Off-Season Preview: WRs/TEs

In previous years, someone—typically Deebo or Kittle—would absolutely dominate touches in the passing game (or in Deebo’s case, the passing and running game). While that was great for fantasy owners and it let our guys soak in some much-earned nationwide appreciation, those outrageous target shares were largely the product of a passing attack that was—whether it was due to health, development, or roster construction—short on weapons. Things changed dramatically last season, and 2022 marked the most balanced the Niners’ receiving corps has ever been.

With the emergence of Brandon Aiyuk into a 1,000-yard receiver, the addition of CMC, and (relatively) healthy seasons from both Deebo and Kittle, the Niners spread the love in the passing game more so than they ever have under Shanahan. The result was the most efficient and effective passing offense in the ShanaLynch era. 

With all the big names under contract, our receiving room has very much earned an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” type of approach to this off-season. But the continued growth of our receiving unit in the coming year will have ripple effects on the salary cap decisions we’ll need to make in the next two or three.

Wide Receivers

UFAs: none
RFAs/ERFAs: Jauan Jennings (ERFA)

It’s doubtful there will be any legitimate movement at wideout as all of the team’s receivers are signed for 2023 except for Jennings, who is—as our top slot receiver who we’d only need to offer the veteran minimum—as easy a tender decision as there ever was. The only way the Niners don’t offer him one immediately is if they’re trying to lock him up on a multi-year deal instead. 

Any movement of note will likely happen on the back end of the roster, as the Niners would like to go through the off-season with at least twice the number of wideouts that they currently have. Practice squad holdover and special teamer Tay Martin will certainly be a part of team activities as we move into spring and summer. So will two guys who just inked futures deals with the Niners: Dazz Newsome—a second-year slot/return man with enough YAC upside to make sense as a special teamer/gadget project—and Tyron Johnson—a former five-star wideout with deep ball potential who was thrown onto the field for 12 games as a rookie in 2020 but has bounced between three teams in the two years since. Of those three, Martin seems like the most likely to stick—even if it’s just for special teams purposes—and any additional contributors will either come from free agent discount deals or the draft. Predicting the free agent movements of players vying for a sixth or seventh wideout spot is a bit of a fool’s errand, and we’ll discuss the draft closer to the event. So the emphasis for the Niners turns mostly towards continued development from within.

The Niners will almost certainly exercise Aiyuk’s fifth-year option this spring, giving them another year to wait on making a decision on a potential extension past his rookie deal. This could prove important because—while our cap situation is decently chill this off-season—it’s hard to envision a world where we can afford to keep Aiyuk, Kittle, Deebo, and CMC a year or two down the road. Due to that, 2023 will be a big year for evaluating how all our offensive pieces fit together, and how we plan to jigsaw them together for the next half-decade. 

While Aiyuk made huge strides in his third year in the offense, we’d love to see him add “deep ball threat” to his resume. I know that he’s been hurt more than most by the fact that we don’t huck it down the field often, but if he can truly stretch the field with regularity, we may be able to unlock yet another level of passing game efficiency.

For Deebo, his 864 yards and five scores from scrimmage were less than half of the yards and TDs he put up a year ago. Part of that was due to him missing four games due to injury. Part was the product of a much more balanced passing and rushing attack that didn’t have to force-feed him the ball. But there’s still room for improvement and reason to believe he’ll do just that.

Last year, Deebo spent the off-season away from the team as his agent negotiated a multi-year extension. This year, he’ll be in the building and participating in team activities throughout the spring and summer, which means valuable reps with Lance and (whenever he returns) Purdy—two guys who we took very few snaps beside in the lead-up to last season. All those distractions and hold-ups are now gone. So Deebo will be more free to attack self-improvement.

Many of the better defenses that we faced tried to eliminate Deebo by draping cornerbacks all over him—knowing that press man coverage would allow them extra numbers against the run, would make it easier to deny passes because of how often he runs short-to-intermediate routes, and would put defenders in easier tackling position if he got the ball. While it’s not super likely that Deebo ever becomes a deep ball maven, if he can improve against tight man coverage (and shore up the occasional drop) then we won’t have to lean as heavily on Aiyuk when teams show us Cover 1. That would help us tremendously in 2023 and would certainly factor into future roster decisions regarding both Aiyuk and Samuel.

In the slot, we have two unique different body types and skill sets. Ray-Ray McCloud isn’t often mentioned when talking about our horde of Swiss Army Knife offensive weapons, but he played both receiver and running back in college, and the hope is he’ll be more comfortable in year two in Shanahan’s scheme. We saw higher usage from him down the stretch—in part because Deebo was missing—and his running ability and big-play speed were on display on his 71-yard touchdown run against the Commanders. While our run-heavy nature means he’s unlikely to get massive snaps offensively, there’s hope that he can be deployed more efficiently and given more situations where his speed, shiftiness, and open-field running ability can be put on display.

Part of the reason Ray-Ray’s production won’t be coming from a massive increase in snaps is that our current starting slot receiver—and the biggest wideout we have on roster—has fully solidified himself as a starter over the past year and a half. Jauan Jennings isn’t a tremendous athlete, but he has carved out quite the niche as basically a slot fullback and offensive antagonizer who runs the occasional crosser and makes the (not-so-occasional) clutch third-down grab. While his ceiling may not be astronomical, his personality and play-style mesh perfectly with the Niners’ commitment to the run game, and I wouldn’t be shocked if the Niners re-up him on an under-market multi-year deal in hopes that he becomes a bigger, beefier Kendrick Bourne down the road. Jennings will never have the wiggle or smooth athleticism of KB, but he can make up for that with size and brawn if he continues to develop at his current rate.

Finally, last year’s third-rounder Danny Gray was basically a healthy scratch in 2022. While the idea of him blazing past corners and catching deep balls down the sideline was an off-season dream, Gray was always super raw, and when Lance went down, so too did much of Gray’s intended use as a rookie. That said, I’m not worried about his long-term projection. While it’s always a lot cooler when a rookie produces immediately, part of Gray’s appeal was in how raw he was and how—with his incredible speed and athleticism—there was a chance we locked up a bargain as long as we were patient. That said, we need Gray to advance enough this year to be confident that he could play decent snaps in 2024 because—as discussed above—we may need to make some tough decisions at that point.

Tight Ends

UFAs: Tyler Kroft, Ross Dwelley
RFAs/ERFAs: none

Every year our brass discusses bringing in a second tight end to take some of the load off of George Kittle, and—every year—we don’t quite accomplish that goal. It’s tough because Kittle is so valuable both as a blocker and as a receiver, but—with back-to-back snap count percentages in the nineties—getting Kittle off the field more could help preserve his body in both the short- and long-term. Additionally, having a second tight end who can catch the ball (or ideally catch and block) well opens up a lot of value in our 12 personnel play action sets.

While a double tight play action set was the set-up of the play where Purdy got hurt, we—and the Chiefs the game after—liked the double tight play action looks against the Eagles because—like many defenses these days—they have minimized their investment in linebackers and overall size in an attempt to go faster and defend the pass. While you can’t live in double tight personnel, having two reliable receivers at tight end can force defenses to play two-to-three linebackers when they’d prefer to be playing one-to-two. In essence, bolstering our double tight personnel would let us run the ball better from another look and hunt matchups more within another personnel grouping—the two things we like doing most as an offense.

But again, we can’t live in 12 personnel, nor should we be throwing fat stacks down on a second tight end. But while I think we’re past the point of spending legit money on a big-name free agent (remember when we were linked to Austin Hooper coming off a 75-catch season?), I wouldn’t be shocked to see us kick the tires on a lower-cost veteran (perhaps Austin Hooper, three years later, coming off a 41-catch season?) or add a rookie in the middle rounds of the draft.

If we don’t add another body, either Kroft or Dwelley (or both) could return in 2023, but I doubt there will be a mad rush to sign either until closer to training camp. We also still have Charlie Woerner, who—after a promising second season—saw his play and his snap count plummet in the back half of last year. Not sure what happened there, but a return to his 2021 form would—at the very least—assure us of a quality backup in case of injury and give us a bit more wiggle room to swing on an unfinished product in the draft. 

Either way, I’d expect a new body in the tight end room come training camp.

Go Niners 👍🏈

Off-Season Preview: Backfield

I was waiting to write-up something on our new-look coaching staff, but since the dust has yet to settle and multiple decisions (and promotions?) have yet to be made, we’ll jump ahead to the positional previews. With these previews, we’re looking for potential needs and turnover by position group before throwing in some educated guesses as to how those changes may shake out.

Up first is the offensive backfield, which has—for better or worse—never been boring during Shanahan’s five years leading the Niners. Much of that has been due to injuries and the long-term question marks that have stemmed from said injuries. And this year, it’s… same same but different. 

