week 5 NYG coaches film analysis thread

Originally posted by Niners816:

Originally posted by Joecool:
I don't know many QBs these days who do a lot of post snap reads. Most passes are out in less than 3 seconds. There is a reason why teams of the smarter QBs run more of a spread offense and it's because they can decipher almost any defense presnap in order to find the mismatch. Peyton Manning and Brady heavily rely on presnap. Manning more than Brady as Brady is closer to Rodgers in his ability to move in the pocket and find more open looks. Peyton is 100% presnap which is why he doesn't throw to other wide open receivers during games. I have seen him miss lots of wide open guys because his presnap read told him to throw it to another spot.

With how complicated defenses are these days and how difficult it is to get more than 3 seconds to throw, it is nearly impossible to go through progressions.

The only way a QB can go through progressions consistently is like Montana did where he already knew where he was going to throw but went through the progressions to freeze or look off the defense. Brady is very good at this.

Here is the iconic Montana play from SB24 that was highlighted on the Super Bowl highlight film. Shows him working the concept (sticks concept) before coming back to Jerry. This is the master.


Here is the play art

It stills occurs but I would bet 90% of the time, a QB already has his plan of where to throw it laid out prior to the snap.

We briefly discussed how Manigni used his safeties and how it is different than how Fangio did it. I hate to keep comparing the two, but to understand why Reid/Bethea always look like they are missing tackles and giving up pass plays, I think it's important to see what they are doing differently.
Fangio, in a Quarters look, had one of the safeties (or both) lined up around 10-12 yards deep. Mangini has his safeties playing more cover 2 shells and that has them aligned 12+ yards deep. But the bigger factor is what they do at the snap. Fangio will often have at least one of the safeties, often times the strongside saftey, not gain depth. That is, they don't back peddle at the snap.

Mangini has them both gain depth. What this does is create a large area behind the LBs and in front of the safety. Fangio's Quarters look compressed that area so that it was smaller. Here, the 49ers again do something that Fangio never did - Tampa 2. Focus on the safety play and how it creates a large area for the offense to attack. ARI lit them up when the entire game, the 49ers went with soft zone coverage. Versus NYG, Mangini mixed it up, but here he goes with soft zone and the results are similar.

Orange, purple, and red all work to suck forward the underneath zone defenders. This will create a clear high-low read for Eli.


Eli just completed his 5 step dropback. The blue dotted lines show how much depth Reid has gained since the snap of the ball. Bow sees red coming into his sightline and that prevents him from gaining any depth.


Brock is stumbling but it doesn't matter, he wouldn't have followed the WR anyway since he's just playing his zone (flat). Bow and Reid are 15 yards apart from one another and Reid is still backpeddling. Not his fault, that's his assignment for this coverage. Plenty of room for yellow to work the Deep In route. Red and yellow give a high-low read for Eli over Bow's hook zone.


Zone coverage works when there is a ferocious 4 man rush, think SEA in 2013-14. For this 49er team, if it isn't Lynch it isn't anyone applying pressure. +24 yards.

Originally posted by thl408:

Here's the exact same play but the formation is flopped (concept side is now to Kap's right). In he play jonny cut up, NYG was in zone coverage. Here, NYG is in a Cover1. NYG shows a cover 2 shell presnap.



NYG anticipated Kap targeting the #3 WR again, like the previous play, and jump the route (#88) with two defenders. Kap isn't going there. He's going over the top to Boldin. With the deep safety (Dahl!) having to rotate over from a cover 2 shell, there's room for Boldin to work.


Same play, different coverage, different result. Tell me that's not a QB reading coverage.

Love this route as far as boldin works he pushes the db in then just fades to the sideline giving kap just enough room to place that ball in there good route and a dime toss! One we might have to freeze in time!lol

Originally posted by thl408:

Here's a play where there are progressions built into the 3 man route combination. It's a triangle stretch, a Bill Walsh staple. Surprised no one cared to talk about this play.

Nice call push in the middle forces kap to release the ball early then if he had another second could have hit 88 easy! Martin can't hit the pine fast enough!

Originally posted by MikeD:

Originally posted by Brewcrew:

Watch pears drop his head and wife on the block forces Kaps to scramble fast and play over before it ever had a chance.

