The Path Forward

With the combine completed and franchise tags due today, figured it was as good a time as any to turn the page from the atrocities of Bill Vinovich and toward the 2024 season. While it’s easy to say a team should be getting better each year, that’s far from a reality in the NFL for most teams. Eventually, that won’t be the case for us either, but we have clearly improved over each of the past three years and—with one year left before we have to extend Purdy—have various means to do so again in this upcoming season. We were good enough to win it all this year. Now, we need to make the changes and improvements necessary to actually win it all before our core starts to change shape.

The Winds of (Sort of) Change. Over a week of interviews, the Niners met with at least three external and two internal defensive coordinator candidates–and even kicked the tires on Steve Spagnuolo before he re-signed with the Chiefs. The result is the promotion of Nick Sorensen to the DC position and the hiring of former Chargers headman Brandon Staley to fill the assistant head coach role vacated by Anthony Lynn’s departure to Washington.

Sorensen will be a first-time defensive coordinator and has only been with the Niners for two years after spending the 2022 season as a defensive assistant and 2023 as the passing game coordinator, nickels coach, and head of the Niners’ weekly “The Ball” meetings, which prioritized turnovers and coined his nickname of “The Ballfather.” Before coming to the Bay, Sorensen was the special teams coordinator for a year in Jacksonville and spent seven seasons in Seattle working in the secondary and special teams. A former college quarterback at Virginia Tech, he switched to defense when some dude named Michael Vick arrived in Blacksburg, eventually carving out a nice 10-year career as a safety in the NFL before switching over to coaching. While Sorensen isn’t as highly regarded as DeMeco Ryans was when he got the DC nod (if he was, he would have gotten it last year) he’s thought of highly in the coaching ranks, knows our scheme and personnel, and has extensive experience in the Seattle 3 system.

While Sorensen’s promotion is the big development, Staley’s addition is the most intriguing one. Staley was ousted from the Chargers after three seasons and zero playoff victories and developed a reputation for some seriously questionable game management decisions while he struggled to consistently connect his complex defensive schemes to his players. The Chargers had their fair share of impressive defensive outings during Staley’s tenure, but the overall body of work was subpar at best. Injuries and a lack of depth–which got the Chargers’ GM fired alongside Staley–played their part in Staley’s defensive performances, but the end product wasn’t nearly what it should have been. Despite the issues with the Chargers, Staley is widely regarded as one of the smartest defensive minds in football, and in his last–and only–stint as DC he helped the 2020 Rams lead the league in both points and yards allowed. He’s a disciple of the Vic Fangio gap-and-a-half 3-4 scheme, which operates in stark difference to our 4-3 Wide 9, but his front versatility makes his defense malleable enough that he was heavily considered for the Niners’ top job. If the Niners weren’t so dead-set on keeping the majority of their defensive scheme intact, perhaps Staley would have been the choice, but in this unorthodox set-up, they likely get the best of both worlds. While there’s always a threat of “too many cooks,” I would guess that Staley operates entirety on the defensive side of the ball and helps Sorensen in weekly game-planning while installing some of the coverage concepts and fronts he has that align with our defensive scheme. 

For better or worse, the Niners always seem to do things a little bit differently, and this could be a lucrative relationship for all involved. I understood the urge to stick with the same overall scheme that got us here and that has had success for so many years running–especially with 2024 such a critical year before our roster core faces some difficult decisions–but I appreciate that the Niners understood they also needed an influx of new ideas. Given the dearth of established DC candidates this late in the hiring cycle, securing both continuity and a sprinkling of new concepts from one of the better defensive schemers in football has to be considered a win, even if a first-time DC who–unlike Saleh or Ryans–is not an obvious “future head coach” type always carries some form of risk. Staley’s presence helps mitigate that risk, and–if things go according to plan–the combo has high-end potential, especially given the talent they’ll have to work with.

Going Wide. Brandon Aiyuk and his looming contract negotiations are the big ticket item on the rumor mill this off-season, but we also have a decision to make on Jauan Jennings, who is currently a restricted free agent.

Let’s start with Jennings, our run-blocking, fight-instigating, third down-securing jumbo third wideout who has proven abnormally clutch for being the team’s fifth (at best) option in the passing game. As an RFA, the Niners have a choice to make as to what level of tender they can offer him: first round, second round, or original draft round. Since Jennings was a seventh-round pick (thank you again, our third-day scouting department), the lowest tender would be risky at best. Jennings at the cost of a seventh-round pick is an offer many a team would jump on. A first-round tender is out of the question, which leaves the second-round tender–which has ballooned to $4.8M after the salary cap spike–or something more creative.

In past years, the Niners have offered RFA tenders to players such as Ross Dwelley and Jeff Wilson, only to then extend those players instead on one-year deals that come in at a lower pay rate (and cap hit) than the RFA tender but that are fully guaranteed. Something like that is certainly possible here, as is a two-to-three-year extension if the rate is friendly enough. Jauan has undoubtedly earned his money, but he’s more valuable to us than anyone else. While someone like Kendrick Bourne left for a decent contract and a much bigger role in the passing game, it’s hard to imagine Jauan getting offers for anything beyond a third receiver role. And while other teams may throw more or may not have guys like CMC and Kittle soaking up targets, Jennings’ biggest impact on a down-to-down basis is in his run-blocking, a trait that we probably value in our wideouts more than any other team in football. Considering he was a blown pass protection away from a likely Super Bowl MVP award, his value may never be higher from an outside perspective, which means a one-year deal could be the most likely option as an extension a year from now could be—time adjusted—cheaper.

As for Aiyuk, we’ve seen how tough Shanahan can be on his wideouts and how hard it is for rookies to contribute immediately when they don’t yet have the practice, preparation, and blocking commitment that he demands. This year Aiyuk was the top-graded run-blocking wideout in football AND was top 3 in yards per route run, yards per catch, and a litany of other stats–advanced or otherwise. He was an All-Pro, one of the top man-beaters in the country, and fits our offense like a glove. He too is more valuable to us than anyone else, but–unlike Jennings–it would be easy to see him racking up 100+ catches and 1500+ yards with regularity on a team that throws the ball more and shares it less. 2024 is not the year to mess around with breaking in a rookie wideout and Aiyuk is the exact type of player we should be extending.

For me, any talk of trading Aiyuk only begins if his representation is unreasonable AND someone is offering a high first-round pick in return. I consider the top three wideouts in this class all NFL slam dunks, and–if we could be assured we’d get a pick high enough to return Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Nabers, or Rome Odunze–I would at least take the call. But all three of those guys will go in the top 10 of the draft. In fact, there’s a very real world that all three go in the top 6. And–with teams picking that high likely not on a “win now” timetable–it seems unlikely that kind of compensation is forthcoming. In fact, the overall talent and depth of this receiver class likely depreciates Aiyuk’s trade value. While there are still plenty of playoff teams and cuspy contenders who believe–perhaps rightfully so–that a true alpha No.1 like Aiyuk could put them over the top, that’s not a deal we’re looking for when we have one more year of Purdy on his rookie contract. The most likely outcome is that Aiyuk skips OTAs and holds out (or holds in) until sometime around the beginning of training camp before we secure a long-term deal and he reports. The only core player the Niners have actually traded rather than extended around the start of training camp was DeForest Buckner. Whereas Robbie Gould, Raheem Mostert, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Fred Warner, and Nick Bosa all played the waiting game until sometime in August.

Adjusting the Ledger. While the next off-season has always been the time earmarked for big roster changes, there are a few moves we could make this year to set up an easier path forward. The majority of those revolve around extensions, both good and bad.

Dre Greenlaw and Juice are both in the last year of their respective contracts, with $9.6M and $7.6M cap hits and dead cap figures under $3M. That makes both of them extension or cut candidates. Since dropping either of those players would fundamentally change our scheme on one side of the ball, I would expect them both to get extensions. While there’s certainly some risk in extending a fullback in his 30’s and a linebacker fresh off an Achilles tear, there are contract manipulations to hedge some of that risk and there’s a chance the circumstances of those two players could actually make retaining them cheaper than otherwise. I’m saying there’s a chance. I’m not saying it’s a good or bad one.

The big-ticket contracts of two other veterans also loom as a precursor to some potential major moves a year from now. Deebo Samuel ($28.6M) and Arik Armstead ($28.3M) are two of our three biggest cap hits this season but–unfortunately–neither is playing like it. 

Armstead is entering the last year of his contract, has had significant injuries stemming from a Lisfranc issue that likely isn’t going away, and has no guaranteed money left on his deal. Nicknamed “The Blueprint” because of how he does everything right on and off the field and the team’s perennial Walter Payton Man of the Year nomination, Armstead is still impactful when he’s actually healthy (see: Super Bowl) and is a model citizen and key contributor towards the development of the rotating door of defensive line depth pieces we constantly rely on. The Niners certainly want to keep him around, but–at his current price–that seems untenable. 

Meanwhile, Deebo is a true one-of-one talent and perhaps the single most unique and entertaining player in the NFL, but his value is significantly nerfed by the presence of Christian McCaffrey. Deebo’s First-Team All-Pro 2021 season–and the contract he received afterward–happened in a year when we quite literally ran out of running backs. We started Juice at running back for a game in September. At the time our backfield was injury-prone and relied mostly (if not entirely) on day 3 picks and UDFAs. While those running backs were talented, and it was reasonable to expect we’d keep finding guys who could plug-and-play every few years, none were difference-makers in the passing game and their lack of availability led to a lot of backfield touches for Deebo. 

Insert CMC, who has dominated touches in the run game and is an S-tier weapon on underneath routes, and it’s become pretty clear how much their skill sets overlap. In a perfect world, we love that overlap because it’s one of the best ways we can deploy our Swiss Army Knife offense. But in a hard-capped league, this means we’re approaching a decision point. Yes, Deebo is more of a gamebreaker than CMC after the catch and if you like to blitz and open up the middle or play any kind of soft zone with regularity, Deebo becomes one of the best weapons in football and will eat you alive. But–as was depressingly clear in the Super Bowl (even if he was a bit hobbled)–Deebo’s not enough of a difference-maker down the field and struggles too much against tight man coverage to warrant the cap figure of a true No.1 wideout. 

Deebo’s not going anywhere this year. Not when his dead cap figure is $14M more than his cap hit. But with a post-June 1 designation, Armstead could save the Niners a good chunk of change this season. The Niners certainly WANT both of them back in 2024 and beyond, but they might start having some difficult discussions with them this off-season about potential pay cuts to make their contracts better represent their production. That’s never an easy conversation to have with a player and an understandable one for them to balk at, but there’s a card the Niners can play here that could make it a win-win for both player and team. Guaranteed cash. 

Deebo’s 2024 salary guarantees in mid-April, but with $37.5M of his remaining $52M over the next two years in base salary, there’s likely some wiggle room here to negotiate. Meanwhile, Armstead’s $28M cap hit includes zero guaranteed cash and seems ripe for restructuring, perhaps in a way that includes equal or greater cash locked in but spread out over multiple years. If nothing changes, Armstead and Deebo are potential cut candidates this year and next, respectively. With that in mind, both are potential restructuring candidates now in hopes we can avoid those fates down the road.

Trench Warfare. Both lines need addressing and with more bodies than one. The Super Bowl reminded us of how much our offensive line gets by on scheme and Trent Williams. If we want to take the next step in the dropback passing game, we need more guys who can win their one-on-one battles.

Luckily, this draft class is LOADED with offensive linemen. There could be as many as eight or nine offensive tackles taken in the first round, multiple guards throughout the first two days, and–despite positional value–two centers who might get drafted on Day 1. The offensive tackle depth in particular is impressive, with many prospects slated for the back half of the first round and early into the second possessing the kind of high-end traits you typically can’t get at the bottom of the first. TBD if we’ll actually be able to get one at the bottom of the first or if a run on the position will force us to maneuver about the board, but there’s a very real possibility of adding one or two immediate starters along the OL in the first two days of the draft.

While the tackle market isn’t great in free agency (and probably never will be), it’s an oddly deep year for interior linemen, and a lot of the big names are fresh off rookie contracts and either still ascending or in the prime of their careers. Jake Brendel is on a relatively team-friendly deal and both our guards are on rookie contracts, but the depth of the free-agent interior OL could let us add an immediate starter without spending too much money on positions we historically don’t want to shell out for. Here, as always, juggling who we think will be available in the draft versus who is available at these positions in free agency will be both complicated and vitally important. Part of me believes that enough teams are in the same situation that the free agent market for interior OL will be slow and there will be guys of merit available after the draft, but with enough contenders like the Dolphins and Ravens looking for wholesale changes along their OL, that may be wishful thinking. 

Feliciano was only signed to a one-year deal but played well. Ironically, he was the journeyman right guard who actually would have (and was) blocking well upfront in crunch time before he went down in the Super Bowl. He could certainly be back, but likely only if we don’t look for a higher upside play/longer-term solution in free agency. Banks and Burford are still young. Perhaps they take the step forward this season that we were hoping they’d make last year, but we’re past the point of that being our Plan A and Plan B. There is more than enough talent available in both the draft and free agency for us to revamp our offensive line without breaking the bank. 

Along the defensive line, both our backup DTs (Givens and Kinlaw) and–if we rightfully assume that we don’t keep Randy Gregory at his current cap figure–all of our non-rookie defensive ends (Young, Ferrell, Gregory) are free agents, meaning we need bodies to replenish the ranks and many of them. While Drake Jackson and Robert Beal both present potential, we need to figure out who starts opposite Bosa and who makes up the entirety of our second wave off the bench. 

While I don’t think this DL crop is particularly special, it has good depth through–at least–the first two rounds, if not the first two days. This draft class as a whole is impressively deep, which makes it a great year to have 11 picks and four in the top 100, and while a run on offensive tackles could certainly lead us to take yet another defensive lineman with our first-round pick, it’s probably more likely that we go that direction at some point on the second day and at least once more as the draft dips into its later rounds. 

While the franchise tag deadline took away most of the top-end of this year’s crop of free agent defensive linemen, there are several intriguing options at edge both on the high-end of the spectrum and as depth/reclamation projects. Yes, in theory, we could make a Hargrave-like swing again this off-season, but it’s not what I would expect. However, the large number of Leonard Floyd-esque options (including Leonard Floyd himself) makes me optimistic that we can add multiple vets on the edges on the cheap, perhaps one being Clelin Ferrell on another friendly deal and another having a bit more upside.

On the interior, whether it’s through the draft or via free agency, I’d love to add a bigger-bodied DJ Jones type. Yes, asking for a big guy who moves like Jones is just that–an ask–but having some mass on the interior could help our run defense, particularly because Hargrave and Armstead are both more of three-technique types and the latter will likely miss some time due to injury this season. 

We can never have too many defensive linemen. This means that every off-season we’re doing this kind of shuffling of chairs as we try to find value on the margins and long-term contributors through the draft. This year is same same but different in that the number of spots we have to fill is greater. 

Aggressiveness Update. I’m not saying I want Brandon Staley anywhere near decisions of clock management or the overall running of a team, but I wouldn’t be against him nudging Shanahan towards a more aggressive lean on fourth-down decisions and offensive drives to end the first half. Jimmy G is gone and in his place, we have the top offense in the league. I know that’s not a one-to-one comparison as CMC arrived just games before Jimmy G went down, but it’s not a coincidence that our offense has hit new heights under Purdy. I know that dropback passing isn’t our strength (we could update our schemes in that field as well as our blocking), but it’s no longer a glaring weakness either. All this means we can–and should–be more aggressive in our approach to scoring touchdowns instead of field goals before the end of halves and when facing more fourth downs. 