RUNNING BACK

UFAs: None
RFAs/ERFAs: None

A quick refresher on the types of free agents that exist in the NFL. The Unrestricted Free Agents (UFAs) are the guys who you typically think of when you think of free agents. Their contracts are up and they’re fully on the open market. Restricted Free Agents (RFAs) are players with three accrued seasons in the NFL. We basically have the right of first refusal with any of these players as we can tender them at one of a variety of compensation levels and—depending on what tender level we choose—we get to match any outside offer and (in most cases) get a set amount of draft compensation in return if we fail to do so. Finally, there are Exclusive Rights Free Agents (ERFAs), also known as “definitely not free agents but we call them that.” These players have less than three accrued seasons in the NFL, their tender is for the CBA minimum, and once they’re offered a tender they can’t negotiate with any other teams.

Let’s start with the easiest position group first. All four of our top running backs (and Juice) are under contract for 2023. All four (and Juice) will return. 

Despite losing his starting job to Christian McCaffrey, Elijah Mitchell is a vital part of our offense and (hopefully) one we can keep healthy next year. He’s arguably a better pure runner, seemingly always explodes through the right hole, and has the most burst of anyone in our backfield. Behind him, the rookies Jordan Mason and Ty Davis-Price will vie for touches, and—since this is a Shanahan offense—it wouldn’t be surprising to see either perform well if given the chance. Mitchell, Ty Davis-Price, and Mason will combine for just over a $3M cap hit.

The only real question with this group is when the Niners restructure CMC’s contract and what that will look like. While McCaffrey isn’t a free agent until 2026 he has ZERO guaranteed money left on his deal and will almost certainly want to restructure a new deal that locks in some cash on his side and opens up cap room on ours.

QUARTERBACK

UFAs: Jimmy Garoppolo
RFAs/ERFAs: None

The Niners enter the off-season with two quarterbacks on roster: Trey Lance and Brock Purdy. According to much of the national discourse, this is apparently a catastrophic situation for a team so talented and ready to contend. But it actually seems pretty simple to me.

Lance should be cleared to go within weeks while Purdy, who will undergo an internal brace surgery on his torn UCL, is expected to be out six months before he can return. That means Lance will run the offense through the off-season and—depending on the timing and progress of Purdy’s rehab—into training camp. The coaching staff won’t need to make any kind of decision on who the starter is until Purdy returns to full health, and—I can assure you—they won’t. Nor should they. 

While Purdy’s intelligence and gamesmanship were incredibly impressive as a rookie, he’s still an undersized player coming off a major throwing arm injury and teams will have a better plan to attack his tendencies in 2023. While I’m bullish on his ability to continue to get smarter and better, the hope was that he’d be able to spend the off-season doing just that and adding a few more MPHs on his fastball. Now, he loses an entire off-season of reps, and the idea of him improving physically in year two—either in arm strength or overall bulk—is likely out the window. Granted, Purdy was a perfect 8-0 in games that he finished, so he can clearly play at this level (physical limitations and all), but this was far from the off-season we’d hoped for as we prepared for Purdy’s sophomore encore.

At the same time, Trey Lance needs as many reps as physically possible, and—while practice reps are nothing like regular season ones—having another off-season as the man leading our offense should only improve his consistency and understanding of the game. I don’t really understand the push to “move on from Lance.” Even though he’s now one year older, he’s still younger than Purdy, would be the youngest starting QB in the league—save for a few potential rookie starters—and is still one of the greatest balls of physical potential in the game. There’s quite simply not enough info for us to know what we have in Lance, and—while the ticking clock of the rookie contract is ever-present—moving on from him without the knowledge of what he can become in this system and at the nadir of his market value makes little sense on every level. It’s not all that hard to imagine Lance—with a few more reps—having a Jalen Hurts-esque emergence with more time as a starter, and I’m sure that before this season the Niners were hoping he’d be well on that track by now.

While I think Purdy’s undefeated string to end the season means it’s his job to lose, it is impossible to have too many starting quarterbacks on your roster. And it is absolutely impossible to have too many starting quarterbacks on your roster who are on rookie contracts. As stated before, Trey Lance and Brock Purdy will combine to make just over $10M against the cap next year, a figure which is less than Mitch Trubisky’s 2023 cap hit and four to five times less than the hits of the top ten highest paid quarterbacks in the league. That’s also a number that’s sure to increase given the new deals likely coming for Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Tua Tagovailoa(?), etc. in the coming months. The single greatest advantage you can have from a roster-building perspective is a truly elite quarterback. The second-greatest advantage is having a starter on a rookie contract. We have two. And while that advantage doesn’t exactly stack, there’s no one who appreciates the value of a backup quarterback better than us. After all, we’ve had to start a backup in five of six seasons under Shanahan. 

That said, we will need a third quarterback and—given our injury history at the position and the fact that Purdy is out for so long—that guy should be a low-cost veteran who can play in a pinch. So what are our options?

For the purposes of this list, I’m scratching off anyone guaranteed to get starter money on the free market. So no Lamar Jackson, Derek Carr, Daniel Jones, etc.

The definition of insanity…

Jimmy Garoppolo: No. While we should all appreciate him for what he’s done for the squad over the years and how he handled the Trey Lance situation, the worst way to secure a position group from injury is to rely on the health of the guy who gets injured more so than anyone else. 

Shanahan has already vetoed any idea of Jimmy coming back, and—while the remark seemed blunt in the end-of-season press conference Shanahan definitely didn’t want to attend—I wouldn’t be shocked if that’s because Jimmy’s injury woes did us dirty one last time this post-season. Remember, when Jimmy went down we picked up Josh Johnson off the street as a backup, but we also added Jacob Eason to our practice squad. So why wasn’t Eason on the active roster for the NFC Championship game? My guess is because that would have meant we’d had to reserve four spots for the position. 

Since there was hope Jimmy G would be back in case of a deep playoff run, the Niners couldn’t keep him on IR, and IR decisions have to be finalized before the playoffs start. The Niners clearly thought that having Jimmy G as their third QB in the playoffs (or second, depending on how he rehabbed) was a better bet than bringing up Jacob Eason, a physically talented player but one who has only ten career pass attempts for a reason. This seemed reasonable at the time, especially since the large majority of teams only keep two quarterbacks on the active roster for any given game. Unfortunately for us, our quarterback injuries just hit different. 

Teddy Bridgewater: see: not signing someone who is outrageously injury prone.

Young Cast-Offs

Baker Mayfield: Laugh all you want, but I was super pro-Baker when he was free on waivers and we needed a backup for Purdy. However, the Rams swooped in first, and Baker played… fine. I would be absolutely shocked if he were to get a starting role or even a chance at competing for one unless a team brings in a raw rookie for him to battle with, but I’d assume he’s looking for something more than a third quarterback spot. And while it’s hard to evaluate what Baker is really like in a locker room, it’s hard to claim he’s a better film guy than the names on this list who have closer to ten years of experience in the league.

Sam D’Arnold: see: Baker Mayfield but with higher variance.

Drew Lock: I’ve honestly never hated the talent, and he’s still only 26, but—like the names above—he may be looking for a better path towards playing time than as our third-stringer, and he’s only been in the league a couple years.

Scrappy McScrappersons

Taylor Heinecke: He’s gritty, tough, and his teammates seem to love him, but he may not be the type of QB who would necessarily thrive in the Niners’ offense. His accuracy wavers. His turnovers come in waves. And while he wins, it’s rarely because he’s stringing together long drives via an efficient passing game. Pure on-field performance isn’t the only factor to consider in this acquisition, but there’s an argument he’s a better fit as a spot starter for a team than a clipboard guy leading film sessions. 

Jacoby Brissett: Like Heinecke, I think his career is still more in the “break glass in case of emergency” stage, and he may prefer another shot at a backup gig after starting 11 games last season. But I’ve always heard good things about his approach, and we could certainly do worse as a QB room tutor who we weren’t terrified of getting real snaps.

CJ Beathard/Nick Mullens/Nate Sudfeld: They’d know the playbook…

Cooper Rush: There was never a real QB controversy in Dallas (nor should there have been), but Rush did hold the team together and pilot them to a 4-1 record while Dak was out with injury last year. Now it is worth noting that he completed only 58% of his passes, never threw for over 235 yards, and fell to the Earth with a three-interception game in his final start against the Eagles, but, again, we’re looking for a third quarterback.

Old Heads

Tom Brady: He retired. Let’s not do this unless he starts waffling.

Andy Dalton: If we’re adding a veteran addition, we’re looking for a two-part role. First, the guy needs to be able to play in a pinch if (god fucking forbid) we need to play our third quarterback again. Second, they need to be good in the film room and with a clipboard because that’s the role we actually want them playing. Dalton makes sense on both levels, but more on the latter.

Matt Ryan: He’s a 37-year-old coming off the worst season of his career on a team in full rebuilding mode who isn’t even a free agent. And while that sentence may not get the people going, the likelihood of him getting a buyout from the Colts and saving Indy $17M seems highly likely. Ryan is remarkably durable, having started every game of the season in a dozen different years and—until he was benched last year—never fewer than 14 in a single season. More importantly, he’s won an MVP running Shanahan’s offense, and—while those days are long gone—he could be a great mentor for our two young signal callers. Finally—if he does get released—no part of his contract would count against our comp pick formula this off-season.

Case Keenum: A 34-year-old poor man’s Andy Dalton? Not the sexiest description but the price tag might be.

