Offseason Film analysis thread - Passing concepts

Here's an example of CK's struggles in in the "smash" concept.


This was late in the 1st Sea game, Sherman's 2nd INT - it was a gift from CK to seal the game. I really like the design of this play, it gives CK 2 concepts in 1 to work. He gets 2 curls along with the inside corner route to work a smash concept with a horizontal curls stretch added in. On these plays you should always be "alert" for the corner route against man-coverage. You see it's man coverage pre-snap based off of Dick's alignment. He's in press, squared up on the receiver, this means man coverage - along with the alignment of the LB's. They're going to "Spy" CK as well.


You see just after the snap how the corner route has an advantage. VD's working against Chancellor and Chancellor's in a tough spot having to defend both the mid-in and corner routes.


an aside - If Ck was deep in his film study, he would've seen what I've seen from Dick Sherman - that is, in man coverage, Sherman's COD isn't great. He's very susceptible to curls in man coverage. The one route you don't throw against Sherman in man coverage is the streak.... You see here how it held true, Johnson is able to get decent seperation on Sherman and is turned completely around, ready for a ball while Sherman is still face the other way....

anyhoo, you see how Ck has a nice pocket to step up in to. Staley did what he should, he took the speed rush upfield past the QB. Davis loses Chancellor with a nifty in/out move.


CK has a nice pocket and Davis has lost his man towards the corner, but, instead, he's fleeing the pocket. also, by now, Sherman's ready to drive on the curl route that CK is bailing out towards.


Davis beat Chancellor so bad that he fell down. VD probably goes in for a TD if CK stayed in the pocket and worked the play. Instead, he bails out to the opposite side with the "spy" waiting for him. I've omitted the last part of the play as it can be disturbing for some viewers. But, CK basically throws the ball straight at Sherman.

Here's an interesting flood design we dialed up against Sea that worked well, but, CK misses the receiver again.


We're going to run a deep hitch from the outside receiver and then run Boldin on a wheel route and send Miller into the flat off play action. This is a flood type of play but I like the wrinkle we throw in with the wheel route to create a horizontal stretch against the corner.


You see how the play action sucks up the LB's Now we have 3 receivers in a space of 2 defenders.


The mid level defender has his eyes on Boldin, this creates an opening between the numbers and the hash.



If Ck delivers the throw to Lloyd of a timing 5 plus hitch step - he only took 5 steps, not the hitch - as I'm sure the play called for, he'd have Lloyd wide open for a minimum of a 14 yard gain.


You see how wide open Lloyd was, but, instead, CK takes off running - why???


By the time he brings his eyes back up to look for Lloyd, Maxwell is in a position to drive on the ball.


So, he takes off for what's a 3 yard gain.

Good stuff, jonnydel. Be sure to check out all the Sucker and Spot concepts the 49ers ran last season. Those worked a number of times. I agree there were a crap load of Curls ran to get a horizontal stretch versus underneath zone defenders. Easily, the zone coverage that the 49ers saw the most was cover3.

edit: I see you did mention Spot in your OP.

Great info! Keep up the great work

Here's an example of what he can work on in his verticals concept.


Here, we're just gonna run 4 verticals. It creates a horizontal stretch of the defense as you have 4 receivers in a 3 defender zone. When AS took over for Shaun Hill, we ran this play a LOT and it had great success. This is when VD really emerged, because he was such a weapon up the seam against cover 3 zone.

the primary read is going to be on the FS as the key defender. Whichever side the safety helps to, the QB hits the opposite side seam.


On this play, we run play action to open up even more space to get the LB's out of the throwing lane.


You can see Earl Thomas opens up to VD's side as VD has the inside leverage on his side. This means the throw should go to McDonald.


This is at the moment of CK's windup. You can see the open area for McDonald and Maxwell has his head turned to Lloyd and you can see the back of Thomas' jersey. He should be throwing it to McDonald - easy. But, instead, he's throwing it to Lloyd. Why? I have no idea.


This is where McDonald would be about the time the ball arrived -if Ck threw the ball to him.


Instead, Lloyd has to make a tough adjustment to the ball with the defender right there - incomplete pass.

jonnydel, can you detail what constitutes a positive rating for your concept grades? In your OP, you mentioned that for Levels, "positive rating on 52% of these plays, negative rating on 32% and 16% were times where he made the correct read but his footwork and mechanics were off."

For example: Smash is run versus cover1 (similar to the play in post#2), but there is a man busting concept on the other side of the field. If Kap looks to the man buster, but the Smash (corner) becomes open, is he given a negative rating? In this situation, I might give a no grade because he properly looked to the man buster versus cover1.

Just trying to understand your criteria.

Money thread.

Thanks, JD.

