback and had—unlike the Broncos—some actual time to prepare for it, this would be my best guess as to what that offense would look like: a wing T / single wing option-based scheme (from Shanahan’s Saratoga days) with Deebo splitting time in the backfield and as a wing back, Aiyuk running a lot of fly sweeps, and the majority of the passing attack coming off pop passes, rollout sail route combinations, and the occasional tunnel screen.
Anyways, COVID amirite?
DEFENSE
Back-to-back masterpieces from Robert Saleh, who at this point has to be a front-runner for any number of head jobs this off-season. His unit held the Rams to 308 yards, their lowest offensive total since (checks notes again) the last time they played us, and 124 of those yards came on three big plays that should have been snuffed out for shorter gains. While last year’s defense was better, this year’s coaching job has been more impressive. Any questions about whether it was just a case of talent winning the day have been full squelched. It’s impossible to guess what kind of head coach Saleh will eventually make, but it would be even more ludicrous to claim he hasn’t yet earned that shot.
Safety switching. Just like last game against the Saints, Jimmie Ward spent more of his time down near the line of scrimmage while Tarvarius Moore played primarily as the deep safety. Ward has effectively been playing strong safety (with a dash of nickel) while Moore has been playing free.
This change has allowed Ward—who had a slow start to the season—to be at his most effective, leaning on his wide breadth of coverage experience he gained from the incessant position-switching of his first years in the league. While his injury history and body type make for potential long-term concerns once we matchup against more power run-based offenses, letting Ward play near the line of scrimmage and in the nickel has really shown off his versatility and has led to more of the splash plays that he’s always critiqued for not creating enough of.
Likewise, playing deep has given Moore the chance to use his tremendous length and speed to take away any threat of deep passes over the middle, even if his issues with deep safety tackling angles reared their ugly head again on Sunday.
As noted before, 124 of the Rams’ 308 yards of offense came on three plays. For all three of those plays, Moore was at least partially responsible. He got caught watching routes in front of him when he should have sunk to take away the deep out on a bootleg sail, took a bad angle in support on a pass to Cooper Kupp—leading to an additional 15 yards—and triggered downhill too quickly then gave up the inside shoulder on Cam Akers’ 61-yard run. The Rams only scored on three offensive drives. The big plays above made up the majority of yardage on each of those drives.
While Moore’s struggles with tackling angles from the high safety position are worrisome, the Ward/Moore combo is tantalizing enough that I’d let him ride it out. If it’s something that he can improve with more reps—this is only his second season at free safety and sixth start at the position—then we’ve shored up a big question mark for next season.
Dat DL depth. Despite missing both DJ Jones and Jordan Willis to the COVID list, the defensive line was absolutely dominant this game. While only tallying two sacks, the Niners registered six QB hits and had seven-and-a-half tackles for loss on the game—absolutely bottling up the Rams’ outside running game and making Jared Goff throw into the teeth of a defense that he simply couldn’t figure out.
With two sacks and four QB hits on his own, Kerry Hyder has almost certainly played his way out of re-signing with the Niners this off-season (if the team moves on from Dee Ford then that may change). He’s a half-sack away from tying his career high in sacks and is on pace to be quite the unlikely double-digit sack man for the Niners. For now, we can only hope Hyder continues to shred and nets us as high a comp pick as possible.
In his first career start, Kevin Givens continued to assert himself, totaling two tackles, one for loss, a fumble recovery, and a QB hit that forced Goff into one of his two interceptions and secured fellow defensive lineman Javon Kinlaw his first-ever touchdown. There is no question he’s become a big part of our defensive plans moving forward.
Despite heavy losses, our d-line has been performing at a high level throughout the year, which is both a testament to the depth that we’ve acquired at the position—often at little-to-no cost—and the coaching of DL coach Kris Kocurek. If Saleh does get a head job this off-season, Kocurek’s name has been brought up more than once as the heir apparent, but I’m not quite sure. Kocurek has been a DL coach in the NFL for ten years now, and there’s a chance he’s one of those position coaches who simply wants to be very very good at just that—being a defensive line coach.
After all, this is the same guy who Arik Armstead described as:
“He's a football junkie, but more than that I would say he's a D-line junkie. It's all he cares about in life when it comes to football. He's addicted to D-line play. That's all he thinks about, all he cares about. That's like his high in life. He'll tell us, 'I only slept for an hour last night because I was thinking about this stunt or this play.' That's how his brain works."
Regardless of what his role may be next year, he’s absolutely a guy we should be thrilled to have on the Niners staff.
A taste of our(?) own medicine. After the Saints adjusted to our fly sweep/edge game with nickel blitzes triggered by motion, we deployed something similar against the Rams on Sunday.
Here’s a counter run out of a double tight formation.
The Rams are looking to use the fly motion to fake a fly sweep and pull attention the wrong way while looping the tight wideout (#11) across the formation as the kickout block on a counter run the other way. Theoretically, they have 8 blockers against 7 men in the box; the numbers advantage is even more severe if they believe the fly motion will pull a box defender out of the play.
However, upon seeing motion, Sherman now has no one to his side other than an in-line tight end. With the Niners perfectly happy with letting a safety or linebacker handle that player if he goes out on a pass, Sherman cat blitzes off the edge, getting enough depth quickly enough that he makes for an impossible kick out block and in general just mucks up the work with the timing and execution of the play.