Go Niners 🏈👍

Super Bowl Post-Mortem

I wanted to let my emotions cool a bit before writing this one, in hopes that the takeaways would somehow differ and be more productive when given time and space to breathe. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. While time has made me less heated, it’s only because the sweet embrace of nihilism is seldom fiery hot. What’s done is done, and that’s something that the NFL must live with as much as any of us. 

The great beauty of football lies in the fact that every moment matters. A single play can swing a game in its entirety. A single bounce of the ball–whose mere shape incites chaos–is often the difference between winning and losing. Possessions are few. Every game matters. Playoffs are one-and-done. Even careers are short. So all you can ask is that your team play 1% better than their opponent at the exact right time and hope that the rest falls your way. But this appeal assumes a fair playing field. Because bias in this sport swings outcomes more so than any other. And as we now know for certain, a fair playing field is far from what we’re dealing with. We’ve learned twice in five years that to beat the Chiefs in a Super Bowl–with a team that doesn’t have any popular podcasts, or Amazon Prime docs, or a quarterback that hocks insurance and hair products, or a player who’s dating the biggest pop star on the planet–you need to be at least 20% better. Or 50% better. You need to blow them out. You need to leave no doubt. Because if you don’t, and you let the game be close, the refs will make sure you lose. 

We could have played better, and we’ll need to if we want another shot at taking home the game’s ultimate prize, but the topline takeaway from this Super Bowl was that–despite mistakes and mishaps–we played more than well enough to win. We just weren’t allowed to. And that stings in a way that will forever change my perception of both this game and a league that has fully blown past any supposed ideals of impartiality and fair play. 

When I think of this Super Bowl, I’ll think of the opportunities we missed and the others that were taken from us, but I’ll also think of the end of “Hot Fuzz,” when a bunch of crotchety old hags butcher their prized town while droning on about “the greater good.” They’ve kept up their image. They’ve kept up their sense of self. But at what cost? Then I’ll think of Roger Gooddell, sitting down in his La-Z-Boy and putting on his best human skin while whispering to himself in parceltongue those very same words: “the greater good.” Perhaps it was worth it to cement the NFL’s darlings as a dynasty. Perhaps the league will retain all those mercurial Swifties when Kelce retires or Taylor starts dating some British guy who you vaguely remember from one episode of Game of Thrones and a BBC miniseries that you started but didn’t finish. I’m not naive enough to believe in the moral fortitude of the National Football League, but when it comes to overt favoritism, this was uncharted territory. They’ve got their dynasty. They’ve fashioned it out of the league’s most marketable and exciting pieces and stuck it together with duct tape, chewing gum, and some good old-fashioned corruption.

But at what cost? 

OVERALL

Even people who don’t do their jobs have to roll up their proverbial sleeves first

“I Swear I’m Not Corrupt, I’m Just An Idiot.” If there was any justice in this world, Bill Vinovich would be sent out to pasture and turned into glue. Perhaps then–since we’d be relying on a chemical reaction rather than his all-encompassing incompetence–he could finally do a task correctly, like adhere a sole to a shoe or help a child complete an art project. But Bill will be around for a while because the NFL loves a corporate shill, and because he’s the league’s best option for implementing their no-call policy. 

This game wasn’t lost by a suspect roughing the passer or a defensive pass interference deep down the sideline. While that’s certainly been the case in the past–more specifically, in Bill Vinovich’s past–the NFL has realized that singular calls at the point of attack—called or not—generate too much attention. Too much backlash. They’ve learned–as most morally bankrupt entities do–that the best way to swing things in your favor is to puppeteer the game where others aren’t looking. Now, the NFL relies on calls OFF the ball that are NOT made. If throwing a flag for an on-ball penalty late in the fourth is like assassinating a foreign president, refusing to call holding for an entire game is like bankrolling a fascist movement over decades to let them do the dirty work for you.

I charted 11 obvious holding calls against the Chiefs, none of which were flagged. Six were on third downs, and every single Chiefs scoring drive–other than their one-play touchdown after the fumbled punt–included at least one of those holds. This only includes offensive holding, even if there was also some defensive holding that went unchecked–especially on Kittle–like this one, where two dudes blatantly held him on second-and-long two plays before a third quarter punt: 

For absolute clarity in the argument that the officiating in this game goes far beyond variance and sour grapes, feel free to look at the NFL’s official language on illegal offensive blocks. Holding is—in summary—using your arms or hands to restrict or alter a defender’s path or angle of pursuit, regardless of whether those hands are inside or outside of the body. Examples include, but are not limited to, hooking, turning, grabbing, tackling, twisting, etc.

I’ve also included the two grainy screenshots below, taken directly from an NFL teaching video on what constitutes holding. There are other examples of what could be a hold, but these images make pretty clear what is definitely a hold. 

Finally, before we get into the rogues' gallery of offenses, if anyone wants to try and big-brain you about these calls through rules exemptions, I am fully aware that clipping (blocking in the back) is allowed within the box. Any shot of a player being blocked in the back below includes him being tackled, which isn’t legal wherever the block occurs. I also understand that there is a “rip exception” to holding calls. This states that if a player executes a rip move (a shoulder dip and uppercut motion with the arm nearest the blocker) to put the blocker into a hold, that hold won’t be called. For any of you basketball fans, think of it like the Harden/Durant rip-through rule. I won’t go into too much detail on this rule because not a single one of the shots I’m about to show you includes a hold on a rip move.

If we exclude rip moves at the point of attack, the simplest way to determine holding is to look at the offensive lineman’s feet and his hands. If the back of his feet are NOT facing the quarterback but the back of his hands ARE and the defender being blocked is being turned, tackled, or restrained from changing direction it is almost certainly a hold. There are many ways to hold someone, but there are few (if any) ways not to hold someone within those parameters. With that in mind, behold but a small cross-section of the human embodiment of ineptitude we call Bill Vinovich:

If you look at the timestamps, the holds got much more prevalent as the game went on. Once again, that’s 11 missed holds on 6 of 19 third downs and holds on every scoring drive except for one. And this doesn’t even include the cuspy ones.

Across two Super Bowls, Bill Vinovich has called zero offensive holds on a Chiefs team that is known for holding and that quite literally led the league in the category this season. In the one Super Bowl where their Chiefs OL did get called for holding, the Bucs swarmed Mahomes and blew them out with ease. The word ineptitude for this officiating is far too kind. This is quite simply game-swinging bias. 

Sloppy Joes. The many self-inflicted wounds were maddening and quite often drive-killers. Few elite offenses rebound as poorly to holding penalties as ours and we had two of them in this game, but at least they were understandable. One was on Trent Williams as Purdy left the pocket (when you’re not the Chiefs, that’s a hold). The other was on seventh-round rookie Brayden Willis while filling in for a temporarily injured Kittle. 

But the four false starts are inexcusable, and given three of them occurred on 2nd-and-10 or worse, they clearly contributed to us getting out of our run game. By many metrics, running on 2nd-and-10 isn’t usually the right move (even if it sometimes was in this matchup) but running on 2nd-and-15+, when the most likely outcome you’re setting yourself up for is third-and-long, is almost never the right move. 

Fumbles, drops, and other simple execution issues plagued us throughout the game, and–as is abundantly clear at this point–we weren’t going to be bailed out by luck. Of the seven fumbles in this game (five by the Chiefs), the Chiefs recovered six of them. Considering fumble recovery statistics have shown to be equivalent to a coin flip, that’s a telling stat for the day as a whole.

Even if we don’t talk about reffing bias, the Chiefs were undeniably lucky this post-season. To the point of statistical relevance.

Let's shatter an incorrect narrative....

There have been 80 playoff teams since 2018. In @DataWithBliss' data-driven measure of luck (fumble recoveries, opponents' drops/FGs), here are the "luck" ranks of those 80:

2023 Chiefs: #1
2023 49ers: #69

Aiyuk's NFCCG catch included

— David Lombardi (@LombardiHimself) February 13, 2024

New OT, Same Talking Points. People love to critique Shanahan’s game management (sometimes rightfully so) so I’m not surprised that there have been so many hot takes about his decision to receive the ball to start OT. But I am surprised at how confident people are in their opinions. This was the first-ever game under the new OT rules so there is quite literally no direct data to support either decision, but there are a few things that can at least explain the thought process.

The most common initial reaction is that the new system resembles college football, where there is basically unanimous agreement that you should go second so that you know exactly how much you need to score once you get the ball. But the advantage gained from going second is wildly overstated. Since college overtime’s movement to its most recent OT format(s) in 1996, multiple studies have shown that starting on offense or defense has almost no bearing on who wins the game. The most recent study, which looked at games from 2013 through 2021, had teams who started on defense winning 51% of the time. There’s an edge there, but not enough for that decision to be deemed “automatic.” The comparison between college and NFL overtime also neglects a few big differences to the NFL’s new rules.  

First off, in the NFL you don’t start with the ball on the opposing 25. You start with a kickoff. And in this game that meant you started on your own 25. This difference cannot be overstated. When you start at the plus 25, the expectation is that you score in some way. Starting OT from a kickoff greatly changes the receiving teams’ chances of scoring and the eventual starting field position of the defending team. If anything, I would think this benefits the idea of defending first in case you force an early punt and can gain a starting field position advantage, but that’s just my initial instinct. 

The second major change is that in college, all teams are guaranteed an equal number of possessions. Teams are always given a rebuttal. In NFL OT, that guarantee only lasts two possessions. If the game is still tied once the third possession begins then it becomes sudden death and you’re not guaranteed anything. This is also a massive difference between the two formats and was the primary reason Shanahan and his analytics team decided it would make sense to receive the ball first. Yes, there is a second-mover advantage for the defending team in that they can go for two after scoring a touchdown to win it (which the Chiefs said they would have done), but there are a lot of variables (and assumptions) inherent in that advantage. If the game goes to a third possession, having that possession on offense is undeniably a humongous advantage. 

I also think the fact that the Niners’ defense had just come off the field on an 11-play scoring drive to end the fourth quarter plays into this decision. By starting on the minus-25 in college, your defensive starters could be gassed, but they only have to suck it up for a few plays before–one way or another–they get a break and get off the field. In the NFL, that’s not the case. In all likelihood, a Niners team that was battling some defensive injuries and fatigue and had a single play’s rest after that 11-play scoring drive would have had to force a three and out (or at worst a punt on the second set of downs) before subbing their defensive line, at which point the Chiefs would have almost certainly went tempo to keep them on the field. There’s little argument to be made that our defense and its ability to stop the Chiefs benefited from the extra rest, regardless of whether or not taking the ball to start overtime was the right decision or not. 

Finally, if we want to look at the college comparison again, teams in OT who received the ball first and scored a touchdown won a whopping 70% of the time. That number would surely be much higher in the NFL due to the increased distance needed to score, even if obtaining that initial touchdown is much harder in the pros. Perhaps this should have led Shanahan to go for it on fourth down rather than settle for a field goal? While I don’t think that was an easy decision either, I certainly buy that critique more so than our choice to receive first, even if it’s steeped in 20/20 hindsight. 

The differ or receive decision of the NFL’s new playoff format is considerably more complicated than any other overtime format before it, and–like most things–the decision to defend or receive should likely be based on the specific circumstances of each particular game. All this to say, I don’t know what the right choice was. But I’m glad every other asshole apparently does.

DEFENSE

Farewell, Wilks. While the Wilks firing was unfortunate, it was not without reason. Anyone considering this a “scapegoat firing” and a testament to Shanahan’s big game issues obviously didn’t watch the Niners until the Super Bowl—a game in which we allowed 455 yards of offense, btw.

While I thought our defense played much better than that stat—which was inflated due to poor officiating—Wilks never meshed with our top players nor the type of scheme we have to run for our roster-building strategy to make sense. Based on how we alot our salary cap and draft capital, we need to play from the front to the back, and while Wilks made major strides with our secondary, he never seemed to fully get on board with that fundamental idea. Far too often, the schemes in the front and the back weren’t tied together tight enough.

On its face, our defense was strong this year, and—at times—it was the same elite unit we’ve seen in past seasons. But we benefited greatly from having the league’s best offense, and a closer look showed a defense that had serious flaws. Our EPA/play dropped off from 1st to 12th. Our run defense DVOA fell from 2nd to 15th. And our third down percentage fell from 13th to a woeful 27th. This despite retaining the entirety of our core, staying healthier than in past years, and adding Javon Hargrave in the off-season.

Wilks was never comfortable stepping in and running “our defense,” and it showed up most on soft, vanilla third down coverages, slower-than-ideal adjustments, and a consistently frustrating lack of disguising and mixing up our looks. This was as much our fault for hiring him into a scheme he clearly didn’t totally understand as it was his for his inability to connect with it, but that doesn’t change the fact that a move had to be made, and–even if we’d won the Super Bowl–that move was likely coming.

The Heat-Seeking Missile. Referred to as a “one-of-one human” by his teammates after he went down to a ruptured Achilles, Dre Greenlaw’s loss was felt both emotionally and on the field, as the Chiefs targeted replacement linebacker Oren Burks and Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles relentlessly in pass coverage after Greenlaw went down. 

The Chiefs basically spammed quick flats, screens, outs, and option routes to the non-Warner linebacker to get their offense going post-injury, and it’s hard to imagine them having anywhere near the same kind of success with Dre on the field. Before he got hurt, those very same plays were going for–at best–1-yard gains.

Too Soft for Too Long. I get that Mahomes has a rocket and completed one deep pass when Gipson lost the ball in the stadium lights, but this was still a bad deep ball passing team that was susceptible to aggressive play outside.

Charvarius Ward was targeted zero times in this game. Deommodore Lenoir allowed five grabs but for only 36 yards. Our corners were as sticky and shutdown as could be, yet we used that as a deep ball deterrent rather than as a greenlight to be more aggressive disrupting the short plays that ended up becoming the majority of the Chiefs’ offense. I understand the bend-don’t-break philosophy, but when facing an offense that has–for the entirety of the season–shown an inability to do anything other than manufacture long drives off of short passes, playing soft plays into what they can do well. To be fair, if the holds were being called, this strategy would have worked, and it did for a while, but sometimes it seemed like we played this Chiefs offense like it was a Chiefs offense of old. It was not.

Show and Tell. Our defense was the third-most likely unit in the league to run the exact coverage that we showed pre-snap, and while there’s value in keeping things simple so that players can play fast, I can’t imagine that the marginal gains of slightly better positioning and more reps outweigh the massive benefits of confusing opposing quarterbacks and play callers. To make matters worse, our defense became so static and predictable that teams started deploying gameplans stuffed with designer plays to combat it. We saw this versus the Packers and a ton against the Lions. While the Chiefs’ offensive gameplan wasn’t able to start racking up real rock-paper-scissors wins until late in the game, our penchant for showing exactly what we were doing pre-snap bit us in the ass a few times at critical junctures.

The most frustrating example of this was on this long completion to Travis Kelce late in the game.

Warner bumps out of the box to line up on Kelce, as clear an indicator as possible that we’re in man coverage with outside leverage. This is an incredibly difficult assignment for a linebacker given how much the Chiefs love to attack man coverage with crossers, which is exactly what the Chiefs have dialed up.

Expecting man coverage, the Chiefs have set up a shallow crosser with a pick from Noah Gray to free up Kelce. Given Warner was clearly on an island pre-snap and that this would have been a difficult assignment for a cornerback, much less a linebacker, I assumed there would be inside help in the form of a high-and-inside safety bracket or a defender meant to wall Kelce on any crossers going to the opposite side of the field. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The high safety took the high zone. The low safety roamed the intermediate middle and Warner was left with a largely impossible task.

While Warner is the best coverage linebacker in the game, you cannot guard this route from this alignment—especially against the pick the Chiefs run here—and that frees Kelce for an easy gain that both he and Mahomes likely diagnosed pre-snap. Even a simple flip of responsibilities from the safeties, with Ji’Ayir creeping down and looking to take away in-breakers while Gipson plays over the top, could have baited Mahomes into an incompletion or worse. But we showed early what we were in and they punished us for it by hitting the only real option on the play.

