49ers 17, Seahawks 20
Is the season over? Not quite. Do we wish it was? Check back later. If we fail in our push for the playoffs, we may look back at this late-game collapse against a divisional foe as the moment that doomed us. That or the other one. Or the other one. Dealer’s choice.
OFFENSE
For much of the season, our blown leads have been mostly the product of our defense and special teams. But while the defense did get shredded late, this was our worst offensive performance of the year.
Too Little Kittle. As in, none at all. Kittle’s late-week medical scratch highlighted how important he is to our offense. Lots of defenses have excellent nickel players. Seattle has one of the league’s best. But when Kittle’s healthy, teams have to deploy that nickel on either Kittle or CMC, leaving the other to feast on linebackers or safeties in the passing game. On the ground, Kittle’s health—since 2019—has resulted in half a yard more before contact on rushes, and we haven’t rushed for a single score this year without him on the field.
Excluding Purdy scrambles, we netted 91 yards on 22 carries (4.1 ypc) on the ground. Not a horrendous performance, but an inconsistent one that was devoid of explosive plays on a day when we desperately needed them.
Identity Crisis. Kittle or not, after watching the All-22, I was surprised by how many positive looks we had in the run game. We just got whupped up front. We’ve gotten used to teams loading up numbers in the box and forcing us to pass, but—until that last drive when Seattle did exactly that—the Seahawks were primarily running two-high and light or even boxes. Yes, they had some slants and well-timed tricks, but slants shouldn’t be a problem while running zone and stretch. For some reason, there were just far too many reps in this game where we were hesitant, where we struggled to diagnose and hand off defenders, or where we were just flat-out weak at the point of contact.
At full strength, the Seattle front is very talented. Their two-deep features two first-rounders and four second-rounders, including three guys picked or traded for in the last two years. But we need to be able to win on the ground when someone gives us fair fronts and numbers. And because we couldn’t (and because we kept putting ourselves in negative positions to get us out of the run game) our passing attack had to climb uphill all game.
The Devil You Know. We talked previously about how our offensive penalties–and their outsized impact on our yardage and points–were oddly impactful in the first half of the season. I even showed you this chart to prove it.
The assumption was that the prevalence and impact of these penalties were so out of the ordinary that they would regress to the mean. Well, maybe not.
We had seven offensive penalties in this game. Two wiped out third down conversions. A false start by McKivitz–followed up by a sack allowed by McKivitz–took us directly out of field goal range on a drive we’d wind up punting on. Back-to-back holding and illegal formation calls wiped away 22 yards of offense (or 37 net yards), taking us from a would-be 2nd-and-2 from the Seattle 8 to a 1st-and-25 from the Seattle 31. That’s a lot of points off the board in a game where we needed every last one of them.
Separation Anxiety. Entering the week, the Niners were dead last in the NFL in average yards of separation at the point of the catch. Our 3.0 ypc tied us with the Cowboys and put us narrowly behind the Giants, Titans, and Panthers (3.3 ypc). Yikes. That is a murderer’s row of offenses that you will go out of your way to avoid in your YoutubeTV quad split.
As a whole, we’re head and shoulders above those offenses (even if we didn’t look it this week), but our inability to gain separation has been an issue all season and one that became considerably more pressing once Aiyuk went down.
Diversifying our Interests. Our offense is all about running a handful of concepts from a bunch of different looks, formations, and personnel sets. But it’s games like this–which are becoming far too common–where I wish we could zig more when the defense zags.
Fundamentally, this offense is built off of condensed sets that force defenders into run-and-pass constraints. When you put guys in tight, you give defenders more critical responsibilities in the run game, and you can more easily put them in a bind. Throw in some play-action and it’s impossible for them to read it right every time. We saw that most clearly on Jennings’ touchdown. But the advantages we get from putting these defenders in binds dwindle the less that teams play us honestly. And these defenses are crafting their entire approach to our tendencies and our hot spots.
We know what defenses want to do against us. They want to stop the stretch and zone game with fast flow and overwhelming numbers in the box and they want to crowd the short-to-intermediate zones between the hashes to take away our quick hitters and digs. Not every team can do that. But teams with good personnel, a strong defensive-minded coach, and an extra week to prepare, can often slow us down–especially because half of the league now runs our offense.