As you can see from the end zone angle, the Rams’ numbers in the box were overwhelming, and a giant hole was created… but none of that mattered since the play was blown up at the point of attack.
We also did something similar later in the game by deploying what resembled a squeeze-scrape—or the gap-switching edge technique that teams often run against shotgun, zone read attacks—against the Rams’ fly/handoff combo runs.
Sick of our team speed beating them to the point of attack on their zone and stretch runs, here the Rams are once again trying to run counter opposite a fly sweep fake, but this time they’ve pulled a tight end off the field and replaced him with a receiver (outside of frame, to the right of the screen, wide of Jimmie Ward).
This means that the outside corner can’t cat blitz to blow the play up at the point of attack so the Niners do something else to replicate that kind of edge disruption.
The Niners are slanting the majority of their defensive line towards the fly motion and letting their second-line defenders play their run fits away. This is particularly important on the back-side, where Arik Armstead and Jimmie Ward are basically squeeze-scraping, or switching edge responsibilities.
Slanting linemen and switching gap responsibilities isn’t something insane or new, it’s part of the foundation of any defense, but this backside gap switch is particularly effective against the inside/out threat that the Rams present with their run game.
Just like Sherman on the CAT blitz, Ward immediately aims to get penetration so that he can mess up the play’s timing, avoid any kickout block, and play the bootleg in case of play action. The Rams also made the critical error of putting a tight end on Arik Armstead in the run game, and that tight end is beat immediately to the inside.
While the running back would awkwardly spin out of Armstead’s reach as he was being blocked, the back’s momentum was fully stopped, he had nowhere to run, and he spun directly into the waiting arms of Kentavius Street.
Throughout the game, the Niners’ secondary confused the Rams with edge blitzes and filled hard in the alleys when called upon. This not only shut down the Ram’s rushing attack (outside of the 61-yard run, the Rams totaled 65 yards on 27 carries for 2.7 ypc) but also confused Goff in the passing game.
Masters of Disguise. When Goff gets in a rhythm and is confident in what he’s seeing, he can dice up a defense, but when he has to double take or finds himself coming out of play action fakes and seeing something unexpected, he can get thrown off in a hurry. Thus, disguising our coverages is tantamount to throwing the Rams’ QB off his mark, and we did that beautifully on Sunday.
Here is a simple but marvelously executed example of exactly how these kinds of disguised coverages can throw Goff off his game.
Pre-snap, the Niners are showing Cover 3, with a clear single-high safety, Sherman playing off and looking inside, and Verrett—while showing press—in a position where he could easily turn and bail at the snap. So the Rams have a Cover 3 beater called against it, hoping to high low the top of the formation, hit the crosser behind the linebackers or play pitch-and-catch on either of the comebacks against corners playing deep thirds.
But the Niners are not in Cover 3.
They’re actually in Cover 1, with a linebacker squatting to help on any crossers and Moore deep to help on anything down the field. The return of Sherman—who is as comfortable in man or zone off-coverage while eyeing the quarterback as any corner in the league—helps us really sell that Cover 3 look. While there’s a chance the Rams could hit the quick out against man with a great release, this is already a play-calling win for Saleh.
After the snap we can see the second level of the defense’s deception. Fred Warner has timed up the snap count and lunged forward as if he’s blitzing, all the while locking eyes with Goff as the Rams QB looks right of formation at the high-low read.
But once Goff looks left at his crosser and comeback (and Warner is out of his peripheral), our All-Pro linebacker stops his blitz and widens out. He’s actually in man coverage on the running back and is sniffing out the supposedly safe check down route.
Goff sees that nothing’s open and turns to the swing pass—believing it to be an easy completion since Warner was coming on the blitz. But by the time Goff gets his eyes on the swing, both he and Warner have the exact same thing on their minds: a case of deja vu from last December.
Effectively trapped, Goff looks upfield to see if anything has opened up off schedule. Given the nature of the routes, the timing of the play, and the fact that he is squarely in the pocket, it comes as no surprise that every receiver is blanketed. With the defensive line closing in on him, the terror in his eyes is apparent.
Thus he gets the anime teardrop treatment.
Through the past two years and four contests, these are Jared Goff’s averages against us versus every other opponent he’s played during that time.
And that’s including the wildly out-of-character first half of the December 2019 game, when the Rams went heavy on screens and bootleg passes and Goff threw for nearly as many completions (16) and yards (191) in a single half as he’s thrown for in any other full game against us in the past two years. Take out that outlier and the stats are considerably more grim.
Not great, Bob. Not great.
Pour some for Taylor. Jamar Taylor going down to an ACL tear was a heartbreaker, both because he was a journeyman who worked hard to make the practice squad, then the active roster, then takeover the starting nickel role, and because he was playing well enough that he could have potentially secured himself a multi-year extension in the off-season. For any journeyman in the NFL, getting any kind of multi-year deal is huge.
With Richard Sherman and Jason Verrett starting outside, Emmanuel Moseley slid into Taylor’s nickel slot when he went down. Moseley doesn’t really have the kind of lateral quickness that you typically look for in a nickel corner, and he was targeted early on before he could get situated—especially in hurry-up situations just after Taylor went down. However, Moseley has played in the slot in the past—albeit only in training camp—and he’s such a quick study that you have to imagine he’ll be more prepared going forward, even if it’s not his natural, nor likely long-term, position.
