49ers Week 17 mailbag: Is Talanoa Hufanga the real deal?

This is the first mailbag I've done but it seems every other writer does them, so why not? I got some good questions from fans on Twitter.

It’s week 17 and the 49ers play the Raiders this weekend in Las Vegas. The Raiders will be without Derek Carr who’s been removed from the team in the midst of a late season playoff push, which is both odd and unsurprising. The Raiders cannot make the playoffs with Jarrett Stidham and Josh McDaniels, despite leading this late season push, has been a dumpster fire.

The 49ers come to town looking to bully their former crosstown rival (not really a rivalry except among fans) and honestly these last two games are final tune-ups for what should be a fun and wild preseason with rookie quarterback Brock Purdy.

So let’s get into answering some questions!

1) Glock Purdy, @49ersgamg on twitter asks: “We're seeing the bad side effects of Hufanga's instincts calling for a late check, but are there plays that he checks that are positive and end up in positive plays for the defense?”

I wish I had a better answer for this and the short answer is probably yes although I have not really watched much of the defense lately except for the last few weeks where in the last three games a late coverage check from Hufanga has led to a bust and touchdown for the opposing team.

However, he is still a young player and relies a lot on instincts. He is a student of the game and his coverage checks, albeit late, have come because he recognized something in the offensive formation and situation on the field that led him to make those checks.

Against Tampa Bay on the touchdown that was called back, he alerted Jimmie Ward at the nickel to carry the slot fade probably because he recognized what they were doing based on an earlier play in the game where Hufanga carried the slot fade.

On the touchdown versus Seattle, he alerted the defense to watch for the seam routes but Fred Warner never carried inside seam like he should have in their coverage.

Even still, you can see his instincts and film study at work in the way he recognizes what’s going on with the offense in front of him. Versus the Rams in week four, he recognized the screen right away based on the receivers nearly horizontal release to block the corner. He jumped the screen, intercepted, and scored on a pick-6. So he has a hell of an instinctual feel the 49ers were missing in the secondary.

With Jimmie Ward and Jaquiski Tartt, the 49ers could vary their coverages with a pair of versatile safeties. They didn’t necessarily need to rely on instincts and they were arguably a top 5 safety duo with Robert Saleh and DeMeco Ryans.

Now with Tashaun Gipson, the 49ers safety rotation is a little more static in that they don’t disguise a lot of what those two do but where they make up for it is in their recognition and instincts. Hufanga is a really smart player who can make up for his weaknesses. But he, and the 49ers defense, cannot afford to show those weaknesses and make those mistakes leading to coverage busts when the playoffs start.

2) Wil, @wil_maze on twitter, asks: “Does Jason Poe take over center next year and how much longer can Robbie Gould keep kicking?”

I’m not sure the 49ers want to move on from Jake Brendel even though he’s on a 1-year contract with them. I think they’d like to re-sign him and keep some continuity at the center position, especially with the way the quarterback situation could look next season. What that means for Jason Poe is he’ll have to wait.

The 49ers kept 9 offensive linemen this season on the active roster and Poe was not one of them. Assuming they re-sign Dan Brunskill again, then Poe will have a tough time finding anywhere to slot into and can maybe find a backup role.

For now, Brendel appears to be the guy and he’s been playing some great football during the second half of this season, earning some of his season-high grades since week 7.

3) Carlos, @Ca_Loes on twitter asks: “Have you noticed any change on the play calling since Brock Purdy is the starter? And Clay, @clayspiegel on Twitter, asks: “It seems like Purdy is much more aggressive throwing into coverage but that doesn’t show up statistically (which I’m not sure it can) but have you seen that in film?”

The short answer to part 1 of this question is no, I have not noticed.

The longer answer, and this incorporates part 2 below, is no, there has been no noticeable change. The reason the offense looks like it functions better is because Brock Purdy is a smart quarterback who masks his flaws through smart and efficient quarterbacking. He doesn’t have a strong arm but he likes the deep shot and Kyle Shanahan acknowledged this after the Miami game:

“I think Brock naturally looks a lot more often for the deeper one than the shorter one, which is awesome. Sometimes, it helped today. In a couple early, I thought he missed just having someone quick right there and just trying to look for something deeper and then ran out of time to come back to the short one. You like that about a guy’s personality. You want that much more than the other way.”

This is where part 2 of this questions comes in. He has more deep touchdown passes in 4 games than Jimmy Garoppolo had in the last 2 seasons. And while he may not have the cannon of an arm like some of the league’s elite quarterbacks, he makes up for it with some precise and well-timed throws.

These two clips in the video above show the kind of intelligence post snap that Purdy has, combined with great ball placement and timing and there really no other way the defense could have defended these throws. In the first clip on a 3rd down early in the game versus Washington, Purdy hits George Kittle in stride for a 25 yard gain on a dig route over the middle versus cover-1 man coverage.