Whoever we add, I doubt we’ll be in a huge hurry to bring them in. This year’s quarterback market is flush with starter-ish types and there will likely be a bit of a wait-and-see approach from the second tier of QBs as they assess the market. Everyone’s going to want to take their shot at a No.1 or No.2 gig before resigning themselves to being a full-on clipboard quarterback—even on a team where those quarterbacks play more than anyone would like. But once the dust settles, I still think there will be plenty of viable options to help tutor Purdy and Lance.

Go Niners 👍🏈

Farewell, Coach Ryans

It seemed written in stone as early as September, but there was always the selfish hope that few enough jobs would be available or enough out-of-touch owners would hire Jeff Saturday for us to get one more year of DeMeco Ryans as our defensive coordinator. Alas—the man who was labeled a “future head coach” before he was even our DC was never long for the Niners, and he just signed a six-year contract to become the next head coach of the Houston Texans.

Congratulations to Coach Ryans. The promotion was well deserved, and he will be sorely missed. Ryans took a defense that was a top ten unit in back-to-back seasons under Robert Saleh, successfully maneuvered it through the landmine that was our cornerback room in 2021, then rode late season momentum and an improved secondary to a #1 defensive rating in every metric imaginable this year. Universally lauded for his brilliant scheming, innate leadership qualities, and the ability for him to routinely get his guys playing like their hair was on fire, Ryans played a big role in the emergence of Fred Warner, Dre Greenlaw, and Azeez Al-Shair. After crossing paths with Coach Shanahan while in his playing days in Houston, Ryans was one of Shanahan’s first hires, quickly ascending from a defensive quality control coach to an inside linebackers coach, and—after five short years with the Niners—is now off to lead his own team. While Houston is kind of a shitshow and their owner is the unlikeable real-life version of Tommy Boy, the team is loaded with draft capital and cap space and—with a few smart moves—can contend more quickly than people think (it helps that they reside in the AFC South).

Lastly, since DeMeco Ryans is the second minority member of our staff to get poached this off-season (Ran Carthon was named GM of the Titans) we’ve got more third-round comp picks incoming. While there’s a weird, kind-of-bullshit loophole in the rule that says we get three picks over three years rather than four over two (the standard rate is two comp picks over two years per hire), it’s still a massive deal for a team that finds itself light on early round picks next year. I believe we’re the only team to be affected by this loophole (and this is the second time we’ve run into it in two years) because of course we are, but oh well. Score one for us. Score one for finding absolute beast coaches by not being racist. Hooray!

As for what happens next, that’s what the rest of this write-up is for. Unlike in 2020 when Robert Saleh left and we had Ryans ready to take the mantle, there isn’t an obvious candidate to replace our departed defensive coordinator this time around. But given we were just the #1 ranked defense in football, have All-Pros on all three levels, and have sent two DCs to head coaching jobs in the past three years, one would think we won’t be short on potential candidates.

What We’re Looking For

First and foremost we’re looking for an excellent coach. This isn’t the olden days of the NFL where a team could get by with an average play-caller on one side of the ball. If you don’t believe me, who’s the worst OC or DC from this year’s final four? How about last year? Or the year before that? When the names that come across your head are the Bengals’ head coach Zac Taylor/Brian Callahan or three-time Super Bowl winner Steve Spagnuolo you know you can’t get by with a scrub on one side of the ball, and I doubt Shanahan—one of the game’s most analytical minds—has any interest in bringing in someone who isn’t buttoned up with their shit to the highest level.

Other important notes include:

• They can work with the wide 9 and Kris Kocurek: Our DL could shuffle through a lot of bodies this off-season but Kris Kocurek’s ability to milk plus play out of older veterans or discarded guys on rookie deals is one of our greatest advantages as an organization. When you can manufacture depth at one of the league’s most expensive and important positions despite massive turnover in your two deep every season, you have an innate competitive advantage, and we have that with Kocurek. Thus, it’s important that any new DC’s scheme meshes with our aggressive one-gapping front-of-preference.

• They run primarily zone: The greatest personnel advantage we have compared to anyone else in the league is the insane range of our linebackers. While Warner and Greenlaw can stick with guys in man coverage as well, we best utilize their talents allowing them to eliminate the middle of the field in a way that most teams—who minimize the importance and value of off-ball linebackers—cannot. Perhaps more importantly, our secondary—with the exception of Charvarius Ward—is much more suited for zone coverage. It would be a shame to waste a talent like Hufanga running down the field in man coverage on speedy slot receivers when he could be patrolling, reading patterns, and making plays on the ball.

• Clear communicators. Strong motivators: By now I think a lot of the fire that comes from our defense is pretty inherent in leaders like Fred Warner, so I’m not super worried about that. But the ability for our defenders to play aggressive and physical is often tied to their preparation and confidence in their assignments. Saleh and Ryans were excellent communicators. The next DC must be the same.

Familiar Faces

If we’re looking in-house, secondary coach Cory Undlin is the most likely candidate. The 51-year-old has been a defensive coach in the NFL for nearly twenty years and—since he’s been our defensive pass game specialist for the past two years—is already closer to a coordinator than the other defensive assistants. Our secondary has two coaches—and safeties coach Daniel Bullocks has a strong reputation—so, as always, it’s hard to give anyone accurate credit for anything, but our DBs have vastly improved over the past two seasons. While the outside corner position was a nightmare for the majority of 2021, Ambry Thomas emerged from the rubble as a solid option down the stretch and second-year players Deommodore Lenoir and Talanoa Hufanga showed explosive growth in 2022. 

Undlin actually was a defensive coordinator as recently as 2020, so he has experience in the role, but that was with a 5-11 Lions team that fired its head coach midway through the season. Unsurprisingly, the results were ugly:

2022 - DVOA - 32nd // Pass - 32nd // Rush - 27th // Pressure Rate: 32nd

As for any of these ratings, it’s best not to put all the blame or all of the credit on the defensive coordinator—especially when the head man gets fired mid-season—but that’s a tough resume when stacked up against the big names that we’re bringing in for interviews.

If there’s another in-house candidate it’s probably Johnny Holland, as he was the run game specialist under Saleh and has been with the team as a linebackers coach since Shanahan’s arrival. However, Holland had to step away from the team for parts of last year for multiple myeloma treatments. While the players love him and the linebackers in particular consider him family, who knows how interested Holland would even be in taking on greater stresses and responsibilities as a defensive coordinator? My guess would be he sticks around as our linebackers coach, which will be as important as ever with Ryans moving on.

While not an internal candidate, another guy we’d be familiar with is Joe Woods. He was the DB coach and passing game coordinator during our Super Bowl run, but he departed shortly thereafter for the defensive coordinator position under Kevin Stefanski in Cleveland. Largely credited for updating our coverage schemes on the back end, there was talk that the Niners tried to keep Woods by telling him he would have been the next man up when Saleh got a head gig. However, that’s only speculation—especially given there was already talk back then that Ryans was the likely heir apparent—and it’s TBD how interested the Niners would be in a reunion after three lackluster years as a DC in Cleveland.

2020 - DVOA - 23rd // Pass - 25th // Rush - 23rd // Pressure Rate - 24th
2021 - DVOA - 11th // Pass — 7th // Rush - 23rd // Pressure Rate - 17th
2022 - DVOA - 23rd // Pass - 16th // Rush - 28th // Pressure Rate - 27th

While the Cleveland Browns are still the Cleveland Browns, that’s still a defense with one of the top edge rushers in the game and decent talent along the defensive line and in the secondary. A reunion where Woods took over a spot in the secondary from a departed assistant may make some sense, but we wouldn’t exactly be buying high on him if we were to make him a DC.

cooking up ways to murder slant routes

The OGs

The most popular name that’s been getting circulated basically since DeMeco Ryans turned down a second head coach interview with the Vikings a year ago is our guy Vic Fangio, who is slated to meet with the Niners later this week. Niners fans know Fangio well, as he was the architect behind our nasty Harbaugh defenses, and—when he didn’t take a DC position last year—many stamped him as our DC-in-waiting. Currently serving as a defensive consultant for one of his many proteges in Philadelphia, Fangio’s defense is as sought after as Shanahan’s offense. His footprints are all across the league, and it’s not surprising why.

Here are the splits from Fangio’s last stint as a DC in Chicago (pressure rate wasn’t recorded before 2018)…

2015 - DVOA - 31st // Pass -  25th // Rush -  31st // Pressure Rate - n/a
2016 - DVOA - 22nd // Pass - 18th // Rush - 28th // Pressure Rate - n/a
2017 - DVOA - 14th // Pass - 15th // Rush - 18th // Pressure Rate - n/a
2018 - DVOA - 1st // Pass -  1st // Rush - 2nd // Pressure Rate - 12th

…and, just for fun, here are his splits from his time in San Francisco before that.