Yet another impressive team win against the Rams has us once again thinking we may be returning to form, but in order for that to materialize into an actual playoff berth, there’s no room for error. Next up, a Bills team that’s sitting 8-3 and on top of the AFC East.
Go Niners 👍🏈
Preview: Wk12 @ Rams
😬
![Coming into your nightmares like… [Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1606260337013-Z47KD0SGA8ELW5ZSJE70/aaron+donald+smoke.jpeg)
Coming into your nightmares like… [Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times]
Opponent: Los Angeles Rams (7-3)
Date: Sunday, 11/29
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Kickoff: 1:05 PM PT
TV: FOX or wherever you stream it illegally
The NFC West is like one giant game of rock, paper, scissors.
The Cardinals’ quick-passing game and scrambling quarterback works well against our deep shell zones. Aaron Donald’s ability to create havoc on an overmatched interior and rein in Russell Wilson has helped the Rams to a 5-2 record against the Seahawks in the Sean McVay era. And our knowledge of the Rams’ offense and ability to rattle Jared Goff have given us three straight over the Rams. But this time around, the health gap between our two squads threatens to bring that streak to an end.
Last we saw the Rams, they were making their pitch as one of the best and most complete squads in the NFC, the Dodgers and Lakers were encouraging them to “do their part” in bringing a third professional championship to Los Angeles (and people weren’t audibly laughing), and the team itself was doing your classic LA sports team shit—like making proposals such as this one:
"Our goal hopefully is we can get to the point where maybe we can unveil a new uniform every year, either the way we space it out or whether the NFL and Nike changes those rules,” Demoff said, via USA Today's Rams Wire. "Maybe a little bit more of a European soccer model where you come out with that alternate jersey each year. Some people like that, some people don't. But yeah, we could see that."
Since we beat them in week 6, the Rams have gone 3-1 against four straight (potential) playoff teams and have knocked off two of the top teams in the NFC in back-to-back weeks. They’re also one of only three teams in the NFL with top 10 DVOA ratings in both offense and defense. Unfortunately for us, we should expect a stiffer challenge in our rematch as the Rams attempt to hold onto the lead in the NFC West.
INJURY REPORT
Since this is getting posted Wednesday morning to avoid Thanksgiving, the Niners have yet to practice this week so all of this is conjecture. With an extra week to rest up from the bye, this was the intended return date for Deebo Samuel, Raheem Mostert, Tevin Coleman, Jeff Wilson, and Richard Sherman. Deebo seems like a shoe-in to play, Sherman has been practicing since the week leading up to the bye, and both Mostert and Wilson had their practice windows opened on Tuesday. How many of them truly return won’t be known until much later in the week, but rest assured, each of them would make for a huge boost.
![A noodle al dente [Jae C. Hong / Associated Press]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1606260507082-MU3AXVUNK9NE0D259VW0/goff+and+mcvay.jpeg)
A noodle al dente [Jae C. Hong / Associated Press]
OFFENSE
For 8 games this season, the Rams have looked like the most complete and well-rounded team in the NFC. For 2, they’ve been sunk by Jared Goff implosions. Since his first bottom-out against us, Goff’s been efficient against the Bears, slung it all over the field against the Seahawks and Bucs, and turned the ball over four times against the Dolphins. Coming off two of his better performances of the year, Goff will look to keep the momentum rolling in an offensive scheme that has been adjusted to minimize variance.
We went over the core tenants of their offense in the earlier writeup, so I’ll focus more on what’s changed since then. The Rams’ implosion against our defense has led to a series of small tweaks rather than any large ones. They still want to run the ball. They still want to get the ball out of Goff’s hands with quick pre-snap reads and half-field combination routes while on the move. But unlike before, when they largely required some modicum of rushing success to tap into their passing game, they seem to have found the ability to do one or the other—run the ball or throw quick passes—without exposing themselves.
Against the Seahawks, the Rams were held to 3.7 yards/carry and just over a hundred yards on the ground but threw for over 300 in an efficient win. Against the Bucs, their rushing output provided a measly 37 yards on 1.9/carry, but Goff—outside of two sketchy interceptions in the second half—diced them up for 376 and three scores on 51 pass attempts.
Over the past two years, that kind of Rams game plan has often meant less-than-ideal efficiency, turnovers, and losing football. Since the start of the 2019 season, the Rams had been 0-5 in games where Goff attempted more than 45 passes. Their first win with such a pass-heavy lean was this Monday against the Bucs. So what’s changed to allow this offense to throttle the #1 defense in total DVOA and passing DVOA without any semblance of a rushing attack?
The Rams’ aerial explosion is less the product of them opening up their downfield passing attack and more a case of them leaning even deeper into what they are at their most comfortable doing: quick game and screens, half-field reads, play action passes, and—as we saw last year—a willingness to show tons of play action looks even when the run game is largely nonexistent.
While many coaches would go into their bye weeks thinking up ways to get better at what was—up until that point—an offensive weakness, McVay decided instead to double down on what they were good at. They now have more screens, more outlets to get the ball quickly out of Goff’s hands, and more ways to—in essence—protect their quarterback and play to his strengths. By getting Goff into these grooves, he’s in turn become more comfortable throwing the ball down the field and his play as a whole has elevated. Granted, he will still have the occasional lapse—the Dolphins game wasn’t that long ago and a pair of ugly picks made McVay very conservative late in the Tampa Bay game—but McVay and the post-bye week Rams have done a good job of increasing Goff’s comfort level and decreasing his variance.
