week 12 Arizona Cardinals coaches film analysis

Close games are always frustrating to watch. Sometimes they're less than others. To me, the most frustrating aspect of this game was probably the same as the players themselves - the officiating. I hate to be one that blames a game on officials, but there were some really costly penalties in that game. There were also a couple missed calls on the Cardinals that ended up being huge in the game. If they call one penalty they missed and don't call another one they got wrong, there's no need for a 4th and 20 conversion, the game would've already been tied - at worst.

This was an interesting game to watch because, as good as the offensive numbers were, it still felt like there was a lot of meat left out on the table. That being said, that's what good defenses can do to teams. They get you off your game, force you to play left-handed and speed up the process. They force mistakes, they force turnovers and they force the issue. The Cardinals defense is as good or better than our defense during our championship runs - just think about that. Think of all the teams and good QB's we made look poor. All the great offenses we held to lower point totals. Keep that in mind when you think about how our offense performed. We're not a playoff team - we're not even a "bubble" team. We're a bad team with a lot of questions all over the field. This was one game where we put together a quality game and a number of guys took a step forward in making the question marks smaller.

Overall, the whole team started out a little slow - both offense and defense. We had a big negative play on 2nd and 5 on the first drive where Tiller got beat badly on a stretch run for -4. Instead of being 3rd and 5, at worst, it was 3rd and 9. Then, both Tiller and Martin got beat on a blitz and Gabbert was sacked at the 2.3 second mark. Then, we muff the next punt and turn it back over to the cards, then Brock drops a sure INT in the endzone. It was as 6 point swing that became huge in the game.

How did our defense bounce back from such a horrid performance against Seattle? A few ways.
1. Much more intensity and "get to the spot" from our D. Last week, they looked lackadaisical, at best. Some guys were slow to their rush lanes and there was a lot of terrible tackling. The tackling was MUCH better this week and guys were flying to their lanes and coverage's.
2. Scheme wise, Mangini tried to take away the intermediate part of the field that Palmer loves to work in. We played a lot of trail technique man-coverage with "lurk" coverage. If not that, we played a very effective pattern-match 3 zone. Mangini seemed dialed in to when the Cards were going to try and attack deep and when in the intermediate. It's not to say that the Cards didn't move the ball, but it wasn't easy - and a lot of penalties helped them along the way.

On offense martin, once again, struggled. He struggled in line shifts and in the running game. An addition of Kilgore would really, really help this team - when he's fully acclimated back. I don't expect an immediate great leap when Kilgore comes back, considering how long he's been out and didn't have an off-season of practice. But, I could see within a few weeks really helping this line along.

All in all I'm not going to write a ton for the OP as I'm working on an article right now :)

Cheers!

Here's our best run of the day. It was setup by from a great "reach" block from Staley.


We're in "11" personnel. We're just going to execute a stretch left play.


Celek first helps on the DE then moves on to the LB


Staley's quick feet really show here. When he gets the help, he quickly shuffles his feet around to start sealing off the edge.


Boldin cracks down on the OLB and the corner, anticipating the DE keeping contain, moves inside to fill the hole and gets picked up by Celek. You see how Staley was able to work around and seal off the DE.


Draughn is then able to get to the edge with blocks set up from Celek, Boldin and Boone(Boone's hard to see because he's going to the ground, but hey, it always have to be pretty, but he gets in the way).


Draughn springs for a big gain.

Here's the -4 yard run on the same drive:


This is nearly the identical play, just to the other side.


Tiller's feet fail him here. If he's running, it's one thing, but when you're engaged and need to be driving your man, your feet need to be wide so you don't get thrown side to side.


Because he gets too narrow and takes a poor angle, the DT easily slips inside of him.


It happens so fast that the moment Draughn gets the handoff he's being met by a DT.


You run the ball on 2nd and 5 to either convert a 1st or setup a manageable 3rd down - not make a 3rd and long....SMH

Here's the very next play after the -4 run. The first 3rd down of the game.


One thing I want to note here - Tomsula, in his presser said it was, "absolutely no ok" for his QB to be throwing the ball short of the 1st down. A couple things I want to say about that:
Then call plays with more than one viable option past the first down or get a new O-line to pass block for longer....

Here, we're going to run a smash concept on the 3 receiver side with a "zig" route on the backside. The vertical is a clearing route only. They're looking for either Boldin or TS. Arizona runs a cover 1-man.


At the snap, Boldin's defender takes a flat footed retreat -he's defending a vertical route. The others take more flat footed reads, they're looking to defend underneath.


Gabbert recognizes the man-coverage so he's going to look at the corner route to Boldin - however, the honey badger does a really good job in coverage.


Because the O-line failed, the ball would have to be out right now. No one is open, at best, Gabbert should throw this ball away right now. Remember, the 1st down is the 23 yard line.


Gabbert is sacked.


