49ers Film Room: 49ers red zone struggles highlighted in win over the Chargers

Despite the win, the 49ers offense has some issues that still need to be cleaned up.

The 49ers won a close game on Sunday night over the Chargers in week 10 at home by a final score of 22-16. This came after a bye week where the 49ers were picking up steam with the addition of Christian McCaffrey during week seven and his presence propelling them to a 31-14 win over the Rams.

Buried in that final score from Sunday night though, is the fact that the 49ers offense scored on all five of their red zone trips but came away with just 22 points when they could have had at least 28 or more.

In 2022, per Football Outsiders, the 49ers rank 21st in points per red zone appearance at 4.65 points and 18th in touchdowns per red zone appearance at .548. Last season, the 49ers ranked first overall in both of those categories. The regression is real. But does it matter? There are a lot of factors that go into this, like total red zone trips, how much a team scores from outside of the red zone, and teams in garbage time making a late game push to score points.

For example, Buffalo, widely considered a super bowl contender, is 27th in pts/RZ trip and 21st in touchdowns/RZ trip. Buffalo scores a lot from outside the red zone. But they also have not scored a second half touchdown in their last four games either.

Other notable teams and their ranks this season that are considered playoff contenders include Baltimore at 13th/16th, Seattle at 20th/26th, Tampa Bay at 27th/29th respectively in those categories as well as lesser out of contention teams like Arizona, who ranks 6th/11th, Carolina at 14th/19th, and Cleveland at 11th/10th in those respective categories.

So it’s not the be-all/end-all to having a competitive team. But there are still some issues the 49ers offense needs to clean up if they are going to remain competitive and go on a run here in the second half of the season. So what were the issues in the week 10 game versus the Chargers?

There were many: missed quarterback reads, drops, missed blocks and missed running back reads, and a lack of proper usage of some skill players. A team with the caliber of talent the 49ers have on offense should not be having this many issues.

Missed quarterback reads

On two separate occasions Jimmy Garoppolo missed key reads on the 49ers bread and butter run-pass option concept of a swing pass tagged to the backside of a running game concept. They will run this play with inside zone, outside zone, pin and pull sweep, and now GT power lead.

On the first drive of the third quarter, the offense moved the ball at will and got into the red zone inside the 10 yard line. On 2nd-and-goal from the seven yard line, the play call here is the swing pass RPO with power lead concept to the front side.

The offense is in 11 personnel (one running back and one tight end). The read for Garoppolo becomes the outside linebacker that will either chase the run by Deebo or Elijah Mitchell on the motion to the swing pass out of the backfield to the two receiver side on the left.

That edge defender is unblocked as the 49ers pull the right tackle and right guard to lead for the run to the left, giving the offense an even advantage 6-on-6 in the box and moving the gaps to the left to attack the perimeter. The corner is not typically counted in the box count as that is hopefully the defender the running back gets 1-on-1 with in the open field.

Mitchell’s motion widens the defensive end and with the addition of the safety rotating downhill, the defense has a 4-on-3 advantage to the offense’s right to cover the swing route. Garoppolo should have handed the ball off to Deebo and Kyle Shanahan confirmed this after the game, saying, “I thought we should have scored on a run. We threw a bubble and I think we shouldn't have, which got us in the third-and-goal from the eight, that was the one that we dropped.”

While not in the red zone, Garoppolo did again misread the same concept around mid field, one that would have easily scored with Deebo on the swing pass but Garoppolo handed it off where it was promptly blown up in the backfield.

You can see the frustration from Kyle Juszczyk, Brandon Aiyuk, and Deebo at the bottom of the screen as they all recognized where that play should have went too.

Missed blocks

It is not always the quarterback. At every level on the offense, someone missed an assignment somewhere on a few occasions in the red zone. And here, the offensive line missed blocks on defenders who stuff the run as a result.

In clip one, the entire offensive line got no push on the play side and actually got pushed back into the backfield by about one yard. In clip two, center Jake Brendel (No. 64) got shoved aside by defensive tackle Breiden Fehoko (No. 96) because it looks like he was unable to get adequate hand position on the blocker and therefore couldn’t control his movement.

In clip three, right guard Spencer Burford (No. 74) took a bad angle to get to linebacker Kenneth Murray (No. 9). He should have went more horizontal toward the linebacker instead of opening up to punch the defensive end over McGlinchey before he went to the second level. That wasted movement prevented a touchdown.

In clip four, McGlinchey (No. 69) goes to block down on the defensive tackle Sebastian Joseph-Day (No. 69) and Joseph-Day beats him to the outside and made the tackle in the backfield for a loss.

Missed opportunities in the run game

In the fourth clip above, the reason the play went nowhere and was killed in the backfield was primarily due to running back Elijah Mitchell slipping and falling down as he was making his cut.

 The play call is same side counter GH with two pulling blockers to the play side edge. This is in effect a more difficult assignment to execute than a regular shotgun counter because the running back is taking his counter step into the quarterback and having to reverse course immediately after getting the handoff.

If he were coming from the right side here, the same side as the pullers, the counter step would happen in the opposite direction away from the quarterback and he would step back into the handoff and stayed on the same track.

As he makes his cut, he loses his footing, stumbles, and is tackled by Sebastian Joseph-Day. It has been pointed out he stumbles because he sees Joseph-Day flash into the backfield. That is not the case. He has to plant and cut in the opposite direction anyways and what we do not know is what he is processing as this is occurring.

What we do know is his footwork is poor as he tries to cut with too much forward lean. His feet were already in a bad position before McGlinchey missed his block due to a slight false step he takes with his left foot.

Deebo mis-red his blockers on this run up the middle for seven yards on second down. He should have stayed on Trent Williams inside hip but instead he cut further inside off Kittle and missed a potential open running lane.

Missed opportunities in the pass game

Receiver Brandon Aiyuk is the 49ers clear number one wide receiver this season with 44 catches for 567 yards and four touchdowns. On Sunday night versus the Chargers he had six catches for 84 yards and no touchdowns. But he had no touchdowns because he dropped his only opportunity to score one when a back shoulder throw from Garoppolo bounced off his chest after he put his defender on skates.

Aiyuk is running a double move red zone route in the Shanahan route tree called a “sluggo under” route. It’s a slant-and-go (first move) to an under route (second move) that breaks under the coverage and is a good red zone route.

The Chargers playing “sub red stuff” which is a nickel cover-6 defense with quarters to the trips and cover-2 to the single receiver side.

Garoppolo drops back and looks right looking for his primary route, Kittle, who ends up with a bracket coverage on him so he comes back left to Aiyuk who is wide open. The pass is slightly behind Aiyuk but he does not have to make a difficult adjustment on it. The pass gets on him before he can even get his hands on it and it bounces up off his shoulder pads and is nearly intercepted by the defender. 

The pass is not perfect by any means but he needed to catch this pass regardless. It is an inexcusable drop to go along with the fumble he had earlier in the game off of a 20 yard catch.

Outlook

Regardless of the mistakes, the 49ers offense still scored five times in five red zone trips but to change perception of a struggling offense, they need to clean up these mistakes. These mistakes are easily correctable and they won’t often go into that many red zone trips and have that many mistakes. They are still in the process of finding their stride but scoring in five trips is what good teams do. They just need to eliminate one or two of these mistakes each week to separate themselves from the rest of the field.