Ultimately, that makes defending this offense more difficult, but doesn’t necessarily change what our defensive goals should be. We want to stop easy yardage on the ground, force Goff to throw drop back passes from the pocket, and minimize YAC yards via quick diagnoses and strong tackling in space.
In our last matchup, the Rams found their most consistent success on interior runs with outside misdirection, but by the time they’d realized that the score had forced them into more of a passing game. While the Rams have found ways to pass at higher volumes with more success, they’d like to be more balanced, and I would guess they make a concerted effort to get the ground game going early in our rematch.
Since they’re likely to try to run and get the ball out of Goff’s hands quickly, it may make the most sense to rush with four, key the bootleg, and try and confuse Goff with an assortment of looks rather than leaning on an undermanned pass rush. Initial-look confusion and collapsing (but not necessarily penetrating) pockets could get Goff out of rhythm, and once drop back passes become a greater part of the gameplan, then we can try and dial up some free hitters with delayed linebacker blitzes and pressure from the nickel position.
With Richard Sherman (hopefully) back from injury, how the Niners deploy him alongside a secondary coming off a lockdown game against the Saints will be one of the major questions of the day—and potentially a crucial one towards slowing up this revitalized Rams offense and seeing what our defense is going to look like for this back stretch of the season.
For the Future: Tarvarius Moore vs. Run/Screen Fits and Play Action
Tarvarius Moore has had two very nice showings as a starter this year, thus it is only fitting for me to mention him in this column and for him to immediately mess up. Just kidding. Hopefully…
Against the Saints, Moore excelled at taking away the deep ball and filled with great intent (and just enough mass) against their power running game. Against the Rams, he’s in for a totally different challenge. While their ability to run the ball behind a talented three-headed monster at running back will test his recognition speed and run fits, their heavy reliance on short passes and screens will test his ability to crash hard from the safety position and tackle well in space—which, for those of you who remember last year, wasn’t exactly his strong suit.
If Moore can once again flex his athleticism in coverage and his physicality as a downhill force against quick passes and the run, we’re very likely looking at our starting strong safety for 2021.
Dawgwork, the official mantra and mascot of the Rams defensive line and also a roided out pit who has definitely chased me through the streets of Boyle Heights.
DEFENSE
Defensively, the Rams have settled in quite nicely after a touch-and-go start to the season. In the past seven games, they’ve allowed over 300 yards only twice—once against the top-flight offense of the Seahawks and once against us. While during that time they’ve pitched a few absolute shutdown performances against the Racial Slurs (108 yards of offense!), the Dolphins (145 yards), and the Bucs (251 yards).
In our last matchup we dropped 390 yards and 24 points, the most yards the Rams have allowed this year and the second-most points (only to the Bills). We did this via the full deployment of a finally healthy Deebo Samuel on touch passes, a commitment to a physical running game, a series of quick hitters and screens underneath, and heavy doses of George Kittle (7-107-1 TD).
The Rams will certainly have adjustments in place to combat our horizontal stretch looks this time around, and while it’s possible we see the return of both Deebo and Mostert in this game, the losses of Garoppolo, Kittle, and Ben Garland will make for much tougher sledding in both the run and pass games. Shanahan often does well against teams that “do what they do” and don’t stray far from their defense’s fundamental rules, but if there’s hope for a Shanahan surprise attack it may be in the deployment of an emerging Brandon Aiyuk.
While Aiyuk played in the first matchup, he’s progressed considerably since that time, and Sunday will (hopefully) mark just the second game where both Aiyuk and Deebo are fully healthy and playing at the same time. However, they’ll be matching up against one of the strengths of this defense. While Jalen Ramsey gets the majority of the attention playing wide corner and the Rams’ “star” nickel hybrid, Darious Williams has been tremendous opposite him, and John Johnson, despite his parents being wildly uncreative, has really held it down while splitting snaps deep and in the box. The Niners’ reliance on short passes between the hashes nullifies some of the impact of a talented duo of corners, but Shanahan will have to get creative without Kittle’s gravitational pull attracting attention away from the wideouts. Getting anyone on these linebackers will certainly be an emphasis in the passing game because while the DL and secondary have loads of talent, these linebackers are straight up bad—especially in coverage.
Ultimately, none of these passing game matchups matter if the Niners can’t establish at least a moderately efficient running game and the threat of play action. Jordan Reed has excelled as a receiver when he’s healthy, but someone needs to block the edge this game. Whether it’s Juice, who’s had an up-and-down year as a blocker, Ross Dwelley, who is an all-purpose sub but not a mover in the ground game, or even our wideouts sealing down into the box, we need to win those run game matchups on the edge if we’re to control possession at all in this game.
For the future: Interior OL vs. Aaron Donald, Eater of Worlds
In the last matchup, Daniel Brunskill—who struggled early in the season—showed out well against the All-Pro defensive tackle. Now Brunskill is at guard and Tom Compton/Colton McKivitz are splitting reps at guard with sub par results. With Donald’s ability and the variety of places he can line up along the DL, he has the potential to wreck a game plan before it can even get going—especially one that relies on a consistent run game and a backup quarterback who has had turnover issues when under pressure.
