With 11:49 left in the third quarter of the Baltimore Ravens’ Monday night win over the San Francisco 49ers’ 33-19 Monday night win over the San Francisco 49ers, Lamar Jackson threw a nine-yard touchdown pass to rookie receiver Zay Flowers. That in itself was not exceptional, but the ways in which the Ravens came to fool the 49ers’ top defense? Well, there was a lot to unpack there.
On the previous play, running back Gus Edwards was caught for a one-yard loss by edge-rusher Nick Bosa.
The Ravens rushed to get the next play off, and a different alignment caused a lot of confusion for the 49ers’ defense. Here, Baltimore had tight end Isaiah Likely outside of right tackle Morgan Moses, left tackle Ronnie Stanley outside Likely, Flowers outside Stanley, and receiver Nelson Agholor outside Flowers.
At the snap, Likely ran a rail route, while Agholor ran a stutter-post, and Flowers went right to the end zone unobstructed. You can see linebackers Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw, two of the best in the business, getting confused and winding up in the same place. Warner was handing Flowers off — probably to safety Ji’Ayir Brown — but Brown had vacated his area to cover Likely. It’s unusual to get this many San Francisco defenders out of place at once, but the combination of an unbalanced formation and a hurry-up offense did the trick.
On Thursday, offensive coordinator Todd Monken mentioned Jackson’s vision on off-script plays, and brought up the Flowers touchdown as an example.
“I do think that’s a strength of [Lamar Jackson’s]. I do think he sees the field very well. Take for instance … We’ll talk about the scrambles first. He does a tremendous job, and we’ve worked awfully hard with our scramble drills in terms of our spacing down the field reacting to the quarterback. But even beyond that, I think he’s able to communicate what he sees and what he anticipates. Then, when he gets outside the pocket, [he] does a great job of seeing things.
“The touchdown to Zay – more times than not on that, we’re trying to get the defense to move laterally, and we’re thinking outside post [route and] rail [route] to the back [of the end zone]. I don’t even know if we ever hit Zay one time on that part of it, but he saw the reaction of the safety and made an unbelievable play to be real honest.”
Well, there was more to it than that.
Those [plays] don’t just happen,” head coach John Harbaugh said after the game. “Those happen because a lot of hard work gets put into it on top of a lot of amazing talent. It’s a group effort. You have the offensive line doing their thing and then tight ends, [wide] receivers, and [running] backs, both in protection and in routes. They’re forced to cover guys downfield, and Lamar [Jackson] is able to run. [If] they don’t cover guys downfield, Lamar finds them. [Lamar] has great vision, and our guys are finding soft spots in the coverage there and getting open, and he hits them. Nobody throws better than Lamar on the move, from awkward platforms, he’s very accurate that way. So, all those things I would say came into play.”
Now, the Ravens face a Miami Dolphins defense that has jumped from 26th to sixth in DVOA since Week 10.
Miami defensive coordinator Vic Fangio is well aware of the challenge, especially when it comes to Jackson’s combination of pocket efficiency and dynamism in unstructured moments.
“I mean, the pure definition of a great quarterback is there’s no one way to play him,” Fangio said this week. “Because if there was, everybody would do it. So you just have to mix up what you’re doing. Along the way, they have a hell of a run game. Both from the players ability – O-line, tight ends, runners – and the scheme of it with Lamar at the helm makes it a difficult task. There’s a lot to prepare for, a lot to defend in this offense.”
Especially if Monken starts messing with the clock again.
In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys discuss this particular play, and get into why Baltimore’s offense is a real problem for any defense.
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You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os,” featuring tape and advanced metric analysis of all Week 17’s biggest NFL matchups (including Ravens-Dolphins), right here:
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