Outward and Upward
Last season’s offense was easily the best of the Shanahan era, leading the league (or close to it) in nearly every metric imaginable. But improvement always starts from looking inward, and–with our multiple holdouts finally back in the fold and the season quickly approaching–it’s worth examining our worst offensive performances in hopes of staying ahead of the curve.
According to PFF, our offense graded out under 65 (their mark for average or below) in only two games all season. According to Pro Football Reference, our offense provided negative expected points in only two games all season. You know which games: losses against the Browns and the Ravens. But I’m also going to include references to our performance in the Super Bowl because the Chiefs clearly used the Browns’ game plan as the foundation for what they did and there are some parallels between the game plans of all three defenses.
What Worked Against Us
Amoeba Fronts + Run Blitzes: In general, last season’s offense was hyper-efficient against the blitz. This follows logical sense in that most blitzers come from the short alley or middle regions of the field–two areas that we love to target in the passing game–and that fewer defenders in those areas allow both for easier completions and more yards to run after the catch. But the Browns and the Chiefs were blitz-heavy outliers. The Chiefs in particular took this strategy to the extreme, blitzing on 60% of their defensive snaps–the highest blitz rate the unit has deployed in four seasons under Spagnuolo.
To me, there were two big differences between how the Browns and Chiefs deployed their blitzes where most everyone else faltered. The first difference is that they were blitzes with a run-first mentality. Both the Browns and the Chiefs showed five- and six-man fronts with seven in the box–the same sort of shell we’ve seen deployed against outside zone teams ever since the Patriots ran it against the Rams in the 2018 Super Bowl.
Their goal was to create walls on the outside with rolled-down linebackers or extra linemen in wide techniques while letting their linebackers sprint to the ball with simple reads inside the box. This forces the offensive line into one-on-one matchups rather than double teams at the point of attack and keeps the linebackers clean from offensive linemen who would otherwise be climbing up to obstruct them on second-level blocks.
This isn’t a particularly new strategy, but it worked so effectively against us because (the Chiefs in particular) paired this basic scheme with a litany of different fronts and a ton of five- and six-man pressures behind it. Instead of risking their linebackers getting confused with motion, misdirection, and other offensive window dressing, they simply blitzed them up the B gaps, figuring they could undercut any runs before we could hit the edges and–if it wound up a pass–our guard play was poor enough (particularly after Jon Feliciano went down) that they could get home as pass rushers as well. This overarching logic of setting a wider edge than we could block and aggressively pursuing from the inside even extended to their nickel corners, who would often come down and reset the edge as blitzers as we motioned down into condensed formations.
Effectively, the Browns and the Chiefs made it mathematically difficult to run on early downs and they dared us to complete passes on first- and second-downs to set up more manageable third downs. Teams know that our dropback passing game is our schematic weakness and features much less of the motion and misdirection that opens up so much of our offense. But while the blitz-heavy approach makes numerical sense against the run, it still doesn’t work without the right coverages behind it.
Man Coverage: Where every other blitz-heavy team was scared of getting absolutely roasted off and ran a soft zone underneath, the Browns (52%) and the Chiefs (41%) were the only teams to run more than 26% man coverage against us all season. To be fair, they were probably the only two teams who had the personnel to feasibly attempt it. But what allowed them to do that (other than talent and coverage disguises) was how heavily they keyed the areas we liked to attack in the passing game.
Spot Dropping: With the Browns and the Chiefs, this meant keeping a hole defender on the second level who was specifically looking to jump the slant routes and quick-ins that are often best at beating blitzes and using a backside safety to rotate down into the middle of the field to take away digs and crossers.
Here, we’re trying to run a variation of a cross concept with Aiyuk (in blue) as our primary receiver and Jauan looking to clear him out and set a natural rub route with an outside release and out and up.
However, the Browns may be showing two-high but are in Cover 1 across the board with a high safety playing anything deep and the safety to the bottom of the screen looking to step down into the hole and jump any crossing routes.
Naturally, this doesn’t work well for us, and by the time Purdy has to move off Aiyuk and reset, there’s already pressure in his face.
These hole or rat defenders let the DBs in man coverage play aggressively and over the top, knowing that they had help on the YAC yard generators we so often love.
While the Ravens didn’t run nearly as much man coverage or blitz as often as the Chiefs and Browns, they were able to create a similar effect defensively by always making sure there was a new defender dropping into the hot zones we so often attack.