2011 - DVOA - 3rd // Pass - 8th // Rush - 1st
2012 - DVOA - 4th // Pass - 7th // Rush - 1st
2013 - DVOA - 13th // Pass - 11th // Rush - 15th
2014 - DVOA - 5th // Pass - 6th // Rush - 10th 

While there was a clear adjustment period in Chicago as he retooled their defensive personnel and shifted them from a 4-3 to a 3-4, the end results were classic Fangio. But that adjustment period is worth noting. Fangio loves the Niners. He’s visited team headquarters multiple times over the past year and—back in 2017—he wanted to leave Chicago to return to the bay under Shanahan, but the Bears blocked his request. Yes, “sources” claimed Fangio had committed to the Dolphins just days ago, but the idea of him flipping to the Niners is very much a possibility.

While Fangio’s interest in the position seems legitimate, the bigger question is how likely his scheme meshes with Nick Bosa and Kris Kocurek. Fangio’s defense has evolved in step with the passing attacks that now run rampant through the NFL, and it’s not impossible to pair his defense with more one-gap and wide nine principles (case in point: Eagles). Also, his defense—like all others—spends a large amount of time in nickel formations due to the decreasing size and increasing speed of offenses across the country, and nickel defenses typically differ less than base sets. But after our 2022 performance and the four-season run we’ve had on defense, we are definitely in “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” territory. I have to assume much of Shanahan’s conversation with Fangio will be as much about what Fangio would NOT change as what he would bring to the table.

But if that meeting goes well and there’s a healthy middle ground that Fangio and our current staff are excited about, this would be a home run hire. Fangio may not be an up-and-coming head coaching candidate or a minority candidate who—if he left for a head coaching job—would net us more of those sweet sweet third-round comp picks that we love so dearly, but there’s a very real world where Fangio just wants to settle in and coach bomb ass defenses until the end of time. And if that’s the case then, yeah, it would be pretty sick if he was on our team.

Another guy who we’re bringing in for an interview this week is Steve Wilks, long-time Ron Rivera protege, and—most recently—the Carolina Panthers’ interim head coach. Wilks was a finalist for the head coaching gig in Carolina, had near unanimous support for the gig from his locker room, and did an admirable job finishing 6-6 while piloting a team that started 1-5 and played sad quarterback roulette with Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, and PJ Walker this season. This is a team that was a DJ Moore helmet penalty away from a playoff berth this season, and while they—like everyone else in the NFC South—weren’t actually “good,” the job Wilks performed was far better than anything the Panthers ever could have imagined.

Wilks has bounced around for a while after his last shot as a head man saw him getting saddled with the worst OL in NFL history, a rookie Josh Rosen, and an impatient owner with an affinity for Big 12 coaches with losing records. Before that, he was a part of Ron Rivera’s golden era of Carolina Panthers football, coaching DBs for 5 years and being an assistant head coach for 2 before adding defensive coordinator to his resume in 2017. That season the Panthers had the following splits:

2017 - DVOA - 8th // Pass - 11th // Rush - 6th

Wilks had one more stop as an NFL DC in 2019, when he was with the Browns for one year…

2019 - DVOA - 24th // Pass - 18th // Rush - 30th // Pressure Rate - 12th

…before they cleaned house and brought in Stefanski. Not the most impressive numbers in Cleveland but—like with the Panthers this past season—it’s hard to blame the coordinators when the ship is sinking right before their eyes. This was, after all, the Freddie Kitchens year.

Speaking of former head coaches being put in tough spots due to no fault of their own, Gus Bradley is a name that may get connected to us if we don’t hire someone from the three outsiders that we’re known to be interviewing this week. Although our defense has greatly diverged from the Seattle 3 scheme that Bradley took over after Dan Quinn departed the Pacific Northwest, the former Jaguars head man did pilot a top ten defense as recently as 2018, and that was while working under then-Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn.

I’m not going to list the stats of all three of his years as DC with the Chargers (let’s just say, 2018 was the peak) because I think we secure one of the three dudes interviewing in the next few days. But when Lynn’s staff was cleaned out, Bradley hopped between the Raiders and—last year—the Colts, putting up very respectable numbers as DC considering they fired their coach mid-season and hired a dude with zero experience to take over.

2022 - DVOA - 14th // Pass - 18th // Rush - 16th // Pressure Rate - 15th

Again, I don’t expect Bradley to be the guy.

The Young Bloods

Consider this the “likely future head coach” section. These dudes are younger, less proven, and lack head coach experience, but they have been getting the kind of talk that DeMeco Ryans was getting just a year or so ago.

First up is the last of the three names who have been confirmed to be getting interviews this week and that’s Washington’s defensive backs coach Chris Harris. The seven-year NFL vet just wrapped up his third season as the Commanders’ DB coach after spending another four as the assistant DBs coach with the Chargers under Anthony Lynn. This is where my knowledge taps out as it’s basically impossible to evaluate a relatively new position coach working for teams that I couldn’t care less about, but—with requests to be interviewed by both the Titans and the Bears—he’s clearly a rising star in the coaching circuit who Lynn certainly vouched for.

That said, this would be a massive promotion for Harris, as the rumors connecting him to the Titans and Bears are for pass game coordinator/secondary coach roles, NOT a defensive coordinator position. That’s not to say this couldn’t be the right hire (after all, we are the team that promoted DeMeco Ryans to defensive coordinator within three years of his first coaching gig), but it would be a huge career jump with lots of question marks.

The final candidate that I’m cramming in here is a bit of a homer pick, but I also think he’d be a slam dunk hire. Ejiro Evero, who just wrapped up his first season as the Broncos’ DC and who took head coaching interviews with four of the five head coaching openings this off-season, was the DBs coach when I briefly played at UC Davis, and his work on the defensive side of the ball was the only bright spot in the horrid dumpster fire that was the Broncos’ 2022 season.

2022 - DVOA - 10th // Pass - 7th // Rush - 20th // Pressure Rate - 26th

For a big chunk of the season the Broncos were ranked in the top three of a lot of these categories, but eventually—as defenses with no support and fired coaches tend to do—the unit started to crack down the stretch. Even still, a top-10 mark in one of the better offensive divisions in football is nothing to take lightly and Evero has been getting rave reviews all season while helping Justin Simmons and Patrick Surtain to All-Pro honors despite his top two edge rushers going down early to injury or getting traded for picks. Evero came up through the coaching ranks under Monte Kiffin, Dom Capers, Wade Phillips, Raheem Morris, and—over five seasons as an assistant with the Niners—Vic Fangio, and he’s been lauded for his flexibility to fit his scheme to his personnel, his strong communication skills, and his ability to keep the defense focused in a season when the offense regularly turned the ball over and put up the fewest points in franchise history.

I have no idea if Sean Payton will attempt to retain Evero, if Evero will want to stick around after being passed up for the Denver head coach job, if the Broncos will even let him interview with other teams (they blocked the Falcons but that was before they hired Payton), or if the Niners have any interest, but I think he would be a great fit. And, FWIW, while Coach Evero wasn’t my position coach in school, I can vouch that he is incredibly smart and a super nice guy.

Time will tell what direction the Niners go with their next defensive coordinator, but given how much talent the incoming coach will have to work with, I wouldn’t be surprised if they make a hire within the next few days.

Go Niners 👍🏈

Niners Post-Mortem 2022

Same, bruh. Same

When every commentator and talking head starts parroting back the phrase “you have to give the Eagles credit,” you know that if one thing is certain, you do NOT have to give the Eagles credit. They showed up and did NOT lose the only two healthy quarterbacks on their roster. They showed up and did NOT get absolutely hosed by a trash officiating crew all game. But they DID gloat and talk shit all day—as if beating a team without a quarterback was somehow an impressive achievement—and then, as Trent Williams boiled over and summoned all challengers, they promptly decided they were NOT really about that action and backed away. V impressive. Much tough.

Welcome to an extra salty edition of Niners Nonsense, as this was possibly the most frustrating Niners game of my life. There’s not going to be much in-depth analysis of the atrocity of last weekend because it really comes down to this: you can’t win without a quarterback. Not figuratively. Literally. When you no longer have an operational quarterback on the roster, you’re not going to win.

Luck (or lack thereof). This was basically the definition of a game where “nothing goes your way,” and it just happened to occur against a team that is probably one of the luckiest that we’ve seen in quite some time. Luck is not a truly quantifiable stat, but I’m backing that claim by checking in on a stat that—in a sport as violent as football—is largely attributed to good (or bad) fortune: injuries. 

Every single member of the Eagles’ 53-man roster was healthy enough to play on Sunday. Not a single player held an injury designation. And of their original two-deep, only Derek Barnett—who went down in September and is a part of the team’s deepest position—wasn’t healthy enough for this game. In a conference championship weekend that was hugely affected by the Niners running out of quarterbacks, injuries to Mahomes, Kelce, and a handful of the Chiefs receivers, and a Bengals offensive line that just recently had to shuffle in three new starters, the Eagles being 100% healthy was an outrageous product of good fortune. 

Speaking of luck, let’s update the list of quarterbacks that the Eagles have beaten this year: Jared Goff (before he was good), Kirk Cousins, Trevor Lawrence (before he was good), Carson Wentz (long after he was good), Kyler Murray, Cooper Rush, Kenny Pickett, Davis Mills, the ghost of Matt Ryan, an injured Aaron Rodgers who didn’t finish the game, Ryan Tannehill, Justin Fields, Daniel Jones (3x), and N/A. Their losses were to Andy Dalton, Taylor Heinecke, and Dak Prescott. This team is about to go to the Super Bowl after beating a sixth-seeded Giants team that finished the season 2-5-1 and a team with no quarterbacks.