Part of our overall lack of separation in the passing game is because our best separator is out the year. Part of it is because our second-best man-killer out wide (Jennings) does so with size and strength rather than speed and quickness. But part of it has to be the fact that teams are keying the hell out of the areas that we like to attack and the concepts we like to use to attack them.
Whether it’s the run game or the passing game, we should still major in the concepts that we’ve made into our bread-and-butter. We don’t want to lose the forest through the trees. But we need to do better at minoring in the other things when teams cheat to our hot spots and refuse to play us straight.
Hot or Not. After a preseason chat with Tim Kawakami about Shanahan’s preference to lean towards hot routes against the blitz rather than asking QBs to check protections at the line of scrimmage, there’s been a decent amount of discussion about how the Niners should face blitzing defenses. The best analysis of this comes from this article by Ted Nguyen of The Athletic, but the long and short is this.
Shanahan feels that it makes things simpler and better for QBs when they can recognize a blitz and throw a hot route to beat it rather than asking them to check protections at the line of scrimmage every play. But, following the Super Bowl, defenses have realized that and have started to send unblockable extras on crucial downs to force hot route throws short of the sticks. This is most clearly shown in the third-and-nine (featured in the article) that we threw short of the sticks against the Bucs late in the fourth quarter… I just can’t find a video of it.
But it was brought up again this week since the Seahawks sent a six-man pressure on the third-and-long that we threw short of the sticks on our last offensive drive.
Now there are a couple of things worth noting here. First off, Shanahan never said he doesn’t allow his quarterbacks to change protections at the line of scrimmage. I believe he actually said they always have that freedom but that they’re taught to do it less often. And yes, a Shanahan “suggestion” is probably closer to an “order,” but it’s not something that flat-out doesn’t exist in the playbook. Purdy and Shanahan both have stated that he has the freedom to change protections at the line of scrimmage right now.
Secondly, the Niners’ offense and Purdy are routinely one of the best at beating the blitz, so—on aggregate—opting for hot routes over protection changes is likely the right choice.
Finally, on that clip against the Seahawks, don’t we pick up the blitz correctly? Seems like both our tackles just got beat. Only the Niners know whether it was that pressure—or the pre-snap pressure look—that caused Purdy to throw the hot route rather than let the concept open up, but the Seahawks example is a little different than the Bucs generating a free-runner a week before.
Ultimately, my takeaway would be similar to Ted Nguyen’s. Prioritizing hot routes over protection checks makes sense most of the time. I’d argue that it makes sense almost every time that we’re on schedule and on any third or fourth downs where the yardage is short enough (~4 yards) that the hot route can get it. But defenses are getting more and more complex and teams are getting more blitz-heavy than ever. So when we’re in third and fourth-and-long situations, Purdy should start to get comfortable adjusting protections so that we’re not forced into underneath throws far short of the sticks. It may make sense not to overwhelm a young QB (or Jimmy G lol) with that kind of responsibility. But Purdy is a smart dude and our QB of the future. I think he can handle it.
Again, it’s about accepting that what we do is largely correct but having the flexibility to break some tendencies so that we can hit another level.
DEFENSE
The defense played great until they didn’t, and the reason why things fell apart was both obvious at the moment and part of a more alarming long-term question of sustainability. All defenses win by some combo of pressure, confusion, and execution. So as a soft zone team that doesn’t disguise its coverages that much, when our pass rush disappears, teams can paper-cut us to death. That’s what happened late in this game.
The Big Question. Here are our splits before Bosa re-aggravated his oblique injury early in the third quarter versus after.
Healthy Bosa: 5 drives, 30 plays, 82 yards, 2 FGs, 1 INT (2.7 ypp)
Injured Bosa: 3 drives, 31 plays, 190 yards, 2 TDs (6.1 ypp)
Woof.
To be fair, Hargrave’s already out the season, which means our top two pass rushers were down. And Leonard Floyd and Yetur Gross-Matos did combine for 2.5 sacks rushing from the edges. But those sacks were all before Bosa went down. To rush solely with four—without extra men or sim blitzes—you need so much juice upfront and so far this season we’ve relied far too heavily on Bosa to open up rush lanes for everyone else.
