Category: 2023 NFL Playoffs

The Ravens’ bizarre offensive game plan cost them a trip to the Super Bowl

The Baltimore Ravens fell to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, and their offensive game plan was a big reason why.

Often times in the NFL, coaches can overthink themselves and not learn from the peers around them, perhaps thinking they can outsmart what is right in front of them. It was a painful reminder for Baltimore Ravens fans everywhere that sometimes you should stick with the obvious, if the obvious works. In a heart breaking loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship game, offensive coordinator Todd Monken and this Ravens offense decided to stray away from their biggest strength and the Chiefs’ biggest weakness.

Just last weekend we saw the Buffalo Bills pound the rock directly down the gullet of Kansas City to the tune of 192 yards on 39 carries. While the Bills of course did not ultimately win the game, it was a brilliant yet simplistic strategy that may have been one missed kick away from working. There is little doubt the Baltimore offensive coaching staff watched that game and saw what the Chiefs did and did not do well against Buffalo, so it leaves a bit of a head scratcher as to why one of the best running games in the NFL was suddenly turned away from on the biggest stage.

The Ravens were third in offensive rush efficiency on the year and yet only ended up running the ball eighteen times in a game that was never really out of hand at any point. The Chiefs on the year were giving up 4.5 yards a run and were clearly susceptible to a running attack, even if they were paying extra attention to the running game it’s still an area you needed to attack.

It truly becomes head-scratching as to why the Ravens didn’t hand the ball off more to Gus Edwards who averaged 6.7 yards on his three carries or dialed up more designed quarterback runs. It’s a sobering reminder that sometimes the answers are right in front of you, and to go into a game with a different set of ideas than the obvious can lead to a game getting away from you.

The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell: Previewing the NFL’s conference championship games

In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys get you ready for Ravens-Chiefs, and 49ers-Lions. It’s conference championship time!

And then, there were four! It’s time for the conference championship round of the NFL playoffs, deciding which teams will play in Super Bowl LVIII. Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup, and Doug Farrar of Touchdown Wire and the USA Today Sports Media Group, are here to get you ready for the most interesting matchups.

Kansas City Chiefs at Baltimore Ravens

  • How will Lamar Jackson deal with Steve Spagnuolo’s unconventional blitzes?
  • Can Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco take over this game, and will “pin/pull” continue to be a thing?
  • Will Mike Macdonald’s Ravens defense cause Patrick Mahomes to hesitate in his process with all those coverage disguises?
  • How will Baltimore counter the Chiefs’ effective use of heavy personnel in the run and pass games?

Detroit Lions at San Francisco 49ers

  • Jared Goff has become much more than just a game manager, so how will Steve Wilks’ 49ers defense deal with that?
  • Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn has done a brilliant job coaching up a cornerback-light roster. But will that turn into a pumpkin against Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers offense?
  • Is Brock Purdy’s bad game against the Packers in the divisional round indicative of vulnerabilities that can be exploited here?
  •  Will the Lions’ rookies on both sides of the ball be the ultimate difference in this game?

You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os,” previewing both conference championship games in detail, right here:

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You can also listen and subscribe to the “Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…

…and on Apple Podcasts.

How the Ravens, Chiefs, Lions, and 49ers get big plays out of heavy personnel

The Ravens, Chiefs, Lions, and 49ers all get more explosive plays out of heavy personnel than you might think, and here’s how they do it.

We tend to think of the modern NFL passing game as heavily dependent on multi-receiver sets, spread out to foil opposing defenses. But more and more, modern offensive coordinators are finding ways to use heavier personnel and some old-school ideas to score points.

All four of the remaining teams in the playoff picture — the Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, Detroit Lions, and San Francisco 49ers — have patented ways to break defenses in half with more tight ends, fullbacks, and extra offensive linemen than you might imagine.

You’ll see a lot of these concepts in Sunday’s conference championship games, and here they are. In case you’re not familiar with how numbers and personnel packages, here’s how that works.

  • 10 Personnel = 1 RB, 0 TE, 4 WRs
  • 11 Personnel = 1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WRs
  • 12 Personnel = 1 RB, 2 TEs, 2 WRs
  • 13 Personnel = 1 RB, 3 TEs, 1 WR
  • 21 Personnel = 2 RBs, 1 TE, 2 WRs
  • 22 Personnel = 2 RBs, 2 TEs, 1 WR

In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys talked a lot about how all four teams will use their own ideas to set themselves up for possible Super Bowl berths.