When it came to crunch time, there was simply too much of this and too many easy underneath completions against soft coverage when they didn’t have the talent outside to warrant it. 

Pressure Performers. To their credit, our defensive line showed up in a big way in the pass rushing category, totaling 32 QB pressures, 7 QB hits, and 3 sacks. Bosa in particular is insane in Super Bowls. He racked up 12 pressures all on his own. While those stats will likely only add fuel to the fire that is “Mahomes Magic,” they’re more a testament to how greatly we would have snuffed out this offense entirely if not for the blatant holding. 

OFFENSE

Almost the Super Bowl’s most unlikely of MVPs

Manholes. We absolutely eviscerated the Chiefs when they played zone, picking them apart in the intermediate zones to the point where they went with much more man coverage and blitzes in the second half. That’s where we ran into some issues.

Deebo in particular struggled to get open, hauling in only three of his eleven targets and rarely getting separation against press man. There were times when it felt like we were forcing him the ball, but oftentimes the throws his way were a product of reads and progressions, not matchup hunting. Deebo just couldn’t beat his man. It’s hard to say how much of this was a product of the handful of injuries Deebo was carrying at the time, but he’s had his issues against man coverage before, and we really needed him to win more matchups.

Aiyuk, our man-beater all season, had a quiet game as well. He had a couple of wins where we just couldn’t get him the ball, but the Chiefs’ corners were generally sticky. When we put Aiyuk (or really whoever) on a safety and ran vertical stems to isolate them in coverage, we routinely got separation, but far too frequently the protection wasn’t there as the Chiefs became more and more blitz-happy as the game went on. What we needed were more underneath options and more people to get early open.

Our man killers in this game were CMC on everyone, anyone who could run a vertical stem against one of their safeties, and Jauan Jennings—who scored just the second touchdown all year against L’Jarius Sneed but did most of his work against their lesser DBs. Unfortunately, the protection fell apart quite a bit and it wasn’t always possible to take advantage when these guys were open.

Shots in the dark. We had a couple of big-time shot plays that sprung open in this game, but—in what will become a theme—we weren’t able to protect them. Deebo got big-time open on this fake hot screen, but Burford got beat immediately by Chris Jones so Purdy didn’t have time to make the throw.

The game could have looked a lot different if we’d even connected with one of these—which I’m sure was the reason why we kept trying—but the combination of guys getting open and us not hitting them also helped contribute to our offensive spiral in the middle of the game.

Burying the lede. Sometimes I think Shanahan gets too obsessed with calling the perfect play when he should just settle for a very good one. This—in conjunction with some ill-timed penalties and pass pro issues—felt like what happened during the stretch of three straight three-and-outs to start the third quarter. But, after looking at the coaches’ film, it seems more complicated than that.

To start the second half we called a deep play action shot play, which I was 100% in support of. Take off the top to keep the run game open all day. At least that was the thought.

Unfortunately, the Chiefs had already committed to cranking up their blitzing, and Deebo’s motion across formation likely sealed the deal.

The strongside linebacker shoots through immediately, and our offensive line—who, to their credit, are trying to perform a play fake—are clearly a bit confused. Brendel loops right looking for work, Banks and Feliciano end up taking the same guy, and the linebacker whizzes right behind them toward the quarterback. This is a shame because both of the guys who went out on routes were open down the field.

After it fell incomplete, Shanahan dialed up a run play, but Aaron Banks false-started. Now facing 2nd-and-15, running was largely out of the question and we were an incomplete and a short scramble from a punt. This was unfortunate but at least understandable.

To start the second drive, we ran what I initially thought was another play action shot play, resulting in a frantic scramble and a negative 8-yard completion to Jauan Jennings. This once again put us behind the sticks and took us out of running territory. Live, I thought this was a massive mistake, but after watching the All-22, it looked more like yet another giant missed opportunity.

While the blocking is a bit weird, this looks a lot like a called throwback screen. And if it was, holy shit was it open.

None of the DL have read screen. One is on the ground. Juice is ten yards in front of CMC and ready to block the one cornerback in the area (who also hasn’t seen the screen yet) and the closest inside linebacker (underlined) has fully turned his head and started running the wrong direction. If this is a screen (and not just a conveniently effective stretch play action fake), I have no idea why Purdy didn’t throw it. Even if it wasn’t a called screen, he should have thrown it. I would assume some combination of the pressure from Chris Jones coming earlier than he expected and the area around CMC being blocked by bodies made him reluctant to toss it out there without a clear picture. But mother of god, that’s a house call if he does.

Instead, Purdy evades Jones and dumps the ball off to Jennings, who was only supposed to block on the play. The massive loss puts us in another hole that we can’t run out of and we punt two plays later. If that was meant to be another deep play action pass, it was a bad call. We just can’t risk that kind of lost yardage to start back-to-back drives—especially against this defense. But if it was a called screen that Purdy just didn’t throw, then… you can’t really complain about a dialed-up touchdown that was open.

For the third three and out, we started with a gap run, which was the right call, even if the play didn’t work. The Chiefs were so dialed against our zone running that the gap schemes started opening up much better, but this was the rare play where both Trent Williams and George Kittle missed their blocks. We could have run again on second down—I probably would have—but instead, we ran a dropback pass concept where Purdy bypassed a wide-open Deebo to attempt a deeper shot for Aiyuk.

This was one of the rare blown coverages from the Chiefs on the day, and—of course—they somehow benefited from it. Whereas Purdy could have hit Deebo for some sweet slant and YAC action, he holds to throw to Aiyuk, who also opens up on a deep out. However, Purdy winds up late on the throw because one of the DBs doubling CMC incidentally clogs the passing lane while trying to recover and guard Deebo.

Just one of those days.

Upon further review, I (think I) understand more about what Shanahan was trying to do in those three ugly three-and-outs. But, as a whole, I do think we got too far away from the running game (or at least the threat of it) and made things harder than they needed to be. Our YPC may not have been stellar, but we showed throughout that we could get a push on even the most loaded of boxes.

On this play, for instance, we ran stretch right against this ten-man (!) box.

And it gained 4 yards.

The Chiefs ran a lot of late shifts and weird slants and fronts in order to confuse our linemen and their zone rules, and it worked a number of times to stop runs for no gain. But there’s only so much of that you can do. Eventually, your soft underbelly gets exposed. When we could put a hat on a hat, we consistently got push on the inside and the more we leaned on it the better we ran and the fewer third-and-longs we faced.

At times, it seemed like Shanaahan and Purdy wanted too badly to go for the jugular. We didn’t need to get the score or the first down all at once. We needed to stay ahead of the sticks. We needed efficiency–in whatever form that could be found in–and—as we rediscovered as we neared the fourth quarter—that efficiency was found in balance, a recommitment to the run game, and more short-to-intermediate completions to beat the blitzes.

Joe Exotic. Spags dialed up some killer blitzes and disguises in this game—quite often on third down—and Purdy—as should be expected with any young QB—didn’t diagnose them all correctly. But our third down struggles were far from his issue alone.

Here is our last third down of regulation, just under the two-minute warning, with a chance to ice the game if we convert it.

CMC has motioned into a stack to the short-side of the field. Ray-Ray is running an inside release clear out to make sure CMC gets a clean release on an option route, while we have a simple double slant concept to the field side.

The Chiefs are lining up like they’re either in Cover 2 man, one of their favorite third-down coverages, or double bracket coverage over Aiyuk and CMC, but they’re really sending the house and playing man 0 all over. If diagnosed correctly, this is actually a great play call to beat this blitz because the safety on Aiyuk has far too soft a cushion to play the inside slant.

I can’t say for certain because the All-22 is from the back of his helmet, but when Purdy opens up to his left—knowing he wants to hit one of the slants—it seems like he looks out wide to Jennings first. Perhaps he assumed that bracket coverage on Aiyuk would lead to single-coverage outside. But if Purdy had stuck to his inside-out progression, he would have seen Aiyuk open up immediately.

Instead, the blitzing DB comes unblocked, gets directly in Purdy’s throwing lane, and bats down the pass. If the blitzing DB had been picked up, perhaps Purdy would have diagnosed and hit Aiyuk after the initial look towards Jennings, but he didn’t have time because of a protection mishap. We’ve talked about the benefits of having so many guys play so many positions, but there are definitely drawbacks, and we often see those when non-RBs are lined up in the backfield. Given Jake Brendel steps right on the snap, I assume he diagnosed the Mike linebacker to his right and set the protection that way, meaning Kittle (most likely) had an inside-out scan protection to the left—meaning, he is responsible for the blitzing DB. Instead, he stays on the right and looks to help out on an extra man that never shows. If he’d come over and simply picked up McDuffie as he was supposed to—or even just knocked him out of the lane—Purdy likely finds Aiyuk or has enough time to hit CMC, who breaks open later on the option route. Then, we run out the clock and kick a game-winner as time expires.

We were 3-of-12 on converting third downs. The Chiefs were 9-of-19. That’s as telling a stat as any.

As Purdy sees these schemes more he’ll get used to what they’re doing and be able to tell when something is disguised, when something isn’t, when to check in and out of different protections, and how to go through his progressions so that just because he’s tricked pre-snap doesn’t mean he has to be post-snap. It’s great that he’s seeing things pre-snap and preparing for what he thinks will be open, but–as he gets more reps–he’ll learn when he can and can’t trust those mental shortcuts. Sometimes, you just have to go through the progression and let the defense show you their coverage. 

Overall, I was impressed by Purdy. He navigated the pocket as well as he ever had against a lot of pressure, largely fought the urge to flush out too early, and–as he usually does–seized the moment and played good football down the stretch. This is a guy, who–in his second year in the NFL and first as a full-time starter–performed much better against this defense than two-time MVP Lamar Jackson, NFL completion % leader Tua Tagovailoa, and countless other veteran quarterbacks who faced the Chiefs this season. He got tricked by Spags on a couple of occasions, but we didn’t lose because of him. Far from it.

Don’t Play It Again, Sam. This is now the third year in four deep postseason runs where pass pro issues—particularly on the right side of our line—have played a major part in dooming our Super Bowl aspirations. Some of it is d-coordinators scheming up well against our pass protection rules, but a whole lot of it is just our guys getting beat. 

On our final offensive play of the Super Bowl, we split out into empty and called a fly sweep play action fake with man beaters all over the formation.

Jauan is running a whip route to the short side of the field. The two slants to the left are functionally one slant, as Deebo in the slot is meant more to pick the trailing linebacker on CMC—who is running a swing route after the fly sweep fake. Finally, Kittle is chipping and then opening up into space as a fallback option underneath. If no one else opens up then at least the Chiefs will have to tackle Kittle in space from a deep safety position.

This is an excellent play call in every way except for the protection up front.

The OL is attempting to sell the play fake, so Jake Brendel is pulling to the left side and taking the edge. This isn’t inherently flawed, but—as Justin Reid creeps up to blitz on CMC’s motion across—things start to get messy. Tony Romo—who was meh or worse for much of the Super Bowl—did make a good point in the broadcast that this was a protection that a more elder Purdy might have checked out of given the front. But even with this protection, we we would have been fine if we’d simply executed it correctly.

Unfortunately, despite being taught to step out and block the B gap, Burford tries to help inside on the A gap pressure—a mistake he copped to after the game and blamed on relying on “instinct” rather than teaching. This leaves Chris Jones, the Chiefs’ best defensive player, totally unblocked and screaming towards Purdy. While Reid, and both edge players, are coming after the quarterback, they’re not full blitzers. There’s a read and a check involved and Reid even stops in the hole before being contacted. So even if Reid wasn’t picked up, he wasn’t getting to Purdy before he hit one of the many open receivers.

And boy were there open receivers.

That’s right, with Deebo acting more as a pick player, every single receiver going out on a real route was open on this play. All four of them. Aiyuk shook all-pro L’Jarius Sneed to the literal ground en route to the endzone. Jauan was breaking open towards the sideline. CMC had a clear pitch and catch angle to a walk-in touchdown. Even Kittle, the only player who might not have scored on this play, would have easily gotten the first down with this much room to run.

Yes, we could have run a different protection or Purdy could have checked into another one at the line, but the protection was ultimately sound. We just had to execute up front.

Trent Williams and Jon Feliciano allowed one combined pressure all day. Our other four linemen allowed a combined 14. This is a stacked draft at OT and one that has starter-level depth and high-end potential well into the bottom of the first and even the second round. I know that our lack of spending on the OL is in part a result of our salary cap structure and something we actively scheme around, but I fully expect us to select an offensive tackle with our first pick in this draft. Enough is enough. No matter how much we’d like to scheme around it, we just need to be better along the OL to prevent these kinds of issues from popping up at the worst times in our dropback passing game.

It is somehow both comforting and wildly depressing that we were so close and so deserving of winning this Super Bowl, only for it to be tanked by a couple of mistakes and consistently biased refereeing. Worries about our Super Bowl window closing are legitimate, if for no other reason than because opportunities such as these are so hard to come by. But great franchises stay in contention, and I have faith in the core we have in place. As always, growth is needed across the board for us to continue to play at this level and to finally take that next step, but every season we’ve gotten better and there’s no reason to think that next year should be any different. Of all the scars the Niners speak of from their recent post-season heartbreaks, this one will certainly run the deepest. While it may not feel like much at the moment, take solace in knowing that this latest setback will make the next Super Bowl victory—which I believe is coming soon—all the sweeter.

Until then, if someone says the Chiefs won because “you just can’t beat Mahomes” feel free to slap them across their whore face.

Go Niners 🏈👍

Super Bowl Preview Pt II: Chiefs Defense

Steve Spagnuolo might be the most underrated defensive coordinator in football. As a defensive play caller, he’s won three Super Bowls at two different spots and has an outrageous 17-4 career playoff record. But due to his underwhelming few years as a head coach splitting up his two championship DC stops–and the fact that the Chiefs have not exactly been known for defense until this season–he never seems to get his due. 

While young up-and-coming whiz kid play callers are always going to get more fanfare, well-established coordinators (especially those on the defensive side of the ball) are often taken for granted. But the work Steve Spagnuolo has done in turning a young and unproven Kansas City defense into one of the better units in the league has been remarkable. This Chiefs team would not be here without its defense, which–regardless of your belief level in “Playoff Mahomes”--has been the better unit on this team for the entirety of the season. 

This defense is 7th in DVOA, 5th against the pass, and 27th against the run. They’re 6th in EPA/snap, 3rd in SPA/pass, and 25th in EPA/run. By all accounts, this is an excellent-to-elite defense with one glaring weakness.

CAST AND CHARACTERS

Chris Jones continues to be the best player on the Kansas City defense, and–despite the presence of two other All-Pro candidates in the secondary–its single most important. While Aaron Donald has long dominated the discussion of top defensive tackles–and rightfully so–Chris Jones is more versatile, and his ability to play inside and out–paired with his incredible instincts all along the defensive line–makes him a matchup nightmare and movable chess piece in a way that no other interior lineman in football can replicate. 

Other than Jones, the rest of the KC interior linemen are space-eater types, but they have a healthy rotation of them. Tershawn Wharton’s got a little juice as a pass rusher, but Isaiah Buggs and Derek Nnadi are throwback nose tackles. They’re there to occupy blockers and let everyone else get singles while blitzers run free. The edges are a talented group, although they’ll be missing former Niner Charles Omenihu for the Super Bowl, as he tore his ACL last week. He had 7 sacks in 11 games, which was the third-highest total on the team behind Jones (10.5) and George Karlaftis (10.5), an impressive second-year player with a nice blend of power and closing speed. Mike Danna starts opposite Karlaftis, and–with 6.5 sacks–he’s no slouch either. Again, Jones can go anywhere along the line, so there’s no real weak spot along this front.

