49ers film room: Kyle Shanahan continues to scheme open receivers all over the place in win over Tampa Bay
For two weeks in a row now, Kyle Shanahan has found creative ways to get his receivers open for big catches.
This was a fun one to dive into the film on but on Sunday in week 11 the 49ers easily handled the Buccaneers by a score of 27-14 at home again. But for now, the stars did their thing on both sides of the ball and the 49ers got a huge win to put space between them and the Seahawks, who fell to the Rams on the road 17-16.
Kyle Shanahan was in his bag too, as I wrote about on last week’s game, and Brock Purdy hit some big time throws, and Aiyuk, Deebo, and Kittle, made some big time catches. The defense recorded five sacks again, intercepted one pass, and forced 11 pass break-ups and one forced fumble and recovery. They pressured Baker Mayfield on 38 snaps too.
Let's just get into the plays.
Shanahan in his bag again in the red zone
On the first touchdown of the game for the offense, we got another good look at Shanahan moving his chess pieces around the board to create favorable match-ups.
The play call is a motion into a trips bunch to the right with Aiyuk singled up on the left side. The three receivers on the right are running crossers at various depths to create traffic for McCaffrey. McCaffrey leaks out on a shallow crosser through the offensive line to the space vacated by they crossers.
With the Buccaneers in man coverage, McCaffrey draws Lavonte David in coverage. He does the shuffle motion out of the backfield where they will usually run him on a choice route but they ran him through the offensive line where David got lost in the shuffle and natural picks of the crossing. McCaffrey was wide open in the right flat for the touchdown.
Later in the game in the red zone again, in the late 3rd quarter, Purdy and Kittle hooked up for their another touchdown in two straight games, this time on flat-7 concept where Shanahan put the underneath coverage in conflict again.
Jauan Jennings and Kittle are over to the left after Deebo motions across the formation. They’re running a flat-7 smash concept with McCaffrey out of the backfield running a choice route underneath the coverage.
Running McCaffrey to the edge here puts SirVocea Dennis (No. 8) and Christian Izien (No. 29) into conflict. I’m 99% certain Dennis (No. 8), who came in for the injured Lavonte David, should run with Kittle while Izien sits on the choice route by McCaffrey. Izien signaled to Dennis like he was watching for the in-cut from McCaffrey and Dennis should run with Kittle. The only problem was neither defender ran with Kittle on the corner and Purdy found him wide open for six.
Brock Purdy on target
Purdy was slinging the ball all over the middle of the field on a very good Buccaneers defense, as evidenced by his passing chart, but he found Aiyuk down the left sideline in 1-on-1 man coverage for a 76-yard touchdown pass.
The play call is an air raid offense staple, “HOSS Juke,” where HOSS is “hitches outside (HO), double seams (SS) inside, with a “jerk” route by a receiver from the trips side.
The progressions are based on the coverages and what the corners are doing. Versus off-coverage, throw the best outside hitch. Versus single high coverage, cover-3 or cover-1, the seams might be the best or the hitches. If the quarterback looks for the seams, he has to look off the safety.
McCaffrey is running the jerk route from the #3 in trips, and it’s a play he made his money on in Carolina.
Against single high coverage, the best read is the seam routes. Purdy confirms single high man coverage with the motion of McCaffrey out to the slot as the #3. The other man coverage indicator is cornerback Jamel Dean moving into the slot to cover Aiyuk. The outside defenders are sitting on the hitches so he picks the best match-up: Brandon Aiyuk in the slot 1-on-1 with Dean.
Purdy launches the ball down the seam away from the safety and hits Aiyuk in stride. Dean fell down as the ball was arriving so Aiyuk was untouched as he sprinted to the end zone for the touchdown.
Purdy made several other high quality throws over the middle of the field as well on a their dagger concepts/dig routes where he layered the passes over defenders sitting in the throwing lanes over the middle of the field. It’s become so routine for him to hit these throws over the middle now with excellent precision and timing that it’s not all that impressive anymore. That’s not a bad thing!
Defensive line continues to generate pressure
I’ll have more later this week or early next week on the defense but the early indications are that reactions to the poor defensive performances during the three game losing streak were actually overreactions and the one bad performance was versus Cincinnati. For one thing, they’re not really having any more issues with missed tackles this season than they were in seasons past. This year, they’re only missing one more tackle per game than last season. Secondly, they’re turning pressures into sacks again.
On Sunday in week 11 they turned in another solid performance where they recorded four sacks, that were sure to start happening due to all the pressure they were generating, 11 pass break-ups, an interception, and a forced fumble and recovery. That’s nine sacks in the last two games and it’s the product of complimentary football being played between the back end coverage and the pass rush.