The Rams had Brunskill circled going into our week 6 showdown, which means they’ll have our two-headed rotation at right guard highlighted with a neon sign going into this one. The Niners’ ability to scheme up help on Donald and our guards’ ability to create stalemates in their one-on-one matchups could be the deciding factor in whether our offense gets off the ground or not.
Go Niners 👍🏈
Saints 27, Niners 13
trigger warning
November 17, 2013: a day that will live in 49er fan annoyance.
Time is a flat circle.
Crucial down, Saints driving, Niners sack puts them deep behind the sticks, but then... Drew Brees looks sad. And we already know what’s going to happen next. We’ve seen it in our minds, repeated a thousand times like we’re one of those bald people lying in milk in Minority Report. We are clairvoyant, if only for a single, fleeting second.
Yes, it’s a bummer that Brees was hurt on this play. No, that doesn’t mean it should have been a penalty, and any retroactive takes that follow in that vein adhere to at least a half dozen logical fallacies. Injury = penalty doesn’t follow with torn ACLs or hamstring pulls, nor should it and arguing that an injury that was diagnosed 24 hours after the game means a penalty in the second quarter was correct is like arguing that it was good that you fell asleep at the wheel and hit that old Dodge Dart off the road because its driver happened to be wanted for robbing a bank.
Seven years ago, Ahmad Brooks’ sack of Drew Brees not only kept the Saints from scoring but forced a fumble that Patrick Willis would recover. The late flag that erased that from existence set up the Saints for victory and set us up to lose the tiebreak in the NFC West and play the NFC Championship game at Century Link rather than Candlestick. If there’s any solace to be had in Sunday’s fit of deja vu it’s that Kentavius Street’s sack—while as clean as could be—was only one of a series of plays that foiled our chances at victory.
Yes, in 2020, losing by a wide enough margin that a single bad call doesn’t infuriate you is as close as you’re getting to a silver lining.
OFFENSE
For the third time this season we actually out-gained our opponent in offensive yardage, only to fall short on the scoreboard. In similar fashion to our loss to the Eagles, the point differential was largely caused by turnovers undoing any chance we had at creating and sustaining momentum.
While we fired out of the gates with a near-perfect script and efficient, focused play on both offense and defense, our massive game flow advantage only lasted through the first quarter. After that, our inability to run the ball (2.0 ypc on the day) and a steady stream of turnovers kept our offense from regaining any type of rhythm and that—combined with our special teams miscues—hung our defense out to dry.
Everyone hates Nickelback: Any defense we face is going to commit to stopping the outside run first and foremost, otherwise it’s hard to have a chance against us. That often leads to unique fronts that haven’t been shown on film, DL alignments made to prevent reach blocks or minimize interior double teams, super-wide edge players whose entire job is to not get hooked, and 5 or more defenders on the line of scrimmage.
The Saints basically did all of the things above, but they added a specific wrinkle that made their defensive front even more difficult to run against. Instead of rolling a linebacker down or adding an extra lineman to give them five defenders on the LOS, the Saints used their nickel corner (Gardner-Johnson) as their edge defender and would typically hide that fact up until the snap.
formation key (condensed split to TE) in blue; defensive adjustment in red
The Saints showed this front often throughout the game against run-friendly formations and clearly had checks built into their play-calls to shift into this look whenever (A) we showed condensed receiver splits—an alignment that we love to run towards because it allows our receivers to block down into the box—or (B) we sent a receiver in fly sweep motion TO the nickel—another sign of a likely run.
They even showed this look on the first play of the game:
Two-high look rolls safety down to run strength to create 8 man box
When they saw that wing TE and condensed wideout out of 21 personnel, they slid their nickel far enough inside the receiver to make for a terrible blocking angle then rolled the high safety down into the box to replace their pass responsibility and create an extra body against the run.
Ballcarrier in yellow; Jet is screwed before the play even begins
By using an edge defender who was too fast and aligned too wide for any blocker to successfully reach, the Saints were able to immediately turn runs back inside or blow them up at the point of attack.
They’d do this when we’d motion down into a condensed set:
Motion from a spread set to condensed wideout keys adjustment
Penetration causes Hasty to cut upfield early, while roll-down safety gets clean path to ball carrier
Or when we’d motion across the formation to create a condensed set on the opposite side:
Alignment of nickel (wide and at LOS) + assignment (penetrate into backfield) makes for an impossible block
Unsurprisingly, reverses and touch passes were the hardest play to get going, as we were outflanked on the edges before we even got started.
Nickel is told to get penetration so can’t be fooled by reverse or kicked out by pulling lineman
We’ve talked a bit about how some of the Niners’ misdirection run concepts and the way they all meld together resemble elements from both a spread option attack and throwback Wing T football. Thus, it seems fitting that the Saints adjusted to our run game with a hybrid of elements that are often used against spread and Wing T teams.
In essence, the Saints were treating the condensed receiver as a blocker and extending the LOS an extra gap with their nickel corner. Tons of college teams use nickel blitzes against spread option attacks as it messes up the read keys of the quarterback. Against us, the Saints weren’t worried about a Mullens zone read keeper as much as they were the natural cutback of our zone and stretch plays and the reverses, sweeps, bootlegs, and play actions going the other way. By shooting into the backfield, CGJ can collapse down against the run unblocked or pressure Mullens enough that there’s no time for a crosser or deep shot to develop via play action.