These sim blitzes and unexpected spot droppers helped force Purdy into the worst game of his career.
Masters of disguise: Spot-dropping and pressure is a great foundation to slowing down our offense, but it isn’t necessarily enough unless you can also mix up your looks. While the Chiefs’ defense had more coverage disguises and variety than I think I’ve ever seen in a defensive game plan, the Ravens defense as a whole is fundamentally built off of the idea of showing weird fronts and sim blitzes and dropping back into as many complex coverages behind it as physically possible. This creates confusion for the skill players but also for the linemen, who often get put into disadvantageous one-on-one looks due to misreading pressure–effectively creating the same advantage as a blitz would while still having numbers in coverage.
These weird fronts and back-end coverages were a notable issue for our OL and for Purdy, who (understandably) struggled to decipher the Ravens’ and Chiefs’ pre-snap looks–particularly when under quick pressure–whether the blitzes were simulated or not. It’s probably worth noting here that you can still get to the right receiver even if you have the wrong pre-snap read, but not when you’re moved off your spot before you can get there.
While our offense as a whole may have had only two games all year (out of twenty) that were graded by PFF as below 65, or “average or below,” our offensive line only had five games all year that were graded ABOVE 65. Our pass pro can be problematic in a vacuum, so it certainly isn’t helped by increasingly complicated fronts.
Countering the Counterpunches
I’m about to talk a lot about pass game stuff, but it’s important to note one caveat in all three of the games being referenced here. Yes, the defenses loaded up against the run. Yes, they made it harder to run with numbers and aggressiveness forced us to pass more in more situations where we’d rather not. But… we still ran the ball successfully against all of these teams. These are our rushing totals—excluding QB scrambles—in those three games:
Browns: 20 carries for 104 yards and 1 TD @ 5.2 ypc
Ravens: 16 carries for 110 yards and 1 TD @ 6.9 ypc
Chiefs: 28 carries for 98 yards and 0 TD @ 3.5 ypc
And in the Browns game, CMC, Trent Williams, and Deebo Samuel all went down due to injury. So we should not abandon the run. In fact, against some of these teams (the Ravens in particular), running the ball should be the first part of every game plan. But when teams go so far out of their way to key our run game and our middle-of-the-field passes, we need to be strong enough in our dropback game to make them play honest.
Get better along the OL: Loading the line of scrimmage and committing numbers and blitzers to the box is a sound strategy to force one-on-one blocks in the running game… unless the offensive line wins those one-on-one blocks. Then you’re just getting gashed. While our OL is largely the same unit that finished out last year and we (le sigh) still don’t have a young tackle to develop, there is some hope for improvement in the trenches.
I’m not going to pretend like Colton McKivitz is a future star at right tackle, but–other than an atrocious Ravens game–his best play was towards the end of last season. The ceiling’s not high but he may be just a tick better in his second year as a starter. We can still (I guess) hope for Aaron Banks to take another step in his development, but–after seemingly plateauing last season and missing all of training camp–I’m not sure how likely that is. But the biggest ray of hope lies in Dominick Puni–our third-round rookie and new starter at right guard.
In a draft where it seemed like we kept trying to trade down and couldn’t or wanted to trade up but missed our window, Puni was one of two offensive linemen outside of the first two rounds who I was excited about as a potential year one starter, and–through deft draft maneuvering–we were able to secure him in the third round after nine other linemen (who I largely thought were lesser prospects) went off the board.
After injuries to Jon Feliciano and Spencer Burford opened the door for him, Puni quickly locked down the first-team right guard spot, impressing coaches and veterans with his intelligence, maturity, and quickness, as he looks slated to start week 1 in a massive test against the Jets’ stacked defensive line. Every spot along our offensive line (other than Trent Williams) could be upgraded, but with the massively inflating salaries of offensive guards this season (four guards now make upwards of $20M/yr) the best way to do that is through the draft. If we found a keeper in Puni, we may be able to rest easy at the right guard position for the first time in the ShanaLynch era.
Take the Party Outside: Our offense thrives in condensed splits because they allow us to get across the field quicker, sell play action, and dig out defenders in the run game. None of that–nor our focus on the run game–should change. But we need to find ways to attack quickly outside when a team is too heavily keying motions and trying to reset the edge with blitzing nickelbacks. When teams go that far out of their way to stop our core offense, they’re opening up other things, and–in this case–that’s quick outside passes.