From the endzone you see Martin slid to the wrong side. He didn't identify the correct possible rushers. This leaves a 2v3 situation on the right side.


The DE cuts across Tiller's face and puts Pears in a no-win situation. This is at 1.5 seconds, btw.


1.6-7 seconds. Tiller fails to move his feet and therefore doesn't even make a good block on the guy he's trying to block. Pears tries to take the inside rusher.


Tiller gets turned sideways and Martin, apparently, tries to block the guy with his butt....jk...Gabbert wants to throw, but he sees Boldin covered.


This is the 2.1 second mark or so.


2.3 seconds. How Peterson wasn't called for Defensive holding??

Going off of what Thl pointed out last week - we continue to add variations or "wrinkles" to some of our more commonly used concepts to get the defense to bite. This is the biggest offensive play of the game - a 41 yarder to TS.


We're going to come out in "12" personnel. We then run a variation of a slide concept. The for TS, I've put the normal cut at the top of the route in black. We normally do a 3 level flood out of a slide concept.


You see the PA to the opposite side - that's what makes it a slide concept.


You see the safety, Rashad Johnson(who grew up in the little town I live in in Alabama and his mom lives a few houses down, she wouldn't want to watch this play haha. The road behind my house is, "rashad Johnson dr." lol.) Anyhoo, Johnson anticipates the outbreaking route on the flood and begins to drive on it - the cards are in a form of cover 3 zone here, btw.


You see how Johnson is anticipating the outbreaking route and now it's vacated the middle of the field.


TS gets behind the defense on a deep post.


41 yard gain. You could split hairs and mention that Gabbert underthrew the pass a little. But, to be fair, palmer had a play on a nearly identical route and underthrew his guy worse; and he's one of the best deep ball throwers in the league.

no gif !

Great stuff. Thanks for the time you put into this, jonnydel.

How was Torrey Smith's play in general?

Originally posted by 49AllTheTime:
no gif !

I'm on an old mac that's really, really hard to make GIF's on. It would take me quite a while to put em together as most of the GIF software nowadays are for new operating systems than what I have.

Originally posted by jonnydel:

Originally posted by 49AllTheTime:
no gif !

I'm on an old mac that's really, really hard to make GIF's on. It would take me quite a while to put em together as most of the GIF software nowadays are for new operating systems than what I have.

Pffft. Slacker.

Originally posted by BodhiPaddlesOut:
Great stuff. Thanks for the time you put into this, jonnydel.

How was Torrey Smith's play in general?

I thought he did alright - it's hard to really know for sure because he had Peterson shadowing him around most of the game. The cards play a lot of man-coverage and Peterson is probably the best man-cover corner in the league. Definitely better than Sherman(who plays zone 90% of the time) and on-par or maybe even better than Revis now that Peterson has his diabetes under control. He's a guy who's really given every top WR on the team's they've played a hard time. I was hoping for more from on of our WR's not named Smith or Boldin. Ari had the honey badger - Mathieu, shadowing Boldin the whole game as well. That left Powers - they're 3rd best man-cover guy on our 3rd WR. We tried to take a shot at him a couple times and one of them was a near miss. Patton let himself get slowed up by Powers, so the ball was just out of reach.

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by jonnydel:

Originally posted by 49AllTheTime:
no gif !

I'm on an old mac that's really, really hard to make GIF's on. It would take me quite a while to put em together as most of the GIF software nowadays are for new operating systems than what I have.

Pffft. Slacker.

OKR! For me, it would take something in the neighborhood of 25 min just to make the GIF. Silly mac's.... I only use it cause my wife took my desktop for her work and I'm too cheap to buy a new computer when this works just fine for what I do at work.

Good review jonny.

I thought the positive story of the game was the 49ers defense. After that piss poor showing last week, and the tissue paper soft showing in the first ARI game, they really tightened up. The 49ers came with a lot more man coverage in this game - very different from the first meeting with ARI when they kept calling zone coverage and having Fitz/Palmer slice it up. ARI did hit 2 big plays, but at least it required a good throw and catch for ARI to earn it. Individual miscues (muff punt/dropped INT), and penalties really helped ARI get their points. Lots of Cover1 blitz with some Cover 2 Man for the 49ers defense.

Offensively, the 49ers failure to convert a single 3rd down is what I'll try to cover. It's worth mentioning how they got into some of the long 3rd down distances, but the failure to convert them fell on both execution as well as playcalling. This game made me realize how important it is for the 49ers to find a replacement for Boldin. The three divisional foes all have either excellent secondaries (ARI), excellent pass rush (STL), or both (SEA). Torrey is not good enough to beat PPeterson/Sherman as they shadow him around the field. I counted 1, maybe 2 times where Torrey was able to get separation on Peterson. Torrey's specialty is the deep route, so is Sherman's. PP excels at using quickness to impede the WR's path, and he did that well in this game. There has to be another precision route runner with decent speed at the other WR spot. Boldin's loss of speed relegates him to a good slot WR, but not much separation when working as a wideout.

