Weekly individual film threads will be merged with this thread. This is the armchair coach thread.
As Kyle Shanahan continues to grow his scheme, he has drafted young WR help in Samuel and Hurd to go along with Pettis and Kittle. The addition of Tevin Coleman suggests they will use a committee approach at RB. After missing most of 2018, Garoppolo will look to continue his growth and development within the system and its intricate playbook.
The 49ers brought in key assistant coaches at defensive line (Kocurek) and defensive back (Woods). They will be revamping the defense at all levels. The DL is no longer a 5 man front, opting to go with a four man front in a Wide 9 alignment. The three LBs are all off-the-ball now. Woods' background has been mainly in a two deep cover shell. All these are new facets to the defensive playbook and will be monitored throughout the season.
Many of the terms used in this film thread are described in the thread linked below, and can be found all over the web. Coverges and Concepts
Start of film thread:
@ Bucs - page 1
@ Bengals - link
vs Steelers - link
vs Browns - link
@ Rams - link
at Redskins - link
vs Panthers - link
@ Cardinals - link
vs Seahawks - link
vs Cardinals - link
vs Packers - link
@ Ravens - link
@ Saints - link
vs Falcons - link
vs Rams - link
@ Seahawks - link
vs Vikings (Divisional) - link
vs Packers (Conference) - link
I'll start with the defense because they were the stars on Sunday.
DEFENSE
It's official, the 49ers are no longer a 5 man defensive front in base, they are a four man front with their wide 9 and Over fronts. All three backers are off-the-ball. We saw this in the preseason, but nothing is official until the regular season, it's now official.
49ers are also lining up a lot in two deep safety looks. This was discussed in the offseason. They are still a Cover 3 team as I charted many snaps in Cover 3, but they often start the play with two deep safeties and rotate to single high, or stay two deep and play some form of Quarters/Cover6. This is a change from last season as they only occasionally showed two deep safeties. So when comparing 2017/18 to week 1 vs TB, they are showing much more 2 deep safety presnap. They also played much more split coverages and the way they rotate to Cover 3 creates a really muddy picture for the QB - I'll try to show this. This is why the safeties need to be more interchangeable now in terms of skillset. Both safeties must play deep as well as play near the line equally well.
There was a play where the 49ers blew a coverage but the pass rush covered up the mistake. I will show this for sure because the play is a direct example of how an improved pass rush makes the secondary look better. Last couple seasons, the QB would have easily found and exploited the blown coverage, and we know there were blown coverages last season.
I thought Kwon was excellent on run defense but shaky versus the pass, but was never exploited. When he left the game and Nachoez came in, there was a drop off in run defense and on some plays it showed as Kwon was much more aggressive in diagnosing and plugging vs the run.
OFFENSE
It usually starts with the QB and Jimmy was more often than not off the mark. His usually accuracy in the intermediate range was not there. He overthrew Kittle, overthrew Bourne, threw behind Goodwin, it was not a good performance by my personal standard for Jimmy. I have seen and know he can be more accurate. Rust or injury or both? I think it's early enough that these are valid reasons (excuses). As far as decision making it was not as bad as his accuracy, with one particular play in the red zone where I thought Bourne was open enough to warrant a target that could have been a touchdown, I'll show this. TB mixed things up well in terms of coverages, mixing man and zone. The only time TB was able to get pressure seemed to be on blitzes, which is a testament to the pass protection.
The WRs have to be better vs man coverage. Kittle was the only player able to beat man consistently. Deebo really struggled at split end. I don't think he won a single route up the sideline. TB was grabby and that's something 2018 opponents used to help defeat the 49er WRs.
TB came with lots of Bear fronts and the 49ers ran right into it. I was wondering why as I was re-watching. My guess is maybe it was so hot Kyle didn't want to run the OL since OL doesn't substitute? No idea, but after a number of unsuccessful runs, there was a series in the 3Q where the 49ers made an adjustment, went 22 personnel, and ran some Counter plays that resulted in good runs - off tackle is how to beat a Bear front. Tomlinson and Richburg really struggled in run blocking vs Suh/Vea.
The Jimmy pick 6 is a throw he's made before, to a RB lined up wide, versus Cover3. But this time the CB was not backpeddling and Jimmy got burned. I'll show a couple plays from past seasons where he made the throw, compare it to the pick 6, and we'll see why he shouldn't have thrown it.
Overall, it was the new, re-vamped defense that made the big plays. Winston seemed unprepared for the different looks the 49ers showed. If TB studied 2018 film in preparation for Sunday, then they were surprised by what they saw. While still based on Cover3, there are too many different looks for me to say it's the same defense. Then add in the two dynamic edges players and it's a whole new ballgame.
Defense carried the day......Pass Rush is the sexiest thing in football outside of a legit Franchise QB.
Here's the best thing to say about Jimmy....even being noticeably erratic on some throws he still completed 18/27....that's 66.7%. We've seen really only one s**tty statistical game (Minny game last year).
jonnyd. I think a written summary of what you saw would provide talking points for us. Please don't stop doing those.
Good video on the run defense. Teams will look to exploit those large bubble gaps in the wide9 and one way to screw up the blocking assignments is to slant and scrape like you showed. Bucs TEs simply could not handle the 49er DEs. Whether it was run blocking or pass blocking. Or is OJ Howard just a poor blocker? He looked like Jimmy Graham out there "blocking".
Defense carried the day......Pass Rush is the sexiest thing in football outside of a legit Franchise QB.
Here's the best thing to say about Jimmy....even being noticeably erratic on some throws he still completed 18/27....that's 66.7%. We've seen really only one s**tty statistical game (Minny game last year).
Threw some handful of passes that were behind his receivers. I think it was rust, catching up to the speed of the game.
