Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds

Of course it couldn’t be that easy. 

After buzzing through the first four games of our bird-stead with an average margin of victory of 24 points, winning each game by at least two scores, and never really being threatened except for one quarter in Philadelphia, we were two wins away from locking up the No.1 seed in the NFC and being able to rest starters Week 18 against a healthy—and dangerous—Rams team.

But the Ravens game quickly devolved into a swift kick in the nuts and the must disappointing Christmas since your grandma packed a chunky sweater into a gift box that looked suspiciously like a PS2. Now we must win both of our next two games (or get some help from the Cowboys and Cardinals) to secure a first-round bye that—given our banged up state—may be more important for us than most other contenders.

So what happened? How worried should we be? Why has Santa Claus forsaken us despite our best behavior? And what could a potential Super Bowl rematch look like?

OVERALL

The one thing your Pop Warner coach was right about. How do you lose a game by two scores when you outgain your opponent by 80 yards and nearly a full yard per play? Turnovers and penalties. While it may seem overly simplistic, that’s the big story of this game.

The Niners—who to this point led the league in takeaways and were last in giveaways—were an astounding minus-5 in turnover differential against the Ravens. Historically, teams that lose the turnover differential by ONE have a winning percentage of just over 30%. Lose by two and it drops to 15%. By three? 10%. By four? Less than 5%. By five? I have no idea. Because at that point the statistical trend is so obvious and the margin so great that no one has even bothered crunching the numbers into a Google-able stat. The old heads were right. Turnovers will do you dirty.

Penalties are a bit murkier regarding their statistical impact, partly because not all penalties are created equal. But the 49ers were flagged 10 times for 104 yards, and six of those flags either took away one of our first downs or gave the Ravens one. If you cluster those kinds of penalties alongside third/fourth down success (after all, they both give or take away a new set of downs), then the Niners got annihilated in the two statistical categories that matter most in winning: creating and extending scoring opportunities.

Sweet, sweet, specials. The special teams were far from horrid in this game. Mitch had a few nice punts. Deebo had one solid kick return. Moody made his one field goal attempt. But my god did it feel like the mistakes on special teams were absolute momentum killers.

After the safety, we had a chance to easily get the ball back on our own 35-yard line or better and pile on early in a way that has thus far proven insurmountable to overcome, but Ronnie Bell muffed the ball by the sideline and it dribbled out of bounds at our own 20-yard line. You should never gain fewer yards on a safety punt return than a regular kick return. And you should NEVER ever gain fewer yards than you would by simply fair catching.

But the biggest special teams momentum swing happened at the beginning of the third quarter. After Purdy threw at Willie Snead’s inattentive head to snuff out our first series of downs, we outkicked our coverage on the ensuing punt, allowed a fatty return, then fouled the runner out of bounds to tack on an additional 15 yards. Three plays later, the Ravens would score a touchdown. The next offensive play Purdy threw an interception returned to our nine-yard line. The game felt out of reach almost immediately thereafter.

OFFENSE

The Niners’ roster construction—and Shanahan’s deployment of our talent—is not coincidental. Shanahan always likes to zig while other teams zag, so as more and more teams started assembling rosters around an analytics-encouraged theory that builds defenses from the front (defensive line) or the back (secondary) while pinching pennies on linebackers and safeties, we were assembling a roster of Swiss-army knife position-less offensive weapons to attack the very same positions that other teams were neglecting.

In Philadelphia, Nicholas Morrow—despite being a converted safety who has had a good season in coverage—allowed a whopping 6 catches for 175 yards and two scores against us. When hosting Seattle a few weeks ago, Jamal Adams—despite being an actual safety—allowed two grabs for 79 yards and a score. At its core, Shanahan’s offense aims to force linebackers to cover and defensive backs to tackle, and—as odd as it may sound—there are far fewer defenses than you’d think that can do those two things consistently. 

Bizarro Baltimore. The Ravens’ defense was always going to be a fascinating litmus test for our offense because—in theory—their roster was made specifically to stop the kind of linebacker and safety abuse that we specialize in. 

