Analysis from Seahawks Game coaches film

Anyone watch the Lynch TD? We just about lost Ray McDonald the same exact way we lost Ian Williams. @ 12:22 2Q, watch the OT. Ray is blocking down the right side of the line slnting engaged with the RG and just as he engages, the OT dives at his knees from behind. This was ALL the way over on the left hash mark leaving an enormous cut-back lane right up the middle of the field for a TD. Not only does he decleat McDonald but then the OT rolls on the ground and takes out Willis as well.

Now, question, is this legal?

Obviously we were slanting HARD right and Brooks went straight for Wilson.

Please, can you?

Johnnydel, question about our missing play selection. We don't run a lot of pitches, quick slants, screens, sit downs, swing passes, things that generally might be effective when an opposing defense is overly aggressive defending the line of scrimmage.

When we have run these plays, are they just a disaster? Or are they somehow antithical to our packages and personnel, so we never call them?

I would think we would want to try these things at this point, just because no one has prepared for them. But couldn't they be a part of our regular game plan too? Why are they absent?

Originally posted by 49erphan:
Thanks for the feedback. I guess it just seemed like it to me on a few plays (like the pass to the flat to Miller that he missed in the Seattle game), but probably isn't much of an issue.

I did actually go back and look at that play, I thought I was going to see poor footwork, but it wasn't he just missed him, and Miller didn't do a great job of turning for the catch either. Kaep prob should have dialed back his fastball a little on that play

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:
Please, can you?

Johnnydel, question about our missing play selection. We don't run a lot of pitches, quick slants, screens, sit downs, swing passes, things that generally might be effective when an opposing defense is overly aggressive defending the line of scrimmage.

When we have run these plays, are they just a disaster? Or are they somehow antithical to our packages and personnel, so we never call them?

I would think we would want to try these things at this point, just because no one has prepared for them. But couldn't they be a part of our regular game plan too? Why are they absent?

I'll try and answer that as soon as I'm done analyzing a little bit of the defense. I'm almost done

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:
Please, can you?

Johnnydel, question about our missing play selection. We don't run a lot of pitches, quick slants, screens, sit downs, swing passes, things that generally might be effective when an opposing defense is overly aggressive defending the line of scrimmage.

When we have run these plays, are they just a disaster? Or are they somehow antithical to our packages and personnel, so we never call them?

I would think we would want to try these things at this point, just because no one has prepared for them. But couldn't they be a part of our regular game plan too? Why are they absent?

I was going to show a few examples of sit down routes and how they attack a zone defense, but fail against man coverage. It will also illustrate what a horizontal stretch is. I'm juggling actual work too so it may come much later today.

Ok, bear with me on this. I've just watched a lot of film on the D and here's what I can say about all the off coverage. It's mostly about disguise ability and also about a defensive philosophy. The 49ers don't like to give away their defense easily. They also believe in keeping everything in front of them NOT giving up deep plays down the field. If you're going to beat them, you're going to have to dink and dunk you're way down the field. This is why they generally do not give up big passing plays.

Here's a LOT of snapshots. I'll work through each play from a couple games cause it gives a great variety of plays they run.



Here they give a Quarters coverage look pre-snap with Ahmad Brooks moved out on the slot



Post snap you see they are moving into a quarters defense. Seattle runs a Play Action which draws Brooks in fron his curl zone.



They run a simple hitch on the outside, cause Brooks bit on the PA it vacates the zone. You can see Brooks kind of looking back going, "crap...."



Here again they show the same quarters coverage look, this time with Rogers in the slot.



This time they rotate into a cover 3 to counter the play Seattle had run earlier. Reid comes flying down from the secondary into his flat responsibility.



Wilson, seeing the off coverage again thinks the RB in the flat is going to be wide open(I've highlighted the LOS for you). But, because Reid is already moving downhill he's in great position to hit Lynch before Lynch can make a move.