If that’s not luck, I don’t know what is.

They are who we thought they were… One of the most frustrating elements about this game was the fact that it appeared that our coaching staff came in with a superior game plan, but the quarterback injuries prevented us from ever taking advantage. 

It’s impossible to say what our offense would have looked like when our quarterback went down six plays into our first drive, but it’s worth noting that we’d already picked up two relatively easy first downs and had made it to midfield prior to Brock Purdy’s injury. Even when Josh Johnson was thrown in (and he looked terrible), our offense was still springing dudes open—particularly in the second level across the middle of the field. But Johnson—as we probably should have expected given he’s a fourth-string journeyman who we picked up off the street two months ago—just couldn’t get them the ball. 

Despite a complete inability to throw the ball after the first series, there were seams on the ground. Christian McCaffrey picked up 84 yards rushing on 15 carries for a healthy 5.6 average—numbers that you can only assume would have improved if the Eagles weren’t allowed to send all 11 men at the running game for an entire half of football. Again, it wasn’t a big enough sample size to see what the Niners had planned on offense, but the early returns were quite promising before our season dissolved behind a torn UCL. 

On defense DeMeco Ryans and his staff had a strong enough game plan to win this contest—effectively reverse-engineering what the Eagles do on offense and punishing them for their simplicity. But as the game went on and the defense’s execution wavered with exhaustion, sloppy penalties, and just plain shitty penalties, the Eagles were able to take advantage in a quantity-over-quality approach.  

The Eagles may have scored on the first drive but nearly half of their yardage on that drive was due to the 29-yard fourth-down catch that wasn’t actually a catch. That non-completion would wind up Jalen Hurts’ only deep ball of the game. With a game plan that involved us hemming Hurts into the pocket, making him beat us with his arm, and keying the limited route combinations that the Eagles run, we successfully eliminated that entire facet of their offense. Hurts finished 15-of-25 for 121 yards on a 4.8 yards per attempt average—his worst passing performance of the season. Take out that deep ball that wasn’t a deep ball and he threw for 92(!) yards. While I have enough faith in Hurts’ approach to the game and work ethic to believe he very well may develop into the passer that his 2022 statistics would indicate he already is, we basically pantsed this passing attack and showed massive flaws in its competency level and long-term structure. Are there any teams left in the bracket that are talented enough on defense to watch this film and take advantage? TBD. But a massive Hurts extension is coming soon, which means the Eagles won’t be able to skirt by on talent alone. They’ll need to evolve their offense heading into next year or else they may risk hitting a Goff-Rams wall.

As a runner, Hurts did find some room on the ground… once we were already down three touchdowns. Even that success—in a desperate attempt to make it sound like Hurts had more to do with this win than he did—was overstated by the announcers. He finished with 39 yards on 11 carries. Not exactly world-beating numbers. 

The most successful element of the Eagles’ offense was clearly their running game as a whole, but even that should be taken with a massive grain of salt. The Eagles carried the ball 44 times for 148 yards on 3.4 yards per carry. They wore us down with quantity and found some nice seams on the backside cutbacks, but they were greatly aided not only by our lack of a quarterback to keep our offense on the field but by how each of their offensive drives was extended—sometimes multiple times—by trash penalties.

…and we let em off the hook. The officiating crew dominated us on defense. Yes, we had some dumb fouls. But it’s worth noting that—of the Eagles’ five scoring drives—four included first downs due to penalty and the only one that didn’t was the drive that had the fourth down “completion” that clearly wasn’t a catch. Massive assist from the zebras in this one, and while the final score was well out of reach, the way each bad call went against us in pivotal moments of the game was comical.  

On the day, the Eagles gained 6 first downs through the air (5, if you don’t include the non-catch) and 7 first downs via penalty. Three of those penalties—the Jimmie Ward three-yard “pass interference” on third-and-7, the roughing the kicker that should have been—by definition—running into the kicker because it was contact on his kicking leg, not his plant leg, and the Dre Greenlaw unnecessary roughness when he was trying to punch out the ball before the whistle was blown—gave the Eagles a new set of downs after they had already been stopped on either third or fourth down. Even if we gift the Eagles a long field goal conversion regardless of Greenlaw’s penalties, those flags led directly to 14 points. 

In a game where we didn’t need any more obstacles, the refs repeated an absolutely pathetic trend that continued all the way to the final whistle of the afternoon game—reacting to crowd noise from a home fanbase because you’re too scared to do your job correctly. I wouldn’t work in crane lifts if I was afraid of heights. Maybe find another vocation if you don’t have the guts to go against the drunken dude screaming from row eleven. That’s not actually Randall Cunningham yelling in your ear, that’s Big Ted from the warehouse who’s no longer allowed within a hundred feet of schools or Wawas.

They should teach this in training: If a play is over and you haven’t thrown a flag, but—after hearing noise from the crowd—you think you should, treat it like your dick and keep it in your pants. Cause no one wants to see that shit.

Boston called, they want their “incorrigible people as a personality” back

Am I gonna have to root for the fucking Chiefs? Nick Sirianni has done a great job with this football team, but that dude is skyrocketing up the NFL’s “punchable face” power rankings. Raise your hand if you don’t know a convicted felon who looks just like him. An uncle who’s not allowed to Thanksgiving anymore? Did they pick him out of the local drunk tank or did an AI create him from aggregate off of every henchman in a Scorsese knock-off whose one line is calling someone a “broad” or a racial slur? 

Word of advice: if anyone ever describes a man as someone who “embodies their city” and that city is Philadelphia, make sure not to let that man date your sister, watch your dog, or operate any kind of heavy machinery without supervision. If Sirianni doesn’t have “frat bro with a psychosexual affinity for hazing who blacks out and breaks down crying twice a week” energy, I don’t know who does.

But of course, since he coaches for a team whose city’s own nickname is a play on how everyone in that city is a raging asshole, get ready for two weeks of puff pieces about how being a dick is somehow synonymous with charm. I’m sure Sirianni isn’t as bad as the cartoon character he seems to be, but I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a thousand times: there is no positive correlation between being a dick and having success. If you’re great at something, it’s not cause you’re a dick. You just like being a dick.

Cheesesteaks are cool tho. 

Until next time. This wasn’t a game where we ran out of steam. Or where our quarterback shelled up. Or where—like last year—we ran out of bodies and couldn’t overcome a talent deficit. It was just terrible, terrible luck on all fronts. And it’s only made worse by the fact that I absolutely thought we would have won that game and—for the second year in a row—felt we would have had a good matchup in the Super Bowl. Last year we were the hottest team by the end of the season, but not the best. This year, there was a legitimate claim that we were both. This was another lost opportunity for a Super Bowl title, and championship windows are notorious for being smaller than anyone expects. That’s why this game stings the way it does.

On the bright side, we’ve been to three of the past four NFC championships, the core of our team is strong (and mostly young), and our two-deep at quarterback is about to cost 1/4 to 1/5th of the price of upcoming contracts for Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, etc. The impending departure of DeMeco Ryans will hurt, and there’s lots of roster maneuvering and shuffling to be had, but we’re not going anywhere. 

I’m well aware that patience is harder to preach in the game of football than in any other sport. The short careers, the single elimination playoffs, the way games, seasons, and sometimes franchises seem to hinge on one bad bounce, bad play, or bad call—everything about the sport hammers home the importance of the now. But the lessons of the past help shape the future. They make up the foundation upon which great teams are built. After every setback, this team and this locker room have come back hungrier and stronger. Here’s hoping this disappointment—like the many before it—fuels this team for greater things to come and that—when our luck finally matches our ability—we’ll be prepared to seize the moment.

I, for one, believe that will be the case. 

Go Niners 👍🏈

NFC Championship Preview @ Philadelphia

Date: Sunday, 1/29
Time: 12:00 PT for some reason
Location: Lincoln Financial Field (where they threw snowballs at Santa Claus)
Opponent: Philadelphia Eagles

At 14-3 (13-1 with their starting QB), the Philadelphia Eagles are the league’s winningest team. With a +133 point differential and no losses by greater than ten points, they’re the league’s most consistent team. And with six first- or second-team All-Pros and an MVP finalist at quarterback, they’re the league’s most talented team. But it’s worth noting how they got here.

The Eagles are one of the rare organizations who had a wide-open championship window, but—other than one special post-season—flubbed it enough to get their Super Bowl-winning coach fired, then rebuilt their coaching staff and roster and created a second championship window—all in the span of five short years. 

Head coach Nick Sirianni—whose “I got a bone to pick” press conferences, sideline demeanor (I had to pause an All-22 clip after seeing him yelling at an opposing player), and hilarious alleged interactions with civilians are as Philly as it gets—deserves a ton of credit for rejuvenating the Eagles. So does his excellent coaching staff. But GM Howie Roseman deserves a shoutout as well.