You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os,” previewing both conference championship games in detail, right here:

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You can also listen and subscribe to the “Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…

…and on Apple Podcasts.

The Deebo Factor, and why the 49ers desperately need it

Deebo Samuel is the one player the 49ers need to get to the Super Bowl. Here’s why his health is crucial in the NFC Championship game.

One key reason the San Francisco 49ers have such a ridiculously efficient offense is that there are stars all over the roster. Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk, and quarterback Brock Purdy have all established themselves as true tone-setters in Kyle Shanahan’s system, and that tends to manifest itself more often than not. And if you’re aware of a better left tackle than Trent Williams, that would certainly be breaking news.

But there’s no one player who does more to define Shanahan’s offense than receiver Deebo Samuel. That’s clear an obvious both on tape, and with the on/off splits.

Per Sports Info Solutions, Samuel has missed 320 plays this season, and he’s been on the field for 676 plays. When he’s on the field, the 49ers have an Offensive EPA of 0.18. Without him, 0.01. San Francisco’s Passing EPA with Samuel? 0.26. Without him? 0.06. And their Rushing EPA is 0.09 with Samuel; -0.05 without. Both in the run and the pass games, Samuel’s presence is crucial in any game, and certainly in Sunday’s NFC Championship game against the Detroit Lions.

Samuel went out early in the 49ers’ divisional round win over the Green Bay Packers, and the difference was all the difference. Purdy was not as confident in his reads and throws without Samuel, and the offense lost an entire dimension without him.

“Yeah, it’s huge for us,” Purdy said this week about Samuel’s presence on the field. “Deebo is a game-changer. He is one of the best in the NFL at what he does. So obviously, for him to be able to play, all of us are like, all right, Deebo brings some juice and energy and we’ve got his back and so obviously seeing him run around at practice and look good for us, it’s like, all right, it’s on. So, we’re excited for him.”

Let’s start with Samuel’s explosive potential in the screen game. This 15-yard play on a tunnel screen against the Packers with 6:42 left in the first quarter was a simple example of, “Let’s get the ball to Deebo, and wait for good things to happen.” Which they usually do.

The 49ers have gained 5.6 yards per rushing attempt with Samuel on the field this season, and 4.1 yards per carry without him. Part of that is because Samuel himself can be a great runner out of the backfield, as he showed on this 11-yard sweep scamper against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 18…

…and Samuel will also open gaps for other players, as he did on this 23-yard McCaffrey run against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 14. Samuel sealed the inside edge for McCaffrey and took safety Jamal Adams to the shadow realm.

Not that Samuel is a primary deep receiver, but he can do that, as well. On this 40-yard catch against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 11, the 49ers set up in 11 personnel with a three-man vertical concept in which Samuel and receiver Jauan Jennings crossed over, and nobody in Tampa Bay’s Cover-3 accounted for No. 19.

Not the way the Bucs drew it up, I’d imagine. And when Samuel does catch the ball downfield, he’s not done yet — he’s one of the NFL’s best yards-after-catch receivers. 546 of his 916 receiving yards have come after the catch this season, the most among San Francisco’s roster of receivers.

In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys get deeper into what Samuel means to this offense, and how the Lions might deal with it all.

You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os,” previewing both conference championship games in detail, right here:

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You can also listen and subscribe to the “Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…

…and on Apple Podcasts.

The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell: Previewing the NFL’s conference championship games

In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys get you ready for Ravens-Chiefs, and 49ers-Lions. It’s conference championship time!

And then, there were four! It’s time for the conference championship round of the NFL playoffs, deciding which teams will play in Super Bowl LVIII. Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup, and Doug Farrar of Touchdown Wire and the USA Today Sports Media Group, are here to get you ready for the most interesting matchups.

Kansas City Chiefs at Baltimore Ravens

  • How will Lamar Jackson deal with Steve Spagnuolo’s unconventional blitzes?
  • Can Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco take over this game, and will “pin/pull” continue to be a thing?
  • Will Mike Macdonald’s Ravens defense cause Patrick Mahomes to hesitate in his process with all those coverage disguises?
  • How will Baltimore counter the Chiefs’ effective use of heavy personnel in the run and pass games?

Detroit Lions at San Francisco 49ers

  • Jared Goff has become much more than just a game manager, so how will Steve Wilks’ 49ers defense deal with that?
  • Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn has done a brilliant job coaching up a cornerback-light roster. But will that turn into a pumpkin against Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers offense?
  • Is Brock Purdy’s bad game against the Packers in the divisional round indicative of vulnerabilities that can be exploited here?
  •  Will the Lions’ rookies on both sides of the ball be the ultimate difference in this game?

