Coaches Film Analysis: 2018 Season

Originally posted by thl408:

816 stop hoarding inbox messages

Sorry....I've cleaned it up.

The zone waiting...

Alright, Alright, Alright.

All you great niner faithful the coaches film thread is back and here to stay!

Good lord it was a long time without any new football to watch. As much as losing football isn't fun, it sure was great to have our niners to watch on Sunday, wasn't it? Enough of the pageantry, let's get into the analysis.

I'm saving the discussion of Jimmy G til the end.

First off, Minnesota was known as a tough team before we even set foot on that field and they did make it to the NFCCG last year with Case Keenum at QB and their #1 RB on IR most of the year. That means one thing, they have a stout defense. It was #2 against the pass and #2 against the run last year and #1 overall. Think about this, during our 3 year run under Harbaugh, as good as our defense was, we were never ranked as highly as Minn's defense was last year and they managed to return 10 of the 11 and the 1 that didn't return they filled with a pro-bowl player. That's a tough group.

What a shocker though, it looked that way on film. That is one heck of a talented bunch on defense for Minnesota. Add to that your two best offensive weapons being out of the game by the 1st quarter(McK and Goodwin) and then losing your starter and backup guard and your reserve G was already hurt and the other guy you brought in wasn't healthy enough yet either - that's rough. It's the kind of thing that even with 4 capable guys brought in during camp, all 4 were down. I don't know if there's a team in the league that could overcome that kind of situation against that defense. They're a team that you have to bring your horses to the race with.

Their players are tough, fast, smart and disciplined. To do what we did is impressive. While I know we all don't like moral victories, let's take it as that and move on to the Lions.

Defense: It was amazing how much the addition of Uncle Sherm made to this defense. I hated, hated, hated the guy in Seattle but was very pleased that he was with us this past Sunday. He looked every bit the guy he was in Seattle. He played smart, fast, tough and took away 1/3 of the field almost all day. It allowed Saleh to play coverage's much more like we used to see Seattle shut every down with. Give this DLine enough time to gel and get Foster back in there and we're going to have a much better than expected defense this year. I could see us ranked between 7-11 on defense.

Fred Warner - WOW! Kid looked great. He wasn't quite as flashy as Foster's first appearance last year but this kid is legit. It's incredible that we found this kind of talent in the 3rd round. Reminds me of when we found Bowman there. That's the kind of thing that builds championship caliber teams. All 3 of our top draft picks from this last year looked really good.

Offense - losing Goodwin really hurt us. We tried to run the same PIN concepts with Pettis in that spot and he's definitely a rook in his 1st game going against the best defense in the league. They were able to lock down his post for the most part on those concepts and it made those DIG's off the post much more closed. That's why it looked like Jimmy was forcing throws down the middle a number of times. He wasn't, it was the right read, but the defense was closing so quickly because they weren't turning their hips to help on Goodwin. The one time he broke free we almost hit a TD but the defender made an incredible play.

Jimmy - wasn't his best game by any means. However, there were so many extenuating circumstances that it's tough to gauge. I think the INT to Rhodes, Pettis ran his slant too shallow and so the pass was off target. We all know the one to Bourne was a wrong route, he was supposed to run a short in and ran a short hitch on a "Smash" concept. Jimmy made the right read, but the receiver ran the wrong route.

In the end, the game came down to about 4 plays. That's pretty effin good for who we are, where we're at as an organization and who we went against.

I'm not a "sky is falling" guy and I believe there's a lot of good things to build on. On to the tape!

As I posted before, the loss against the Vikings may actually turn out to be good for this team.

I hope that the team now realize that they AINT there yet... that what happened last year 5-0 (with Grappy) was last year... now every team out there is coming to HUNT the 49ers.. and/or prove that Grappy and last year's ending was nothing but LUCK..

This may also remind our young team that we are not just gonna win the game by showing up..

RESPECT MUST BE EARNED and WE AINT EARNED NOTHING YET !!!

Originally posted by 9moon:
As I posted before, the loss against the Vikings may actually turn out to be good for this team.

I hope that the team now realize that they AINT there yet... that what happened last year 5-0 (with Grappy) was last year... now every team out there is coming to HUNT the 49ers.. and/or prove that Grappy and last year's ending was nothing but LUCK..