Celek missed his block a lot worse

Been a better call just to pound the pill with Hyde!

Originally posted by jonnydel:

Finished watching the game - there were, as always, positives and negatives to take away from the game.

One thing I'll address right off the bat: There were many of us(from the broadcast, I was one of them too) who assumed that the entire game should be laid at Mangini's feet for playing a straight zone coverage most of the game. After watching the film - I saw very little spot dropping zone coverage and mostly pattern matching and man-coverage throughout the game. In fact, on the last drive of the game, that won it for NY, it was all man-cover 2 or 1 with one cover 3 zone - pattern match. We didn't have a single play of spot dropping zone. It looked like Mangini was trying everything in his tool kit to stop Eli. Sometimes, we got beat conceptually, sometimes, we blew our assignements(more often than not). It looked like no matter what Mangini tried to do, either players didn't execute their assignments or we had ZERO pass rush. There were at least a dozen(hard to keep count because Eli threw it over 50 times) where Manning got to his 5th read on the play with little pressure on him.

When a QB can do that so often throughout a game, there's not much a coach can do. Harold started to get a little pressure near the end, but it wasn't enough. We got no interior pressure, none, zip, zero, natta. That put a lot of pressure on our guys when they were in man-coverage or in their pattern match. One thing with pattern match is, those short checkdowns over the middle are usually going to be open if your pass rush can't get there - and that happened a lot.

What's most worrisome, for me at least, is that we played to, what should be, our players' strength - and got shredded.

On offense - it was good to see us finally get into a rhythm. One thing that I think helped, was seeing more power run than in any previous game. I think that helped hit on a couple vertical plays and to be able to take a couple vertical shots. The ZBS is great, if effectively run. But, considering that our O-line really struggled in their space blocks, it was good to see some old-school power blocking with double-teams and down blocking. It really helped open up the game.

Offense:
Good - Kaep made some great, timing and rhythm throws in the game. There were several where he got the ball out right as he hit his back foot on a 3 step drop - that's encouraging. Also, why he can be so maddening as a player. It's like he'll tease us with greatness, then fall face down - hopefully, after this game, the arrow continues upward.

Our receivers really did a good job of winning a few 1-1's.

Bruce Miller - dude played very well when he was in the game. Made some great blocks, caught a couple passes and had some good, physical runs after the catch. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more Miller in the game in stead of multiple TE's.

Bad - Martin....seems like same story, next chapter, every week. Got pushed around still, whiffed on some blocks and overall, played a poor game.

TE's. Overall, in the game, the TE blocking was very sub-par. There was one play where McD made a great block to spring Hyde, but other than that, all 3 TE's blew blocks at some point, McD and Celek both blew blocks on multiple occasions. Celek's only saving grace was a great route run in the RZ that got a TD.

Defense:
Good - Lynch was solid the game. It's hard when he's the only one getting pass rush for most of the game.
I thought Bowman wasn't nearly as bad as the game looked. It looked like he got exposed more than he did. The last TD, I don't put on him, Bethea played too shallow and Bow was expecting more help over-the -top, so he was in good position. It was also a great throw and catch.

Bad - there was a LOT. Dorsey, Dial, Williams, Carradine, Armstead - all got tried at DT to rush the passer in passing situations and none of them generated anything of an interior rush. Eli had a clean pocket most of the night. On the times we did get pressure, those were the times when we nearly had some turnovers. It was really frustrating, if we'd been able to generate an interior rush, I think we'd have created another turnover at some point.

Tartt - played a very poor game. Got whooped in man-coverage multiple times(including on 1 key play on the final drive). We even tried to sub in reaser at his spot. Also, looked lost in the pattern-match. Which, I understand he's a young guy from a small school(Samford, which is only an hour and half away from me). I've seen their defensive stuff and it's not very complex at all, so I know there's a steep learning curve for someone like him.

Ward played a lot, but played OK. He's under the "bad" because the whole team gave up so much and he was at fault a couple times on key downs. He also struggled, at times, with the pattern match and knowing when and where to pass offf. He also gave up some plays in man-coverage.