Roseman, who was both the architect of the Eagles’ Super Bowl run and the primary hand behind a slew of personnel follies that prevented them from returning to the promised land, easily could have been canned alongside Doug Pederson in 2020. In fact, I thought he should have been. But Roseman—who is also as Philly as it gets—fully accepted his many mistakes and—in the two years since—has moved with incredible speed to rectify them.

Months after Nick Foles led them to a Super Bowl, Carson Wentz was anointed with a massive contract as the next sovereign king of Philadelphia—only for it to turn out that he was a weirdo who nobody really liked, who killed a bunch of ducks (way way too many ducks), and whose MVP-caliber season was a mirage of statistically unrepeatable variance. So Roseman drafted Jalen Hurts, despite this openly affecting Wentz’s play and his relationship with the organization, and—two years after Wentz left—Hurts is an MVP front-runner.

The Eagles were probably the only team (other than the Cardinals lol) who did NOT get a stud wideout from the 2019 and 2020 drafts, as Roseman drafted JJ Arcega-Whiteside over guys like DK Metcalf, Terry McLaurin, and Diontae Johnson, then tried to fix that mistake a year later by selecting Jalen Reagor one pick before Justin Jefferson and with guys like Brandon Aiyuk, Michael Pittman Jr., and Tee Higgins still on the board. Roseman jettisoned both the wideouts he drafted then traded a first- and third-round pick for AJ Brown to pair with 2021 first-rounder DeVonta Smith. Now, Brown and Smith make up one of the best wide receiver pairs in the league.

In the post-Malcolm Jenkins era, Philly played musical chairs in the secondary in hopes of patching over a weakness at a key position. In the past two years, Roseman has traded for Darius Slay, signed James Bradberry from the rival Giants, and sent two third-day picks to the Saints for nickel pest Chauncey Gardner-Johnson to form one of the best cornerback trios in the country. 

These massive positional overhauls, combined with the continued bolstering of the core of their original championship window (elite offensive and defensive lines) with draft picks (Landon Dickerson, Jordan Davis) and savvy veteran adds (sack-leader Hasson Reddick, Ndamukong Suh, Linval Joseph) has led to an Eagles team that is top-to-bottom as good as any in the country. 

OFFENSE

Offense DVOA: 3rd
Weighted: 6th 
Pass: 9th
Run: 1st

The league’s second-highest-scoring offense is back at full strength with the return of MVP finalist Jalen Hurts and First-team All-Pro right tackle Lane Johnson. This unit put up 400+ yards of offense in a whopping 11 of 18 games (including last weekend) and boasts—by DVOA—the NFL’s top rushing attack. According to Football Outsiders, the Eagles’ rushing attack is nearly 50% better than second-best and is as valuable as the league’s #2 and #7 rushing attacks combined.

When Jalen Hurts has been healthy, the Eagles have rushed for upwards of 100 yards in 13-of-16 games, over 200 yards five(!) times, and over 300 yards(!!) once. These guys like to run and everything they do stems from that. But that doesn’t mean their passing attack is lacking. In two of the three games the Eagles didn’t eclipse 100 yards rushing, they threw for upwards of 300.

Fun stuff.

Beauty in simplicity. I’ve always believed that in order to field a championship-caliber offense in today’s NFL you have to have a certain level of complexity in your scheme. The league is too smart and too good and when defenses are given two weeks to prepare (like for the Super Bowl), offenses that are too simple in their approach (2018 Rams, 2015 Panthers) tend to have their tendencies and weak spots exploited. 

But the Eagles hope to have found somewhat of a loophole in this argument by developing an offense that employs largely simple plays and concepts but with enough variety and versatility that it has answers for whatever defenses throw at it. In doing so, they’ve created an offense that is simple in its plays but multiple in the many ways it can attack defenses that try to take away those plays. They have embraced an identity of flexibility.

At their core, the Eagles want to predict and assess what defenses are trying to take away from them then pivot to something else that’s more open. While that can be said of many good offenses (and, on some level, any good offense), the Eagles differ in that their entire playbook is built like a closed-loop rock-paper-scissors game—with relatively simple answers to different fronts and coverages—and they have the utmost confidence and commitment in deploying heavy doses of any one of their answers if the moment calls for it. 

But ultimately, they want to run the ball.

It’s basically the triple option. Other than incredible talent across the board, the Eagles’ option run game has been so successful because—unlike a team that dabbles in the zone read here and there—their zone reads are foundational to their playbook and designed like the 2022 equivalent of a triple option.

The traditional triple option has (surprise) three options: the dive to the fullback, the QB keep, and the pitch to a tailback outside. While the Eagles don’t use a fullback and run their scheme mostly out of the gun, their “triple option” attacks defenses in a similar way to the traditional one—by presenting a give option up the middle, a QB keep option off-tackle, and an outside option that replaces the tailback pitch.

In the original shotgun zone-read system, that third “pitch” option was the bubble screen. With time—and a shift to the NFL—that bubble screen has largely been replaced by RPOs, which aim to stress alley defenders on quick hitters if they commit to the run. The Eagles love RPOs but those are largely eliminated with tight man coverage, so they’ve leaned heavily on having a tight end or wideout come in motion (or start in tight and delay release) before doing a quick shoot route to the flat. This serves the same purpose as the bubble screen or the traditional tailback pitch—it presents a third option on any given play that stresses defenses laterally. And considering the Eagles’ have two 1,000-yard receivers and one of the better tight ends in the game running this shoot route, it’s proven to be quite effective.

This variation of the triple option also lets the Eagles build their option looks directly into their play-action bootleg game, which relies heavily on sail route combinations (streek-deep out-flood). Since a flood is basically the same as a shoot, teams may think they’re guarding the Eagles’ triple option, but once they realize it’s actually a play-action pass, the Eagles have already completed the deep out over their head.

Reactive but Rugged. In the absolute simplest of terms, this is what the Eagles would like to do versus what they will likely do depending on the looks they get. 

• What they would like to do… Run the ball, run zone read, and generate easy sideline reads and deep shots off of play action.

• If shown one-high safety man coverage… Run the ball, run zone read with the weird shoot thing, and rely on crossers and deep jump balls to your stud wideouts.

• If shown one-high safety zone coverage… Run the ball, run zone read with RPOs, and challenge alley defenders with sail routes and in-breakers.

• If shown two-high safeties… Run the ball and run zone read.

This isn’t to say the Eagles can’t just sit back and throw the ball when teams leave that wide open, but they want to run the ball. That makes sense given they have the best offensive line in football—with no real weak spots across the front five—a talented backfield, and one of the best running quarterbacks in the NFL.

Given their heavy heavy use of option runs and option looks, the Eagles typically have a numbers advantage on the ground. Against any two-high shell, that number advantage is multiplied. If you want to play one-high and start sending edge guys to stop the option, they’ll RPO you to death and make your second-level defenders run sideline-to-sideline chasing deep outs from the slot. If you play man, they have two dudes out wide who can win on all three levels, one of the league’s top two-way tight ends, and a quarterback who can gobble up yardage on the ground when defenders turn and chase their men downfield.

Again, this is an oversimplified version of the Eagles offense, but the strength of the scheme isn’t that they catch you by surprise, it’s that they already have answers baked into what they do best (and those answers happen to be the thing that they’re “second-best” at).

summoning Shooter

Definitely Not Carson Wentz. Equally as impressive as their offensive balance is the fact that the Eagles have shaped their entire system around the strengths of their personnel while hiding their weaknesses. That starts at quarterback, where third-year signal-caller Jalen Hurts is likely to be the winner or runner-up for the MVP this year.

Not since Lamar Jackson’s breakout year with the Ravens have I seen a team so fully commit their scheme to maximizing a young quarterback’s talents, but—unlike the Ravens’ scheme—the Eagles’ system also seems poised to let their young quarterback grow to his full potential as a passer. 

Hurts doesn’t have a great arm—he turfs some balls and doesn’t have crazy zip—and his accuracy is improving but wavers at times. But he’s an elite-level runner with tremendous instincts in the open field, an intelligent student of the game, and he’s shown the fastidiousness and work ethic-bordering-on-psychopathy that is often required of elite quarterbacks. 

The Eagles offense heavily features Hurts’ legs, both in the option game, on designed runs, and with a heaping dose of bootlegs. Whereas less athletic quarterbacks are often taught to get more depth on their bootlegs—with the hope that as long as they get outside the end they’ll have enough time and space to throw—Hurts often sprints laterally to get width on his bootlegs—forcing shallow defenders on the boundary to either commit to him as a run threat or guard the receiver who is almost certainly shooting to the flat or crossing on a shallow from the backside. They want to put you in a run-pass bind in as many ways as possible.

In his first two seasons, Hurts famously just did not throw the ball over the middle. While he’s improved in that area, it’s still not a strength, and the Eagles—whether it’s on bootlegs or not—throw mostly levels (sails, so many sails) and high-low concepts outside the hashes. While I don’t want to knock him for something he’s not asked to do much, my guess would be that Hurts is a better vertical processor than a horizontal one, thriving on passes like sails, high-lows, and shallow-digs versus full-field progressions that make him read left to right or vice versa. Thus, the Eagles have built mostly passing concepts where the side of the formation that Hurts is throwing to is determined by defensive alignment, relying on his penchant for film study and knack for pre-snap diagnoses to effectively split the field in half for him post-snap.