On the flip side, Wing T offenses have always had to deal with defenses adjusting to motion, which is why many such as De La Salle employ very quick-hitting motions that get the snap off before defenses can adjust. In this case, the Saints were setting an extra edge defender wide of the blockers who could blow up any fly sweep or reverse, while rolling a backside safety down into the box to give the defense appropriate numbers to fill against a more traditional run such as zone or stretch.
We saw a similar look when we were in trips:
Nickel is basically just here to create havoc at the LOS regardless of run or pass
Here, the nickel corner is head-up and pressing the front man in the bunch formation, but isn’t in man. His eyes are inside, and his goal is to jam the wideout so he can’t block down into the box on a crack block—which allows Demario Davis to flow to the ball unhindered—and knock the receiver off his route in case it is a pass—giving the DBs behind him the chance to mark up the right guys in coverage.
clusterfuck initiated
In this case, CGJ knifes inside of Bourne’s block, forcing McKinnon to bounce when he didn’t want to and funneling him into the unblocked hands of their crashing cornerback.
But these blitzes weren’t only effective in stuffing the run game:
Bourne, at the bottom of the screen, is literally pointing out the nickel blitz
In the passing game, these nickel blitzes presented problems because: (A) a nickel blitz is often on the quarterback to recognize pre-snap so that he can shift protection or find his hot routes, and Mullens just isn’t seeing them consistently; and (B) neither McKinnon, Hasty, nor Walter are very good in pass protection. McKinnon especially—due mostly to his abundance of snaps in this game—really struggled, allowing at least two sacks entirely on his own and a handful of other pressures.
Here, nickel is accounted for schematically but Jet didn’t step up into the pocket in pass pro
So how do you beat these loaded boxes with extended edge nickel blitzes? In the run game, you’d want to treat that nickel as an extra defensive lineman. If it’s a run, it doesn’t matter if he’s dropping or coming off the edge, you just need to account for him. Sicking Juice on him on kick-outs could have theoretically given us a matchup we liked in the run game. Same-side sweep action with a cutback intended may have had some legs if we were winning more on the inside.
Getting into formations that themselves have a lot of gaps, like a tight end on the LOS and Juice in a wing, is another way to make that edge pressure less impactful by simply creating more gaps. Conversely, you can open up into more 11 personnel sets as a way to deter that kind of edge pressure and minimize its impact—which we did in the second half—but with Dwelley at tight end instead of Kittle, that doesn’t really give us the run game matchups we’d prefer. Gap running should be on the table as well, but I assume Shanahan leaned away from that in part because—as stated before—it relies a bit more on our inside guys to win blocks and our guards at least weren’t doing that on Sunday.
The best way to combat this look is simply to pass. In particular, you pass underneath. That slot corner may be coming off the edge but he’s also lining up pretending to be in coverage and then vacating all pass responsibility. Just like any other blitz, that opens up space for quick completions underneath and makes dropping defenders cover more ground with less bodies. While a nickel blitz can be dialed up so wide that the blitzer can only be picked up by a running back, it’s inherently more risky on the coverage end because his abandoned pass responsibility is tougher than that of a linebacker’s (hence why an extra DB is on the field in the first place) and—if hiding the blitz—the defender taking over his coverage likely starts the snap out of position and immediately must make up ground.
The signs were actually there of us taking advantage of these blitzes by doing just that—attacking the Saints in underneath holes where the blitzer vacated. For instance, if you look at the sack from before and focus on a different part of the play…
This is as open as you can get
You can see how Shanahan was dialing up dig routes to take advantage of the vacated space. If pass pro had held up this was a completion of a bare minimum of 15 yards.
Here’s another inside-breaking route that was actually completed to Jordan Reed:
motion signals defensive check
Our use of motion activates the nickel corner blitz and rolls the high safety down to replace his coverage responsibility. Knowing that this means the linebackers will be widening out in a hurry and that the single-high safety will surely be pulled by the vertical route out of the slot, this makes Jordan Reed open for a shallow dig or square-in on the backside.
Reed wide open for square-in; this one would be completed
On the first drive of the second half, Shanahan dialed up more spread out sets and started throwing short passes outside the hashes to counteract how the Saints were crowding the box. It got us down into field goal range, but a holding call, an inaccurate pass on a shoot route, and then Mullens’ interception squashed that drive.
This was an excellent defensive game plan from Saints’ DC Dennis Allen, and I would assume we’ll see plenty more nickel blitzes after the success that both the Seahawks and the Saints have had in employing them. Shanahan will have to come in with more early checks against this kind of look—perhaps with more quick passing towards the sideline, inside screens, and gap-running concepts—but I wouldn’t worry about it being some kind of gamebreaking defense against us. This is far from the case of a Rams’ 6-1 defense kryptonite situation.
That’s because in theory, we’re actually built quite well to counteract this strategy when we’re healthy. After all, our passing game strength is in completing underneath passes and getting yards after the catch—thus attacking the very areas that nickel blitzes leave open in coverage. Consider me skeptical that the Saints would be as comfortable dialing up a six man blitz and a soft coverage shell with Deebo and Kittle catching quick outs, hitches, and fast screens in space against a single corner. Or allowing single-high coverage on Kittle rumbling down the seam. Or loving the idea of sending a slot blitz that vacates alley support against a Deebo slant.