The defense generated 38 total pressures on Baker Mayfield with Arik Armstead racking up 12 of them. Nick Bosa and Chase Young get all the headlines as they are the premier players of that group along the defensive line, but Arik Armstead continues to be the driving force in the interior.
On his sack here, he beat both blockers with a “club and swim” back to back to prevent Mayfield from stepping up in the pocket. Wilks play call simulates pressure with a 5-man rush post snap that creates a 1-on-1 for Armstead by pulling the center toward the extra rusher. By the time the center recovered to look for work to his outside, Armstead was right there to club him aside. Mayfield had to pull the ball down and eat the sack.
There is another player already making a huge splash in his second game with the 49ers: Chase Young, who’s had 2 sacks now since the trade.
The defense is in their overload front to the right with three defensive linemen “overloading” the protection scheme to one side to create 1-on-1 match-ups for the pass rushers on the field. It’s 3rd and 9, certainly four down territory here. The rush generates the desired 1-on-1’s here with Young rushing the outside edge of Tristan Wirfs.
Young works against Wirfs with a “stab and club” move where he uses his inside arm to punch the inside shoulder of the blocker, then clubs away the outside hand to get around him. He gets to Baker Mayfield in about 2.5 seconds flat.
Secondary coverage
The pass coverage was sticky again in this one, with the defense allowing just 246 yards on 45 passing attempts, a paltry 5.5 yards per attempt for Mayfield. One reason was the 11 pass break-ups.
Yes, 11 times 49ers defenders got a body part on the football in the air. I say body part because at least one deflection was off the head of a defender before rookie safety Ji’Ayir Brown, in for the injured Talanoa Hufanga, intercepted it in the end zone. Mayfield had several more that should’ve been picked too.
Brown’s interception wasn’t even his best play. That came on a late cover-0 blitz with 6:45 remaining in the 4th quarter on a 4th-and-4 from the 49ers own 12 yard line in the red zone for Tampa Bay.
Isaiah Oliver in the slot moves late toward the line of scrimmage revealing just before the snap to Mayfield that’s cover-0. Brown rotates down to cover Mike Evans, stays square, waits until Evans declares his route and stays in phase with him the entire time, squeezing the route and condensing the space Mayfield has to throw in the end zone. The pass does float on him as he’s hit while he throws but Brown would have contest.
Before the interception, he also forced a pass break-up in the end zone on tight end Otton. The defense is playing cover-1 hole here with Fred Warner as the middle of the field zone robber.
Brown is the middle of the field safety with Tashaun Gipson covering a receiver out in the trips. Brown sees no threat from the inside, stays on the goal line and breaks on a pass to Cade Otton in the end zone, knocking the ball loose and preventing him from catching it. On the next play, he intercepted a pass off of a tipped ball off of Dre Greenlaw’s helmet.
The coverage remained sticky throughout the entire game though. Just how sticky was the coverage? Charvarius Ward’s pass break-up in the early third quarter shows how. The Buccaneers are lined up in a 4x1 similar to a screen pass they ripped off earlier in the game on a 3rd and 3.
On that play, the defense could not get their assignments sorted out on the 4-receiver side, started with two to cover four receivers, and ended up with three when Warner moved up. The play gained eight.
It’s possible this just wasn’t a look they were prepared for in the game plan because it might not be something Tampa Bay has ever shown. Can’t say for sure. But the next time they saw it, they were prepared.
Early in the 3rd quarter, Tampa Bay lined up again, this time on the right side, in a 4x1 but the 49ers defense was ready for it and got their rules sorted out ahead of time four to cover four in cover-1 “hole.” Tampa Bay tried to run off a slot fade hoping the defenders would jump the screen.
Ward stayed on the wide in phase the entire time, read his cues, and knocked the pass away as the Trey Palmer (No. 10) tried to catch it. Ward saw Palmer start looking in the air for the pass, knew he wouldn’t be able to get around, so he did was he was taught and threw his arm up into the receiver’s hands as the pass arrived. Palmer couldn’t hang on.
Ward also had a nice open field tackle on a bubble screen where he tracked the inside hip inside out and drove on the receiver with good low leverage, making the stop for a 1-yard loss.
The stat sheet might not show it, and at times it certainly didn’t feel like it, but they played a solid game. Not every game is going to be a 3 score/30 point blow out and that’s just fine. Week to week in the NFL it is hard to stay consistent like that. But there wasn’t anything from this game that should have fans worried regardless. This is the slog and grind of a 17 game season. They’ll put this in the rear view mirror and head to Seattle for a crucial division matchup on Thursday Night Football, for the second year in row after playing Tampa Bay at home.