Pessimists may say these facts—and the unreal talent surrounding him—make Hurts a “system quarterback,” but that’s massively shortchanging both him and the Eagles coaching staff for creating such a well-balanced and explosive offense.

DEFENSIVE KEYS

Don’t let them do that thing they’re the best at. Obviously, stopping the run is easier said than done against a team that spams option runs and has the top offensive line and rushing attack in the country, but the one major constant of this Eagles offense is that if you can’t stop the run, they won’t stop running. However, if you get them into third-and-mediums and third-and-longs—where play action and RPOs are less effective—their playbook shrinks considerably. 

This will be the biggest test yet for our front seven and making sure we are decisive and sound in our option responsibilities, rush lanes, and run fits, will be a constant point of emphasis throughout this week. This shouldn’t be a “sell out to stop the run and deal with the pass later” approach. The Eagles are too explosive through the air for that strategy to be successful. But if we can slow their running game without committing more bodies to the box or abandoning our pass coverage responsibilities, then we’ve got an excellent chance at slowing down what can otherwise seem like an unstoppable train.

That means stopping Hurts on scrambles as well, which has been an issue for us over the years. Last year, in what was a physical defensive battle, a green Hurts was largely ineffective through the air, but he led all rushers with 82 yards and a score on ten carries. That’s not something we can let happen again.

Bosa Breakout? While the term “breakout” may not apply for the odds-on favorite to win DPOTY, Bosa has had only one QB hit and zero sacks in the past two games. Much, if not all, of that is due to teams game-planning and devoting extra attention to him. In fact, in this game, I would assume he’s made the unblocked read key more often than not.

But while the Eagles’ OL is the best in the business if they have a weakness it’s in the pass pro of left tackle Jordan Mailata. Due to that, I’d expect heavy snaps from Bosa opposite Mailata and hopefully he can bust out of his “slump” in a big way.

Win the alleys. Our defense may be built from our defensive line out—and they’ll need to win some battles at the point of attack for us to have success against this offense—but our outrageously fast linebackers are what makes our defense truly unique. The Eagles rely heavily on option runs and RPOs against zone coverage—which we run more than almost anyone in the country—so whether it’s disguising our fronts and slow-playing mesh points on options and RPOs to muddy the reads, preventing small gains from becoming big ones on the ground through proper angles and strong tackling, or taking away large swaths of ground in the passing game, our linebackers will be paramount to our success on Sunday. 

Last weekend, Dre Greenlaw and Fred Warner’s ability to cover slot receivers deep down the field allowed us to disguise coverages and blitzes in a way that few—if any—other teams are capable of doing. This week, Ryans will once again need to gamble at times with matchups that—on paper—are less than ideal, and Greenlaw and Warner’s unique skillset will once again be relied upon to minimize the potential downside when we roll the dice. Against an offense that is capable of attacking so many different fronts and coverages, the added flexibility and range from our linebackers will likely be a major factor in our defense’s performance. 

Go’s and Gooses. Due in part to a few blown coverages and losses on jump balls down the stretch run, the Niners’ have one giant statistical weakness on their defense, and that is that their deep ball defense is bottom ten in both DVOA and EPA ratings. Expect the Eagles to test that weakness early and often with their dynamic duo of wideouts—both of whom excel at coming down with deep balls and generating big plays down the field. But don’t sleep on Quez Watkins. The Eagles’ third receiver (but fourth option at best) is typically used to stretch the field vertically—often in the slot—with his 4.3 speed. I’d guess the Eagles take at least one shot with him, whether that’s targeting a safety out of the slot or out wide in one-on-one coverage if Philly slides Brown or Smith inside for a play or two. 

The Niners’ other statistical weakness is that they’re 31st in the league on third-and-short defense. Against a team that runs the ball so well, has one of the league’s top option attacks, and loves loves loves the QB sneak (which they often do out of a formation that almost looks like a kneel down), stepping up on third- and fourth-and-short could prove pivotal in this matchup. 

Force intermediate dropback passing. The Eagles’ strength in the running game and top marks in short-yardage situations are enough reason to emphasize keeping them out of third-and-shorts. But if we can force them into downs and distances where RPOs and quick game aren’t viable, we start to push them into an intermediate passing game that doesn’t play to their strengths.

We’ve talked about how Hurts has improved targeting the middle of the field, but it’s still not a strong suit, and it says plenty that it’s an area of the field that they largely avoid outside of RPOs, slants, and the occasional shallow-dig. While his work ethic and astronomical improvement over his short NFL career suggest that he’s likely only getting started, at the moment I think he’s a better preparer and pre-snap guy than he is a fast processor. To me, that’s one of the reasons why they bootleg him so often, throw so many sail and high-low concepts, and often split the field. And that’s likely why they still avoid the middle of the field in true dropback game. At the moment, going quickly through horizontal progressions just isn’t one of his strengths, and—as stated before—they want to cater to their quarterback’s strengths.

But the Eagles’ commitment to (and avoidance of) certain concepts has led to some odd statistical marks, which (hopefully) are markings of potential weaknesses. Hurts has spent all season eviscerating defenses that try to simplify option responsibilities and take away RPOs by playing man coverage, but his EPA/dropback falls from third overall to 21st when facing zone looks. And that includes the easy yardage he’s gotten off the quick screens with numbers and RPOs that the Eagles deploy against zone looks. Against four or fewer rushers, Hurts is 5th in EPA/dropback, but against five or more that drops to 19th. And against zone coverage with five or more rushers? He ranks 32nd out of 33 qualifying passers.

I’m not saying we immediately become the throwback zone blitz-crazy Steelers. But zone coverage is what we do best and what we do most of the time and under Ryans we’ve blitzed at a rate that’s about league average. So it’s in our wheelhouse. If we can’t get home with four then pairing zone coverages with the occasional well-timed blitz could be crucial to get the Eagles off the field. But in order for that to be an option, we have to force them into traditional dropback passes.

Reverse engineering? There’s one other thing that may not even be a thing, so I hesitate to even bring it up, but if anyone’s gonna figure it out it would be DeMeco Ryans (or possibly a future Super Bowl opponent because they’d have two weeks to study film).

The Eagles offense is built like a triple option. It’s reactive to what the defense does in order to generate the best possible look. In the triple option, if the end stays home, the fullback gets a dive up the gut. If the end crashes down on the fullback, the quarterback pulls it and runs. And if the end crashes down on the fullback and the alley defender hits the quarterback, the QB pitches it to the tailback out wide.

Proponents of the option claim that the option is never wrong. How could it be with all those reactive elements based on its read keys? But the option in all of its forms has one very distinct weakness. When other people know those same read keys, they can basically force you to do what they want. They end up calling your plays.

Take for example a zone read with Lamar Jackson (with knees) at quarterback and Practice Squad Joe who runs a 5.3 forty at tailback. In theory, option plays allow Practice Squad Joe to run against better numbers while Lamar can pull whenever his read key tells him to and scramble for a big gain. But in practice, the defense knows the read key and just forces the tailback to get the ball every play. And then your best player winds up with zero carries.

This is a little bit like what we talked about last year against the Packers. Rodgers and Adams feasted off of a mental link that operated outside of the playbook. They both knew what to do and how to adjust against each alignment and depth they saw, and the result was a bevy of fades, nine routes, and slants—regardless of what play was called. So in that divisional matchup, the Niners—knowing exactly what Rodgers and Adams were keying—decided to regularly show one look then rotate into something else on the snap. They knew that Adams against press man would get a fade. So they had a safety lineup in the box to goad the fade, then sprint over the top to double Adams at the snap. They knew when Adams was doubled opposite trips Rodgers would go the other way. So they showed a double then rotated off it at the snap to effectively force Rodgers to ignore his best receiver.

I’m not saying this is the case with the Eagles offense. The schemes they draw up and the way that they make decisions are considerably more complicated than a triple option or a dynamic forged over the years between an elite quarterback and receiver. But I am saying that a scheme that relies on simple answers against specific looks runs some risk of a savvy defensive coordinator—with a full season of film to determine tendencies—showing one look pre-snap, predicting the counterattack, then rotating into a trap once the ball is snapped.

Would be sick.

lol

DEFENSE

Defense DVOA: 6th
Weighted: 9th
Pass: 1st
Run: 21st

Spent a ton more time on the Eagles’ offense because (1) I am busy and running late on this post and (2) this defense is very familiar, but make no mistake, the Eagles D is just as loaded as talent as its offense.

While DC Jonathan Gannon came with Sirriani from the Colts he is actually a Vic Fangio protege. Since Fangio probably has his fingerprints on as many defenses across the league as Shanahan does on offenses, this is a scheme that we’re well familiar with. They are a 3-4 base with a ton of split safety looks who can pressure with four or more (middle of the pack in blitzing). They a more varied in their man vs pattern matching zone coverages than many Fangio schemes, but—overall—they’re not super tricky.

They’re just supremely talented and well-coached.