Some of this may be as simple as diversifying and evolving our dropback passing game, an idea that seems possible after some advancements last year and the first off-season in a decade(?) where we have a starting quarterback who we’re optimistic about. Other signs of an evolved dropback game include us rostering 7(!) wideouts in our initial 53–even if part of that was likely due to the Aiyuk contract situation at the time–and a run-pass ratio that skewed more towards balance by the end of last year.
But I think there are other ways where we can still incorporate motion and condensed splits into our dropback game and punish teams for over-keying our tendencies. I already mentioned one example in the Super Bowl preview:
Tic Tac Toe. One of the tenets of the Chiefs’ defense is that they almost always have a check or two prepared for different types of motion. The thinking goes that–if the offense is going to get more information and an advantage from motion–the defense can reclaim that advantage by adjusting from the motion just before the snap. That could mean players rolling up as edges (which we saw above), rotating safeties, receivers being handed off, d-line stunts, blitzes, and everything in between. Defensive checks are great, but if the offense deciphers what checks you’re making in what situations–either during film study or the game itself–the offense can spring people open in a hurry.
Here the Chiefs are in man and have Trent McDuffie running across formation with orbit motion. In order to keep a good angle on his man he has to really book it, so–knowing this–the Bills have called a play specifically to get the motion man loose the other way.
It will be up to Shanahan, our coaching staff, and our offensive line, to get a grasp on what checks are most likely to happen against what looks and attack them both in the passing game and the running game.
But there are various other ways to punish defenses for overpursuing backside of motion. Here’s an example of Georgia deploying a play action pass off of return motion to spring open a wheel route down the field in this season’s opener:
Even if the potential blitzing nickel peels off into coverage when they read a route release, their eyes can get caught up in the underneath route, and they’re still out leveraged by the slot receiver going over top.
And while the shallow crossers of a pass concept like mesh would seem to play right into the rat defenders and rotating safeties trying to take away slants and crossers, there are ways to use their leverage and expectations against them to get CMC out to the edge with a natural pick:
Whether it’s by playing more spread out and empty sets, mixing and matching our personnel to create mismatches on the perimeter, evolving our dropback game, or implementing more pass game counters away from motion, we need more options to attack the outside when teams commit so heavily to crowding the box.
Win on the Boundary: The Chiefs ran a ton of different bracket disguises, which–in conjunction with the pressure–made it harder for us to target our outside wideouts down the field. Ultimately, if pressure is coming early, you just can’t throw the ball down the field. But when the pass rush is picked up, there are ways to create isolation looks outside when you know a team is running man and clogging the box. We saw as much in a mid-season dismantling of the Eagles…
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.
And even in that disastrous Ravens game.
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.
My apologies. There is nothing lazier and more self-serving than using my rambling writing to quote my own rambling writing of months past, but this is just to show that these are all things we’ve shown we can do. We just need to continue to expand this facet of our playbook.
This is where Brandon Aiyuk needs to earn his money. After the longest, weirdest, and undoubtedly most annoying contract negotiation, he can earn his payday by absolutely EATING against man coverage and on clear isolation plays. Because our offensive scheme is good enough to get a lot of people these looks, but BA is the dude we’re relying on to routinely win those looks.
Read the Wave. I fully believe that sim blitzes are the next wave to take over NFL defenses, and–unfortunately–the closest thing to a godfather of that scheme is now the head coach of the Seahawks. This is annoying because we basically ate for free against the stagnant Seahawks defenses of late, but it does give Purdy a lot of practice against a defensive look that he struggled against and that he’s bound to see a lot of going forward.
This isn’t a knock on Purdy, nor a statement on whether or not he can figure it out. You can count the number of quarterbacks who quickly picked up disguised blitzes and complex backend coverages as a first-year starter on zero hands because it’s just something you have to see to understand. Now, he’s seen it. He’s seen multiple versions of it. Hopefully, last year was a learning experience for him and he’ll be more prepared and precise when facing these looks in the future.
The same goes for the offensive line. Even if Purdy can read and diagnose who’s open, it won’t matter much if the OL is letting defensive linemen and blitzers run free into the backfield.
Ultimately, these are small changes, not big ones. Little wrinkles to the playbook to punish those who don’t play us straight. There’s every reason to believe that our offense should once again be one of the league’s best and thus no reason to think of any real wholesale changes. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to evolve as defenses adapt to combat what we do best.
Go Niners 🏈👍