Cardinals 24, 49ers 20
![Some bullshit about the scoring system in horseshoes [Paul Kitagaki Jr.]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1600145180584-3ICNH7EPEO9EAT1FAMZQ/KB+underthrow.jpeg)
Some bullshit about the scoring system in horseshoes [Paul Kitagaki Jr.]
Well that sucked.
In a game that felt somewhere between last year’s matchups against the Steelers and Falcons but with a result more like the latter, the Niners dropped their first game of the season to go 0-1 while every other team in the division won.
Already, there’s some catching up to do.
OFFENSE
Despite a hot start to the game that saw us put up 190 yards and 10 points (should have been 17) on 22 plays for an outstanding 8.63 yard per play average—our offense fizzled for large stretches of the mid-game. Tasked with pulling out two would-be go-ahead touchdown drives to secure the game in the fourth quarter, our discombobulated passing attack fell just short.
Wideout Shortage: With Samuel and Aiyuk sidelined, the Niners entered the game with four healthy wideouts. Then Richie James got hurt early (he played only 10 snaps, including specials), giving us three. While the team went in knowing that they’d be limited and would have to target their backs and tight ends more in the passing game, having only three wideouts—one of them almost exclusively a slot receiver—pretty much relegated the team to 12, 21, and 22 personnel the rest of the way. When the Niners did line up with all three of their healthy wideouts, the results were pretty rough. Per PFF:
With three or more wide receivers on the field, San Francisco produced -0.7 expected points added per pass, by far the lowest among offenses on such plays today.
Even with an injured Kittle a non-factor in the second half, the backs and tight ends tallied 15 catches, 218 yards, and 2 TDs through the air. In contrast, the receivers combined for 4 grabs for 41 yards. It’s not even that our wideouts played all that poorly, just that their No.1 on our No.3–and the snowball effect that creates for matchups down the line—isn’t a battle we should expect to dominate. Clearly we need more health and production from our wideouts moving forward. As of now Aiyuk is expected to play on Sunday. Even if he does, the Niners may have a chat with Mohamed Sanu during the week.
OL stock check: With Ben Garland a game-time inactive, practice squadder Hroniss Grasu became our starting center. All things considered, he seemed to play okay. Right guard Daniel Brunskill actually struggled more, giving up an early sack and missing some blocks in the run game—likely in part since he had to take mostly center snaps during training camp. Beside Brunskill, McGlinchey didn’t have his best game either, making our right side inconsistent in the opener.
Despite that our OL played okay as a unit, helping us rush for 123 on 4.9 yards per carry despite an often wavering passing attack. But there was one very clear positive. Trent Williams seems to be living up to the hype—as evidenced by this snuff film:
While our long run of the game was an early 16-yard scamper from Mostert, we were on the brink of a few big gains, including the play above—where it’s a TD if Trent Taylor makes his block—and the Mostert bend-back where Budda narrowly tripped him up—turning a likely 60-yard touchdown scamper into a 3-yard gain. Ultimately our split flow backfield blocking action seemed to give us the most success. We could have potentially gone to it more often to off-set their aggressive front seven, but the looks were there; we should expect to hit more of them in future weeks.
Isaiah Simmons Watch: The Cardinals used their first round pick in way more positions than I’d have expected given the matchup. This led to—ahem—mixed results. Per PFF:
[Simmons] logged 18 snaps in total, lining up in the box, slot, defensive line and at outside corner. What he did in coverage, however, was nothing like what we saw from him at Clemson. On his eight coverage snaps, Simmons was targeted three times — he allowed three catches for 86 yards and two touchdowns.
That includes this beauty of a play, where Shanahan uses alignments and deep route combinations to pull every single defender out of the way and create a runway down the middle of the field. Anything that’s made into a foot race is good for us, and this play saw Mostert hit a top speed of 22.74 mph, the fastest speed of any ball carrier over the past two years.
I don’t hate the nickname.
Simmons also had a 15-yard penalty on the very first play of the game and was a big part in the (at the time) go-ahead touchdown. The rookie’s got talent, but… not a great start.