Outside corner L’Jarius Sneed is their headliner in the secondary, even if he (surprisingly) wasn’t named to an All-Pro team this season. Given the Chiefs’ aggressive blitzing nature and their affinity for man coverage, Sneed gets put on an island more often than most, but he’s done an excellent job erasing teams’ No.1 receivers and making plays in coverage and as a tackler. Although Sneed gets the majority of the fanfare, second-year nickel corner Trent McDuffie was the Chiefs’ first-team All-Pro selection in the secondary. He’s an incredibly well-rounded player who can stick on your top slot receiver, bounce out wide, or blitz about equally well, but his versatility has won him his post-season awards more than his lockdown ability.

Part of the reason Spags’ work with this Chiefs defense has been so impressive is because this is an incredibly young defense. Of the four corners and four safeties who get the most snaps, only Justin Reid (in his sixth year) and Mike Edwards (5th year) aren’t on rookie contracts. Starting outside cornerback Joshua Williams–who has had a very strong season in his own right–reserve CB Jaylen Watson, and starting safety Bryan Cook are both second-year players. While Chamarri Conner–a talented matchup-specific safety–is a fourth round rookie. Spags loves extra DB sets so all of them play.

Drue Tranquill–owner of one of the best last names for an NFL linebacker–and Nick Bolton are their top options at linebacker, but–just like in the secondary–the Chiefs play a lot of guys. That means Leo Chenal and Willie Gay will get some run in the Super Bowl. They don’t have any stars at linebacker, but this is a well-coached group that triggers quickly and has solid athleticism across the board.

DEFENSE

Steve “Send It” Spagnuolo (no one calls him this). Spags is one of the best and most creative pressure men in the NFL, and–at his core–his defense is a four-man front that blitzes heavily from all over and likes to run man and matchup zone coverage on the back end. The Chiefs are the 5th-most blitz-heavy team in the league and run the 5th-most man coverage. Cover 2 man is probably his favorite coverage–especially on passing downs–as its shell allows for a wide array of bracket coverages tuned to specific receivers and alignments and is easily hidden within (or hides) other two-high looks such as quarters. That also meshes with his affinity for deploying dime personnel (six defensive backs), which the Chiefs ran the fourth-most in the NFL. 

Everyone who has ever played football had one idiot coach who just wanted to run man coverage and blitz every down despite only having two blitzes in their playbook. Spagnuolo is decidedly not an idiot and the best possible version of that coach. A man who loves to blitz, but also knows when to back off, has enough exotic pressure packages to make the blitz rate worthwhile, and blitzes with intent. 

Like an Instant Pot. The Chiefs finished the season No.1 in adjusted sack rate, 2nd in total sacks, and second in pressure rate (to the Lions), but they were only 20th in pass rush win rate. That’s likely a testament to two things. First off, their pressure rates are greatly aided by their blitz-happy approach, which… yeah, they’d better be or you should stop blitzing so much. Secondly, their down-the-field coverage is so good that quarterbacks are often forced to hold onto the ball longer than they’d like, generating a bunch of coverage sacks. This tracks given their talent at corner and the inherent versatility they have in bracketing top targets from running so much two-high pattern matching. Whatever way you slice it, this is an excellent team at pressuring and taking down quarterbacks so protecting Purdy and giving him a variety of outlets will be key.

Rando Roulette. As noted in the roster breakdown above, the Chiefs play a lot of players on defense. They like to mix and match both personnel and personnel groups to play to their weekly matchup, specific situations, and–of course–coverage and blitz pairings. This also gives them the inherent benefit of keeping more players mentally involved in practice and in games and preventing the defense from wearing down over long drives. I’m sure there are tells of some sort here, but that would require the kind of film study and excel sheet filling that I’m not going to partake in with this free blog. I’m sure if the tells are at all relevant, Shanahan’s staff has cataloged them.

Money on the Money Downs. This Chiefs team ranks near the bottom of the league in takeaways but they still excel at limiting points and getting their offense the ball. They’re 2nd in success rate on both third and fourth down defense (the “original” takeaway, if you will). Their ability to generate negatives via sacks and excel on crunch downs has played a major part in this Chiefs defense allowing the second-fewest points in the league.

POTENTIAL OFFENSIVE KEYS

Sweet Mother of God, Run the Ball. It’s time to talk about that one glaring weakness. Despite being a disciplined, well-coached, and sure-tackling defense, the Chiefs are 27th in DVOA against the run, 25th in EPA/run, 29th at the rate in which they allow runs of 10 or more yards, dead-last in ESPN’s run stop win rate, and dead-last in short yardage run defense. Whether it’s double tight stretch, throwback under center I-form, fly sweeps, tosses, or our standard shotgun run looks, we should run the ball early and often.

It’s important to note that Raheem Mostert’s 2019 NFC Championship Game performance really spoiled us as a fanbase. That Packers’ run defense was so bad and so unsound that the matchup became truly as simple as “run it every play.” While I’d love nothing more than to be able to do that on Sunday, there’s a reason we haven’t had that kind of success in the run game since. That season put defenses on notice. You can’t just line up and “run your stuff” against this offense. Now, at least half of the NFL runs some variation of Shanahan’s offense, which means defenses (and coordinators) across the league spend the majority of their time building strategies to combat our specific run game. Granted, we have the original, the best, and the most creative version of that run game, but it’s still built within the framework of an offense that every defensive coordinator has a strategy to combat. So while the run game will be massive in determining our offensive success, we’ll need to do several things in the run and pass game to keep that run game open all game long. But make no mistake, we need to stay committed to the run, which means we need to be creative and efficient in taking the Chiefs out of the fronts and looks that are selling out against it.

Loaded Lines and Aggro Edges (there’s a cocaine reference in here somewhere). One of the first steps that defenses often take to slowing our zone/stretch game is loading the line of scrimmage with enough players that it becomes mathematically impossible for us to generate many double teams at the point of attack. This not only takes away the double team benefit of our scheme but also attempts to hold up second-level blockers who can carve out cutback lanes while cluttering the line of scrimmage to shrink and muddy up any rushing lanes.

Given that–and how the Chiefs played the Packers and the Dolphins this year–I would expect to see a healthy dose of five- and even six-man fronts on early downs, with a variety of linebackers and defensive backs acting as rolled up edge defenders as well as heavy edge blitzes to simulate those loaded fronts.

This is a 5-2 against gun look with the back away. You can see how they’re playing outside shade everywhere on the strong side–keying the Dolphins’ heavy lean towards trying to hook defenders and break stretch runs outside. Note also that linebacker Willie Gay (#50) is a late addition to the play side, with a checked creep up and blitz due to the motion away of Tyreek Hill.

The result is a run where Gay (top arrow) blows up the point of attack, which forces Mostert to cut up field early and into the hands of the unblocked backside edge defender (bottom arrow), who has crashed hard inside.

Against the Packers, the Chiefs showed more 4-3 looks–likely because they were more afraid of Jordan Love and Green Bay’s intermediate-to-deep passing game. But they still deployed plenty of loaded fronts, they just got into them later and sneakier in hopes that they wouldn’t get exposed in the passing game through pre-snap recognition. 

However the Chiefs plan to deploy their ever-changing fronts, it’s safe to assume they’ll have a bunch of different looks aimed at trying to load the line of scrimmage and play hyper-aggressive on the edges. By selling out hard on the edges they hope to force everything inside and collapse runs from both sides before the back is able to slice through the middle of their defense. While it will be tough to diagnose and properly block all of their looks, it’s worth noting that the Chiefs HAVE to do this to stop the run because they simply aren’t stout up the middle and give up way too much ground when you run right at them. This is all window dressing and sleight of hand to disguise the fact that you can road grade them in the running game as long as you diagnose what they’re doing and have the proper restraint plays to punish them for their overaggressiveness. 

Restraints (The Fun Kind). So how do we keep the Chiefs’ aggressive edges honest and open up the run game? Let us count the ways. 

Fly Sweeps/Touch Passes - In a traditional under center run game, naked bootlegs were the primary way of punishing aggressive backside pursuit. Those are still on the table, but modern offenses have a few other options to accomplish the same goal. When the edges are playing aggressively towards the running back, making them lose contain with fly sweeps early is a good way of keeping them honest and slowing up their backside pursuit.

The Packers ran a touch pass fly sweep on their very first play from scrimmage, catching the Chiefs overpursuing on the backside and setting the tone with this nine-yard gain to Jayden Reed. 

They’d go back to fly sweeps, touch passes, and reverses throughout the day–mostly to great success–and their early and consistent commitment to the concept helped the backfield run for 104 yards on 21 carries (excluding the yardage gained from the sweeps and touch passes themselves). While that may not seem like an overwhelming number, note that Aaron Jones missed this game to injury, so the primary ballcarrier was AJ Dillon, who averaged only 3.4 ypc this season. The Packers were getting a lot of push in the run game all day.

Bubble Screens - For any spread offense people, one of the most obvious ways to do this is with the equivalent of a bubble screen, which both the Dolphins and the Bills ran plenty of in their playoff matchups.

This is a pretty traditional bubble screen set-up, but there are several ways to create this same constraint on the backside pursuit (red arrows). The aggressive alignment of a defender on the line of scrimmage and the linebacker inside that player means they’ve inherently got bad angles, and this horizontal backside stretch—in whatever way you want to call it—can often get you cheap yardage. Most importantly, if the defense has to respect it then you can pop off rushing lanes like this, where the backside pursuit is hesitating because they’ve been burned too often by the bubble screen.

Dump Offs/Swings - There are other ways to attack the weakside flat and widen the space the backside edge and linebackers have to cover. Both the Bills and the Dolphins were committed to just dumping the ball out wide and letting their receivers work in space. Often, that was accomplished with a receiver going across formation in motion.

Somehow Tua turfed this and it fell incomplete, but you can see how the linebacker—already at a disadvantage based on alignment—and hard-crashing edge both take themselves completely out of the play selling out against the run. If Tua had hit more passes like this the Dolphins run game could have had more success. After all, this is Devon Achane—one of the fastest and most elusive runners in the league—with two blockers on two DBs and the closest defender about 30 yards away.

Motion is the easiest way, but you can also just dump the ball to someone like a hot screen, or, you can get creative and send a receiver with a tight split to the other side of the formation after the snap.

It works especially well if the receiver you send over there is as fast as Tyreek Hill, but I don’t think any of us would be mad with that kind of completion going to Kittle or Deebo with this kind of room to run.

Weakside Play Action - Finally, there’s the good old fashioned play action pass. That can include—among other things—weakside leakouts from backs or chipping tight ends and shallow crossers from the opposite side of the field. 

In this case, both circled players actually got open and Jordan Love threw the deeper route, but that short route—or ones like it—sprung free multiple times on film.

If you hit the Chiefs enough times with receivers coming across formation off of play action, they may start tasking their safeties with guarding the crossers, hoping that their added speed and friendlier angle can get the job done. But this takes away the safety’s ability to help out on outside receivers, isolates them in a way that the Chiefs don’t always want, and–given how much they play man coverage–can mess with the defense’s keys and run fits.

Here you can see All-Pro Trent McDuffie has been tasked with following the wing back tight end in man coverage, so as to prevent a cross formation shallow or leak out off play action.

But with the safety in man coverage and now worried about getting outflanked by a receiver going across the formation…

…it can become difficult for him to know whether it’s pass or run until it’s too late.

Split Zone - Split zone/stretch isn’t really a way of punishing the backside edge defender for crashing hard against the run, but it is a way of blocking him when he does it. The Packers used it a bunch throughout the game (including in the clip above) to ensure they had a cutback lane to run through.

This is third-and-two. Here, the Chiefs are showing 4-3, but—possibly due to the motion or possibly just as a pre-determined call—they are creeping up Willie Gay into a 5-2 look, sending him off the edge, then sending a double dog blitz from both nickels.

Without the split zone action this play would have been boned. But instead…

It’s not the biggest hole, nor the prettiest run you’ve ever seen, but it was a four-yard gain on third-and-two against seven-man pressure with two linebackers also in support. Thus, it is beautiful.

All these plays can pick up chunks of yardage and—in some cases—even spring for big gains, but their primary purpose is to make the Chiefs play our run game honestly. Because if they have to do that, they won’t be able to stop it. Running the ball successfully will be the single most important factor towards our offensive success.

Open Hearts, Closed Formations. There are a couple of other ways to prevent the Chiefs from selling out against the run on the edges–one being the use of formations.

The Bills deployed some closed formations and a ton of tight bunches, which–while not technically closed formations–served the same purpose in the run game. 

The Chiefs would love to play someone on the line outside of this bunch formation to operate as backside pursuit, but since there’s no receiver wide of the bunch they can’t reasonably do so. Putting a corner on the line of scrimmage opposite the furthest outside receiver–especially in man–would absolutely hose the Chiefs if this was a pass. The corner would get picked, switch release pass offs would be impossible, and the second receiver would run free on a deep safety or linebacker with all of the outside available to him and leverage over everyone. So they have to play their outside corner off the line of scrimmage.

This creates numbers in the box once again and double teams on the backside of a run away, which leads to the sort of cutback seams that zone and stretch concepts are built off of. 

Runs away from this bunch alignment–or towards a traditional closed edge–worked well throughout this game, but the Chiefs did adjust by having the defensive back over the bunch’s second receiver crash into the No.2 and No.3 on every snap. They basically tasked this DB with eliminating both blockers–like a two-gapping defensive lineman–to crunch down plays and try to get penetration. That may work against Khalil Shakir and the Bills’ wideouts, but I’m not sure how well that adjustment will go against Deebo, Kittle, Juice, Jauan Jennings, and Brandon Aiyuk–the top-graded run-blocking wideout in all of football.

Tic Tac Toe. One of the tenets of the Chiefs’ defense is that they almost always have a check or two prepared for different types of motion. The thinking goes that–if the offense is going to get more information and an advantage from motion–the defense can reclaim that advantage by adjusting from the motion just before the snap. That could mean players rolling up as edges (which we saw above), rotating safeties, receivers being handed off, d-line stunts, blitzes, and everything in between. Defensive checks are great, but if the offense deciphers what checks you’re making in what situations–either during film study or the game itself–the offense can spring people open in a hurry.

Here the Chiefs are in man and have Trent McDuffie running across formation with orbit motion. In order to keep a good angle on his man he has to really book it, so–knowing this–the Bills have called a play specifically to get the motion man loose the other way. 

It will be up to Shanahan, our coaching staff, and our offensive line, to get a grasp on what checks are most likely to happen against what looks and attack them both in the passing game and the running game.

Depth or Disguise? The Chiefs’ cornerbacks are excellent and so is its pass rush. We know that. But I’m not totally convinced that their heavy rotation of players isn’t hiding some potential weaknesses as much as it is catering to players’ strengths. Willie Gay already seems a bit like a “point-and-shoot” type of player. He’s a plus athlete but I think there’s a reason he’s often rolling up on edges, blitzing, and spying quarterbacks and not reading and reacting or dropping into coverage. The other linebackers are well-coached and far from liabilities in coverage, but with all the help they get from the safeties, how well do they hold up on an island. And the safeties? Yes, they’re strong help defenders, but—like with the linebackers—there are questions about their ability when they get isolated in man coverage. Per PFF, Mike Edwards was graded as the 81st safety out of 95 and Justin Reid was 75th. Now a lot of teams have been able to target them in one-on-one coverage, but when they have those offenses have had success. Justin Reid, for example, gave up 7 catches on 9 targets for 83 yards and a tug against the Packers, who hunted him all day with motions, switch releases, and route combos that they knew would isolate one of their wideouts (usually Christian Watson) on him without help.

