Offseason All22 Film Study

So, I wanted to join in on the film fun. Here's some different aspects of his offense that I've noticed. He does a really good job of making variations on classic concepts when playing opponents he's played before who might be familiar with concepts he'll use in certain down and distances. For example: here's a play against the Steelers in week 1 of 2014.



Here, he comes out in "21" personnel on the first offensive play of the game. Considering he's played them before and he knows they like to play a base personnel with either cover-1 or cover-3 against his personnel at this down and distance he does a great job here. First, he flexes the FB out top(What?!?!?!? oh no, no again[sarcasm meant]) Yes, as much as people ragged Harbaugh for doing this same thing and I defended him, so too does KS. It serves a great purpose. Now, Shanahan, by personnel has dictated what defense he's most likely to see. By flexing the FB out top with Polamalu coming over to cover him and the corner coming inside to cover the WR reveals man coverage. He then, takes it a step further and flexes the RB out wide as well - Shazier goes with him so he now has the TE isolated on Pitt's slowest coverage man.

With this, he's also going to run a variation of a "spacing" concept. The "spacing" concept involves a criss cross spot a snag route from the 2 inside receivers with the outside receiver running a curl. You see how the middle receiver will be running a "spot" route and the FB up top is running a "curl" route. This is a very common passing concept as it creates a horizontal stretch of the defense and is widely used against cover 3 zone to stretch the 2 underneath defenders to that side of the field.

Having revealed the man-coverage however, the TE isn't going to look to sell his "snag" route as much, but more look to gain outside leverage and leave room to run away from his defender towards the sideline.


You see the play just before the snap and how the TE already has outside leverage vs the LB.


Here you see the play developing. The LB first does start out with a little more flat drop into coverage as he see's the in-breaking "spot" route. I'm not sure whether or not the LB thought it was going to be a spacing concept or if he just flat out got beat. He does seem to lose just a step in a moment when it looks like he thinks the TE is going to break off the route for just a split second.



Having revealed the man-coverage with a single safety, Hoyer now knows that his best chance is to move the safety to the other side of the field to give his TE the most space to work. This is another example of how the pre-snap shifts and personnel help the QB know where the ball will go pre-snap, so he just has to focus on executing his part - move the safety and then make an accurate throw.


You see how the safety was moved by Hoyer's eyes, this opens up a huge hole for Hoyer to lead the TE in to.


He gone....


Hoyer delivers a spot on accurate throw and it would've been a TD had Jordan Cameron been able to keep his feet. After the catch he stumbles just a bit and ends up doing a summersault after a few yeards - still a big gain though and ends in a FG.

Originally posted by jonnydel:
So, I wanted to join in on the film fun...

It's about time you got off your lazy ass. Pssst. Home building. Pssst. Parenting. Pssst.

Whatever...get to work!

Here Shanny dials up a good combo vs the Steelers and how they will play a cover 2 zone - it's different than most teams as it seems to have a lot of moving parts.


here, he's going to mix a levels/mesh concept with a "bench" concept(being a version of a 'smash'). One thing teams will do is rep versions of "smash" concepts against their cover 2 zones so that the defenders will see these over and over again as a "smash" is a great way to defeat the cover 2 zone. Here, Pitt runs a bail/pattern read version of it. When most teams play a cover 2 zone the corner is supposed to funnel his guy inside to help out the safety. Here, with the receiver taking an inside release he reads the underneath outside release route and bails into a soft zone coverage to protect against a "smash" route. With the underneath defender reading an outside release, he first jams the TE then trails with him, knowing the corner's responsibility is to bail.


The mistake happens with Shazier -being a matching zone, if there's an underneath crosser, the playside underneath defender is supposed to run with him and he's supposed to drop back into a middle hook zone to react to an in route. Instead, he plays it as a normal zone and drives down on the crosser.


This then, opens up a big hole in the middle of the field with both the underneath defenders running with the crosser. One thing to bear in mind is that Shanny runs a lot of crossing, mid crossers and deep crossers with his TE's in slide concepts. So, he's primed the defense for these.

You see the Bench/Smash being defeated to the top of the screen.


Whoopsie...3 defenders looking at one receiver....


Ends in a big gain to set up a TE that THL showed earlier. His awareness of how Pitt plays their defense and how to force them to adjust(by coming out in a 3x1 set and identifying the 2 deep zones he knew Pitt would have to adjust to a pattern read on the fly to protect against either a flood or smash), he put the stress on the defense to execute their play on the fly.

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by jonnydel:
So, I wanted to join in on the film fun...

It's about time you got off your lazy ass. Pssst. Home building. Pssst. Parenting. Pssst.

Whatever...get to work!

Thankfully, the home rebuilding is pretty much done for a while.

Awesome, ty!

I'm also going to do a workup on Shanny's run game. One thing i've noticed in his zone run scheme is how he attacks the "bubble". It's almost predictable - but not in a bad way. He constantly puts stress on that part of the defense and it sets up almost everything else in his offense.

Originally posted by jonnydel:

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by jonnydel:
So, I wanted to join in on the film fun...

It's about time you got off your lazy ass. Pssst. Home building. Pssst. Parenting. Pssst.

