St. Louis Rams week 6 coaches film analysis

I wanted to touch on this play because it's a great example of CK throwing with anticipation:

This is big because it was 3rd and 12 in the 3rd Qtr. This led to a TD to put us in the lead that we never relinquished.


St. Louis had been running a lot of funky blitzes against us out of these blob like fronts. So, to combat all of it, we run a super quick snap. Literally, I had to grab this at exactly the right moment for Kilgore to have his hand on the ball. He walks up and just grabs the ball to snap it. There's not "hut" call. This way, St. Louis is caught in their own game.

Note the single safety look.


At the snap, the corners position - mixed with the single safety give away the cover 3 zone - more specifically, it's a sort of "fire" zone. It's a one man blitz with a 6 man cover 3 zone behind it. So, CK knows right here where he's going with the ball. Because of the quick snap - it leaves 2 pass rushers a long way from the QB, so it negates most of the pass rush.


Lloyd's vertical route clears the outside zone and opens up the space to outside for Boldin.


You see the great chemistry of Boldin and CK. The yellow line is the first down. So, they got this route right where it needed to be.


CK leads him to outside, away from the closing LB and towards the smaller defender. 1st down!


This angle shows the anticipation - he's in his windup.


More through.

The ball's on it's way before Boldin even gets around. That's anticipation. Great job CK.

You might be giving Fangio too much credit. Tomsula is the man behind the stellar front seven!

This is how VD can affect the defense:


This is good use of personnel in the formation to force the Rams to show their hand. We come out in 11 Personnel(1 back 1 TE) so the Rams are in their "Nickel" personnel(5 DB's, 2 LB's, 4 DL). We send Gore out wide with Boldin and Johnson in the slot. Because the Rams align a LB over Boldin it reveals the zone coverage. This, with the 2 high safeties reveal the cover 2 zone. This means, the MLB is the only man in the middle of the field.


Because we hit so many of the short curls to VD, the MLB tries to jump on VD's route. This opens up the middle of the field.


It opens up the area for Johnson to work and CK hits him over the middle.

He gets the ball with space to work and gets a nice 13 yard gain. Unfortunately, we had a false start by VD on the previous snap, so we still ended up with 3rd down and Boldin drops a tough pass the next play and we don't convert. However, you see the affect of VD on a defense.

Originally posted by verb1der:
You might be giving Fangio too much credit. Tomsula is the man behind the stellar front seven!

Well, I'm also looking at scheme and the collective effort of the defense. Don't get me wrong, I think Tomsula is one of the best D-line coaches out there because of how sound all our D-lineman are in their technique and assignments. But, some of the sacks we got were because of great coverage and some by great design. Most of our sacks this year haven't been because of great individual effort, but more by great team defense. Which, if it's an individual thing - that's usually either on the player or position coach or both. But, when it's a whole defense, that's when you look at the coordinator.

Fangio has our defense - even after all the crap - in the top 5 in both passing and rushing defense. No other team in the league can say that.

Nice summary, jonnydel. Just got through watching the game myself and there were two things that stood out to me on the offensive side of the ball. The spread offense is starting to be a preferred look for Kap imo. It puts defenses in a real bind as to how they play the 49er's spread look and how Kap can use his legs to scramble. This forces teams to place a spy on him - now they only have 1 deep safety. Or they zone up in the middle of the field - easy curl routes for Kap to complete, easy 7 yards.

The other thing that stood out is that the 49ers ran the ball out of 11 personnel (1rb/1te/3wr) using a spread formation, which was something that was discussed in the offseason here on the Zone. Many of us feel this is the most talented grouping that the 49ers can put on the field. Not because Miller and Vance suck (I know the Vance thread is active right now), but because SJ trumps them both, easily. The only question was how well can Gore run without a lead blocker. He did well in this game. I'll hit on some of his runs out of this personnel and formation.

Rams played a nice mix of man and zone coverage all game long in an effort to give Kap more to think about. Rams played a nice bait coverage (variation of Tampa2) to win on a 3rd down. What's funny is they played a similar coverage on the Lloyd TD and it was just way too aggressive given the game situation (80 yards away, under 20 seconds left). Justifiably they got bit in the ass with that coverage call. I'll try to hit on this as well.

Agreed that ADavis made some very nice throws to start the game and that's how they were able to move the ball so well. 49ers disguised their blitzes very well with props to Brooks for coming a few times on well timed blitzes. Well timed as in he didn't show as a blitzer until just before the snap. It is easy to see the difference between a RB that knows how to pick up a blitz (Gore), and one that doesn't (Rams RB). Not in recognizing the blitz, but actually using proper blocking technique to nullify the blitzer. ADavis just didn't make the same good throws in the second half of the game as he was in the first half and credit goes to the 49ers for forcing him to make tight throws as they mixed coverages as they always do. Honorable mention to Ian Williams who I thought did well against the run.

Here's a great play made by CK - he climbs the pocket and finds the receiver.


Here, it's early in the game and St. Louis is showing their "blob" like defense. Because the safety is down over Miller - it reveals a blitz in man-coverage. They also use the MLB, #55, as a "spy".

as best as I can figure, the alignment of Miller as a TE confused the LB over VD and he's not sure which side is the "strong" side. So, they're blitz call gets mixed up and he blitzes. He should be in coverage on VD. This puts the corner in a tough spot. He's now stuck between choosing to cover VD or Boldin on the backend. He tries to pick a middle ground and so it looks like he's in zone coverage - but, based off everything else, I think he's just reacting to the blown assignment in front of him.