While built from the back forward with tons of quality corners and safeties, they also have invested heavily in the linebacker position—spending a first-round pick on Patrick Queen and trading a second and a fifth to obtain Roquan Smith and pay him handsomely. With four quality cornerbacks, two excellent safeties, an emerging star at nickel (who can also play all the safety positions), and two rangy linebackers, they’re one of the few teams who can mix and match different cover guys on our many offensive weapons. 

I wouldn’t say they can fully cover all of our guys. As we’ll touch on later, there were certainly people open in this game, but the Ravens have enough flexibility and optionality on their roster and in their scheme that they rarely give themselves a genuinely bad matchup. That allows them to present a wide array of coverage and blitz looks that aren’t easily recognized.

The other unique aspect of this Baltimore defense—and the reason why it’s both hard to play against and hard to predict—is the fact that they really coach up and prioritize blitzing technique in their linebackers and defensive backs. That helps them generate considerably more pressure than their pure DL talent would indicate and also slows up the timing and processing speed of opposing quarterbacks.

I don’t want to completely neglect the Ravens’ defensive line, as it too is an interchangeable collection of players who they do a good job of finding the right matchups for, but it’s the depth and quality of their linebackers and secondary that truly differentiates this defense, especially when in the hands of a talented DC such as Mike Macdonald.

Spot Treatment. Everyone knows that the Niners want to chunk play you to death with slants and digs built off of their run game looks, but the extra potential cover man that 3-4 fronts like the Ravens employ innately means there’s one more guy between the tackles or in the alley who is a genuine threat to drop into coverage.

The Ravens have loved mug looks up until this point—where inside gaps are covered by walked-up linebackers, simulating a six- or seven-man front. But knowing how much we like to attack the box in the passing game, they went away from those looks and kept their linebackers back, telling them to drop into the zones that we like to target the most and hoping to throw off the rhythm of an anticipatory thrower such as Purdy.

That led to a couple of plays that ended up looking like this.

Granted, one Tampa 2 defender covering two digs is the single worst example (and there were people open in this game), but by spot-dropping to our most popular areas of attack and moving from mug looks and inside pressure to creative outside edge rushes, the Ravens successfully mucked up the works and forced Purdy to rush out passes before he could get through his progressions.

Dark and Edgy Reboot. Purdy’s second pick was the most glaringly effective use of the Ravens’ edge pressure, as a blitzing corner batted down an attempted screen pass which another edge blitzing corner from the opposite side was able to pick it off, but, in a macro-sense, these outside blitzes were most effective in speeding up Purdy’s process so that he couldn’t get to the open receivers further down his progression.

You can see it as early as our first offensive play. Here, we’re motioning CMC out wide to see how the Ravens adjust to empty, with the idea of throwing a simple spot-dig concept to the three-receiver side.

In response, the Ravens check to an edge blitz to the three-receiver side, gambling that their nose tackle shading the center’s weakside A gap—plus the late showing blitz—will make the Niners open their pass set to the left so that the edge rusher will come free.

The gamble pays off, as it heats up Purdy so quickly that he’s forced to throw a check down to CMC, and the Ravens—in a split coverage with a corner sitting in the flat, are easily able to rally to the ball and make a short tackle for loss.

If Purdy had been able to get through his progression he’d have been able to find a wide-open Kittle, who had enough room to run—and advantageous angles on the secondary—that it the completion would have netted a hefty gain, if not a house call.

Another clear instance of this edge pressure forcing Purdy to make decisions before he can get through his progressions is the pass to Willie Snead noted above. Here, we have an empty set with a simple triple slant inside-out progression to the left and a high-low concept to the right. 

Brock will open to the side he thinks he has numbers, which is very clearly the left side given it looks like man coverage across the board. But on the snap, linebacker Patrick Queen—who is lined up way outside on CMC—will basically cat blitz from wide outside…

Triple slants rarely go to the inside slant unless something has gone terribly wrong on defense, so this is really a play designed to hit Deebo in the middle and Aiyuk after him if Deebo doesn’t free up. Willie Snead may be the “first read,” but nine times out of ten he’s just there to run off / wall his defender.

Right off the snap, you can already tell that Snead (in red) won’t be open, while Deebo (in yellow) will be.