ARI came with their regular Cover1 blitz a lot. I thought the 49ers pass pro (blitz pickup) was decent and gave Gabbert time for the most part. This was a very deceiving 300+ yard passing performance. Just didn't seem like he threw for that much. 49ers stayed committed to the run to set up their playaction. I thought that showed good patience because the run game was very shaky after the opening drive.

Originally posted by jonnydel:
Here's the very next play after the -4 run. The first 3rd down of the game.


One thing I want to note here - Tomsula, in his presser said it was, "absolutely no ok" for his QB to be throwing the ball short of the 1st down. A couple things I want to say about that:
Then call plays with more than one viable option past the first down or get a new O-line to pass block for longer....

Here, we're going to run a smash concept on the 3 receiver side with a "zig" route on the backside. The vertical is a clearing route only. They're looking for either Boldin or TS. Arizona runs a cover 1-man.

At the snap, Boldin's defender takes a flat footed retreat -he's defending a vertical route. The others take more flat footed reads, they're looking to defend underneath.

Gabbert recognizes the man-coverage so he's going to look at the corner route to Boldin - however, the honey badger does a really good job in coverage.

Because the O-line failed, the ball would have to be out right now. No one is open, at best, Gabbert should throw this ball away right now. Remember, the 1st down is the 23 yard line.

Gabbert is sacked.

From the endzone you see Martin slid to the wrong side. He didn't identify the correct possible rushers. This leaves a 2v3 situation on the right side.

The DE cuts across Tiller's face and puts Pears in a no-win situation. This is at 1.5 seconds, btw.

1.6-7 seconds. Tiller fails to move his feet and therefore doesn't even make a good block on the guy he's trying to block. Pears tries to take the inside rusher.

Tiller gets turned sideways and Martin, apparently, tries to block the guy with his butt....jk...Gabbert wants to throw, but he sees Boldin covered.

This is the 2.1 second mark or so.

2.3 seconds. How Peterson wasn't called for Defensive holding??

Tomsula specifically spoke about this play on local radio. He said (paraphrased) that when they go 5 wide, Gabbert is in charge of hand signaling the WR routes, and that the slide protection falls on someone else. JT said that there was an obvious side of the formation that was overloaded and they called the slide protection to the wrong side (which you showed).
Pretty clear which side is overloaded.

Originally posted by thl408:
Good review jonny.

I thought the positive story of the game was the 49ers defense. After that piss poor showing last week, and the tissue paper soft showing in the first ARI game, they really tightened up. The 49ers came with a lot more man coverage in this game - very different from the first meeting with ARI when they kept calling zone coverage and having Fitz/Palmer slice it up. ARI did hit 2 big plays, but at least it required a good throw and catch for ARI to earn it. Individual miscues (muff punt/dropped INT), and penalties really helped ARI get their points. Lots of Cover1 blitz with some Cover 2 Man for the 49ers defense.

Offensively, the 49ers failure to convert a single 3rd down is what I'll try to cover. It's worth mentioning how they got into some of the long 3rd down distances, but the failure to convert them fell on both execution as well as playcalling. This game made me realize how important it is for the 49ers to find a replacement for Boldin. The three divisional foes all have either excellent secondaries (ARI), excellent pass rush (STL), or both (SEA). Torrey is not good enough to beat PPeterson/Sherman as they shadow him around the field. I counted 1, maybe 2 times where Torrey was able to get separation on Peterson. Torrey's specialty is the deep route, so is Sherman's. PP excels at using quickness to impede the WR's path, and he did that well in this game. There has to be another precision route runner with decent speed at the other WR spot. Boldin's loss of speed relegates him to a good slot WR, but not much separation when working as a wideout.

ARI came with their regular Cover1 blitz a lot. I thought the 49ers pass pro (blitz pickup) was decent and gave Gabbert time for the most part. This was a very deceiving 300+ yard passing performance. Just didn't seem like he threw for that much. 49ers stayed committed to the run to set up their playaction. I thought that showed good patience because the run game was very shaky after the opening drive.

I felt the same way. I was surprised, really afterwards. I think that's a good thing??? The two big chunk plays to TS and Bell helped, but it's still 229 yards without those plays. The thing was, we didn't have a ton of short completions. We had a number of plays go for that intermediate gain, in the 12-20 range. We had a fairly high, for us, 8.83 YPA and a very high, 12.72 YPC.

BTW, 8.83 YPA is exactly Carson Palmers YPA average for the season - and he leads the league.

Also, Gabbet's YPA so far is 8.07 - which, among qualifying QB's, would place him as 5th in the league - just ahead of Tom Brady and behind:
1. Carson Palmer
2.Ben Roethlesberger
3. Russel Wilson
4. Andy Dalton

In contrast, CK was ranked 29th out of 32 qualifying QB's in YPA at 6.62