Whatever...get to work!

Thankfully, the home rebuilding is pretty much done for a while.

I have a feeling my man wanted to lock that down with plenty of time to "prepare" for the draft.

Originally posted by jonnydel:
I'm also going to do a workup on Shanny's run game. One thing i've noticed in his zone run scheme is how he attacks the "bubble". It's almost predictable - but not in a bad way. He constantly puts stress on that part of the defense and it sets up almost everything else in his offense.

Now that will be awesome too...get an idea of how that might work here (or not) with our current personnel.

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by jonnydel:

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by jonnydel:

So, I wanted to join in on the film fun...

It's about time you got off your lazy ass. Pssst. Home building. Pssst. Parenting. Pssst.

Whatever...get to work!

Thankfully, the home rebuilding is pretty much done for a while.

I have a feeling my man wanted to lock that down with plenty of time to "prepare" for the draft.

Yeuuup!

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by jonnydel:

I'm also going to do a workup on Shanny's run game. One thing i've noticed in his zone run scheme is how he attacks the "bubble". It's almost predictable - but not in a bad way. He constantly puts stress on that part of the defense and it sets up almost everything else in his offense.

Now that will be awesome too...get an idea of how that might work here (or not) with our current personnel.

Well, it should work alright. I've seen it in both his ATL film and CLE film.1

Nice cut ups JD. Zone defenders going up against Shanahan's offense have to have great eye discipline. He is really good at designing route combinations that manipulate zone defenders' eyes to open up space.

I see you've looked at the week1 PIT game. Check out the next game they play against PIT (week 6). Hoyer had one of the strangest boxscores I've seen for a QB. I checked out all the shot plays Shanahan dialed up and will post cut ups on those. Hoyers stats from that game were 8 completions on 17 attempts, for 217 yards. That's over 27 yards per completion.

Looking at one play gives us an idea of play design, but it's hard for me to get a true sense of the playcalling because that would involve taking notes. Seeing how an offense came out in a particular personnel/formation in a certain down/distance in the 1st quarter. Then noticing when they do it again in the 3rd quarter, and how they ran a complimentary play that fooled the defense. Shanahan had to be playing off tendencies in this week 6 game I'm referring to because CLE had 5 explosive pass plays in that game (CLE won 31-10).

Originally posted by jonnydel:

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by jonnydel:
I'm also going to do a workup on Shanny's run game. One thing i've noticed in his zone run scheme is how he attacks the "bubble". It's almost predictable - but not in a bad way. He constantly puts stress on that part of the defense and it sets up almost everything else in his offense.

Now that will be awesome too...get an idea of how that might work here (or not) with our current personnel.

Well, it should work alright. I've seen it in both his ATL film and CLE film.1

I love me some Shanahan scheme baby!

Originally posted by thl408:
Nice cut ups JD. Zone defenders going up against Shanahan's offense have to have great eye discipline. He is really good at designing route combinations that manipulate zone defenders' eyes to open up space.

I see you've looked at the week1 PIT game. Check out the next game they play against PIT (week 6). Hoyer had one of the strangest boxscores I've seen for a QB. I checked out all the shot plays Shanahan dialed up and will post cut ups on those. Hoyers stats from that game were 8 completions on 17 attempts, for 217 yards. That's over 27 yards per completion.

Looking at one play gives us an idea of play design, but it's hard for me to get a true sense of the playcalling because that would involve taking notes. Seeing how an offense came out in a particular personnel/formation in a certain down/distance in the 1st quarter. Then noticing when they do it again in the 3rd quarter, and how they ran a complimentary play that fooled the defense. Shanahan had to be playing off tendencies in this week 6 game I'm referring to because CLE had 5 explosive pass plays in that game (CLE won 31-10).

Wow, if THAT isn't an indication of excellent game planning, I don't know what is. This is what I've wanted here since Walsh/Holmgren/Mooch.

Originally posted by NCommand:
Wow, if THAT isn't an indication of excellent game planning, I don't know what is. This is what I've wanted here since Walsh/Holmgren/Mooch.

Yup. I don't think a QB like Hoyer, not known for being a gunslinger, is going to go into a game taking that many shot plays unless it was a calculated, thought out plan. I wanna say that many times a team takes a shot downfield it's on '2nd and short' situations where an incompletion still gives them '3rd & manageable'. CLE was taking shots on 1st downs, and '3rd and short'. I'll be sure to show down and distance on those plays.

Originally posted by thl408:

Originally posted by NCommand:

Wow, if THAT isn't an indication of excellent game planning, I don't know what is. This is what I've wanted here since Walsh/Holmgren/Mooch.

Yup. I don't think a QB like Hoyer, not known for being a gunslinger, is going to go into a game taking that many shot plays unless it was a calculated, thought out plan. I wanna say that many times a team takes a shot downfield it's on '2nd and short' situations where an incompletion still gives them '3rd & manageable'. CLE was taking shots on 1st downs, and '3rd and short'. I'll be sure to show down and distance on those plays.

Its gonna be fun trying to playing along with Kyle. Trying to guess play calls. Personally, I love his formation usuage the best. It really is scheming guys open. I have a real, real good feeling about how his tenure is gonna play out.