Shanahan is as good as anyone at finding and targeting players in one-on-one coverage with our horde of weapons. While it will be a bit harder given the Chiefs’ scheme and its aggressive blitzing nature, I’m sure there are more than a few matchups we’ll be looking to exploit that don’t involve testing those outside corners.

Chris Jones Threat Level: High. Now that we’re moving into the passing game section of things it’s worth reiterating how good Chris Jones is and how potent this pass rush can be. Jones will line up everywhere, and will for sure get some reps on the right end opposite Colton McKivitz given his struggles in pass pro. Jones isn’t only dynamic as a pass rusher but he’s as good as anyone at getting into passing lanes and batting down balls. That’s particularly useful when he’s aligned outside and the Chiefs are thinking quick game. I’m a fan of both of the Chiefs’ two defensive ends as well, but Jones (and the blitzes) are what we need to be the most aware of. Everyone knows that the non-Trent Williams section of our line is the big weakness of our offense. Schemes aside, how they stand up to the Chiefs’ front seven—especially in pass pro—could go a long way in determining what our offense can and cannot do.

Blitz Clock Brock. The past two defenses we’ve faced have dropped their linebackers directly back into the seams to prioritize taking away digs and maintain downhill angles toward any completed slants. This has led Purdy to–at times–stay too long on his deep and intermediate routes and be late getting to his checkdowns. We love Purdy’s aggressiveness in the passing game and if the linebackers are preoccupied with CMC or our short routes then by all means look for the digs behind them, but with a team as blitz-heavy as the Chiefs, Purdy will need to make sure his internal clock is dialed from the start. We’ve gotten away with slow starts the past two games. Let’s not go for a hat trick in the early deficit category. 

Shanahan and the rest of the offense can certainly help in this regard, but ultimately it will be up to Brock to get the ball out on time and to not put it in harm’s way. Big plays are great, but efficiency is key.

Brock Vick. Well, not really. But you may have noticed one of the other great ways to freeze aggressive backside edges is to run zone read. I’m not exactly suggesting we do that—at least no zone reads where we expect Purdy to pull them—but our second-year signal-caller is sneaky athletic, and with the Chiefs’ blitz-happy nature and their lean towards man and matchup zone coverages, they are one of the worst teams in the league at defending QB scrambles (yes, I know, with every passing day, the Ravens’ offensive game plan in the AFC Championship Game makes less and less sense).

We’re not going to go all Josh Allen on them, but when Purdy has an opening on the ground he should take it. I’m not saying he should get happy feet all of a sudden, but efficiency and staying on schedule are the name of the game here, regardless of how pretty it may look.

Slime Time? Deebo’s role in this game is going to be fascinating. On one hand, the Chiefs are a man- and press-heavy team with lots of safety help from guys looking to drive on slants and sure tackling all over the field. That does not play to Deebo’s strengths. Aiyuk is our man-beater, then Kittle, then probably CMC before we get to Deebo. On the other hand, L’Jarius Sneed will almost certainly be shadowing Aiyuk, and while the Chiefs were 5th in DVOA in guarding No.1 receivers, they were only 25th in guarding second wideouts. It’s also a game where we’re likely to be rewarded if we can run a lot in many creative ways, where dump-offs to motion guys and fly sweeps could be a big part of the gameplan, and where the opposition loves to blitz—thus vacating the underneath areas where Deebo excels. There’s a very real world where if we take home the Lombardi Trophy, Deebo is taking home a Super Bowl MVP.

Finally, a few notes on special teams: (1) kick the ball between the uprights, not outside of them; (2) just put that shit in the endzone on kickoffs.

There are countless narratives—about players, teams, coaches, worldwide popstars and their potential flight schedules—that make this a fascinating Super Bowl, but the chess match between the opposing coaches will be as good as it gets. The Chiefs are undoubtedly dangerous, and our playoff defense and slow starts have shaved (and continue to shave) years off of my life. But I’m keeping the faith that our body of work is a better representation of how we’ll play than the last two weeks and that our team—many hardened by the bitter loss four years ago and the many close calls since—will show up and perform their best. If that’s the case, then we’ll be Super Bowl champions. Because no one’s best is better than ours.

Always and forever,

Go Niners 🏈👍

Super Bowl Preview Pt I: Chiefs Offense

It’s February, 2020. 

Life is good. The Niners are good and about to face Kansas City in the Super Bowl. Jimmy Garoppolo has played a full healthy season, and there’s no reason to believe he won’t do that again at some point in his life. But best of all, there’s no way a global pandemic will upend everyone’s lives, tank the global economy, and kill millions across the world. The moral of the story? Bad things happen when the Chiefs win.

Let’s exorcise some demons.

CAST AND CHARACTERS

Patrick Mahomes needs no introduction, as he’s the best quarterback in the league (by quite a large margin) and his face is unavoidable due to the never-ending number of endorsements he’s currently a part of. He hasn’t had his best year statistically, but he’s still the last quarterback you want to face at any given point or time—especially in the Super Bowl. He’s already well on his way to the title of best quarterback ever, and—if he beats us—the majority of media types will be sure to crown him with that designation immediately. Many consider his wife annoying and the federal government is currently considering if his brother is a sex criminal or just your standard run-of-the-mill Tik Toker douchebag, but Patrick Mahomes himself seems like a chill-enough dude. 

His number one target is Travis Kelce (aka Taylor Swift’s boyfriend), who also needs no introduction because someway, somehow, every ad that didn’t go to Mahomes went to Kelce this off-season. They could have picked any other player in the league, but they had to choose another Chief and one who is considerably more annoying. If you don’t know him from those ads or from dating the biggest pop star on planet Earth, maybe you know him from his podcast or the reality show where he dated fifty women at once. That’s right. This is the way the world works. Best to begrudgingly accept it, as it will only grow stronger from your tears. Due to the existence of his reality show, any arguments that Kelce is not a fuck boi must be prefaced with the modifier “anymore,” but arguments that he’s the best tight end of all time are legitimate–especially when blocking isn’t taken into account (which, lets be honest, it rarely is). Kelce is the definition of a “finds a way to get open” guy while Mahomes is the definition of a “finds a way to get the ball there” guy. Together, they form one of the most formidable duos in NFL history. 

Pulling the strings is Andy Reid, a top-five all-time coach, one of the best offensive minds in football history, and unquestionably the most likable part of this team. He too is in a ton of nationwide ads, but at least he’s funny in them while eclipsing Mahomes as a comedic actor. His offenses are built on creativity, diversity, and game-to-game flexibility, making them difficult to strategize against. He’s also the most recently relevant example of how the “you can’t win the big game” narrative only lasts until you win the big game and people finally shut up about it. Mahomes, Kelce, and Reid are all first-ballot Hall of Famers. 

The offensive line has always been a strength of Andy Reid teams. LG Joe Thuney, C Creed Humphrey, and RG Trey Smith make up arguably the best interior offensive line in football. However, Thuney’s health is very much in question after suffering a pectoral injury in the divisional round. He was PFF’s top-rated pass-blocking guard this year, and—if he can’t go—Nick Allegretti will likely take his place. Allegretti is a former starter for them (during their losing Super Bowl run) so he’s not a scrub. The tackles—Donovan Smith and Jawaan Taylor—are not elite, but we’ll get to them later. 

The top non-Kelce options in this offense are first-year receiver Rashee Rice—who is the only actually good wideout on this team—and second-year running back Isiah Pacheco—whose high-knees and hard-nosed running style have made the internet compare him to an angry child. Pacheco is a nice, physical interior runner who can catch the ball out of the backfield, while I think Rice actually gets slept on a bit due to how infamously poor the rest of the Chiefs’ receiver play has been this year. 

The remaining wideouts who play are Marquez Valdes-Scantling, the team’s top deep threat who has stepped up big in hauling in a few impressive long bombs during these playoffs, Mecole Hardman, the team’s second-best deep threat who is most likely to get an end-around, Richie James, a former 49er who gets snaps because he’s a predictable professional, and Justin Watson, a man who plays football. The wideouts who don’t play but may in the Super Bowl include Skyy Moore, last year’s second-round pick who is coming back from injury and has a slam-dunk vodka sponsorship waiting for him if he ever becomes good, and Kadarius Toney, whose impressive athleticism is regularly dwarfed by his crippling, game-ending mistakes and who just made headlines after implying the team was lying about his injury designation (hip/personal reasons) during an IG live stream where he told them “suck my dick” just hours after his first child was born. L.O.L. His entire career has basically been this video from his senior bowl practices. 

Rounding out the skill position players are Clyde Edwards-Helaire, the team’s second running back, and former Niner receiving back Jerick McKinnon, who (surprise) is currently injured but maybe has an outside chance to play in the Super Bowl? He carved out a substantial role in last year’s Super Bowl run due to his receiving ability. It’s also worth mentioning the Chiefs’ second and third tight ends because they have run a lot of 12 and 13 personnel as of late and both get double-digit snaps per game. Noah Gray is their all-purpose Ross Dwelley-like backup. He can line up wherever, his versatility suits the offense, he does everything decent, and he catches the ball well. Blake Bell is their third guy and mostly just plays inline. He’s a good-sized dude and a good athlete, but the dynamic versatility he showed in college (he was both a starting QB and a starting TE at Oklahoma) hasn’t shown up in the pros. 

OFFENSIVE SCHEME

There’s been a lot of hubbub about the fall of the Chiefs’ offense this season, and it’s understandable why. This unit went from leading the league in scoring and yardage a year ago to ranking 15th and 9th in those categories in 2023. Just as importantly (from an outside perspective), they racked up more offensive duds this year than the rest of Mahomes’ career combined. That’s not an exaggeration. Even if we exclude the week 18 game where they pulled many of their starters, this Chiefs team has scored fewer than 20 points eight times this season. In the five seasons prior in which Mahomes was their quarterback, the Chiefs only failed to reach the 20-point mark six times total. 

While it’s impossible to deny the drop-off in offensive firepower, the advanced analytics show a friendlier story as to how sizable that drop-off has been. Per DVOA, they’re the 8th-ranked offense with the 8th-best passing attack and the 17th-best rushing attack. In terms of expected points per play, they’re ranked 11th. The offense has also played better as of late as they’ve found their identity in the back quarter of the season.

All metrics (advanced or otherwise) aside, this is a Chiefs offense that is worse than we’re used to, but there’s no way to enter a game without feeling anxious when you’re facing a HOF coach, quarterback, and tight end coming off of two weeks of preparation, especially with how our defense has performed in these playoffs.

Regular Season Warriors Syndrome. Any Warriors fan can tell you that RSWS—aka the plague that destroyed the NBA regular season—is very much a thing, but whether or not it’s a thing that happens in the NFL (and with this Chiefs team) is another story. 

NBA seasons are long. Teams play 82 games and players sitting out (or getting bored early in the year) are enough of an issue that the league had to install both a mid-season tournament and a 65-game cut-off for awards as a means to incentivize NBA players to actually play. Load management and sitting out games isn’t really a thing in the NFL because it’s not possible. The seasons are too short. Each game is too important. And yes—while the Chiefs were lucky in that the AFC West was so trash in the early going that they were never really threatened with not winning their division—you can’t take plays off in football for the same reason tanking on a player-coach level isn’t feasible. The game is too violent and your body takes too much of a beating to “go through the numbers” without physical consequence.

I do believe that a team like the Chiefs which has had so much success could find a new level of focus in the playoffs (even if no dynastic team in NFL history has operated that way), but the “flicking a switch” argument is likely more a result of the Chiefs figuring out what their offensive identity is while coming upon some fortunate matchups in their playoff bracket.

Yes, the Chiefs put up 400+ yards on a Dolphins defense that was playing well down the stretch and was ranked 10th against the pass, but that team was ranked 19th in defensive DVOA and was down its top three(!) edge rushers, its top coverage safety, and one of the better corners in football, and all five of those guys went down between weeks 17 and 18–meaning their losses were not properly accounted for in either the defense’s raw or advanced stats. Likewise, the Chiefs rushed for 146 yards on the Bills in Buffalo the week after, but the Bills were ranked 12th in defensive DVOA and were down two of their top three corners (with another hobbled), one of their starting safeties, and all of their starting linebackers. While Buffalo lives in nickel and rarely plays more than two linebackers, they quite literally ran out of LBs in this game after Terrell Bernard went down. These matchups were not particularly intimidating and injuries made them even more favorable. 

When the Chiefs went up against the Ravens—the very clear No.1 defense in the NFL—they were lights out in the first quarter, churning for 161 yards and 14 points in two opening drives that totaled a whopping 26 plays. The Mahomes and Kelce mindmeld was back and both were making exceptional off-script plays and catches to grind their way to an early lead. But their remaining nine drives resulted in 158 yards, 3 points, and four three-and-outs. While I believe the idea that this KC offense has improved over the course of the year and is playing its best ball right now, I think that’s more due to them finding an identity versus “flipping a switch.” 

Again, the coaching staff and the core players make KC a dangerous opponent—and one that should always be respected—but this is not the Chiefs offense of old.

The Three (by default) Musketeers. The Chiefs began this season with a heavy rotation of wideouts, likely in hopes that the younger players and imported veterans would develop and come into their own as the season went on. But by the back quarter of the season, they’d been burned so often that the rotation tightened up tremendously, and the direction of Mahomes’ targets shrunk mostly to three trusted confidants: Travis Kelce, Rashee Rice, and Isiah Pacheco.

Since Week 12, that trio has accounted for approximately 50% of the Chiefs’ targets. Through three games of the playoffs, that number has increased to 64%. It’s not a bad strategy. Per PFF, each of those skill players is ranked in the top 8 at their respective positions. But it’s also a clear statement to the lack of faith they have in the rest of their receiving options. 

Mahomes will still throw to the open guy, but he and the Chiefs clearly had enough of the mental errors and miscommunications that plagued them throughout much of the regular season and decided to just take most everyone else out of the offense. The craziest thing about that target stat is that Pacheco isn’t like CMC or Alvin Kamara. He’s not a speedy space player lining up in the slot and running option routes and wheels down the field. He’s an inside runner who is just corralling a ton of swing routes and screens. But that’s a testament to the trust he’s endeared to Mahomes and the coaching staff, to the lack of options at receiver, and to a Chiefs offense that looks considerably different than the ones of years past.

Wide Load. When you want to take as many wideouts off the field as possible, you have to replace them with someone, and the result is a Chiefs offense that runs the third-most multiple-tight end sets in the NFL. While this is in stark contrast to Mahomes offenses of years past, it makes sense for this unit for a couple of reasons:

(1) You get to play fewer receivers; (2) You can sell play action better and more frequently, which means more routes where your receivers have the inherent advantage of a play fake and slightly more time for Mahomes to push the ball further down the field without a pass rush teeing off on him; (3) It lets your tight ends help your tackles in the run and pass game and your ball carriers in the screen game; and (4) it widens out defenses with more gaps so that your power running back and elite interior offensive line are set-up well to plug away with inside runs.

The Chiefs have had about a 3-to-2 ratio of zone-to-gap runs this season, but they are primarily an inside zone team. They prefer to run inside and they do better running right. That probably won’t change with LG Joe Thuney potentially out for the Super Bowl. 166 of Pacheco’s 266 carries (62.4%) were between the tackles. 99 of those (37.2%) were between the A gaps. They rarely run off-tackle but they can absolutely have success getting outside on defenses with pulling linemen and a creative array of sweeps and end-arounds. And while their efficiency as a run game is just okay, they break a decent amount of big runs via gadget-like schemes and Pacheco breaking tackles inside.

In years past, the running game was an afterthought that punctured holes in defenses when they overplayed the pass. That’s not the case this year. The Chiefs want to get Pacheco involved early and often and are committed enough to that goal that they even run a variety of wildcat looks–an idea that would have sounded insane in the past as it takes Mahomes off the field.

Short Kings. If you thought running the ball sounded crazy, wait till you hear about… short passes! 