Unfortunately, the pressure from the outside makes Purdy chuck the ball at Snead—who is tangled up and not even looking—despite Deebo springing wide open for the play that all defenses dread the most: Deebo on a slant with room to run and one man to beat who is twelve yards off of him.

Does a Purdy who hasn’t thrown three first half interceptions to this point have the confidence and timing to huck that ball into Deebo simply off of how Snead is being covered? Impossible to say, but… probably. It’s something he’s done plenty of times before. But by now he’s hesitating and not trusting his anticipation as much.

The most obvious example of how the outside pressure—and Purdy’s play on the night—started to mess up his timing and willingness to throw anticipatory throws was when we turned the ball over on downs at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

Here, we’re trying to run off the short-side defenders and hit a dig-shallow concept behind them, while the Ravens are showing a mug-like look before dropping into man coverage with a rat defender coming off the LOS and a deep zone safety. They’re overloading the short side of the field by sending both overhang defenders, but we have CMC back to block.

Now, if there is one thing that CMC hasn’t absolutely excelled at this year, it’s his pass pro, and he doesn’t kill it on this play. But that doesn’t change the fact that Aiyuk has sprung wide open.

This ball should be thrown now. Honestly, it could have been thrown a step or two earlier because Aiyuk had basically already beaten his man on alignment and initial stem. And normally, this ball would have been thrown. But by now Purdy’s holding onto the ball a bit too long, playing a bit too cautious, and feeling the pressure a bit too early. So instead of a massive completion, first down, and more, Purdy holds the ball, is contacted and flushed, and by the time he’s free there’s no one open anymore.

The result is a weird flip of the ball over Purdy’s head and a turnover on downs.

Still Don’t Miss Jimmy. The stats make it look worse than it was and there’s a lot of team-wide mistakes that went into this kind of performance, but this was unquestionably the worst game of Purdy’s career.

The first pick is Purdy’s fault in full. The second pick is actually a pretty good check-at-the-line from Purdy (Deebo would have had one safety to beat fifteen yards away at a bad angle if he’d gotten the pass) and just bad luck getting the ball batted in a way that it was intercepted in the backfield. I’d basically not blame him for that one at all. The third pick was also a carom but I would put blame on Purdy, simply because he was throwing across his body, not totally on target, on a play where he expected there was an offensive flag. The ROI on that risk is simply not strong enough to make that throw at that time. And the fourth pick he was hit mid-throwing motion. You could say he should have felt the pressure and slid away. But, at this point, given all that had happened before, we’re picking nits. 

We’ve seen Purdy be off-timed or off-target before, but typically that was early in games and he’d adjust as the game went on. This was the first time we’d seen that trend go in reverse. This was very much a game where everything went wrong all at once, so I’m not sure how much there is to really take away from it in regards to Purdy individually. He played poorly. That’s the micro view. The important thing is the macro long lens view. How does he respond from this game in the upcoming games, the rest of this season, and beyond? Based on how he got to the point he currently is, I’m optimistic that his process and professionalism will lead to a strong rebound.

DEFENSE

Despite the score and total yardage, this was not a terrible performance from our defense. But it did raise some questions as to what our overall strategy was in combatting the unique talents of Lamar Jackson.

Hemming and Hawing. Against the Eagles we had our defensive line emphasize containing Jalen Hurts in the pocket because we rightfully believed that he was a person who saw pressure instead of feeling it. When the pocket started to get tight his eyes would leave his downfield options and drop down to the pocket itself, so if you could keep him from exiting that pocket and throwing sideline scramble shit, you could effectively take away a lot of the Eagles’ downfield passing.

Now, Lamar Jackson is better than Jalen Hurts in basically everything other than short-yardage running (and maaaaybe sideline throwing), but—up until this year—you may be surprised to learn he actually struggled with off-script, on-the-run passing. He was still the best off-script, on-the-run runners of all time, but he didn’t do a good job of running to pass. That’s been the biggest change under Todd Monken. Lamar is now much better at running to extend plays in the passing game, while his receivers are much more in sync and prepared for the scramble drill to break out at any moment.