Getting some guys back and getting our interior line in order—although Brunskill did play well—will help solve a lot of the problems that this defense presented.
Take off the kid gloves? Or put on even thicker, more kid-friendly gloves on top of the gloves that we’re already wearing? There have been complaints throughout the year that Shanahan needs to open up and throw the ball more when the Niners run game isn’t working. In a bubble, I totally understand that thinking. When the run game isn’t working and everyone’s keying it, you gotta pass to open it up. In theory. But did anyone leave this game thinking that we would have done much better if Mullens threw the ball 50 times instead of 38? I, for one, did not.
People like to state the positive correlation between first down yardage and offensive success as a reason that the Niners should be throwing more on first down. However, that’s making quite the assumption that we’re getting good yardage on that throw because second & 10 is typically the worst time to run, and if we’re coming out every drive with three Mullens passes we’re not only getting away from our offensive identity and eliminating play action concepts from our playbook, but we’re gonna see some real ugly offensive showings.
I absolutely want this offense to open up more, throw the ball down the field, and be able to win with via the run or the pass. Eventually. But simply throwing more doesn’t mean moving the ball better. For example, the top five teams in the league in terms of first down throwing percentage are (in order) the Bills, Bears, Texans, Racial Slurs, and Eagles. Aka, four dumpster fires and the Bills. Meanwhile, eight of the top ten offenses in terms of adjusted DVOA are in the bottom half in terms of passing rate on first down and five are in the bottom ten.
In the simplest of terms, let’s worry about passing well before we worry about passing more.
The Mullens Meter. A resounding “meh” for this week. Mullens showed the ability to (mostly) operate when he was kept comfortable and didn’t have to work too deep down his progressions. Where he got into trouble was when he’d lock onto his primary read on intermediate routes—allowing underneath defenders and safeties to read his eyes—and when his brain tried to write checks that his arm couldn’t cash. This included the back shoulder wheel to Aiyuk, which was thrown far too inside for the rookie wideout to make a play on it, and the end zone interception off a fade route that had the same issue.
The physical limitations are starting to show a bit, including nine passes deflected—many at the line of scrimmage—but Mullens at least showed some promise in the waning minutes of the game, where he was flushed out of the pocket and completed two off-script throws down the field. He’ll have the bye week—and (hopefully) an injection of healthy offensive talent—to build upon as he auditions for a backup role either with us or someone else in the NFL. He’s never going to have incredible arm talent or stature, but if he can improve between the ears—and start recognizing nickel blitzes—he could still have a strong month of play before Jimmy G comes back.
To his credit, Mullens is clearly a tough dude. For reference, here are his two roughing the passer calls versus Brees’:
Yeaaaaaah, let’s just say “protecting the quarterback” has a variable definition.
“Special” Teams. Far from a banner day from our special teams unit, which—other than Robbie Gould—has had some suspect performances this year. Two muffed punt returns, a punt that was nearly blocked, and a kickoff that was returned 75 yards when Jimmie Ward and Wishnowsky ran into one another made for quite the eventful day in specials (the Saints muffed two punts themselves, but recovered one of them).
Richard Hightower is widely known as one of the better special teams coordinators in the league, so the performances this year have been disappointing to say the least. Although to be fair, it’s hard to say how much of this is on him versus the rotating door of practice squadders and waiver-wire pickups who now populate his units. He’s lost his top gunners in Raheem Mostert, Emmanuel Moseley, and Tarvarius Moore to major snaps on offense or defense while special teams ace Mark Nzeocha has been out since early in the season. The injury wave spares no one, but with special teams often filled with the backend of the roster to begin with, it’s been a full-on rotating door this season.
Air Aiyuk. We may not have the capability to fully harness him at the moment, but Aiyuk is really coming along nicely. While usually guarded by the Saints’ top corner, Aiyuk had a career-high 14 targets while recording 7 grabs for 75 yards and a score. While that may not seem like amazing efficiency, he was getting open early underneath and deep down the field and has made serious strides this year—having now totaled 6-plus catches and 75-plus yards for the third game in a row.
While I’d like to see him improve his ability to play through mid-route contact and use his length to high-point jump balls, he’s quickly growing into a true three-level threat, showing vertical ability and that early separation that made Emmo so valuable for us last year.
DEFENSE
Despite the score, this was actually one of our best defensive performances of the year. Saleh came in with a very strong game plan and some interesting personnel changes (which we’ll talk about later) as we limited the Saints to 123 yards passing. Sure, Drew Brees missed the second half, but our defense’s ability to come out firing and make quarterbacks look confused and off-target to start games is a truly impressive feat that—save the Packers game—has been one of the few consistent trademarks of what has been an up-and-down season.
The Saints were 2-of-12 on third downs. Their 237 yards of offense made for their worst offensive output since a 10-13 loss to the Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day in 2018. While the team doesn’t have the record nor the defense the flash of last year, Robert Saleh has certainly improved his chances at being named a head coach sooner rather than later.
50% is always greater than 0%. Going in we’d said we had to stop Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara. Well, we absolutely accomplished half of that game plan, holding Thomas to 2 catches for 27 yards on 7 targets. Kamara… not so much.