Deep ball maven Patrick Mahomes sat at 7.0 yards/pass attempt this season, a figure that ranked 19th in the league and was his worst mark ever by a considerable margin. That’s a full yard-and-a-half shy of his mark from last year and ~2 or more yards under his “deep balls every down cause fuck it still they’re playing one-high” era of 2018-2020. In terms of average depth of target (aDOT) Mahomes’ mark of 6.5 yards/attempt ranked 44th out of 49 qualifying quarterbacks. 

This team dinks and dunks. If you don’t believe me, look at Mahomes’ passing chart for the season.

Now, with the lesser target distance has come a sizable uptick in YAC yardage. The Chiefs are second (only to us, of course) in yards after catch, but they get there in a much different way. While we’re all about opening up slants and quick-ins and burning poor linebackers with CMC option routes, the Chiefs run a ton of spacing, sticks, triangle concepts, and boundary hi-lows. Not exactly concepts that would scream YAC yardage. Where the YAC shows up is in their robust and diverse set of screen passes, which they regularly spring for big gains. 

But their bread-and-butter is attacking the short-to-intermediate zones in the middle of the field. When the protection is right (and/or the zones are soft enough) they will chip you to death with sit routes and button hooks. The Chiefs love these concepts because they allow Mahomes to meander in and out of the pocket enough for someone to find a soft spot in the zone and for Mahomes to find a good angle to throw to him. If you play man, they’ll shift more to a series of shallows and crossers from all over the field. The Chiefs are at their best and most efficient when they’re grinding defenses down with these short-to-intermediate completions. 

When they’re throwing outside it is likely with hi-low/triangle quick-outs, a fake screen with a vertical route down the sideline, or the occasional corner when they get a matchup they like with Kelce. But I can’t stress enough how much the Chiefs want to and need to have success in the short-middle of the field to move the ball consistently. Travis Kelce has 86 targets in the middle of the field and 54 everywhere else. He has nine deep targets all season. Rashee Rice only has 4 deep targets this year (none of them completed), 20 targets between 11-19 yards, and 96(!) under ten yards. Those are splits that would make Deebo Samuel blush. 

Any offense with Mahomes can pop the occasional big play–especially when he has the time to run around and extend plays–but underneath efficiency is what makes this iteration of the Chiefs offense go.

You may remember him from lining up offsides and false-starting on every single play. The Chiefs’ receiving corps is a very public weakness, but the play of their tackles is a more hidden shortcoming. 

Jawaan Taylor was their high-priced free-agent acquisition at left tackle–and an $80M replacement for the departed Orlando Brown Jr–but his 24 penalties not only lead the league but are the most in a single season since 2015. It’s also worth noting that he and right tackle Donovan Smith are the 73rd and 61st-rated tackles in the NFL (out of 81 eligible) per PFF and, together, the two have combined for 101 allowed pressures this season, marks that put them at 6th- and 12th-worst in the league. To be fair, Colton McKivitz is 5th-worst in that category with 55 pressures allowed, but Taylor and Smith have basically equated to two Colton McKivitz’s bookending the Chiefs line. And their run-blocking grades are considerably worse than their pass pro ones. This has led the Chiefs to lean more on inside running–where the tackles’ blocks are less important–and short passes to the middle–where outside pressure isn’t as detrimental. 

PFF is not an exact science and their grading gets fuzzier the more complex teamwork is involved (aka along the offensive line), but the tape follows the grades. These tackles are a liability. 

POTENTIAL DEFENSIVE KEYS

Running on Empty. The Chiefs are more committed to running the ball than ever, but despite Pacheco and their elite interior line, they’re more of a quantity-based run game than a quality one. While their 4.3 yards/carry is good for 8th-best in the league, the rest of their raw (and advanced) numbers aren’t nearly as kind. They finished the season 19th in rushing yards, 17th in rushing DVOA, and 27th(!) in EPA/rush. They are a plodding interior running team and our defensive struggles against the run have come primarily against outside runs–where our defensive ends get pinned and/or our pursuit angles and tackling becomes suspect. 

Now, Andy Reid’s greatest strength as an offensive mind is creativity and adaptability, so–after seeing our outside run defense get gashed the past two weeks–I fully expect him to have some designer runs dialed up to get to the edge. Whether that’s pin-and-pulls with their many tight ends cracking down, Pacheco out of the wildcat, or Mecole Hardman on jet sweeps (they spammed this against us two years ago), the Chiefs will try their hand at testing our outside run defense. As noted before, they can break big runs off missed tackles or schemes, but as long as we stop their designers and tackle, their outside rushing success can only go so far when the core of their rushing attack is on the inside. If there were ever a game for our rushing defense to come back to life, this would be it. 

Squishin and Scrunchin. This is a heavy, heavy screen team and–due in part to that–an excellent YAC yardage offense. So pursuit angles, open-field tackling, squeezing down running lanes with a strong force defender and backside flow to ball, and all those other issues that we’ve had as of late will be under the microscope. The Chiefs are as good as anyone at designing their screens to get the ball to a variety of people all over the field with blockers set up in enough different ways to constantly challenge defenders’ recognition skills and pursuit angles on every single snap. 

If the Chiefs can’t test our pursuit angles and open-field tackling through outside rushes, they will be more than happy to rely on their screen game as an extension of their gun game. If their screen game is consistently popping off for 5+ yards, everything else in their offense opens up and we will be in for a world of hurt. But if the run and screen game are limited, things become tougher for this Chiefs team than past units. While typically known for the explosive downfield passing game and ability to convert on any down and distance, this year’s Chiefs are only 21st in the league on third-and-longs.

Pick on Someone Your Own Size. The Chiefs may have found their comfort zone operating out of a healthy dose of 12 and 13 personnel, but that’s mostly come bullying nickel defenses. The idea is that the Chiefs can run better out of these tight end heavy sets but that defenses will still try and run nickel to protect themselves from Mahomes’ passing ability. The Bills–a defense that lives in nickel that was also missing all its linebackers–showed us the most obvious example of what the Chiefs can exploit in their heavy sets, but what will they do against a team that has two excellent linebackers and has no problem putting a solid third on the field in Oren Burks when teams go heavy?

In 12 personnel against nickel, the Chiefs have averaged 6.1 yards/play and +25% DVOA (or 25% better than an average offense). But in 12 personnel against base defenses, they average 4.4 yards/play and -8% DVOA. Once again, our linebacker range and coverage ability will present a unique challenge for these Chiefs. Do they continue with the personnel groupings that got them to this point or will they dare go lighter while losing heft in the run game (and extra pass pro help) and having to trust more of their wideouts?

My guess is that they’ll try to start the game with plenty of 12 and 13 personnel to establish the run and will split their tight ends out wide early as blockers in the passing game to support the screen game and other quick outside hitters, hoping to gain the benefit of their blocking prowess while still stretching out our defense based on alignment and making us tackle in space. If that happens, it makes it all the more important that we snuff out those screens and space plays early. We can’t let them have their cake and eat it too. 

The Mindmeld. We’ve talked about QB-receiver mind melds before when referencing Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams when they were both with the Packers, but what makes this Mahomes-Kelce connection different is that their improvisation is built into the framework of the Chiefs offense. In Green Bay, Rodgers’ ad-libbed pre-snap adjustments were an addendum to the offense, a matchup-hunting diversion that was largely effective but didn’t live in the overall offensive system. In Kansas City, Andy Reid has built an offense where Mahomes and Kelce’s flexibility is allowed post-snap within the structure of the play. So instead of Mahomes checking into something he prefers which then isolates his options and throws off the flow of the offense if he hasn’t guessed the right coverage, the Chiefs simply allow a certain level of flexibility in how their players–and in particular Mahomes and Kelce–get to where they need to be.  

Empowered by this freedom, Kelce has become one of the league’s most creative route runners, and his knack for finding open spaces in zone coverage or getting late separation versus man is unparalleled. When paired with a player like Mahomes–who can put the ball on whatever shoulder he wants from wherever he wants to–the connection has been largely unstoppable for the past half dozen years. With their improvisational ability, any called play can theoretically be open and the longer the play goes on, the more dangerous it gets. 

Once again, this matchup kind of comes back to what personnel groups the Chiefs deploy. DeMo is our nickel and has had a fantastic season, but he has a massive size disadvantage versus Kelce–who lines up more in the slot than anywhere else. If the Chiefs want to force that matchup, they could split Kelce into the slot, but they’d need to do so out of a lighter formation that pushes us into nickel personnel. Otherwise, we’d just as happily sit in base, have DeMo as an outside corner, and throw the kitchen sink at Kelce with some combination of our linebackers and safeties. Perhaps they split Kelce fully out wide (he’s lined up there about a fifth of his snaps) to get him away from the linebackers and to isolate DeMo (or Ambry Thomas if we’re in nickel), but our linebacker corps makes it a little harder to operate the rest of their offense when they do that.

Regardless, Kelce should see plenty of different looks and a lot of bracket coverage. Stopping him is always a top priority to stopping the Chiefs passing game. 

Gimme them nuggies. We talked about the issues the Chiefs have at tackle, but the strength of their offensive line is a hotly debated topic that varies greatly by what metrics you examine and the context of the offense itself.

Depending on who you ask, the Chiefs’ offensive line is either one of the best in the country or a unit that is simply good at hiding its below-average tackles. Analytics can’t seem to agree, which makes sense given how hard it is to grade OL from an outside perspective. The Chiefs are #1 in the country in ESPN’s pass block win rate–which measures how often teams can sustain their blocks for 2.5+ seconds–and are second-best in adjusted sack rate. Yet PFF ranks them as the league’s 18th-best line and they’re 24th in pressure rate allowed.

Here are my two cents. Offensive adjusted sack rate is functionally useless when grading a Patrick Mahomes-led offense due to his elusiveness and his ability to–at worst–throw incompletes that are basically intentional grounding but not technically intentional grounding right before getting sacked. While Andy Reid has long been a great OL coach, the Chiefs always have a great adjusted sack rate. Even in the year when their offensive line got absolutely demolished by Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl, they were a top 5 team in adjusted sack rate. But while their adjusted sack rate is likely inflated, their pressure rate allowed is likely overexaggerated because Mahomes’ penchant for holding the ball long and scrambling invites some amount of pressure–even if those pressures don’t result in sacks. It’s also worth noting that Mahomes is still holding the ball long despite his yards per attempt plummeting. This points in part to receivers not getting open deep, which must be taken into account when evaluating an offensive line.  

With all the statistical discrepancies I decided to just watch more film of them, and my takeaway is that this offensive line is generally overrated. The interior is strong and the line as a whole gets into their pass sets quickly, but after their tackles are beatable. Getting pressure will be vitally important because the most shocking stat of all is that Mahomes is 29th in success rate–with the second-most interceptions in the league–when under pressure this year. Even blitzing–which used to be a complete no-go against Mahomes–has been effective this season, which points to his lack of trust in his wideouts and their inability to get early open. 

Once again, this is a great great great opportunity for our expensive defensive line to prove their worth. Some would argue, there is NO better opportunity considering, you know… it’s the Super Bowl and all. 

Uh… Man Coverage? It’s not so easy to just flip from being one of the most zone-heavy teams in all of football to man coverage overnight. There’s a lot more nuance than “cover yo man!” in man coverage and since we’re typically such a zone-dominant team that means we also will have far fewer checks, mix-ups, and answers for little intricacies like stack formations and specific motions and downs and distances, etc. etc. And fewer looks is the last thing you want to give someone like Mahomes and Andy Reid, who have made a living out of “figuring it out eventually” when given enough reps against a limited number of coverages. That said, the matchups look really nice in man.

We have an All-Pro corner in Charvarius Ward shadowing Rashee Rice, their only consistent wideout. We have two of the best coverage linebackers in the game plus our crew of safeties helping on Travis Kelce–with plenty of bracket coverage I’m sure–and those same guys keying Pacheco for screens and dump-offs. Yes, if we play a ton of man the Chiefs would counter with lots of creative crossers and a bunch of picks (they love downfield picks) to try to free up those crossers for big gains after the catch. Plus, there’s always an increased threat of Mahomes running against man coverage. But man coverage (with the occasional well-timed blitz) and a rotating rat defender or safety who can contact crossers and take away those sit routes while being on the lookout for a Mahomes scramble should certainly be on the table.

The stats seem to back this up. On the season, Kelce is PFF’s top tight end versus zone and 9th vs. man. Rashee Rice is its 9th-best receiver vs. zone and 63rd(!) vs. man. While Mahomes has an EPA/dropback of 0.22 vs. zone and .03 vs. man. Like blitzing, man coverage used to be a massive gamble against the Chiefs—and one that would get punished routinely—but, once again, this is a different Chiefs offense than we’re accustomed to.

You always need a variety of looks against Mahomes and Andy Reid, and we can’t become a man-dominant team overnight, but I would expect more man coverage in the Super Bowl than we’ve shown recently. I’d also expect more deployment of (at least half-field) Cover 2 and other zone coverages that clog the short-middle area of the field. The Raiders–whose defense was highly underrated all year–mixed in man coverage alongside Cover 2 and a heavy dose of DL twists to dismantle the Chiefs on Christmas day on the second-to-last meaningful regular season game the Chiefs played this season. Regardless, I’d expect us to be playing the short stuff a bit more aggressively than the past two outings because if we just sit in soft zones as we did in the first half of the Lions game, they’ll chip us to death with hi-low quick outs and sit routes between our linebackers just as St. Brown and LaPorta did through the first two quarters of the NFC Championship.

The Mahomies in Black and White. The NFL’s preferential refereeing for the Chiefs has become a joke at this point, but–like many jokes–it is rooted in reality. Those who try to say it’s not true like to point to single instances of a bad call going against the Chiefs or a supposedly suspect call being correct, but that’s the sports fan equivalent of saying “I’m not racist, check out my black friend.” The argument isn’t that the Chiefs don’t get calls against them–even bad ones. The argument is that they get WAY more suspect calls in their favor, especially late in games and especially when on offense. And unless you’re also one of those people who think Brady and LeBron don’t get more calls either, I don’t know how you can argue that the “Mahomes effect” isn’t alive and well. If you don’t believe the Chiefs benefit from calls, ask yourself if there is any set of circumstances in the world where the uncalled helmet-to-helmet hit Purdy received while on the ground in the fourth quarter against the Lions (a penalty that if called gives us a new set of downs around the ten-yard line) is missed if it were Mahomes at quarterback instead. I’ll wait as you try and scroll Twitter to defend your incorrect opinion.

Compounding overall ref anxiety is the fact that Bill fucking Vinovich is reffing this Super Bowl. Remember Bill? He’s the guy who thinks this, this, and this aren’t holds.

Not a hold if it’s also a cute prom photo

ref trying not to make eye contact like the dude at Chipotle who rips your burrito

if it’s multiple fouls and would result in a safety, it’s actually no fouls

That’s right. In addition to being the asshole who has got me riled up enough to be taking screenshots of GIFs like it’s the fucking Zapruder film, he’s also the asshole who reffed our last Super Bowl and whose refusal to call a single hold directly led to the Chiefs’ comeback and indirectly led to the NFL’s unofficial shift away from calling holding to generate more offense, larger comebacks, and directly benefit Mahomes and the new wave of scrambling quarterbacks (Lamar, Josh Allen) who were at that time taking over the league. If you think I’m kidding, this conspiracy theory is statistically proven. In 2019, the NFL threw 582 flags for offensive holding, capping a four-year average of 544 holding calls/year. In 2020–the season right after our Super Bowl loss–the NFL threw 365(!) flags for offensive holding, averaging 463 holding calls over the next four years that followed that Super Bowl. This shift away from holding and toward defensive PI encouraged scrambling big-armed quarterbacks and in part led us to trade three first-round picks to draft Trey Lance. I’m sure I could also tie 9/11 and that time you sharted in front of your crush in second grade to this asshole with enough time, push pins, and strings of yarn, but, in summary, fuck Bill Vinovich. 