The safety over Miller see's Miller stay in to block so he comes on a blitz - some teams with play it that way. If you're man stays in to block - you blitz. We tend to drop our guys into zone if their man stays in to block. Because the MLB is "spying" on CK he isn't aware of the two receivers behind him. The corner is stuck between a rock and a hard place.


Miller then releases out of his block so the MLB has to now bail on his "spy" and cover Miller. This opens up the middle for Boldin.

Boldin is wide open and Ck is able to get him the ball.

From here you see the front St. Louis used.


The line does a great job with their 1-1 blocks and Gore saves the day with his blitz pickup. He comes across the formation to pickup the safety.


Here CK had the choice to bail out of the pocket or climb the pocket. He does a good job of climbing the pocket to extend the play.


He climbs the pocket and makes a solid throw to Boldin who picks up 28 on the play. Too bad McDonald fumbled another big pass play on the next play after this.

Originally posted by thl408:
Nice summary, jonnydel. Just got through watching the game myself and there were two things that stood out to me on the offensive side of the ball. The spread offense is starting to be a preferred look for Kap imo. It puts defenses in a real bind as to how they play the 49er's spread look and how Kap can use his legs to scramble. This forces teams to place a spy on him - now they only have 1 deep safety. Or they zone up in the middle of the field - easy curl routes for Kap to complete, easy 7 yards.

The other thing that stood out is that the 49ers ran the ball out of 11 personnel (1rb/1te/3wr) using a spread formation, which was something that was discussed in the offseason here on the Zone. Many of us feel this is the most talented grouping that the 49ers can put on the field. Not because Miller and Vance suck (I know the Vance thread is active right now), but because SJ trumps them both, easily. The only question was how well can Gore run without a lead blocker. He did well in this game. I'll hit on some of his runs out of this personnel and formation.

Rams played a nice mix of man and zone coverage all game long in an effort to give Kap more to think about. Rams played a nice bait coverage (variation of Tampa2) to win on a 3rd down. What's funny is they played a similar coverage on the Lloyd TD and it was just way too aggressive given the game situation (80 yards away, under 20 seconds left). Justifiably they got bit in the ass with that coverage call. I'll try to hit on this as well.

Agreed that ADavis made some very nice throws to start the game and that's how they were able to move the ball so well. 49ers disguised their blitzes very well with props to Brooks for coming a few times on well timed blitzes. Well timed as in he didn't show as a blitzer until just before the snap. It is easy to see the difference between a RB that knows how to pick up a blitz (Gore), and one that doesn't (Rams RB). Not in recognizing the blitz, but actually using proper blocking technique to nullify the blitzer. ADavis just didn't make the same good throws in the second half of the game as he was in the first half and credit goes to the 49ers for forcing him to make tight throws as they mixed coverages as they always do. Honorable mention to Ian Williams who I thought did well against the run.

I noticed the same thing. First time I watched it I thought, "what in the world coverage is that???" Then, after watching it a couple times, I realized they were trying to bait an underneath throw. That's Greg Williams for you - big risk/big reward guy. He was trying to get the ball back with a short field. It worked in the SB against manning - played a bait coverage. But, bit them hard on this one. Tried to bait the tampa 2 and got burned lol....

Originally posted by jonnydel:
I wanted to touch on this play because it's a great example of CK throwing with anticipation:

This is big because it was 3rd and 12 in the 3rd Qtr. This led to a TD to put us in the lead that we never relinquished.


St. Louis had been running a lot of funky blitzes against us out of these blob like fronts. So, to combat all of it, we run a super quick snap. Literally, I had to grab this at exactly the right moment for Kilgore to have his hand on the ball. He walks up and just grabs the ball to snap it. There's not "hut" call. This way, St. Louis is caught in their own game.

Note the single safety look.


At the snap, the corners position - mixed with the single safety give away the cover 3 zone - more specifically, it's a sort of "fire" zone. It's a one man blitz with a 6 man cover 3 zone behind it. So, CK knows right here where he's going with the ball. Because of the quick snap - it leaves 2 pass rushers a long way from the QB, so it negates most of the pass rush.


Lloyd's vertical route clears the outside zone and opens up the space to outside for Boldin.


You see the great chemistry of Boldin and CK. The yellow line is the first down. So, they got this route right where it needed to be.


CK leads him to outside, away from the closing LB and towards the smaller defender. 1st down!


This angle shows the anticipation - he's in his windup.


More through.

The ball's on it's way before Boldin even gets around. That's anticipation. Great job CK.

Great shot of the ball already on its way before Boldin turns around. It's clear that Kap trusts Boldin with these throws where Boldin has yet to make the cut in his route and ball is already on its way. It remains to be seen if he can trust his other WRs with the same magnitude, or if they deserve that kind of trust. This is why Boldin is a 3rd down converting machine.

I'm working on the 80 yard TD right now

Originally posted by jonnydel:
I noticed the same thing. First time I watched it I thought, "what in the world coverage is that???" Then, after watching it a couple times, I realized they were trying to bait an underneath throw. That's Greg Williams for you - big risk/big reward guy. He was trying to get the ball back with a short field. It worked in the SB against manning - played a bait coverage. But, bit them hard on this one. Tried to bait the tampa 2 and got burned lol....

Agreed. Cutting those plays up right now...

Originally posted by jonnydel:
I'm working on the 80 yard TD right now

Ok let me post the bait coverage, should be up in 10 minutes. Then it will make the 80 yard TD throw make a lot of sense in terms of wtf the Rams were trying to do.