This may also remind our young team that we are not just gonna win the game by showing up..

RESPECT MUST BE EARNED and WE AINT EARNED NOTHING YET !!!

Still we had the chance to tie up the game. Even with all the turnovers and the lack of redzone execution.

Want to show Buck's first sack. It was a mix of great D-line play and great coverage.



This was the first drive of the game and we came away with a sack. Somehow my red line from Tartt to the flat at the bottom didn't come through. Anyways, Minn comes out in an empty set with 3 receivers up top(RB in the slot and TE on the line) in 11 Personnel. In our defense - much like Sea's, we borrow from Nick Saban and run what's called a "cover-3 'Mable". "Mable" stands for, "man". You have man-coverage out wide away from the single receiver side and your hook/curl defender(Warner) is to read the slot/TE release. If it's vertical he's going to play in a hook/curl area to take away flood concepts, if not, he'll play a shallow hook. It's zone coverage everywhere but Spoon matched up.

Minn runs something that should look very familiar, and old WC concept of slant/flat. The QB reads the inside defender(Tartt) and if he goes out, he throws the slant, if he stays in, flat. It also works well against man-coverage as it will usually get a rub on that side. Remember Garcon got flagged for OPI on this exact play last year?


At the snap Spoon does a decent job disrupting the WR and keeps outside leverage on him. Tartt attaacks the flat area.



This is a thing of beauty right here. Spoon recognizes the concept and adjusts to go around Tartt and gives Tartt enough room so that he's not picked by the receiver, this allows him to play the flat route. Then, Coyle does a great job and in his zone jumps on the slant. Now, you've taken away the slant/flat and have Spoon over-the-top so you can't get burned with a Sluggo(slant and go) route.



Here, you see how they've defeated the slant/flat



Cousins moves to the 3rd and last read in the progression and starts to wind up but see's Warner has swallowed up the curl over the middle.



With everyone covered, Cousins has nowhere to go with the ball, tries to take off but Buckner owned his guy and gets the sack. This is a 3-step drop concept and so you're usually not going to get a sack against it because it's a quick set, quick 1,2,3 read and then the QB is going to take off. So, this is a a great mix of coverage and Buckner.

That's exciting.

Originally posted by mayo49:

Originally posted by 9moon:
As I posted before, the loss against the Vikings may actually turn out to be good for this team.

I hope that the team now realize that they AINT there yet... that what happened last year 5-0 (with Grappy) was last year... now every team out there is coming to HUNT the 49ers.. and/or prove that Grappy and last year's ending was nothing but LUCK..

This may also remind our young team that we are not just gonna win the game by showing up..

RESPECT MUST BE EARNED and WE AINT EARNED NOTHING YET !!!

Still we had the chance to tie up the game. Even with all the turnovers and the lack of redzone execution.

on the road, week 1, 8 days after losing your top offensive weapon, against the best defense in the NFL who also made the biggest FA signing in the league this season for their offense.

It was easy to remember the 2.5 or 3 sacks that Bucko had.. but it's hard for me to forget that I didn't see him or heard nothing about Bucko in the 2nd half !!

Originally posted by 9moon:
It was easy to remember the 2.5 or 3 sacks that Bucko had.. but it's hard for me to forget that I didn't see him or heard nothing about Bucko in the 2nd half !!

LOL

Very nice summary. I agree on a lot of your points. I am eagerly awaiting the film break down :)

This is an interesting and informative thread. Other threads are being used for moaning, whinging and genersl negativity. There is no need to repeat across numerous threads. Please keep this one very specifically on subject please.

Here's a great highlight of Warner and ST. ST didn't show up a lot in the box score but some of it was due to what they asked him to do in this game.



So, one thing we did was ran an "over" front. Here's a decent whiteboard of what an "over" front looks like:



Think of "Emmons" as our SAM and Strahan as our Solly.

In the "over" you flip it from our normal, "under" set. Your SAM player moves to the weakside as well as your BE. and your LEO is now playing stacked over the TE. This is to protect against counters and some gap power stuff . But, you have to have a stud LEO to pull this off because he's going now be asked to play against double teams or force double teams.

Minn runs an off-tackle run to the strong side against this on 2nd and 4 as they were getting into our territory.