Jimmy “Not Great, Bob” Garoppolo. Man he struggled, especially down the stretch. He looked bad. Probably the worst he’s looked over a full game since... week 1 of last year against the Bucs? He had some success early, seemed to be in rhythm, but his timing and accuracy really wavered as the game went on. Part of that was due to the pressure he was facing, but despite all of our issues offensively, we had guys open for potential big plays and we simply couldn’t make it happen.
Considering the pressure he was facing on his throwing side, I’ll cut Jimmy some slack here. You’d have liked for him to come off the left side earlier after looking off the safety, but it’s hard to blame him in full given he couldn’t step, slide, or follow through towards the open man.
Here the Niners use a three-man cluster of tight ends and backs to create confusion on defensive assignments. While Chandler Jones recognizes and widens to contact Mostert out of the backfield, Mostert is our #1 read here and this is the exact matchup we want. Garoppolo pops off the read in a hurry, missing the fact that Jones lets Mostert go—handing him off to a DB who never arrives. This leads to a blown coverage so severe that it alarms both Jones and Mostert.
You and me both, Raheem. You and me both.
It takes a special kind of open for your mild-mannered former special teamer running back to start throwing his arms up in the air for the ball. Jimmy needs to see and hit that layup for a touchdown.
This one is entirely on Jimmy G, and seeing as I have no access to coaches film at the moment, this is the best look you’re gonna get at it. With no pressure and KB running an outstanding route to get wide open, Jimmy G has to make this throw. It’s literally the ballgame.
And of course it was Jimmy G’s inaccuracy (and a missed block out wide) which led to what was potentially the most important play of the game—the fast screen to Kittle that sailed high and ultimately led to (what has now been diagnosed as) a knee sprain.
Sure, Kittle came back in the second half and finished the game, but he wasn’t targeted once or involved in the game plan. I shouldn’t have to remind anyone how important Kittle is to our offensive success, but here’s a look at what it was like in week 1.
Before the knee sprain: 30 plays, 227 yards, 7.57 YPP
After the knee sprain: 31 plays, 139 yards, 4.48 YPP
Did an emphasis on avoiding turnovers over make Jimmy G gun-shy in this opening week? Did the constant pressure throw off his timing? Did a lack of faith in his receivers make cause him to hesitate? Does he just suck in season openers? I dunno, but he looked skittish in the pocket, was late on a number of reads and passes, and simply wasn’t putting the ball in the right spots with the right velocity this game. He’ll need to right the ship quickly while on the road with an offense that will continue to be undermanned.
DEFENSE
Now you know why I insist on Bill O’Brien keeping up with his steady meal plan of dicks. Think of what this Cardinals offense would have looked like without DeAndre Hopkins. Alas, this is the world we live in, and the Murray to Hopkins combo is a problem we’ll have to see twice a year for many years to come. Hooray.
Stop Routes 4ever: In this game the Niners started flipping Sherman and Moseley depending on what hash the ball was on. Sherm would play the wide or field side of the defense while Moseley would play the short or boundary side. It didn’t do much in the opener as DeAndre Hopkins loves boundary play and simply feasted on stop routes.
The Cardinals repeatedly used alignments and route combinations to pull the flat defender out of the way, creating one-on-one matchups with Hopkins on our corners—who are usually playing zone coverage over top—and vacating the space underneath for all manner of stop routes, outs, comebacks, and back shoulders. It’s not something we weren’t prepared for, but now the Cardinals have one of the best wideouts in the league; thus, in large quantities, these plays became difference-makers and chain-movers.
A big veteran like Sherman—who has the size, length, and ability to bang down the field with Hopkins and break hard on these comeback type routes—at least has a chance to do something about those kinds of plays. Moseley, for as much potential as he has, was out of his element. He had to give cushion to prevent the deep bomb, and that meant he was routinely a half-step short breaking on Hopkins’ stop routes.
This is the kind of problem you run into when you alternate largely between Cover 3 and Quarters. Hopkins had 151 of the team’s 230 receiving yards, but—with the exception of that 33 yard crosser in the fourth quarter against a busted coverage—averaged only 9 yards a catch on what seemed like an endless barrage of variations of what is at its heart the same exact route. These completions—combined with our out-of-sync passing attack—fed the Cardinals’ massive third down conversion advantage, which in turn gassed our defense.