Don't forget about the SPOT concept in the very 1st play of the game vs. the Raiders that he f**ked up.

Great work...it felt like slide was a great concept for kap. Gives him easy targets and a run/boot option.



The above play is a perfect example of slide. Of course for kap, this would be flipped because this play is designed for Steve from the 1994 offense. You can run this from any formation you want and the results are usually positive. This needs to be a core play going forward.

Originally posted by defenderDX:

Don't forget about the SPOT concept in the very 1st play of the game vs. the Raiders that he f**ked up.

Yea that was butchered....that was kap pressing the weight of all the Harbs BS kilked this team.

Originally posted by thl408:
jonnydel, can you detail what constitutes a positive rating for your concept grades? In your OP, you mentioned that for Levels, "positive rating on 52% of these plays, negative rating on 32% and 16% were times where he made the correct read but his footwork and mechanics were off."

For example: Smash is run versus cover1 (similar to the play in post#2), but there is a man busting concept on the other side of the field. If Kap looks to the man buster, but the Smash (corner) becomes open, is he given a negative rating? In this situation, I might give a no grade because he properly looked to the man buster versus cover1.

Just trying to understand your criteria.

good point, thanks for bringing that to my attention. Here's how I grade him.

What I did was look at what concept was being employed, look at the defense he was facing and where/if he threw the ball. So, for example, if he was given a "smash" concept on one side and it was a zone play, if he made the right read and completed the pass - I gave him a positive grading. If he made the right read but missed the throw - it was an "ok" grade. If he made the wrong read - I gave him a negative grade. If he ignored the concept side and completed the pass - it was an ok grade. If he ignored the concept side and the concept side was open and the pass was incomplete, it was a negative grade. If he moved on from the concept side because the pre-snap read showed the concept was defeated and completed the pass, it was a positive grade.

For plays where he had multiple concepts working - like you stated above, one concept on one side and another on the other(which didn't happen as much as I thought it would, maybe 15% of the time). Then I graded him on similar criteria for each of the concepts involved.

Originally posted by Niners816:
Great work...it felt like slide was a great concept for kap. Gives him easy targets and a run/boot option.



The above play is a perfect example of slide. Of course for kap, this would be flipped because this play is designed for Steve from the 1994 offense. You can run this from any formation you want and the results are usually positive. This needs to be a core play going forward.

I still have 5 1/2 games to work through, but, so far, I haven't seen a ton of side concept stuff. Sometimes though, there's a penalty on the play and I don't grade those plays - which it's not too uncommon to get penalties on different players on slide concepts because of all the movement. I did briefly mention the slide in my OP though. I just didn't have a high enough volume of plays in the games I watched to actually come to any sort of conclusion. There were only 5 slide concepts I counted in the games I watched - that didn't have any penalties involved.

Originally posted by defenderDX:
Don't forget about the SPOT concept in the very 1st play of the game vs. the Raiders that he f**ked up.

I still need to analyze the Raiders, Giants, Redskins, 2nd Ari game, and 2nd Sea game and half of one of the Rams games. So, his numbers may actually go down on the gradings because, as I remember, our offensive production was pretty low in all those games.

Originally posted by jonnydel:

Originally posted by thl408:
jonnydel, can you detail what constitutes a positive rating for your concept grades? In your OP, you mentioned that for Levels, "positive rating on 52% of these plays, negative rating on 32% and 16% were times where he made the correct read but his footwork and mechanics were off."

For example: Smash is run versus cover1 (similar to the play in post#2), but there is a man busting concept on the other side of the field. If Kap looks to the man buster, but the Smash (corner) becomes open, is he given a negative rating? In this situation, I might give a no grade because he properly looked to the man buster versus cover1.

Just trying to understand your criteria.

good point, thanks for bringing that to my attention. Here's how I grade him.

What I did was look at what concept was being employed, look at the defense he was facing and where/if he threw the ball. So, for example, if he was given a "smash" concept on one side and it was a zone play, if he made the right read and completed the pass - I gave him a positive grading. If he made the right read but missed the throw - it was an "ok" grade. If he made the wrong read - I gave him a negative grade. If he ignored the concept side and completed the pass - it was an ok grade. If he ignored the concept side and the concept side was open and the pass was incomplete, it was a negative grade. If he moved on from the concept side because the pre-snap read showed the concept was defeated and completed the pass, it was a positive grade.

For plays where he had multiple concepts working - like you stated above, one concept on one side and another on the other(which didn't happen as much as I thought it would, maybe 15% of the time). Then I graded him on similar criteria for each of the concepts involved.

Understood. And you are right about the 15% of the time. The 49ers ran 3x1 with a lone WR on the backside, about 85% of the time - not exactly a concept in terms of route combination on the backside.