Hopefully, Vinovich’s presence and the Chiefs logo opposite us won’t mean we’ll be getting absolutely railed again by the officials. Super Bowl referees are an “all-star squad” rather than the team of officials head refs usually operate alongside, which–when you think about it–might be very stupid, but it does mean it’s largely impossible to tell how many flags will be called and of what variety. Regardless, it’s worth noting that Vinovich is the head ref and that the Chiefs start one of the all-time most penalized players at right tackle and were the second-most called team for offensive holding in the entire NFL this year. To the point where when Bosa was asked this week about the Chiefs tackles his response was “They hold a lot.” By any measure, we should be able to draw some holding flags this game. But should and will are very different potential outcomes. The belligerent blog post threat level is officially at midnight.

OVERALL

So much of this game–but in particular the matchup on this side of the ball–is about recency bias, playoff momentum, and determining whether the last two weeks or the 19 before are a better indicator of each team’s true ability. Has the Chiefs’ offense really gotten that much better? Has the Niners’ defense really gotten that much worse? Or are the past two weeks more the product of outliers and a few favorable and unfavorable matchups? History doesn’t really help in clarifying anything. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence supporting either claim.

If you asked me two weeks ago, I would have loved this matchup. Now, I still like it, but not without hesitation. That said, I would like to state my case against a few tropes that are basically dominating the news cycle leading up to this game.

While I certainly believe in gameday momentum (sorry analytics), I’m not sure I believe in playoff momentum. The Super Bowl is a weird beast, with weird schedules, tons of media appearances, and a bye week lead-in for each team. It’s hard to say how much “momentum” really carries into the big game as any team that makes it has to have won–at the very least–their last two games. So are we talking records over the past x weeks? The Chiefs’ is no better than ours. Margin of victory? Excluding the wild card round we didn’t play in, both teams have won two back-to-back single-possession ball games. Or are we simply relying on the ever-present-but-never-remotely-accurate “eyeball test?” 

The two most likely reasons you’ll hear for the Chiefs winning (and it seems like everyone other than Vegas is picking the Chiefs) is some combination of “I’m not betting against Mahomes again” and “The Chiefs will win because they have Patrick Mahomes.” 

Mahomes is 10-3 as an underdog in his career, which makes for an incredibly impressive 76.9% winning percentage. His overall winning percentage? 77%. Not counting Mahomes out as an underdog seems like a better conclusion than him rising to the occasion beyond his normal level of play and being unbeatable after Vegas nerds set a pre-game line. 

As for the better quarterback = Super Bowl winner equation? If you look at the past ten years–so well into the “protect quarterbacks and pump up their stats at any cost” era of the NFL–the “better” quarterback has won exactly half of the time. This is a team sport, despite every effort to make it about only one position.

All-in-all, I know this Chiefs offense has improved in the last month of play, but as to exactly how much, I’m not certain. But I am confident in saying that despite this being the best coach, best quarterback, and best skill player we’ve faced this post-season, it’s also the worst offensive line and the worst offense. That’s not to say they aren’t good or that our defense–which has had a rough go of it these playoffs–will rebound and play to their full potential in the Super Bowl. But the Lions and the Packers were top-five offensive lines and top-five offenses. These Chiefs are not that. Will that help you sleep better at night? Probably not. 

Go Niners 🏈👍

Preview: Detroit

this is the most recent photo of us playing the Lions in the playoffs

Opponent: vs. Detroit Lions
Where: Levi’s Stadium (Santa Clara, CA)
When: Sunday, January 28th , 3:30 PM PT
Weather: Better not be goddamn rain, sheeeeeit

In September of 2021, Dan Campbell opened his first season as head coach of the Detroit Lions against the 49ers. I was in Nashville at the time—sweating alcohol and hungover out of my mind—and I’d wandered into what ended up being a Lions bar. With the Niners up huge in the second half, a man—a regular based on his reception—entered the bar in a custom-made authentic Lions jersey. His jersey number and name? #69, Bukkake. The very next play Jason Verrett blew out his knee to be lost for the season, Shanahan pulled all the starters, and the Lions staged a massive comeback that included fumbles, muffed onside kicks, and nearly the worst blown lead in franchise history. All through this comeback, the Lions faithful gave credit to one thing and one thing only: the jersey and the man who wore it. As the chants of “Bukkake! Bukkake!” rang through the bar and the vacant space where my brain once resided, I contemplated hell and thought it was probably more pleasant (and less hot) than the nightmare I was currently living.

The Niners were able to hold on for an ugly win that day. Now—three years later—we play the fully actualized version of those Detroit Lions. No longer a scrappy underdog but a bonafide contender, they’re competing for their first-ever Super Bowl appearance, while we’re in our third straight NFC championship game and fourth in the past five years.

Health Check

Lions: WR Kalif Raymond seems like a game-time decision, but since he’s yet to practice this week I would say he’s doubtful at best. C Frank Ragnow hasn’t practiced either, but given how banged up he is, I’m going to guess these are more veteran rest days than anything else. I’d be shocked if he doesn’t play. The one player it seems the Lions will definitely be without is starting LG Jonah Jackson, who had a minor knee procedure this week.

Niners: The big question is WR Deebo Samuel, and right now his status is very much in the air. He practiced in limited fashion on Thursday—which is the Niners’ heaviest practice of the week—so he feels like a game-time decision.

OFFENSE

All due credit to Dan Campbell. My undeniable biases led me to believe that Michigan native Robert Saleh should have been hired by the Lions back in 2020, but after Campbell’s amazing intro press conference about biting off kneecaps and hearing his psychopathic coffee order, I quickly came to believe this guy would either be the best or the worst coach ever. As far as instilling a culture and an identity, he’s been much closer to the former, but he’s also had the intelligence to step back, hire well, and let his coordinators handle the X’s and O’s. On offense, that coordinator is Ben Johnson—a mathematics and computer science double major—who has quickly become the league’s most highly sought-after head coaching candidate after building one of the league’s most potent and versatile attacks.

This Lions offense is legit. They’re a top-five unit in the passing game and the running game, are excellent along the line of scrimmage and do as good a job as anyone of shaping their offensive scheme to the strengths of their personnel. That starts up front.

S-Tier Fatties. Dan Campbell’s dictate when he took over in Detroit was installing a culture of physicality and their offense shows that best in their dominance up front. According to both PFF and adjusted line yards, this is the best offensive line in football, and their play in the trenches allows them to run a style of offense that relies on a power running game and longer developing passing plays. 

Frank Ragnow has a legitimate claim to being the best center in football while Penei Sewell is probably the closest thing to a young Trent Williams in the NFL. Both are ranked 1st at their positions by PFF. While they’re the headliners, this line has four of their five starting linemen ranked in the top 10(!) or better at their respective positions, so there are no real weaknesses upfront. That is, until this week.

Starting left guard Jonah Jackson—who was already the team’s “weak” spot—got hurt midway through the Buccaneers game. They replaced him with Kayode Awosiki, who—on 28 pass protection snaps—allowed a team-high seven pressures. That is decidedly NOT elite, and while it’s hard to target a single lineman in a unit that is so strong as a whole, we’re certain to try just that—particularly in the passing game.

The Lions are so O-line friendly that they even play Dan Skipper—a sixth offensive lineman—with decent regularity when they want extra heft in short-yardage and goal-line situations. He was the subject of the declaring eligible snafu at the end of the Cowboys game, so he does go out for the occasional route out of unbalanced sets.

[Trope about a hard hat or something]. On the back of their talented offensive line, the Lions have what is probably the most diverse running game in football. While we have a ton of different ways to get into a relatively small number of actual run game concepts, the Lions could have double-digit rushing concepts that they use to deploy their running back duo of David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs.

Committe RBs are almost always called thunder and lightning, even if they often feature two backs whose skill sets have more overlap than that nickname would imply. But Detroit’s duo lives up to that moniker. Montgomery is their bigger power back and Gibbs is their speedier outside threat and space player. Yes, both guys can run inside or out, but if you want to see how they typically deploy them, look no further than the run charts of Gibbs vs Montgomery in weeks 16 and 17, respectively.

The Lions are an aggressive team—both in play-calling and in 4th down decisions—but the run game is their comfort food. When things are going awry or they start to believe they’re drifting too far from their identity, they’ll lean heavily on the run game to get their offense right and reassert their personality.

Leverage and Long-developers. When Ben Johnson took over as OC, one of the first things he did was sit down with Jared Goff, determine which throws he was the most comfortable making, and shape the playbook around those concepts. This led to an offense that loves crossers, vertical stems, and bending routes inside or out underneath deep coverage—i.e. long-developing routes that attack the second level.

To get their wideouts vertical and horizontal without impediment, the Lions love stacked and bunch formations, switch releases to confuse coverage responsibilities, and pre-snap motion to further stress man responsibilities and to get their smaller-framed wideouts away from press coverage. These motions also lead to a ton of extra blockers in the run game, as tight ends and wideouts will quite often be tasked with kicking out edge players or leading up to the second level off of pre-snap motion.

The result is a bunch of pass concepts that use built-in leverage and long swooping routes to stress coverages horizontally and vertically, which opens up big spaces in the middle of the field and on the second level. Despite the constant vertical stems, this is a team that lives in the intermediate zones. They love shallows, crossers, digs, and options (a Cooper Kupp holdover). They can throw the quick game but prefer to get bigger chunks out of their pass attempts. But not TOO big. They throw deep balls at a lower rate than any other team in the NFL. 

The Goffaissance. Turns out a guy plays a lot better when the fans are supporting him and chanting his name instead of blaming him for every single loss while giving his head coach all the credit for his successes. Who knew?

Once considered a salary dump who the Rams basically paid the Lions in draft picks to include in the Matt Stafford trade like some sort of Brock Osweiler-level cap burden, Goff has thrived in the system that Ben Johnson built around him and the culture that Dan Campbell fostered in this locker room. 

Goff has always been one of the better pure throwers in football. When in rhythm, he throws as nice a ball as anyone. It’s when shit gets hectic—when defenders get into his body or he has to move off his spot—when the valleys would come. In Los Angeles, those valleys were low enough and regular enough that they shipped him out of town. In Detroit, they’ve raised his floor tremendously by helping him reach a new level of comfort and confidence—thus heightening his ceiling.

Inside Out. It’s at least worth noting the difference in the Lions’ offensive output when they play outside vs. inside because the drop-off is—as much as anything can be with such a small sample size—statistically notable. Over the past two years—including their two post-season games this season—here are the Lions’ inside and outside scoring and yardage splits, including where those figures would rank nationwide:

There’s some obvious statistical noise in these figures due to scheduling variance, because the Lions were bad for the first half of 2022, and since they play their home games in a dome and usually teams score more points at home. Plus, the average NFL game played inside scores four more points than one played outside so you can basically spot all teams ~2 points when they’re inside. But even if we give the Lions an additional two-point bonus when indoors, they’re still putting up about a touchdown less when playing in the elements. 

To be clear, their yardage numbers when playing outside this year are still quite potent, and I’m not saying this is an offense we should expect to whither in the oppressive 70-degree weather of Santa Clara, but the scoring figures had enough of a difference that it was worth mentioning. In both 2022 and 2023, four of the Lions’ six lowest-scoring games were played outside. 

POTENTIAL DEFENSIVE KEYS

Yes, we looked far from elite against the Packers, but I flip back and forth between how much that game was indicative of our defense’s ability versus a specifically bad outing. The run defense is certainly a concern—and one that was lingering all season—and there was always a baseline level of anxiety about Ambry Thomas’ deep ball ability and a pass rush that sometimes struggles to convert pressures into sacks. Those are all things that stick out due to the overall strength of our defense, but also problems that we’ve seen enough that we can call them repeatable issues. 

But at the same time, pass interference calls and defensive players slipping led to at least four of the Packers’ seven successful third down conversions and one of their three offensive touchdowns. Our defense gave up a ton of yards but also stiffened up and allowed just six points in three tries inside our own 15-yard line, picked off Jordan Love twice as many times as he’d been intercepted in the eleven games before, and held the Packers scoreless on their last four offensive possessions.

Are there concerns? Absolutely. There have to be after any performance that was as dicey as last weekend’s. But there are also reasons for optimism. And a date with one of the best offenses (and running games) in the NFL will be a tremendous proving ground for a unit that hasn’t been questioned much over the past few years.

Once More, With Feeling. Stopping the run was a priority last week, and our inability to do so was one of the many reasons why that game was as close as it was. This weekend, stopping the run is even more important. While the Packers were adamant they stay balanced to establish the run and open up the passing game, the Lions are fine with just pounding the rock if we can’t slow it down. This is a team that’s rushed for 200+ yards three times this season and has only been held under 100 four times all year. You’d better believe that after our performance last weekend Dan Campbell is gonna have his guys fired up to play bully on the ground while Ben Johnson is finding all sorts of ways to gash us inside with Montgomery and pin in our defensive ends with wideouts and tight ends to get the edge with Gibbs.

Teams run the ball best against us when their scheme is made to attack our aggressive upfield nature, and the Lions are probably the single best team at attacking defenses in different ways on the ground. Given that, I’d be wary of the many types of traps the Lions employ. And after the success the Packers had crack blocking our defensive ends and how our non-Bosa edges have struggled to set in the run game all year, I would expect to see plenty crack tosses and pin-and-pulls until we prove we can stop it. All that seems to point to this being more of a Gibbs game than a Montgomery game, which means setting the edge, taking better pursuit angles, and tackling in space will be at a premium.

While our 51-game streak of holding an opposing rusher under 100 yards was snapped last week, on a per-play basis, we haven’t done a great job of stopping the run all year. That needs to be more of a focus on Sunday, both to get them out of the run but also to force them into more quick game concepts—an area where they’re certainly capable but less comfortable throwing the ball.

Muddy the Middle. Stacks and bunches are a great way to create issues in man coverage and—when deployed tight enough to the formation—advantageous angles for crack blocks in the run game. However, receivers who are close to one another tighten up spaces pre-snap and allow the defense to play a wider variety of coverages as a result. In short, a defensive back or linebacker can better hide their coverage intentions when they aren’t forced out of the box by wide and spread-out receiver alignments. Given the Lions’ use of these formations and the strengths and weaknesses of Goff and this passing game, hiding and deploying edge blitzes, rotating safeties unexpectedly, and—in general—changing the picture pre- and post-snap will be key.

When kept clean, given time to see the field clearly, and able to operate on script, Goff is as good as any quarterback in the league. But while he’s made strides in the department, he’s never been an elite quick-trigger processor, and if you can speed up his process while muddying the picture pre-snap, his efficiency drops off. The Lions want to throw long-developing intermediate passes because they’re the hardest to guard when they can protect it. The first step to slowing down their passing attack is knowing that and forcing them to do anything but. That means deep linebacker drops, a variety of looks and techniques to wall crossers, and late safety rotations to try and passes attacking the middle of the field.

The Lions throw to the middle of the field more than any other team in football, and they’re damn good at it. However, our middle-of-the-field pass defense is the best in the NFL by a very large margin. That’s what happens when you have the best coverage linebacker duo in the history of football. Something’s gotta give.

Ambry Anxiety. Ambry Thomas probably had his worst game of the year last weekend, but—as a whole—he’s been playing the best ball of his career this season. I’m fascinated to see whether Ben Johnson sticks to what got the Lions here (and what Goff is best at) and goes strength-on-strength targeting the middle of the field against our linebackers or whether he tries to attack us outside. Given one of our cornerbacks is a second-team All-Pro who leads the league in pass deflections and the other is coming off a bad coverage and tackling game last week, you can bet who they’ll be attacking if throwing deep outside the hashes becomes a big part of their gameplan. If that’s the case, Thomas has gotta trust his technique, stay in phase, and not panic when the ball is in the air.