Let’s look at the DLs of other teams that rely so heavily on four-man pressure without spamming sim blitzes and confusion to get there. The Jets (before the Saleh firing, lol) were the cleanest example because they run our defense. Their two-deep employs 5 first-rounders in Quinnen Williams, Will McDonald, Solomon Thomas, and Javon Kinlaw, plus high-priced free agent Haason Reddick. The Eagles start four first-rounders across the board, three of them (Jordan Davis, Jalen Carter, Nolan Smith) taken in the past three drafts, plus a high-priced free agent (Bryce Huff) and reliable vet Josh Sweat. The Bills have three first-round picks (Ed Oliver, Von Miller, Greg Rousseau) plus second-rounder AJ Epenesa. Building a defense like this is an investment.
Now, we’ve certainly tried. Bosa was the #2 overall pick in 2019 and has a massive contract. Leonard Floyd was a first-rounder way back in 2016 and is an established vet. Hargrave is on a big free agent deal, he’s just out the rest of the year. But first-round whiffs on Solomon Thomas and Javon Kinlaw, a big miss on Drake Jackson–who won’t play at all this season–in the second round of 2022, the steady departures of valuable contributors such as DeFo, DJ Jones, Arik Armstead, Arden Key, Charles Omenihu, Jordan Willis, Kerry Hyder, and the missing draft picks from big trades (the Trey Lance one being the biggest) has gutted our defensive line depth over the years.
Last year, with a banged-up Arik Armstead in and out of the lineup, we traded for Randy Gregory and Chase Young at the deadline. Now those three guys plus Javon Kinlaw, Clelin Ferrell, and Sebastian Joseph-Day are off the roster. And while Evan Anderson and Sam Okuayinonu are ascending talents and viable second-line players who may even become full-time starters one day, they’re young and that day isn’t now.
At the moment, there’s not a lot we can do about this problem other than hope that Bosa isn’t out long. But when we can’t pressure with four, shit gets dicey in a hurry. And we need to figure out if that’s sustainable long-term or if we need a larger schematic adjustment in the off-season.
NEXT UP = SUNDAY (11/24) AT PACKERS (7-3) @ 1:25 PT
To have a decent shot at the playoffs, we need to finish 5-2. A single loss worse than that and the odds are heavily against us. Luckily for us, this weekend is the first of three remaining games against teams with a legitimate shot at securing a first-round bye. Not great.
Despite missing two games and playing uneven football for much of the year, Jordan Love helms an offense that is one of the league’s best, with a five(?)-headed receiving corps and creative run game powering the Packers to a #3 ranking in both pass and run game DVOA. Josh Jacobs is out of his Raiders-induced depression and is back to his bruising, bell-cow ways, while Jayden Reed is their gadget player and big-play threat. Although if we’re being honest, all of their wideouts are big-play threats. The weakness, if there is one, is probably their interior line and Love’s streaky, turnover-prone ways. He’s thrown at least one pick in every single game he’s started this season.
During the off-season, the Pack brought in old friend and former Niners DB coach Jeff Hafley to run their defense, and while they’re not an elite unit, they’re a stark improvement from the bottom-dwelling Packers defense of last year. The addition of Xavier McKinney at safety and the healthy return of Jaire Alexander have buoyed a secondary that can be pretty meh at the cornerback position. Although Alexander got dinged up last week and his availability is in question. They’re better against the pass than the run, mixing in a lot of coverages with average blitz rates but above-average sim rates and sky-high stunt rates. All this to say, the picture will be cloudy. Unless, of course, Jaire plays and they decide to load the box and run man against us. Regardless, their linebackers and non-Jaire corners are our likely targets in the passing game and we’ll want to be able to establish the run early to get those LBs in play-action situations.
This is a very talented team, but they’re also 5-2 in one-score games this season. This includes needing a blocked field goal as time expired to beat a Bears team in freefall and—two weeks prior—requiring a last-second kick of their own to fend off a 10-point 4th quarter rally from the lowly Jags. Perhaps some of that close game variance will swing our way for a change. But to even get that chance, we’ll need to execute much better than we did last weekend.
Go Niners 🏈👍