The only reason I bring up this comparison is because the Niners had a clear plan of attack against Jalen Hurts, but against the Ravens, it seemed as if the defensive line was stuck halfway between trying to keep Lamar in the pocket and rushing him like any other quarterback. Unsurprisingly, this led to some notable breakdowns.

Below are the splits of all run and pass plays, separated between plays where Lamar moved outside the pocket versus all other plays. I’d put it in a chart, but for some reason, I can’t do that on Squarespace, so please forgive the formatting.

Designed Runs: 24 carries for 63 yards and 1 TD at 2.6 yards per play (ypp)
Scrambles outside pocket: 2 carries for 39 yards at 19.5 ypp
Passes from inside pocket: 17-of-28 for 116 yards, 2 sacks for -11 yards, and 1 TD at 3.5 ypp
Passes from outside pocket: 6-of-7 for 136 yards and 1 TD at 19.4 ypp

Those inside pocket splits don’t even include the negative 20-yard safety that happened due to a disciplined pass rush that kept Lamar backing up within the pocket. And they do include the two completions for 33 yards off of two outside blitzes that Ji’Ayir Brown whiffed on which allowed Lamar to break contain.

The Ravens offense was an entirely different beast when it was forced to operate from within the pocket.

Assuming the position. One of the many drawbacks of eight billion turnovers is that the opposition’s field position is a lot better than ours. Our average starting field position was our own 23-yard line. The Ravens started a typical drive on their own 40. We never started with the ball past our 36-yard line. The Ravens started five drives with better field position than that, including two drives that began inside our 20. If not for two excellent punts that twice backed the Ravens up within their own ten, the field position battle would have been much worse. 

Not my president. Despite the handful of exciting plays he made, the Lamar Jackson MVP chatter was and continues to be beyond annoying. This is a Baltimore team that wins mostly off its defense and Lamar—despite being better in real life than he is on the stat sheet—didn’t surpass Kirk Cousins in touchdown passes until the second half of this game. Kirk Cousins hasn’t played since week 8.

Lamar is currently in a four-way tie for 14th in the NFL in passing touchdowns, and—even when you include his five rushing scores—he only cracks the top ten because the players clustered around him (Stroud, Stafford, Herbert) have all missed games due to injury. He has the #1 scoring defense behind him and has thrown for under 200 yards six times this season, yet the Ravens are 6-0 in those games. Yet somehow the narrative is about how Lamar is a one man offense and everyone else (Dak, Purdy) are the ones who get all the help?

I understand that stats aren’t everything, but they’re certainly worth more than the Instagrammable highlights, media politicking, and the “vibes” that seem to be buoying the campaign to give the MVP to a quarterback—any quarterback—as long as it’s not Brock Purdy.

For the record, I think CMC should get the award.

THE GOOD NEWS

It’s far too early and there are far too many things that could go wrong to start thinking of what a potential rematch against the Ravens might look like in the Super Bowl, but—despite this Christmas nightmare—I think we’d be fine. The Ravens are absolutely one of the best teams in the NFL and one of the few with a defense built to slow down our offense, but everything that could have gone wrong went wrong on Monday and that kind of a shitstorm isn’t likely to make a reappearance if—for no other reason—based on variance. 

But if you want something more reassuring than entrusting our success to lady luck, here are a few cliff notes to how we might flip the script come February.

Run the ball. It’s far too easy to look at the stat sheet and say we didn’t run the ball enough, but that would be neglecting how the game actually unfolded. We were moving up and down the field with ease on our first three drives, it’s just that two ended in interceptions—the second pick coming on a called run play.

After running all over them for our last score of the first half, we entered the second half balanced with two passes and two runs. Unfortunately, we had a three-and-out in the first drive and threw a pick on the first play of the second. By that point we were down 18 points. While I think we could have been slightly more balanced in attempting to make our comeback given how much time was left, throwing when down three scores is pretty common.

When a defense employs so many three safety looks, wants to keep their linebackers off the LOS to take away slants and digs, and hopes to scheme up exotic rush looks, they’re naturally going to be a bit susceptible to the run, and we ran the ball very well in this game. Despite our OL’s issues against the pass, we seemed to overpower them on the ground, and I’m sure Shanahan wanted to lean on that running game in the second half. The game flow just didn’t allow us to.