As usual, breakdowns to follow.

Quick disclaimer: Some of the defensive breakdowns will probably be fairly long since there's a lot to discuss when talking about pattern matching, and more specifically, fails in pattern matching. Mainly, because it can be so complex that there's a lot of moving pieces to discuss. So, some of the posts on the defensive side might be coming out a little slower than normal.

Thank you for the detailed break down. Your breakdown explains pretty well some of the things we saw that were a problem but didn't know why. It makes sense now. Now we can match it with the metrics and get a good overall picture.

how did our new rg do when he was in the game?

Originally posted by SoCold:
the stop watch on my phone said 3.49 s from snap to release

no joke lol

SO DID MINE LOL

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by philosoraptor:

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by jonnydel:

I think the problems came from all over the field. I didn't see Bow blowing a bunch of the pattern-match, the pattern-match fails came from the young guys, mostly. I think some of it too, is that, like Thl noted, we're not running our quarters shell look pre-snap. It seems that Mangini likes to disguise his coverage pre-snap with more pressed coverage. Whereas Fangio showed the shell. The shell allowed the DB's an extra second for reading the play, so I think that may have helped, but, like many of us saw during those years, left us susceptible to the short completions. However, we see some of the trade-off. Also, it wasn't just the fails in pattern-match or in our fire-zones, we blew a lot of man-coverage. Which was quite disappointing.

Thanks for such a prompt response. I'm just blown away at how this #5 defense dropped to #31 in just 5 games (not like we had premium talent last year) but this is just a total collapse and the players all seem to be constantly in trail-mode, lost, confused, slow to react, adjust, tentative, etc.

I agree, Brooks out certainly hurt and not having any rush at all besides Lynch (which is what you'd expect) is painful but so many of these balls were out with the first read just wide wide wide open with just simple pitch-and-catch.

Something schematically is very very wrong here.

Maybe you guys have some suggestions?

Just my 2cents. It doesnt seem like schematically an issue. In theory, these open players should be covered. It seems like an execution issue and the fact that we have so much youth on the field. Plus some key changes in what we do conceptually, as Thl, or jonny said? cant remember which one, but the fact that they arent running a shell but instead running more press man.

Thanks man but what youth? Only Acker is the young one out there. Maybe Ward in year two in the slot a bit?

You're probably talking about Tartt and Reaser on the dime/nickel sets we got exposed on, right?

But we had 50 completions so are the vets really blowing all these assignments suddenly no matter what Mangini dials up or is there something else going on? I just have a hard time believing this is a talent/IQ/transition issue esp. compared to the talent level of the #5 defense we sent out last year on crutches and in wheel chairs.

Looking back at our schedule last year, especially towards the end of the year we didn't play very many high powered offenses with good QB's. I think that ended up being a factor. I'll list off our last 10games last year and how many points they scored.
Denver (good O) - 42pts
St.louis (terrible O) - 13pts
Saints (average O) - 24 pts
NYG ( average/slightly below) - 10pts
Redskins (terrible O) - 13pts
Seahawks (average/below avg) -19pts
Raiders (average/below avg) - 24pts
Seahawks (" ")- 17pts
Chargers (good O) - 38 pts
Arizona (3rd string qb/terrible O) -17pts

Looking back our schedule last year toward the end of the year was favorable for our defense, and when we did play a good offense we allowed a lot of points. This year we have played some high powered offenses with some good QB's. Take into account our new scheme and our losses on defense and we find ourselves where we are at. Just some context to look at comparing the 2 years. I can't help but to think this is a major reason our defense has played like it has.

Originally posted by kujon11:
how did our new rg do when he was in the game?

I thought he looked solid. He's a bigger bodied guy who probably would do better with more of the power run type stuff. My only knock on him was that his feet were a little slow. To me, Devey's biggest weakness is poor balance. He's got quick feet, but often loses balance and leverage. Tiller, looked more opposite, he's got good balance and keeps his feet a little wider but didn't move his feet a whole lot. You pass block with your feet, not your arms. I could see him struggling against faster interior Dlineman. It creates a tough situation for an O-coord. If you put a TE on his side, to help Pears, that means you're putting Tiller against the 3 tech - usually the quickest and fastest Dlineman(Sapp, McCoy, Suh, Bryant Young were all 3 techs). Then, if you're going to give C help to Tiller, you're going to have to shift the line to the right side, as Boone then has to take a step to his R to block the 1 tech(outside shade of the Center), this is then going to make the team more susceptible to weakside blitzes, unless you're keeping your RB in to block - but then, you're RB can't be used as easily in the passing game....