Amon-Ra is a genuine alpha and not a guy who is easily shadowed because he motions a lot and plays many snaps out of the slot. If attacking outside is a big part of their gameplan, I’m sure they will try and do so in ways that force Thomas to guard Amon-Ra. Sam LaPorta is a great underneath safety blanket but will be the problem of the linebackers and safeties. Their supporting receivers are more specialty guys. Some have speed, some have size. All are dangerous when deployed in this system but none are a genuine matchup problem against Ambry as long as he plays clean and controlled.

Earn The Big Bucks. In both draft capital and money spent, we have the most expensive defensive line in football. This is the exact type of matchup where they need to earn that money. We don’t need to have a dominant performance (although it would be a lot cooler if we did), but we need our defensive line to at least fight to a standstill. Given how much this Lions offense relies on their offensive line, that would go a long way to slowing down this attack.

Once again, if there’s a weakness along this offensive line it would be at guard, where injury replacement Kayode Awosika has had major problems in pass protection and Graham Glasgow—while a dominant run blocker—is not as strong in the passing game. Both players have an elite center and a good-to-elite tackle helping them on either side, but everyone can’t have double team help forever, and we have to win those matchups when their guards are unprotected. 

While Goff is a much more mature, confident, and better player than he was in Los Angeles, he isn’t without warts. He’s improved when under pressure, but getting defenders into his body and moving him off his spot is still the best way to cause his efficiency to plummet. Among players with at least 100 dropbacks, PFF has Goff graded as the 11th-best quarterback in football this season. When pressured, his ranking drops to 24th, sandwiched between Mason Rudolph and Joshua Dobbs. Coming out of their bye week, the Lions had a five-game stretch where Goff’s QBR under pressure was 0.6(!) out of 100. That was, unsurprisingly, the worst mark in the league. He’s rebounded since then—and I do think he’s better versus pressure than he’s ever been in his career—but if you are looking for random stats to show Goff’s drop-off under pressure, well… they’re not too hard to find.

Jared Goff's splits from a clean pocket this year:

* 75.9% completion (4th)
* 8.3 YPA (9th)
* 2nd EPA/play
* 25 TD (4th)

Under pressure:

* 50.7% cmp (14th)
* 6.3 YPA (13th)
* 18th EPA/play
* 6 TD (14th)

No indoor and outdoor splits, or whether he's on the road or at home.…

— John Daigle (@notJDaigle) January 22, 2024

Making Goff move off his spot and messing up his timing is the best way to force Goff into turnovers, and when those turnovers come, they can come in bunches. Goff has four multiple-turnover games this season.

DEFENSE

The second of the Lions’ impressive coordinators is Aaron Glenn, who was just voted by players as the NFL’s top defensive coordinator by a weird NFLPA poll that only let players who were playing for a specific coordinator vote for them. Basically, this just means Glenn’s approval rating on his team is through the roof. That’s not nothing, but it also doesn’t equate to him being the “best” defensive coordinator. Meaningless polls aside, Glenn has done a good job instilling a grittiness and aggressiveness in a unit that has some holes in terms of personnel, which is why he’s getting so many head coaching looks this off-season despite the Lions having more of a middle-of-the-pack defense.

Once Again, The Run Game. Just as on offense, the Lions prioritize stopping the run game over everything else, and they’ve done an excellent job of doing just that throughout the season. This unit is well-coached, excellent in their run fits, and they fill aggressively all over the field. But what puts this unit over the top is that they rarely allow big plays. You may be able to move them and grind out tough yardage, but they’ve only allowed 11 runs of 15+ yards all season. All this adds up to DVOA’s #1-ranked rushing defense.

Solving Problems With Aggression. The Lions have basically dominated every imaginable pass rush stat this season, leading the league in pressure % and hurry % and finishing second in knockdown %. The one stat they haven’t done well at is—oddly enough—sacks, where their mark of 41 is the 10th-worst in the league. 

The best player along their defensive line is Aidan Hutchinson, aka Maxx Crosby 2.0. He’s a relentless motor, insane endurance type who never comes off the field, and he’s registered at least a sack and three QB hits in each of his past four games. His 11.5 sacks are more than double that of the second-best on their team, but the guy who holds that mark (Alim McNeil) has had an excellent all-around season in his own right at defensive tackle. Everyone along their DL is solid or better against the run, but the rest of their dudes—save for maybe reserve DE Romeo Okwara—are better run-stoppers than pass rushers.

So how do the Lions get so many pressures with only two defensive linemen who are plus pass rushers? Blitzing. While the Lions aren’t at Brian Flores/Wink Martindale levels when it comes to sending extra bodies, they blitz on 35.4% of downs, which is the 4th-highest mark in the league.

All of their safeties and slot corners are excellent blitzers, but safety Ifeatu Melifonwu is their best overall player in the secondary, and he—alongside rookie nickel Brian Branch—gives Glenn a pair of movable pieces on the back end. Melifonwu basically plays everything from deep safety to slot corner to a rolled-up linebacker and edge blitzer while Branch is their full-time nickel and their best coverage man down the field.

The aggressiveness aligns with Campbell’s very public persona, and my hunch is that the Lions’ blitz-lean is in part because they’d rather be charging forward and ensuring that they stop the run rather than risk hesitation and reactive play defensively. But I also think that aggression and blitz rate are in part because they know their secondary can’t hold up long in coverage.

Dat Forward Pass Doe. After watching some of their film, I came away feeling their pass defense was better than their numbers. I think that’s because their aggressiveness makes them a high-variance pass defense. They’re either forcing incompletions and mistakes with their pressure or they’re kind of getting diced. That said, the numbers aren’t great. The Lions have the 5th-worst play-action defense in the league, are second-worst in yards gained per pass attempt, and third-worst in expected points added per pass attempt. Per DVOA, their pass defense is ranked right in the middle at 16th, but that’s mostly because of the negative plays their pass rush can generate.

To be fair, they’ve gotten a key reinforcement back from injury in safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, a big play guy and an absolutely notorious shit talker and secondary pest who went out of his way to pick a fight with Deebo on IG Live while he was healing up on the IR earlier this year. Deebo may not play this game but few people in the world play better when they’re pissed than our lovable open-field bowling ball of death. Nevertheless, Gardner-Johnson is a boost to their secondary. It’s just worth wondering how much that offsets their absolute lack of talent at outside cornerback. 

Starting outside corners Cameron Sutton and Kindle Vildor have been liabilities all season. Over the past four games alone (vs. Dallas, Minnesota, LA Rams, and Bucs) Sutton is credited by PFF as allowing 26 grabs on 32 targets (81.3%) for 467 yards (17.9 ypc) and three touchdowns while Vildor has allowed 13 catches on 21 targets (61.9%) for 342 yards (26.3 ypc) and three touchdowns. Per PFF, they are the 100th and 105th ranked cornerbacks out of 129 qualifiers. And Vildor replaced the now-injured Jerry Jacobs in the starting lineup after he was pulled due to play. For reference, over the 14 games he’s played this season, our much-critiqued corner Ambry Thomas has allowed 44 grabs on 61 targets (72.1%) for 421 yards (9.6 ypc) and three scores. That’s right, Ambry has allowed fewer yards and just as many touchdowns all season as the Lions’ top cornerback has allowed in just the past four games.

Despite their problems outside, the Lions run the 10th-most man coverage in the league, which makes me think that if Glenn had better outside corners (like if Emmanuel Moseley wasn’t hurt) their rate of man coverage would be in the top 5. Regardless, there are matchups to be had outside.

Play-action passes have also been an issue for the Lions—in large part because their linebackers are so aggressive fitting the run. Alex Anzalone has long been an underappreciated player, and he’s their best linebacker vs the pass, but I’m not sure the Lions are particularly confident in any of their other LBs in coverage. First-rounder Jack Campbell has slotted in nicely as a solid tackler and run stuffer, but he’s a part-time player—their third linebacker—and is one of the single worst coverage linebackers in the entire league.

It’s not as easy as looking at PFF numbers in a vacuum and deciphering exactly where you want to target a defense, but—in the Lions’ case—it kind of is. 

POTENTIAL OFFENSIVE KEYS

Misdirection and Play Action. Given the Lions’ offensive ability and the clear strengths and weaknesses of their defense, we are going to need to throw the ball well in this game. That doesn’t mean abandoning the run (I can’t imagine when I could ever pitch doing that given our offense and personnel), but success on the ground may look more like four- and five-yard gains rather than the big gains we’ve come to expect. We’re much more likely to find chunk plays through the air, particularly off of play action.

This is a Lions defense that is aggressive and well-coached and is always flying downhill, but I think they’re at their best when their keys are clear and they can simply sprint and effort their way to the ball. They’ve held strong against teams like the Cowboys—who have less motion and more static looks—but have allowed 400+ yards in three straight games against teams who employ some amount of the misdirection and complex looks that have become a staple of our offense. 

There are personnel wins to be had in this game, but if we can pepper the defense with misdirection and confusion early then we have a better chance of slowing down their front seven, which would in turn let us matchup hunt in the passing game. Against a defense as aggressive as the Lions, slowing up their read-and-react is incredibly important.

Prepare to Pivot. The worst possible scenario is that we game plan with the assumption Deebo can play and we learn in pregame or early in the first quarter that he can’t. While the splits of our offense with and without Deebo are a testament to his ability, we struggle the most when he’s knocked out of a game early. For all the benefits of Shanahan’s scheme and his horde of Swiss-army knife players, relying so heavily on guys like CMC and Deebo—who are equally important to the rushing and passing game—means when one of them goes down… we lose a big chunk of both our rushing and passing game. 

Since Deebo seems like a true game-time decision we need to enter with a gameplan that both utilizes his abilities if he can play and doesn’t hamstring us if he doesn’t. That’s certainly easier said than done, but I’d expect packages with both Elijah Mitchell and CMC to be on the play sheet in case Deebo can’t go, more creative uses for Kittle as a motion guy, and potentially an influx of the two-way versatility of Ray-Ray McCloud on sweep looks and space plays (if Shanahan has forgiven him for messing up that deep route against the Packers). Perhaps we’ll even see a run game that’s a bit of a Shanahan throwback, with deeper under center play actions sprinkled in to really open those spaces behind the linebackers. Whatever the solution may be, Shanahan has to be prepared for a world where Deebo plays and another where he doesn’t. While that may mean our game plan isn’t as meticulously detailed as usual, we can’t risk having as many issues as we did last weekend when he went down.

Always Open. If Deebo doesn’t play it will be harder to force-feed Aiyuk in the passing game, but my god is this a juicy matchup outside. The Lions guard tight ends well—having a strong nickel corner and a good crop of safeties will often do that—but are highly susceptible to outside wideouts and running backs.

If Deebo is out I would assume the Lions shift coverage and safety help toward Aiyuk whenever they can, but there are still ways to get him into solo coverage based on formations and motions and run action away. Due in no small part to the weather and Purdy’s play because of it, Aiyuk had a much quieter game last weekend than he should have. Unless the Lions shift over so much coverage to Aiyuk that everyone else becomes wide open, we can’t have that happen again. 

Efficiency > Flashy. The Lions’ blitz-heavy nature has helped them pressure QBs better than anyone else in the league, but—despite the assumption of Purdy haters—the Niners are actually the best blitz-beating offense in the league. Unless you can send extras AND confuse Purdy with underneath coverages, our slants and quick-ins are built to punish extra rushers with YAC yards.

I expect we’ll have some screens and CMC swing pass equivalents ready when they blitz, but—extra rushers or not—our offensive line needs to do a better job in pass pro this week than last. This Lions’ defense lives off of limiting yardage on the ground and creating negatives via their pass rush so that they have a better chance of getting off the field or taking away the ball on long downs and distances. We can have success against a scheme like that when we stay efficient in the passing game, but if the Lions can get home with four and don’t NEED to send extras, we start making things more difficult than they need to be. 

As for Purdy? Last week the Packers were dropping deep into the dig areas in an attempt to stop our second-level throws, but in doing so they left the checkdowns wide open. If the Lions do something similar and vacate their linebackers against dropback passing, then Purdy needs to just be smart and take the underneath throw. Staying on schedule and avoiding negatives is how you put up points on this defense, and a checkdown to CMC or Kittle with room to run can easily lead to sizeable gains.

Starting a Change.org Campaign to Reinstate the Drought. How a four-year starter playing out of Ames, Iowa could have so many problems with a wet ball is beyond me, but it’s impossible to argue how a soaked football affects Purdy’s throwing ability. Last week, against Cleveland earlier this year, and in the first half against the Seahawks last post-season were the rainiest games Purdy has played in, and it’s not a coincidence that he was at his most inaccurate in those two-and-a-half contests. As of this writing, there was a 25% chance for rain on Saturday but a 0% chance of rain on Sunday. If there’s a god, the sun will be shining bright.

SPECIAL TEAMS + OTHER SHIT

1-31. If you thought the stat that “Kyle Shanahan is 0-30 in games when his team is down 5+ points entering the fourth quarter” screamed sampling bias, well then… you were right. 

If we exclude games not started or finished (due to injury) by Jimmy G or Brock (aka games piloted by an NFL backup) and take out games where we’re down 14+ entering the fourth because no one wins those games (I’m not scrubbing the data to make this point into a neat statistic but the Cowboys were 195-0 as a franchise with a 14-point lead entering the fourth quarter until last year), the stat is much more reasonable and representative of what it implies.

So… in games where we have an actual starting quarterback and are down 5-13 points entering the fourth quarter, our Shanahan-era record is:

Brock Purdy: 1-2
Jimmy G: 0-3

To Jimmy’s credit, one of those losses includes an 11-point comeback against Seattle where our backup kicker missed a would-be game-winner in overtime back in 2019.

Just like teams who live and die by the three-ball in the NBA, teams built off explosive dropback passing are more likely to come back when down in the fourth quarter. But those teams are—on average—also more likely to be in those positions to begin with because of a lack of defense or complementary football. It’s fun to see a gunslinger take a team back from down big in the fourth quarter, but it’s even more fun to just not be down big in the fourth quarter.

Your everyday key to special teams: (1) kick the ball between the uprights instead of outside of them; (2) just put that shit in the endzone on kickoffs.

TLDR

Coaching is about more than X’s and O’s. Dan Campbell understood that and focused his energy on instilling a culture and an identity in a franchise that had been sorely lacking both for decades. But coaching is also about X’s and O’s, so while Campbell built the team’s identity, he brought in top-tier coordinators to run the show on offense and defense. The only stipulation? They had to be physical and—whether on offense or defense—they had to win in the run game.

If we can slow down the Lions’ run game on Sunday, we win this game. While their passing attack is built to accent the strengths of their personnel and their quarterback, those strengths just so happen to butt up against where our defense is at its best: defending the middle of the field. Those passes get Goff in a rhythm, unlock Sam LaPorta as an underneath safety blanket, and get the supporting receivers involved with easy completions. I just don’t think they can find the success they want through the air against our linebackers if they don’t kill it on the ground, and if that’s the case, they’ll be hard-pressed to keep up with our offense in what I expect to be a strong rebound from a subpar performance last weekend.

This Lions team is dangerous and hungry. The last time they were in this position was 1991, and—as one of four teams (the other three expansion squads) who have never had a Super Bowl appearance—they’re one win away from truly unprecedented territory. They may have left the rowdy confines of Ford Field, but they’ll be plenty prepared and motivated come Sunday. However, I don’t believe that both our offense and our defense will struggle in back-to-back games. We’ve seemed like the class of the NFC all season long, and—rather than jump to conclusions based on recency bias—I expect us to look the part on Sunday.

Go Niners 🏈👍