49ers 36, Seahawks 24
Did it get dicey? You betcha. Did our special teams surrender a massive momentum-swinging play at the worst possible time to give our opponent life when we could have otherwise run away with the game? YOU. BETCHA. But if there’s one thing these Niners have been over the years, it’s Hard to Kill. Like the Steven Seagull movie. But also like the Steven Seagull movie, there are sizable chunks that are mostly unwatchable. Like our special teams. Or the moments where he “acts.” Nonetheless, we typically play our best when our back is up against the wall, and–for better or worse–that’s likely how we’ll have to play the rest of the season to make another legitimate run at this thing. The hope here is that we peak at the right time. This is at least a step in the right direction.
The Infirmary. We entered this game without CMC, Greenlaw, Hufanga, Ward, and three of our top four defensive tackles, then suffered in-game injuries to Mason and Mustapha before the game was done. But there is good news on the injury front. With the mini-bye to follow, Mason (AC sprain) and Mustapha (ankle sprain) likely won’t miss any more game time, Ward was a game-time decision–meaning he should be good to go 10 days from now–and Ricky Pearsall just had his practice window opened (even if the soonest we’ll see him is against Dallas).
There’s also (finally) some positivity on the CMC front. CMC has apparently ramped up his workouts, and–unlike in the ramp-up before the Jets game–there haven’t been any setbacks. The Niners hope to have him back to practice sooner rather than later, with a post-bye week return seeming the most likely scenario. So his practice window could open as soon as Monday.
Depth Charges. The other good news is that it seems like our rookie class is pretty legit. Sample sizes are always worth noting, but we played eight rookies in this game, with three starting and five getting at least 12 offensive or defensive snaps.
Dominick Puni–who has started every game this season–registered the highest PFF rating of his career and is currently ranked 8th out of 69 NFL guards. We can say for certain that he’s (at least) good. His PFF rating for this game was eclipsed only by that of Evan Anderson–whose hefty UDFA signing bonus has looked like a brilliant move early in a season where we desperately need interior players. Malik Mustapha and Renardo Green recorded the first interceptions of their careers while helping hold Geno Smith to 6.0 ypa on the day. Even Isaac Guerendo–who has looked pretty meh in limited touches after missing most of training camp–finally showcased his patented speed on a 76-yard scamper that largely sealed the game for us late in the fourth quarter.
Throw in Jordan Mason–a known quantity at this point–and emerging second-year edge Sam Okuayinonu–who tallied three pressures and our only sack on the day–and it seems like our much-needed influx of youth has arrived. It’s just a start, but after trades, free agency, and bad draft picks have gutted our depth in recent years, it’s a much-needed win for our roster’s long-term health.
📺💸 This would have been top billing if we’d lost because of it, but if the NFL wants to expand to 50 different streaming platforms, they need to make sure their ducks are in a row production-wise. Because this muffed punt return…
…could have easily been the difference in this game.
If we can see a replay with indisputable evidence BEFORE the refs make a challenge decision over the PA, there is something wrong with the system. And if we’re going to be doing this “expedited review from on high” stuff, it seems more than reasonable that they should be able to call down to the ref, tell him to go back to the booth and give him the new angle before he makes a game-altering decision. Just no excuse for this sort of thing to happen.
OFFENSE
Even if they returned most of their injured DL in time for this game, the Seahawks had just allowed the NY Giants and their backup running back to run for 175 yards. So the plan, as it so often is when we need to right the ship, was to run the ball until they proved they could stop it. In many ways, it felt like the strategy we’d deploy against the Rams in past “get right” games. A heavy dose of the run game paired with a patient chipping away in the passing game against Cover 3 and Quarters.
Certainly, there was more to it than that, but this run-centric game plan led to 36 points, 0 turnovers, a whopping 7.9 ypp, and 483 yards of offense–the third-highest offensive yardage total in the Brock Purdy era.
What were the two highest yardage totals since Purdy took over? 527 yards on December 10th of last season and 505 yards in the wild-card round of the year prior. Both against the Seahawks.
Lol.
Back to Basics. Mason has been an absolute stud while filling in for Christian McCaffrey, leading the league in broken tackles and ranking second in rushing yards and third in % rush yards over expected entering this game. But as a runner, the one area where he’s occasionally looked his age is when facing muddied gap run looks. As is the case with many young backs, he’s sometimes gotten impatient, bouncing interior runs or bailing on a tight running lane to fight against traffic for (at best) a minimal gain and (at worst) a loss of yardage that puts us behind schedule.
While we’ve been letting him work through those issues early in this season, we kept things much simpler for his backups once he was knocked out in the second quarter. Guerendo and Taylor combined for 15 carries and 115 yards. All of their runs were variations of zone or stretch concepts. This made sense for this matchup but also from a developmental standpoint.
