49ers film room: Dissecting the two defensive coverage busts versus the Bears in week 1
West Coast Football wraps up week 1 with a look at the 49ers defensive coverage busts that led to two Bears touchdowns on Sunday.
In this article, I briefly wanted to touch on the coverage busts the 49ers defense gave up that led to two touchdowns. One in the third quarter and one in the fourth quarter after the 49ers defense had put the clamps on Justin Fields and the Bears offense in the first half.
First coverage bust
3rd quarter 5:32, 3rd-and-10 @ CHI 49
The play call is “Miami Swirl” with a deep post route from the slot receiver to clear the coverage out. Former 49ers receiver Dante Pettis scored the touchdown here on the scramble drill but initially runs the “miami” sit route over the middle of the field. The opposite side has the “swirl” route, a corner-stop or 7-stop route where the receiver runs 3 steps of the corner stem and sits down.
The 49ers are in cover-3 buzz away from the passing strength. The buzz safety, Talanoa Hufanga is the buzz safety who replaces the linebacker in the weak hook. Dre Greenlaw becomes the weak flat defender in cover-3. Buzz coverage away from the pass strength allows the defense to rob any deep crosser from the third receiver into the pattern.
At the snap, Pettis takes off vertically, angles across the field, and sits behind Hufanga in the seam. Cornerback Charvarius Ward runs with Hufanga and lets him go when he goes across and kicks his coverage to the deep post by the slot.
Up front, the pass rush is unable to corral Fields as he escapes as both Nick Bosa and Arik Armstead both lunge and miss tackling him by about a yard each.
The defense flows toward the scramble and Hufanga never feels Pettis as he races to chase the quarterback. Pettis drifts back to the other and is wide open as Fields chucks the pass across to him. Pettis sprints to the end zone for the touchdown.
After the game Hufanga took ownership of the outcome of both coverage busts. But a play like this is not anything to be concerned about with this defense as they hardly give up mistakes like this.
The more concerning play was the second coverage bust because defenders need to communicate and understand their assignments and if there are communication issues, then the result will almost always be a blown coverage and a touchdown for the opposing offense.
Second coverage bust
4th quarter 12:45, 3rd-and-2 at SF 18
The Bears have a play action pass called on third and short from the 49ers 18 yard line.
The 49ers are playing man coverage and after the short motion in by the Bears receiver, it looks like safety Tashaun Gipson (No. 31) is communicating a coverage check to Ward as the outside corner, probably a banjo call. In a banjo call, the inside defender takes the first inside release and the outside defender takes the first outside release. It is a common way to deal with a stack or bunch wide receiver formation.
The problem here though, is neither Ward nor Gipson follow any of the receivers in the pattern. Receiver Equanemiois St. Brown releases inside on a flag route and receiver Byron Pringle releases inside on a shallow crosser so neither of the defenders pursue and instead they get locked onto what is happening in the flat with the running backs.
The mesh crossers also mess with Hufanga’s vision as the deep safety as he starts to chase but gets caught and reverses course when he see the corner route by St. Brown. There was no coverage help over the top.
These kinds of mistakes cannot continue to happen and in a tight game, they made all the difference because the offense was unable to score when it needed to due to turnovers, penalties, dropped passes, and an inability to run the ball effectively. Fortunately this is a top 3 defense when these things don’t happen and this will not be the norm.