If there’s a rematch, there should be more room (and more opportunities) to churn out yardage on the ground.

Win outside. Clouding the middle of the field to try and take away slants and digs isn’t something new or particularly innovative. Teams have been trying to do that to us for years. The big difference is we now have more answers and—on most days—a QB who can exploit defenses who play our tendencies too heavily.

The Eagles tried their best to take away inside-breaking routes when we played them earlier this year, and our response was to utilize trips and quads formations to isolate a receiver backside—usually Aiyuk—and force the defense to either give that backside player help or have a numbers advantage to the multiple receiver side.

With the inside players keying inside-breaking routes, they inevitably weren’t getting much width, but to make sure that linebacker at the top of the screen would clear out, CMC ran a spot route to the middle of the field and directly into his line of sight. That let Purdy and Aiyuk just chip away relentlessly on one-on-one coverage with no underneath help by throwing quick and intermediate passes outside the hashes.

Even though it seemed like nothing was going right on Sunday, we actually had success doing something somewhat similar against the Ravens—albeit with concepts that created a high-low look to the backside rather than a pure isolation.

Since the Ravens are more likely to drop into something like Cover 2, we used a player coming across formation (or later, a running back) to keep the flat defender shallow, out of the way, and distracted, then basically let Aiyuk cook someone deeper down the field for an easy completion.

After the snap, you can see that the linebackers are looking to take away inside routes and haven’t widened at all. While the true flat defenders must play up to take away the motion man who has immediately threatened their zone (especially when that player is Deebo). The end result is a single corner with deep responsibility covering Aiyuk, and… as we should all know by now…

Aiyuk is always open.

While the Ravens are super deep and versatile in their coverage players, I’m not actually sure if any of their outside guys are true lockdown types, so when we can isolate them on man and protect it, there are wins to be had both to Aiyuk and Kittle—who both roasted people all night.

Layer the middle. The Ravens may have been hedging against our inside breaking routes, but the digs were actually opening up quite well in the second half once we started giving them eye candy—and a YAC threat—with check downs between the hashes. The length of this write-up has gotten out of goddamn control, so instead of diagramming the plays in question I’m just going to show two stills that display how the inside checkdown opened up the second-level passes as the game went on. We just weren’t always able to hit them.

While the Niners love to pair digs with slants and other in-breakers that allow them multiple options to generate big YAC yards and would prefer to put CMC on an option route for the possibility of a bigger gain that is “right every time,” these check downs were more successful in this game because (A) Kittle/CMC/whoever directly in front of a linebackers eyes is hard to ignore, (B) they made for a simpler vertical (high-low) read that required less perfect timing for Brock, and (C) they allowed for a check release if pass pro was going to shit.

Keep Lamar in the pocket. Easier said than done and we still need to pressure him, but I’d rather him run the scramble drill from inside the pocket than outside and rather their offense have to beat us with scheme. That means much better rush lane integrity.

Don’t be afraid to heat him up. The old Ravens offense was so great at option running and so bad at dealing with a defensive scheme that was seemingly too stupid and simple to work: engage eight. There were entire games where teams would just fuckin’ send it and somehow it worked. While this new scheme (and Lamar) are much better at combatting that defense than before, I think there’s still success to be had by sending extra men (as long as they maintain their rush lanes). 

The Ravens spammed screens at times in this game in part because I don’t think their offense has a ton of quick-hitting answers other than screens and RPOs. They rely pretty heavily on crossing routes and mesh concepts for their quick game—plays that are flexible against man and zone and hope to create YAC yards but that are slow developing for short yardage completions—and when you take out the scramble drill element of their offense, their receivers are not as effective getting open. 

The Ravens receivers had 15 grabs for 109 yards and two scores in this game. Far from paltry numbers, but some of that was off the scramble drill, much of that was from screens, and the 7.3 yards per completion leaves much to be desired. If you can speed up Lamar enough to where they have to rely more on their actual offense, then their receivers will need to win downfield in true dropback passing. I don’t know how consistently they can do that.

Go Niners 🏈👍