I saw a stat that we missed 15 tackles in this game, which is a major bummer because we’d improved our open-field tackling so much this season, but I’d say at least a dozen of those missed tackles were from Kamara. To our credit, we swarmed him when he had the ball and absolutely stuffed him in the running game. While he had three total touchdowns, he finished the game with 8 carries for 15 yards on the ground. Ultimately, it was his 7 grabs for 83 yards (34 coming on a single screen) that really powered this offense and kept the chains moving when pretty much no one else was stepping up.
The Middle-Out Approach. Our outside corners were rarely targeted in this one, with the Saints choosing instead to work their matchups on the inside. Jamar Taylor, with regular safety help over top, was as invisible as we wanted him to be given his frequent matchups on Michael Thomas, while Greenlaw and Warner didn’t have their best games.
Despite being outflanked on Kamara’s touchdown catch off the Brees fumble, Warner was his typical blanket-like self in pass coverage, but wasn’t as sure as he’s been as a tackler on Sunday. Greenlaw was mostly victim of circumstance. When you’re the Saints and you’re trying to get Kamara the ball on a linebacker and one of those linebackers is maybe the only guy in the league who might be able to cover him, you’re obviously gonna target the other dude. Greenlaw was that dude this week.
The Saints found ways of lining up Kamara—or even Michael Thomas for one completion—on Greenlaw in man coverage and while Greenlaw has got speed, he doesn’t have go-over-two-picks-on-a-shoot-route-against-Kamara kind of speed. To his credit, no one does. To be clear, this game didn’t change my opinion of Greenlaw at all. It was always gonna be a tough matchup.
MOAR Moore. Saleh’s biggest surprise in this game was how he shuffled things up on the back-end, giving Tarvarius Moore the nod at strong safety to match-up with the Saints’ passing attack and speed. Moore, in his second start of the year, played very well.
When asked a week ago if the Niners should start Moore opposite Ward with Tartt sidelined, Shanahan had mentioned that Moore doesn’t have the ideal body type for a lot of snaps in the box. In this matchup at least, Moore stayed largely at deep safety, where his movement skills and speed really pop on tape. Even in bad special teams plays you can see those athletic talents, as he surely saves a touchdown on this kickoff return.
I don’t know nearly enough about the Niners’ safety responsibilities to know if that meant Moore was actually playing more free safety and Ward more strong safety, or if it was simply a circumstance of the matchup (perhaps, caused by the Saints expecting Harris deep instead?), but the Ward/Moore combo was lights out all game.
However, Marcell Harris was far from left out in the cold in all this. When the Niners were in their base sets, Harris started at Sam linebacker in lieu of Azeez Al-Shair, giving the Niners a bit more coverage ability while risking a smaller player in the box against the Saints run game. Al-Shair has often been a target in coverage, and these two personnel moves likely took away a lot of what the Saints were planning to do in the passing game.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is necessarily the norm moving forward, this gives the Niners an excellent set of options. If they’re keying a passing team (such as the Bills in week 13 for instance), this grouping makes a ton of sense, but if they’re playing a run-dominant team like the Ravens—who Harris was outstanding against—perhaps they want more size at linebacker and strong safety. Either way, I’ve long been interested in what the Niners’ long-term plan has been for Moore, who is often pointed out as their best defensive player who isn’t starting. So consider me fully onboard with giving him the lion’s share of safety reps so we can see what he’s got.
Popping Pass Rush Cherries. Two players along our defensive line registered their first career sacks in this game. Well, technically only one because Kentavius Street’s was wiped out by penalty, but he’s getting a shoutout regardless.
I don’t know what the future holds for Kentavius Street. He hasn’t made much of an impact this year despite a healthy number of snaps due to injuries along the DL. He’s clearly fourth in the pecking order along the interior, with DJ, Kinlaw, and Givens all cemented there. Perhaps he never fully pans out and is getting replaced by practice-squadder Darrion Daniels next year? Or perhaps his blow-by sack, in which he flashed the power and explosiveness that led the Niners to drafting him in the first place, is a sign of things to come? Flashes that the coaching staff had seen enough of that they were willing to bet on him rather than Jullian Taylor? Regardless, congrats to Street. Hopefully he registers another sack soon and that this time it will count.
Meanwhile, Javon Kinlaw had a performance that likely has a number of more anxious Niners fans breathing sighs of relief. The hustle had been there, he’d been getting close, but finally Kinlaw broke through with a handful of splash plays on Sunday, including a third down stop, a screen pass disruption, and a box score that read 3 tackles, 1.5 sacks, and 2 QB hits. There’s still a ton of polish, consistency, and growth needed in his game, but that’s a nice performance for the rookie to go into the bye with.
While we’re on the d-line, Kerry Hyder continues to be out here working. With 5.5 sacks through 10 games, he leads the team, and is on pace to surpass his career-high of 8 in a season. As I state every week, would really love for him to be back next year.
Also worth noting, Jordan Willis recorded a half-sack in this game. Now, in three games with the Niners and just over 100 defensive snaps, he has 1.5 sacks, which is more than he’s totaled in any season at any point in his four-year career. Sacks aren’t everything, but Willis has looked active and athletic since coming over from the Jets. Culture and coaching matter. There’s a very real chance we got a steal.
Go Niners 👍🏈