Again, this is nothing new, as we’ve seen these routes repeatedly from the Cardinals, Seahawks, and the Falcons last year. But if we aren’t comfortable with our corners playing more physically at the line of scrimmage to combat it, we need to find ways of employing some kind of change-up coverage to take away those easy completions. At one point in the third quarter it looked like we were toying with exactly that.
On third-and-nine, the Cardinals want to hit Hopkins on the deep out equivalent of a back shoulder fade.
The Niners show a two-deep off coverage, implying some form of quarters/Cover 4.
But on the snap, instead of sitting back deep, Jimmie Ward creeps up towards the LOS while Kwon, instead of widening to play the flat, sprints to undercut any comeback or (potentially) in-breaking route from Hopkins. Now, there’s a chance I’m full of shit and Kwon just widened out to No.1 because he saw the back (No.2 receiver) block down, but given Ward’s reaction at the snap, I feel like this is an intentional split coverage to combat the two-man isolation game from Hopkins.
As you can see from this alternate angle (sorry again, without coaches cam it’s hard to show this smoothly), Kwon and Sherman are running some sort of high-low game on Hopkins. But in this case, the completion was made anyways cause of course it was. Did Kwon go too far down field and not widen enough or was he told to play inside and under? Was Sherman playing too far inside, expecting a more tradition stop route? Who knows, but the two talked this through while en route back to the huddle after the play, so there’s something to this, and we’re one of the few teams that has the speed at linebacker to pull this kind of things off.
While it didn’t work this time, it at least seems to imply that the Niners are trying out change-ups and trap coverages to counteract the teams that try to abuse stop routes against our Cover 3/Cover 4 looks—even if those coverages are still a bit of a work-in-progress at the moment.
Murray scrambles: By the second half we weren’t doing the best job of keeping our lane integrity on pass rushes, and—when that happened—Murray made us pay.
It also didn’t help that we couldn’t touch him. I’m sorry, but if a quarterback is allowed to slide cleats up into a defender’s knees repeatedly—a move which leads to cleared dugouts and plunked batters in baseball because of how dangerous it is—defenders should be able to hit him when he’s diving forward for extra yardage. And they definitely should be able to lightly tap him on the shoulder.
A head-first dive means you should be fair game, just like you are on every QB sneak or how every other ball carrier is treated when they dive for extra yardage. If not, you have to at least treat a forward dive like a slide and kill the advancement of yardage at the spot of the ball once they start the movement. You can’t have it both ways.
Anyways, expect to see those same chicken shit calls every time we play the Cardinals and the Seahawks from now until eternity.
Kwon looked lost: Whether it was missed tackles, bad angles, or just looking hesitant in space—particularly on one long Murray run when Kwon decided to turn and cover a receiver instead of pressure Murray—Kwon had a forgetful game. This was accentuated by the fact that Dre Greenlaw, in less than half as many snaps, was much more sound and impactful—particularly in his batted ball on a Cardinals RPO that turned into Tartt’s interception.
Back-breakingly long drive PTSD: We’ve seen this kind of thing before. Niners offense has a few short and ugly outings, Niners defense gets caught in an exceptionally long drive, and the draining nature of it all saps our defense of its endurance down the stretch. This week, our defense was on the field for more snaps (78) than any game in the past two years. More so than the Super Bowl. More so than the OT loss to Seattle that went the entire extra period. And we felt it.
This time, the breaking point was the 14 play, 94-yard touchdown drive that took 6:48 off the clock. We rely so much on a fresh rotation of defensive linemen that these kind of stretches are particularly dangerous for our defense. Even more so when the drive is aided by a holding call that just as easily could have been a safety and a total of 33 yards and 3 first downs due to some incredibly suspect penalties.
One way to prevent this in the future is to do better on offense, particularly on third downs, but even after we responded to their score with a 6 play, 78-yard, touchdown drive, our defense was clearly not the same in allowing the go-ahead score on the very next drive.
In the NFC West every loss has the chance to be a substantial one, but I wouldn’t hit the alarm button quite yet. Yes, George Kittle may miss time with a knee sprain; yes, we still have a number of other injured players who we’re awaiting the return of; and yes, we have plenty to clean up on both sides of the ball if we want to contend again this year. But the hardest part of our schedule is in the middle, and this year’s Niners are well aware that they want to start peaking later rather than earlier.
Also, we play the Jets next week. If we lose that game, then it’s time to worry.