Despite his 225-pound build and 4.3 speed, Guerendo hasn’t looked that big or that fast through the first month and a half of the season. His runs have often felt a bit robotic and he hasn’t yet figured out how his pacing and angles as a runner can set defenders up for failure–especially in zone and stretch concepts. That was once again the case for much of Thursday’s game, but it was good to see him get a bit more physical as his confidence grew. And to see his speed finally show up when we needed it most.
This is perfect blocking on the edge, but Guerendo’s ability to stay on his track without rushing things, then lets him turn on the jets as he bursts through the hole and blow-up the safety’s angle. Little things like that go a long way when you run a 4.3.
We entered this season expecting Guerendo to be our fourth running back. Injuries changed that in a hurry. When CMC gets back we’re almost certainly looking at a two-man rotation with Mason, but the reps Guerendo is getting now could prove invaluable towards his long-term development.
Sideline shots. I thought the Seahawks did a pretty good job of mixing up coverages in this game, but in the rare instances where we wanted to go deep, we did a good job of playing to their tendencies. The Seahawks are primarily a press-bail Cover 3 team but their favorite mix-up coverage is Quarters. So our primary deep ball route combination was some variation of a drift-wheel concept.
In the first half, we lined up in pistol with a twin stack to our left. We’re pulling a guard and showing downhill run action in hopes of springing open the drift route behind biting linebackers or the wheel/delay fade route down the sideline.
In response, the Seahawks are either in a two-high pattern matching coverage. I honestly can’t tell if it’s quarters or something like Cover 2 match because of how many people bit on the play fake. But against this pass concept, the rules are similar.
In quarters, the outside cornerback will run with the #1 WR on anything vertical. In cover 2 match, he’ll do the same unless the #2 receiver breaks outside immediately. In both quarters and cover 2 match, the near safety will run with #2 on anything vertical, but—if #2 does anything short—the safety will leave him and try to “rob” #1, essentially creating bracket coverage.
Knowing this, we have Deebo release straight ahead and delay his route with stutter steps (and a run block fake) until Aiyuk exits his vertical stem and breaks into the drift route. This ensures that—regardless of quarters or cover 2 match—the corner will read #1 vertical and stick on Aiyuk while the near safety will read #2 shallow and move his eyes to Aiyuk as well. And with the linebackers underneath having either bit on the run fake or keying Purdy’s eyes in hopes of jumping underneath routes…
Deebo has snuck outside of the coverage and down the sideline. The near safety finally sees this and works to recover, but Purdy intentionally puts the ball a touch inside and behind his receiver. This makes Deebo slow up and come back to the ball, essentially messing up the angle of the safety–who is hoofing it while in catch-up mode–and letting Deebo wall the ball off from the defender.
The result is a catch and run down the sideline for a 76-yard score.
In the second half, we go back to a similar concept for our only other completion thrown more than 15 yards downfield.
This time, we’re in a pure dropback with five guys out on routes, but it’s still functionally a two-man drift-wheel/fade concept. Only this time, we’ve added a clearout (Aiyuk) and two underneath routes (Guerendo/Juice). Think of the hard play action version as trying to get the linebackers to move forward on the play fake to throw over their heads, while this dropback version wants the safeties to bail deep on the clearout to throw underneath them. We’re still attacking the same zone in the same way, we’re just manipulating a different group of defenders to attack it further down the field.
Here, the Seahawks look to be in Cover 6, so quarters rules to the top of the screen and Cover 2 rules to the bottom.
Just as before, the timing is critical so that Deebo’s break inside pulls the outside corner and the near safety just as Kittle breaks outside. And with all of the linebackers dropping and reading Purdy’s eyes…
They get caught up inside and Purdy makes an easy throw down the sideline to a wide-open Kittle.
Remember, the Ravens last season picked off Purdy three times largely because they were spot-dropping to our hot spots on the inside and having their linebackers and low safeties read Purdy’s vision. This trend continued into the Super Bowl with Spagnuolo’s “vision rat” defenders and has become a larger trend throughout the league as the Ravens system and sim pressures percolate the NFL.
In both of these plays, we use that to our advantage–pinning the Seahawks’ linebackers inside with Purdy’s eyes and their DBs inside with their pattern match rules before outflanking them to the sideline. As more and more teams try to replicate what the Ravens (and other teams) did successfully against us last year, it’s cool to see how we start to adapt to punish them for it. And if they get tired of getting beat down the sideline and start to play us straight? Then those digs and slants will open back up in a hurry.
Second Half Slog. But what about that butthole-clenching moment in the second half when it was a two-score game? What caused three consecutive punts after we’d sliced and diced this defense so thoroughly coming out of the half? The easiest (see: laziest) answer is penalties and sloppy execution taking us out of the run game and putting us in third and longs.
In those three drives that ended in punts, we had three penalties, one botched play (Brendel likely couldn’t hear the cadence), and third downs of 18, 10, and 9 yards. While we’d hope we’d be better at climbing back from long downs and distances by now, the best way to get our offense off track is still to generate negatives on first and second downs.