In the second clip, another 3rd down early in the second quarter, the Commanders rotated to cover-1 robber from two deep coverage pre-snap. The 49ers are running two dig routes across the middle and the Commanders wanted to bait him into an errant throw. But Purdy sees the rotation on his drop back and comes back Jennings. The throw clears the linebacker falling back into the throwing lane and Purdy beats the defense again for a conversion. This kind of recognition for a 7th round quarterback is unheard of.

This is what the offense is supposed to look like with competent quarterback play. For what it’s worth, Shanahan will often tell you his feelings about his other quarterbacks through comments he makes about his current quarterback.

“I like when a play is there that guys aren’t scared to make it, they don’t hesitate, they don’t take a second look at it. They let it rip and they worry about it after. A lot of guys who just guess do that too, so you have to find out whether they’re being aggressive or just if they’re deciding then to do it or if they’re deciding on Wednesday and then that’s a big difference, but Brock has been very good with it. He can explain what he sees and that’s why we got a lot of confidence in him.”

He said this after the Miami game too…

4) John, @JohnnyB_68 on Twitter, asks: “Does Vic Fangio convert us back to a 3-4 next season?”

It’s pretty much assumed that DeMeco Ryans will take a head coaching job this offseason. He was already interviewed last season for a position too. If he leaves, the 49ers will have a vacancy at the position and one coach 49ers fans want to bring back, including myself, is former 49ers defensive coordinator Vic Fangio.

Vic Fangio’s scheme and its offshoots around the league are the defensive equivalent of the Shanahan scheme on offense. Various teams around the league have hired coaches from his previous staffs to run a more two deep safety structure and ones that haven’t hired his coaches are running more and more elements of the two deep safety system he employs.

The ironic thing about this is there no defensive scheme that gives the Shanahan tree offenses more fits than his scheme. The Shanahan tree offenses live on the explosive pass plays. The Fangio system takes them away at the expense of defending the run, but they are very good at that too.

The video above shows how the Vikings, coordinated by Ed Donatell, a Fangio coach and former 49ers coach, play cover-8 defense and force Rodgers to hold the ball on a play action shot play before he fumbles.

Teams like the Seahawks, Rams, Chargers, Broncos, Eagles, and Vikings, to name a few, are all running this system. The Rams defense under Brandon Staley and then Raheem Morris has traditionally given the 49ers offense fits plus the Broncos and Chargers held the 49ers to two of their lowest point totals this season.

Fangio would probably transition the defense to a more 3-4 front defense and that means that Nick Bosa, like his brother on the Chargers in Staley’s scheme, would become more of a stand up rusher on early downs but remain hand a hand in the dirt rusher on passing downs.

Samson Ebukam has 1 year of experience in the Fangio defense when he played for Staley in 2020 with the Rams and would make a good OLB rusher on the other side too. But Fangio will also play a more traditional 4 down linemen defense too in some situations, which is what he did quite a bit in Denver.

And modern 3-4 defenses are hybrid 4-3’s now anyways. There wouldn’t be a big shift if they did hire Fangio or one of his former assistants like Ejiro Evero. The 49ers already play elements of the two deep safety defense anyways and have ever since Joe Woods was hired in 2019 and left.

Cover-6 is a combination coverage with cover-2 away from the passing strength and cover-4 or quarters to the passing strength with the nickel aligned to that side. Even though the coverage is played from a 2-deep safety shell, the coverage is still considered a 3-deep/4-under zone with match principles.

The underneath defenders’ responsibility align with the back end coverage and use match principles to fill in the gaps. For example, the “QTR Flat” defender (quarter flat) would chase the flat route out to the perimeter but would carry them if they go vertical because the safeties are playing over the top of the vertical routes or deep in breaking routes.

The vertical hook defender fills in the void in the cover-2 side and the “3 receiver hook” or “middle hook” defender (Warner) carries the third receiver into the pattern.

Warner has the middle hook responsibility here and would cover or run with any intermediate in-breaking or crossing route. He passes off the inside seam route to the quarters coverage defenders while visioning and gaining depth on the dagger route over the middle. Tua rushes the throw over the middle and tries to layer over the top of Warner to former 49ers receiver Trent Sherfield but Warner leaps and knocks the pass out of the air off its trajectory.

So if the 49ers were to hire Fangio or one of his assistants, they still would mostly have the personnel to play in the system and they would likely retain one of the league’s top defenses. I think it’s a no-brainer, they have to lure Fangio or someone else who can run that same defense.

Thank you all for the questions submitted to me on Twitter! Hope to continue doing these. No one else will give you film breakdowns in these mailbags so I hope you all enjoyed this. Thank you again.