Reid makes the stop for what is a 2 yard gain on 2nd and 12. This is part of what makes our defense great. All the pieces working together, Fangio makes a great call knowing the tendencies of Wilson and the Seahawks. Reid makes an outstanding play with his athleticism and open field tackling. Fangio was brilliant on this play for trusting in Reid like this.


Again we show a quarters coverage look with Rogers in the slot




This time we roll into a cover 1 -man Spy. Reid intially thinks the RB is in to block so he helps on the receiver and then drops to his man the RB, They double team the TE in the middle of the field and Rogers play good outside leverage on the slot knowing he has help over the middle from Whitner. Brooks spies Wilson, they come with only a 3 man rush. Wilson tries to fit it in to the slot receiver but the pass falls incomplete.

So this post isn't enormous I'll pause here and drop a 2nd post with more D stuff

Originally posted by jonnydel:
So, I have just finished reviewing the coaches film of the seahawks game. Some Very interesting Notes. I will follow with a few posts noting how some of the bigger plays in the game were made and how some big plays were missed. Overall, It was a physical game as we all know. The major positive is that there were more plays to be made and we still won the game.

First, after a review I'll post some of the low hanging fruit.
The seahawks stayed in a single high safety look for all but maybe 2 plays all game. They loaded the box with 8 guys on 90% of the plays. In that, they play cover 3 zone on probably 70% of their plays.

The biggest impact of Crabtree's return against the seahawks wasn't as much about how he made the defense play towards him but that whenever Kaep's first read(if not crabs) was not there he threw it towards Crabs to give him a chance.

The offensive line played a really good game. There are some definite pre-snap reads in the run game that Kaep needs to get better at, but, the Seahawks did do a good job of game planning their defensive line scheme.

When the defense plays sound, fundamental football, they are probably the best defense in the league. As I will show later, it's only when they get away from sound fundamentals that big plays are given up.

I will show in the next few posts some examples of plays

I demand that you replace Greg Roman as our offensive coordinator!

That sounds reasonable to me.

Are you Greg Roman?

Round 2



Here, again they show a quarters look pre-snap, this time they switch to a cover 2-man D Lurk(Bowman lurks in the middle of the field looking for a route to blow up) with Whitner possibly healping a double team on the slot, or by philosophy they rather he help the slot because of the 2 way option.



They lock down all the routes and Wilson goes down for the sack!



On this play I've highlighted what the defense shows(in red) by what they end up doing(in yellow) cause it can be pretty hard to follow exactly what they do.
They show quarters coverage again, this time to run a zone blitz cover 3, for my purposes I'll call it cover 6 cause they drop 6 in coverage but don't play standard 3 deep technique. Whitner and Rogers play quarters coverage on the wide side of the field while Reid plays deep half on the short side.

Aldon drops into zone with Brock and Brooks and Bowman both blitz. They are trying to overload that side of the line while expecting crossing routes from the 3 receiver side.



Seattle picks up the blitz well and Willis gets screened off by the inside receiver freeing up the TE on the crossing route.



The TE escapes wide open and gets a first down. This was just a bad call by Fangio, he expected one thing and Seattle countered back. It happens in the game I don't blame him too much, overall he called a really good game cause, as I've shown, the TD's weren't on Fangio.

Hold on for round 3

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:
That sounds reasonable to me.

Are you Greg Roman?

I wouldn't have student loans anymore if I was HAHAHA!!

Originally posted by jonnydel:

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:
That sounds reasonable to me.

Are you Greg Roman?

I wouldn't have student loans anymore if I was HAHAHA!!

That wouldn't be possible, that would be a complement to Greg Roman . Besides we know that Roman doesn't know how to read game film or we wouldn't see the same mistakes made.

I can't see any of your pics.

Anyone just getting a box with a red "X" in it instead of a pic?

This takes marvin49 weekly deal to a whole different level...

There's a lot of examples from the Seattle game, I'll show some others from the Colts game as well.



