Week 1 2024 mailbag part 1: the season is upon us!
It’s finally here and it’s time put the previous season to bed.
Earlier this week I posted on X/Twitter and sent an email out to readers of this substack soliciting questions and I received some great responses to those requests. I like to do these mailbag articles, the few that I have done, with some infusion of the game tape with it to provide clarity and context to certain questions when it allows.
As we approach week one with the 49ers hosting the Jets at Levi’s as the bookend to the weekend on Monday night, many fans want to know what players are primed for improvements this season, asked some scheme questions, and if Kyle Shanahan has any deficiencies in scouting. I turned this into a two part Q&A because there were too many good questions I wanted to explore.
Well, let's just get into it and see where it goes!
1) Andrew Coverdale, senior offensive analyst for the football team at the University of Louisville, asks about the 49ers “counter solid” run play:
1) From your perspective, what problems did it help them initially solve? (e.g., slowed down BSLB flowing over top of Counter b/c there’s not a G to take them to the play; read twists based on the G’s pull, etc)
2) Are there specific things other than just fundamentally good run fits & techniques that defenses are doing to stop/limit the play? I think this will be year 3 or 4 since it showed up – interested in the evolution in defending it
3) Who else, other than Miami, Green Bay, Houston, and Detroit (to an extent) run it? Has anyone found twists on it that make it better?
First, counter solid is a misdirection run play (counter, running back counter step footwork) with non-pulling offensive linemen (solid). Instead, the blocking scheme uses two tight ends or a tight end and a fullback to produce the “puller” effect.
It was a staple run concept for the 49ers after they traded for Christian McCaffrey in 2022 because of his patience and vision and ability to jump cut while working downhill. They run it out of both under center and shotgun formations.
And out of the shotgun, and other 49ers run game examples.
Coach asked about what it helped them solve initially but I’m not sure that it helped solve anything outside what he already mentioned above. I’ve viewed this run concept as a play that’s a change up to how the 49ers have attacked 5 and 6-man defensive line fronts in the past.
In 2018, the Rams first experienced this evolution late in the season when they saw more 6-1 defensive fronts to counter their 11-personnel run game (1 running back, 1 tight end). The 49ers didn’t experience this because Shanahan stayed ahead of the curve in 2019 by running more gap schemes between wide defensive end fronts. Remember the 2019 NFC Championship Game and how the 49ers killed the Packers wide 3-4 front defense with trap? Shanahan has never had an issue finding answers to these problems.
In 2021, they designated certain zone running plays that were designed to attack wide edges with the understanding that they might not get outside the edge. That’s fine. They’ll just run it inside your hard edge and rip off chunk yardage that way. In 2022, to counter the heavy 5-down odd fronts, they leaned into counter solid instead.
Running counter this way is a way to prevent the defensive ends from spilling inside and replacing in the C-gap. And it allows the 5 big men in the middle to get vertical on 3-0-3 technique bear fronts like in the Buccaneers game example above. In that game, the Bucs gave the 49ers a heavy dose of bear and the 49ers had the perfect counter.
Now to parts 2 and 3 of the question…
2) I don’t know that there’s any one thing teams did to limit that specific play but to limit the run game in general, examples I can think of were the Bengals and Chiefs, both games the 49ers lost, shifting into 5 and 6 down fronts late in the pre-snap just before the snap.
After giving up 17 yards to the 49ers run game on their first two run plays in the Super Bowl, the Chiefs defense committed to a 5-down odd front defense and a 6-1 front on running downs to slow down Christian McCaffrey and the run game. These are fronts that the 49ers under Shanahan in recent seasons have traditionally struggled against. Zone running scheme teams rely on combo blocks and getting to the second level to block linebackers and the 5-2/5-3/6-1 fronts prevent that from happening.
Walking the linebackers up to the line late at the last second caused some confusion and changed the blocking responsibilities for the offensive line, prevented the interior blockers from climbing to the second level, and likely led to Shanahan somewhat abandoning the run in favor of going pass heavy to open the second half. I am curious to see how the 49ers offense counters this pre-snap this season.
3) Who outside the primary Shanahan tree has run this?
It was the hot run concept early last season with Chargers, Jaguars, and Vikings all logging reps with it. The Chargers and Jaguars both ran it out of pistol, which allows the play to hit faster than running it from under center and doesn’t use counter footwork from the running back.
Whew. That was a lot. Hope I answered that one adequately!
2) Rob “Stats” Guerrera of the Gold Standard 49ers Podcast Network and ESPN Radio in the northeast, asks “What is the biggest change you’d like to see Brandon Staley make on defense this season?”
I think the biggest influence or change he can make on the field is shifting the 49ers defense to be more multiple on the 3rd down from the same static pre-snap alignments. The 49ers have relied on talent to win on 3rd down since 2019 when they built an elite pass rush. This allowed them to pin their ears back and just rush the passer in obvious passing situations.
They found new ways to create rushing lanes with their defensive front by overloading to one side (the overload front) and creating 1-on-1’s for the Nick Bosa and others. They also occasionally walked up Fred Warner in a mugged look and blitzed him or dropped him into coverage. Their preferred pass coverage in these situations was cover-1.
I’ve been casually studying the Fangio tree defenses off and on for a few years now and that includes Staley, especially this past offseason. One thing I noticed that really stuck out watching the Chargers defense recently is that their 3rd down defense seemed pretty efficient especially generating sacks, the presentation of the fronts, and how those can morph into various coverages.
And the data and tape match. In 2023, the Chargers 3rd down defense in neutral game scripts last season ranked 12th in the NFL while the 49ers ranked 23rd.
These screenshots all show similar fronts/presentation, but post snap are all different coverages ranging from cover-2, tampa-2, cover-5 (2-man), and cover-1. In every example here, the Chargers are presenting a single high defense coverage pre-snap, just like the 49ers typically would do.
In each clip, the single high coverages transform post-snap into cover-5, which the Fangio tree calls "Fist" with two deep half technique safeties, five underneath in man-to-man coverage (there’s also a quarters safety man-to-man underneath variant).
Disguised cover-2 (what most teams in nickel or dime personnel would call "52”).
Disguised /Tampa-2 (deep middle linebacker zone drop).
And cover-1 “lurk.”
Some of the defensive line alignments are already in play by the 49ers and have been for a few years now. But are we already seeing some of Staley’s influence on the defensive structure on 3rd down?
In the preseason game versus the Saints, the defensive line played a 9-3-3-9 technique alignment front called a “rush” front, a front in regular use by the Fangio tree coaches in nickel on passing downs. The Fangio tree might use stand-up edge rushers in the 9-tech spots on the edge, but here SF plays with the defensive end’s hands in the dirt.
And on 3rd down and other passing situations, the 49ers fronts here look almost like a mirror image of the Chargers clips above, with even a post-snap rotation to cover-1 Lurk/Robber in there from a split safety, two-high coverage pre-snap shell.
This is what I want to see more of, and also what I will be keeping a close eye on: for the 49ers to evolve their defense this year with Staley advising Nick Sorenson.
In part 2, I’ll cover more questions with less film (but some film).