Here, ST is the key. He is taking on the TE and that TE is trying to kick him out. Being an off-tackle run, the RB is going to read the block of the tackle, if the TE can kick out, the T comes up inside and clears the way, if the T has to kick out, he cuts it back inside.



ST does a great job of doing his job. He understands he's got players to the outside so he doesn't try and go around the TE, he holds down the TE on the inside and is also able then, to engage the T as well. This double team he takes on(while not getting moved off his spot BTW) allows both Coyle and Warner to flow and fill their gaps.



With nowhere to go, Cook tries to cut it up inside and Warner did a heck of job flowing with violence and fills the hole to tackle Cook for -2 yards. It's a great play because this should be an automatic 2-3 yards for the offense to set up 3rd and 1 or a first down and now it's 3rd and 6 and leads to an incomplete pass.

MIN defense came with so many different coverage calls and played them all very well. Usually teams that play so many coverages with pattern matching will have lapses and blown coverages. There was only one play where they blew coverage and the 49ers capitalized (Juice 50+ yard catch and run). Once MIN established their 4 man pass rush, they were able to play every down as if they were in the red zone. Red zone defenses don't have to worry about defending deep so they compress all areas of the field. Seams between zones are tighter, safeties play shallow, everything is condensed. Losing Goodwin early in the 2Q had to have contributed to this as well.

MIN came in and emphasized taking control of the short/intermediate middle of the field. Garcon nearly had his head taken off a couple times going over the middle with a safety playing shallow. MIN was forcing the 49ers to attack outside the numbers to find success. This was very apparent in the second half and the 49ers nearly made them pay for it on the 4Q drive that ended in the overthrow to Kittle near the goaline.

Defensively the 49ers came with their usual Cover3 scheme. Nothing new there. There were some creative pass rushes that looked like blitzes but involved dropping a DE into coverage and rushing CBs. COusins felt pressure whether it was there or not, and made quick throws, one of which nearly resulted in an INT by Tartt. Thielen was killing the 49ers from the slot. KWilliams, Ward, Colbert, all were victims.

The run defense was on point and except for some missed tackles that made some MIN run successful, the 49ers were very sound and was able to control the LoS. jd, agree with what you said in another thread about how the 49ers used lots of Over fronts to help defend the run. Warner and Foster reading and shooting gaps is going to result in lots of TFL in the future. Tartt continues to excel as a box safety playing the run. This matchup unfolded predictably since MIN is hurting along the OL.

I think the book on Jimmy will be to take away the middle of the field and force him to throw outside. This makes sense since most accurate QBs that throw with anticipation can make a killing over the middle of the field. With the talented LBs, four man rush, and Harrison Smith roaming around, MIN can effectively do this.

Overall the game came down to MIN's defense being able to smother the 49er offense. They threw so many looks at the 49ers and kept them off balance. I don't think they blitzed very often because there wasn't a need to. Having Jimmy escape without injury was a minor victory.

Originally posted by jonnydel:
Alright, Alright, Alright.

First off, Minnesota was known as a tough team before we even set foot on that field and they did make it to the NFCCG last year with Case Keenum at QB and their #1 RB on IR most of the year. That means one thing, they have a stout defense. It was #2 against the pass and #2 against the run last year and #1 overall. Think about this, during our 3 year run under Harbaugh, as good as our defense was, we were never ranked as highly as Minn's defense was last year and they managed to return 10 of the 11 and the 1 that didn't return they filled with a pro-bowl player. That's a tough group.

What a shocker though, it looked that way on film. That is one heck of a talented bunch on defense for Minnesota. Add to that your two best offensive weapons being out of the game by the 1st quarter(McK and Goodwin) and then losing your starter and backup guard and your reserve G was already hurt and the other guy you brought in wasn't healthy enough yet either - that's rough. It's the kind of thing that even with 4 capable guys brought in during camp, all 4 were down. I don't know if there's a team in the league that could overcome that kind of situation against that defense. They're a team that you have to bring your horses to the race with.

Their players are tough, fast, smart and disciplined. To do what we did is impressive. While I know we all don't like moral victories, let's take it as that and move on to the Lions.

No fair. You are being objective and observant.

Good stuff...as always.