So, all that to say, hopefully his feet move a little quicker. If so, I think he could pan out. If not, you're going to see a situation where there's no easy solution.

Originally posted by jonnydel:

Originally posted by kujon11:
how did our new rg do when he was in the game?

I thought he looked solid. He's a bigger bodied guy who probably would do better with more of the power run type stuff. My only knock on him was that his feet were a little slow. To me, Devey's biggest weakness is poor balance. He's got quick feet, but often loses balance and leverage. Tiller, looked more opposite, he's got good balance and keeps his feet a little wider but didn't move his feet a whole lot. You pass block with your feet, not your arms. I could see him struggling against faster interior Dlineman. It creates a tough situation for an O-coord. If you put a TE on his side, to help Pears, that means you're putting Tiller against the 3 tech - usually the quickest and fastest Dlineman(Sapp, McCoy, Suh, Bryant Young were all 3 techs). Then, if you're going to give C help to Tiller, you're going to have to shift the line to the right side, as Boone then has to take a step to his R to block the 1 tech(outside shade of the Center), this is then going to make the team more susceptible to weakside blitzes, unless you're keeping your RB in to block - but then, you're RB can't be used as easily in the passing game....

So, all that to say, hopefully his feet move a little quicker. If so, I think he could pan out. If not, you're going to see a situation where there's no easy solution.

But do you think its worth his ability to help in the running game? Who would you rather have based on their weaknesses?

jonny, what do you think the 49ers could have done differently on that last drive. I've watched it and I agree it was a lot of man coverage. Tartt was outmatched by Vareen but Vareen was acting somewhat like a slot WR from out of the backfield. He could break left or right and Tartt isn't quick enough to keep up. NYG ran some rub routes to free up Vareen. Maybe they should have blitzed Tartt to force Vareen to stay in and block? Put Ward on Vareen? Remember that Randle was out of the game and OBJ was out for the majority of that drive. The 49ers should not have felt too threatened by the WRs.

This is an example of what I meant from Fangio's safeties compressing the area that is behind the LBs and in front of the safeties. I have it handy because I've shown this play before.

Notice the depth that the safeties are aligned, about 10-12 yards. Reid is on the 35 yard line.


Notice how little depth Reid has gotten since the snap as the QB has completed his drop. Don't worry about Whitner on the other side, he's double teaming and isn't executing a 'normal' Quarters safety assignment. Reid makes a flat footed read and as soon as the WR breaks inside, Reid is now responsible for him. The CB is now relieved of man coverage duty and replaces Reid's zone.






I'll try to show more examples of how the safeties played to help drive home the point (Fangio vs Mangini). Mangini's safeties are too far back and that's why we see the current defense get gashed over the middle to WRs that seem to be wide open.

Cover 6. Whitner's side is in Quarters.


Quarter Quarter Half. Notice the area behind the LBs and in front of the safties. It's about 10 yards, give or take a yard. Compared to the Tampa 2 that Mangini ran that has 15 yards of space. 5 yards can make the difference between a nice window to throw into and a difficult window.

Originally posted by thl408:
This is an example of what I meant from Fangio's safeties compressing the area that is behind the LBs and in front of the safeties. I have it handy because I've shown this play before.

Notice the depth that the safeties are aligned, about 10-12 yards. Reid is on the 35 yard line.


I'll try to show more examples of how the safeties played to help drive home the point (Fangio vs Mangini). Mangini's safeties are too far back and that's why we see the current defense get gashed over the middle to WRs that seem to be wide open.

Thl--can you comment on the safety depth in the Pittsburgh game versus the NYGs? Seemed to be getting beaten deep against the Steelers. My memory is fuzzy though. I'll check on NFL replay later if you don't have it on the tip of your mind.