Here we show a 2 deep safety read with press on the receivers. The outside corner on the 2 receiver side doesn't press cause you never want 2 defenders on the same level out there, sets up pick plays too easily... When we give this look we usually run cover 2 zone, we use the press to redirect routes not as a man coverage technique.



You see Asomgha get a great jam on the receiver at the bottom(I was impressed with his jam he literally pushed the receiver back a foot and a half, it was really violent and the receiver barely ran his route, on the flip side I also watched him whiff a couple jams later...) Bowman sees the RB stay in pass pro and drops into coverage, he and Willis work really well together to hand off the receiver in coverage as the play develops.



The inside receiver Holds Whitner in the middle of the field but Rogers keeps good technique with outside leverage on the slot receiver knowing he has help inside. Willis passes the defender off to Bowman and Reid sees the RB coming out of the backfield and starts to jump the route from his 2 deep zone coverage.



The D has held long enough for the pass rush to get there. Justin Smith clobbers Luck as he throws the ball, trying to hit the corner route but by the good coverage and the pressure from the pass rush it falls incomplete. This is a good example of team defense, the coverage helps the rush and the rush helps the coverage. I think Luck was expecting a cover 2 zone from the pre- snap read cause it looks like he is looking for the corner route with the curl underneath, which beats the cover 2 zone.



Here again we show quarters coverage with Rogers backed off at the bottom of the screen



From here we rotate into a blanket cover 3 zone. Bowman is the only pass defender who bites on the PA(contrary to popular belief he's still not on Willis' level of diagnosing and after looking at the film. Willis is still faster in a straight line speed.)



I've highlighted the Colts' route combo here, I think they were expecting a quarters coverage or a cover 2 here but the 8 man drop gives them nowhere to throw the ball



there's nowhere to go with the ball and Luck scrambles for a 4 yard gain. A win for the defense.

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:
Please, can you?

Johnnydel, question about our missing play selection. We don't run a lot of pitches, quick slants, screens, sit downs, swing passes, things that generally might be effective when an opposing defense is overly aggressive defending the line of scrimmage.

When we have run these plays, are they just a disaster? Or are they somehow antithical to our packages and personnel, so we never call them?

I would think we would want to try these things at this point, just because no one has prepared for them. But couldn't they be a part of our regular game plan too? Why are they absent?

I think it comes down to how to best attack a defense based on how they are attacking you. Very much a chess philosophy. Part of why we don't run screens is because, when teams blitz, they don't blitz the middle(with the exception of a few plays from NO) they tend to run an overload blitz. If you call a screen the wrong way into an overload blitz you can get you QB killed. We do run a quite a few quick slants actually, part of it is timing between QB and receiver and some of it is that the defense tries to take away the middle of the field a lot so to get an effective slant we usually have to run Vernon up the middle to clear out the middle of the field. Our run game does have pitches in it, but they aren't the most effective. Our run game is predicated on power running. Traps, powers, wham, sweep type of plays. Everything is based out of that. Gore's best strengths are not running east - west it's north-south. pitch plays are not Frank's strength(how many times have we seen the guy slip and fall down on pitch or far stretch plays, I love the guy to death but it's not his strength). It's also not the strength of our football team. What we do, which is essentially a pitch play, usually with Hunter, is run a counter-sweep. This is where Hunter fakes one way and then they run a sweep the opposite way. They try and get the defense moving laterally one way and come back the other. This are sometimes effective. Other times, teams are able to get penetration and blow up the play. There was one play against Seattle in particular where we ran a counter-sweep and it was actually really close to breaking out for a TD but McDonald and Anthony Davis had a miscue on who was going to block the DE, they both blocked him and then both released him and slowed Hunter down enough for the rest of the D to get there.

Most Defenses aren't looking to penetrate up the middle of the field they're actually trying to move laterally across the LOS to beat all the trap and power plays. Also part of why those plays aren't working too well.

Hope that answers your question a little. If I can help any further just let me know.