Pass Rush. First things first, we gotta talk about the Eagles’ defensive line. It’s long been a strength of the franchise, and while this unit may not quite reach the level of singular talents as their Super Bowl-winning squad, it’s hard to imagine this isn’t their deepest crop over.

The Eagles totaled 70(!) sacks this season, which is 15 more than second-best in the league, and two shy of the all-time record set by the 1984 Chicago Bears (in one less game). Their overall pressure percentage is a fraction shy of the best in the country (literally, one-tenth of a percent less than the Cowboys’ mark). They have FOUR players with double-digit sacks, which maybe has happened before but—if it did—I can’t remember when. Their rotation genuinely goes eight-deep with real guys. Not just randoms. Real guys. And seeing as this is a Fangio scheme and they will certainly be keying our run game, that means we’re likely to see a ton of five-man fronts.

Like any Fangio scheme, these guys can line up around the line, stunt, and play games, but the Eagles honestly just are so deep along the d-line that much of their pass rush success relies on them trotting dudes out, pulling them before they’re tired, then trotting out another unit that’s nearly as strong.

Island life. While much of the Eagles’ #1 pass defense metric can be credited to their relentless pass rush, the secondary shouldn’t be slept on. The Fangio scheme is notoriously friendly on cornerbacks (after all, we started Tarrell Brown and Carlos Rogers and were tops in the league) but the Eagles’ duo of Darius Slay and James Bradberry have done plenty well for themselves in man coverage as well. While their play has dropped off a tiny bit since the early portion of the season—when they were 1 and 2 amongst cornerbacks in nearly every metric imaginable—they’re still arguably the best cornerback duo in the country and they make it very difficult to throw outside against the Eagles.

Chauncey Gardner-Johnson will man either the free safety spot or nickel corner (depending on Avonte Maddox’s health) and is—per usual—a disruptive force in playing the ball (his six interceptions lead the team) and playing his way into the mind of opponents. Since our team is devoid of diva receivers, all of our guys block, and he’ll be lined up over George Kittle half the time, I’m not worried about how much he talks, but Vegas odds are high that CGJ and Jauan Jennings will have words in this game.

Their safeties are very well protected in this scheme, but they also don’t seem like liabilities. From what I’ve seen, they perform their roles well and can hold up enough in man coverage to let them ditch zone coverages more than most Fangio disciples.

But what about that run defense, hmmmm? Based on their DVOA rating and the general narrative around this team, the obvious potential weakness in this defense would be its play against the run, but I don’t think their issues are as pronounced as their ratings may imply.

They had significant issues against the run in the first half of the season, but—after nose tackle Jordan Davis went down to injury—they re-stocked the cupboard with Suh and Linval Joseph. On the basis of EPA/play, their run defense has actually been one of the best in the league since the addition of Joseph, and—now that Davis is also back healthy—it’s not the glaring weakness that it may look like on paper.

OFFENSIVE KEYS

But yeah, we still gotta pound that rock. Despite what I just said… we should definitely run the ball in this game. We’ve faced multiple Fangio defenses this season (the Rams and Chargers being two of them) and we know that their goal is to take away the big play through the air, rally up to shorter passes, and force you to manufacture long drives down the field to score. Luckily, long drives with plenty of runs is kinda our thing.

Granted, the Fangio defense and its five-man fronts have caused issues for many a Shanahan system in the past. This is very much a game where we have to stay balanced in order to keep the run game viable. That may mean we have to open things up a bit early before settling into the run game late. Or it could mean we need to keep things balanced from the jump with a good collection of chunk plays and intermediate routes. But getting the defense to a point where we can rack up major carries would be a big win for us.

I do think we have a chance to get outside on this defense. When the two big-time additions that moved your run defense from one of the league’s worst to one of its best are massive waiver wire DTs in their mid-30s, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say they’re not going to be running sideline-to-sideline on you for forty snaps a game. Both the Cowboys and the Packers seemed to find some holes in the Eagles’ run defense on outside zone looks—they just didn’t always have the outside blocking or execution to fully capitalize. I have more faith in our receivers as blockers, and if we can find some success on outside runs, that could open up cutback lanes. After all, if the benefit of putting five and six dudes on the LOS is to fill every gap, the innate drawback is that you oftentimes only have a single linebacker on the second level if a running back breaks through, and—even though I really like TJ Edwards—that’s a lot for any one linebacker to handle.

This is a game where successful incremental gains are going to be our best way to move the ball down the field. How better to do that than with a successful run game?

Play the slots. My guess based on their personnel and the success the Cowboys just had against us with heavy man coverage is that the Eagles are going to come out with more press-man than usual. In doing so they’ll hope to nullify as much misdirection as possible, keep guys tight on receivers to prevent YAC yards, mess up timing in our quick-to-intermediate passing game, and—in doing so—let their defensive line get after Purdy.

Last week, the Cowboys did just that—largely eliminating our outside receivers with blanket coverage—and pressuring Purdy on 16 out of 33 dropbacks. When pressured, he completed only 4-of-12 for 55 yards and two sacks. If the Eagles aim to replicate that scheme, we may pivot to attacking them from the slots.

Other than the occasional double move or play action shot play against an overzealous corner, I’d guess our plan is to largely avoid work outside the hashes and instead focus on the interior, where I think—if you can block it—there is space to be had, particularly on digs and second level balls between the hashes. While Kittle and CMC naturally cause problems with matchups on linebackers and safeties, it will be interesting to see if Shanahan devises more ways to get his outside receivers—in particular Deebo—off of outside man coverage and into the middle of the field via motion, formations, personnel shuffling, etc.

A side of beef. Our unique set of skill players and our affinity for 21 personnel will be something to watch in this matchup. While the Eagles have performed well against two-back sets, it’s not something they’ve seen a ton of throughout the season, and I’d expect us to try and use our swiss army knife skill players to hunt for matchups on the ground as much as through the air.

The Eagles have done a good job of eliminating YAC yards (the natural funneling system of two-high looks helps in that regard) and—if they go man coverage—they’re certain to hope that they can deny passes and tackle our ballcarriers before they get going. But I don’t know how well these DBs will hold up when they’re repeatedly put in compromising positions in the run game. The Eagles have missed some tackles this year, and Shanahan is creative enough to mix and match his personnel to pull linebackers out of the box and/or use motion and closed formations to force cornerbacks to play the role of play-side fill defender or back-side pursuit against the cutback.

If we can start beating on some DBs in the run game, the Eagles will need to make a decision about whether or not they have to match our physicality with size. And if they start subbing out nickels for seldom-used additional linebackers or playing coverages and fronts that protect their corners more in the run game, that opens up space for us through the air.

To sling or not to sling. It’ll be interesting to see what Shanahan’s confidence level is in both Purdy and our passing attack against a historically productive pass rush and the #1-ranked passing defense in the country. After all, this is a pass defense that has allowed upwards of 200 passing yards only five times on the season and upwards of 300 only once (to the Cowboys in December).

The Eagles are deep enough along the DL that they could feasibly start three tackle-like bodies along the interior, load the LOS with five or six, and dare Purdy to pass while they bluff and disguise who on that line is dropping back into coverage to try and rob slant routes. Just like against the Rams last year, they could sell out completely and quite literally force the Niners to pass. If that’s the case, don’t be shocked to see the Niners motion into some empty sets to force the Eagles’ bigger players to run more while hoping to create quick passing lanes for Purdy before the rush gets home. Again, that will depend on how heavily the Eagles key the run and how confident our staff is in throwing on early downs.

Regardless of how we get there, if we can keep things balanced and keep Purdy upright, there will be openings through the air, and our young QB will have to take advantage. The name of the game isn’t volume, it’s efficiency, and as scary as the Eagles’ pass defense may appear, elite QBs have had success against them. This isn’t to say that Brock Purdy is an elite QB, but since Halloween, the Eagles have faced Kenny Pickett, Davis Mills, Taylor Heinecke, the ghost of Matt Ryan, Ryan Tannehill, Daniel Jones (3x), Andy Dalton, Dak Prescott, and Aaron Rodgers.

The absolute max number of those quarterbacks who you could qualify as “good” is three, and Rodgers left the Packers game due to injury while Dak threw for 347 yards and three scores on the Eagles while going a perfect 24-of-24 for 300 against their zone coverage looks. Again, this is a tall task for Purdy and for our passing attack. But it’s not impossible to move the ball through the air on these guys.

[cartoon jumping sound]

OVERALL

Top-to-bottom, the Eagles are the best team that we’ve played all year and—on paper—the best team in the NFL. While we’d be the last to shed a tear over missed snaps from starting quarterbacks, they easily could have finished the season 16-1 if not for Hurts’ injury.

While Philadelphia’s the favorite for a reason, they’re far from bulletproof, and I have to wonder if the same simplicity of scheme that helped catapult their offense and defense to such elite levels so quickly has any blindspots that have gone unnoticed (or incapable of being exploited) as they buzz-sawed through the regular season.

But—magical cipher or not—this is a stylistic matchup we can work with. We can play stout defense, run the ball, throw haymakers, and make things messy. It’s part of our DNA. Teams aren’t 0-15 the week after playing us for no reason. Win or lose, you know the ice baths are gonna be ready to go.

Go Niners 👍🏈