Offensively and defensively, we’re still very much a work in progress. But it’s nice to be able to do this sort of damage while still dealing with injuries and execution issues.
DEFENSE
Hats off to Sorensen and the defense. Yes, we allowed two long touchdown drives in the second half to keep this game annoyingly tight, but we also forced three turnovers and held the Seahawks to only 358 yards of offense and 17 points on 73 offensive plays. Our DC put together an A+ game plan on a short week while piloting an injury-ravaged defense, and it all started with a mammoth effort against the run.
Good v. Bad. The Seahawks haven’t exactly been world-beaters in the run game over the past few weeks, but our front seven held them to 52 yards on a laughable 2.6 ypc. There were some well-timed stems and stunts up front, but we weren’t doing anything crazy schematically to get there. We were just playing cleaner and more confidently.
Sorensen last week talked about “bad” missed tackles and “good” missed tackles, and I think it’s worth bringing that up here. Because we had just as many missed tackles against the Seahawks as we did against the Cardinals, but those missed tackles felt very different. Against the Cardinals, we were missing tackles in the hole or in space that led to an additional 5+ yards down the field. Those are “bad” missed tackles. They were misses that put the rest of our defense in a worse spot. Against the Seahawks, many of our missed tackles were from players being aggressive or trying to grab someone in the backfield or on the edge. So while they may have missed the tackle, they still slowed up the ball carrier and forced him into defensive help. They were misses that still fit within the scheme of the defense.
Front and Center. While we only sacked Geno once, our whopping 31 pressures were our second-best total on the year (32 against New England), with Nick Bosa registering an outrageous 14(!!!) of those pressures himself. Once again, we’ve seen that (for better or worse) our defense runs through our ability to generate consistent pressure up front. Sure, you could say that holds true with most defenses, but–unlike most defenses these days–we rely less on deception and the threat of extra bodies and more on our front four just winning.
Checking the Checks. In our losses, our defense has had a bad habit of getting beaten by a look early and then getting beaten by a similar look later in the game (typically in back-breaking fashion). The Seahawks tried to replicate that in the second half while deploying a “check with me” offense on some critical third downs. I don’t know what our rules were when this happened, but Warner would regularly wait for them to see the defense and change the play before we’d then check to something else entirely.
Back Seven Developments. Rookies Malik Mustapha and Renardo Green both put up career-high PFF grades while securing a pick each, Isaac Yiadom still needs to improve a bit as a run defender but has only allowed 3 of 9 catches over the past three weeks after being hard-targeted earlier in the season. It’s still a work in progress, but If Ward can come back healthy and closer to his 2023 form, our secondary could round into shape in a hurry.
Special Teams Will Be Mentioned Until Morale Improves. I miss the years of special teams being a sporadic low-key problem versus a consistent high-key momentum-swinging game-losing problem. Nothing new here. Just a re-iteration that there’s gotta be something new here if we want to have high-level success this season.
Also, Eric Wright dislocated his shoulder on one of our bad second-half kickoffs. So we just signed Anders Carlson to our practice squad in case he can’t go on Sunday. I’m sure there’s a reason for this (perhaps he won a tryout) but the last time we saw Carlson he was pretty damn bad. In his one year with the Packers, he missed five extra points and nearly half of his attempts beyond 40 yards. In his last game with the Packers, he missed a 41-yarder against us deep in the fourth quarter of the divisional round. That kept the Packers’ lead at four and allowed Purdy to drive us down the field for the game-winning touchdown.
Let’s hope he’s gotten better. Or that he doesn’t have to play.
NEXT UP: SUNDAY vs. THE ABSOLUTE BONERS (5-0) @ 1:25 PM
One of only two remaining unbeaten teams and coming off a bye week (Andy Reid is 21-3 coming out of byes), the Chiefs are as formidable as they are annoying. But they’ve needed some luck in winning four one-score contests and their point differential is worse than every team in the NFC North. This is a machine, but I wouldn’t call it a juggernaut.
Despite injuries to Rashee Rice and Isaiah Pacheco, their offense continues to charge forward on the back of the creativity of Andy Reid, the arm of Patrick Mahomes, and a talented interior line. Our beat-up DT corps will have their hands full in this one, and our success on defense could hinge on how well we can slow them in the running game and pressure their sketchy tackles. Andy Reid coming out of the bye means they’ll have some designer plays built just for us, so we’ll have to adjust to make sure they’re one-offs (or none-offs) rather than the foundation for a recurring issue (like the fly sweeps two years ago).
Defensively, the Chiefs press more than twice as much as anyone else in the league and are a high-volume quarters and split-field coverage team. But they also run as much Cover 0 as anyone. We know from the Super Bowl that they can bracket up and blitz with abandon if they think that’s the best path forward, so pass protection will be key against a defense that has been one of the league’s best against the run but is a bit more susceptible on the backend with the loss of L’Jarius Sneed. If we can regularly get their safeties in one-on-ones, we’re probably doing alright offensively.
Go Niners 🏈👍