You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os,” previewing both conference championship games in detail, right here:

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You can also listen and subscribe to the “Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…

…and on Apple Podcasts.

Stefon Diggs’ killer drop on Josh Allen’s deep throw was the dagger for the Bills’ season

The Buffalo Bills’ missed opportunities this season can be summarized in one play — Stefon Diggs’ drop of Josh Allen’s deep throw.

In “The Xs and Os” with Greg Cosell this week, while previewing all the divisional round games, Greg made the point (which he’s made before) that Buffalo Bills receiver Stefon Diggs is not the deep target he used to be.

That played out in a highly unfortunate way for the Bills in their 27-24 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night.

With 8:23 left in the game, and the score 27-24 in favor of Kansas City, Josh Allen threw an absolute howitzer of a deep ball to Diggs, who had beaten safety Justin Reid on an inside release vertical route up the numbers. Diggs did have to slow down a tick as the ball came down, but the ball was right in his hands at the Kansas City 28-yard line – that’s a 60ish-yard throw, since Allen threw it from his own 12-yard line – and all Diggs had to do was reach out and catch the thing.

Which he didn’t.

NBC’s cameras panned to Allen after the drop, and his expression seemed to say, “That’s the best throw I’ve ever made, and I threw it to my best receiver, and we got nothing out of it.” Just brutal.

That was the first play of the Bills’ final drive, which ended with Tyler Bass missing what would have been a 44-yard game-tying field goal with 1:47 left in the game. There were a lot of things that went wrong on that final drive, but imagine how different things would have been if Diggs had caught that deep throw. It was probably a touchdown, and then, it’s literally a whole new ballgame.

Diggs was targeted three times on that final drive, with no catches. Which further complicates matters, of course. Neither of these were deep throws, but they further illustrate a separation issue. 

The first was on first-and-10 from the Buffalo 43-yard line with 5:47 left in the game…

…and the second happened one play later.

The Bills are in a perilous financial situation for the 2024 season, and if Diggs — one of the team’s highest-paid players — can’t find a better footing next season and beyond, we could be entering a dimension in which he’s more of a problem than a solution.

Baker Mayfield must calm his rogue tendencies to have a chance against the Lions

If Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers are going to beat the Lions, Mayfield will have to stay within himself as he didn’t in Week 6.

Baker Mayfield is on his fourth NFL team since 2021, which is an odd place for a former No. 1 overall NFL pick to find himself just seven seasons into his NFL career. One reason Mayfield has traveled an arduous road from the Cleveland Browns to the Carolina Panthers to the Los Angeles Rams to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is the randomness of his play that can show up too often at the worst possible time. As great as Mayfield can be in the right situation with a coaching staff who can control his rogue tendencies, he’s a finely-tuned machine with a couple of oddly-placed springs, and you just have to live with it.

Buccaneers offensive coordinator Dave Canales has done an outstanding job with that this season, which is a primary reason that the Bucs are in Detroit to play the Lions in the NFC divisional round. Canales has a lot

In that 20-6 Detroit win, Mayfield completed 19 of 37 passes for 206 yards, no touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 56.8. It was probably his worst game of the season. Mayfield was frequently speeding up in the pocket whether he was hurried or not. He didn’t throw with good base fundamentals, and he threw off-platform more than he needed to, which led to a lot of incompletions against tight coverage. More worrisome were the incompletions in which his receivers had scalded Detroit’s defense. 

Mayfield had a wide-open shot to Trey Palmer with 2:00 left in the first half that he overthrew by a couple yards and would have been a touchdown if he’d stayed within himself. This was a deep over from the slot against Cover-4, and Palmer beat safety Kerby Joseph over the top. 

Mayfield did have defensive tackle Benito Jones pressuring him right when he threw the ball, but that’s a throw you need to make. Mayfield was pressured on 13 of his 41 dropbacks in that game, and he completed two of 10 passes for 17 yards and a sack.

This deep incompleton to receiver Chris Godwin on third-and-10 with 1:04 left in the game was one such negative example. The Lions ran a zone exchange out of Cover-4, and Mayfield was in shotgun with a 2×2 formation. The backside flat/post combination was a great design against this coverage, and Joseph was beaten again. With edge defender Julian Okwara dropping into coverage, Detroit defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn sent linebacker Derek Barnes and cornerback Will Harris on an overload pressure to the other side. Harris got through, and Mayfield threw a worm-burner to his target.

For the season, Mayfield has completed 81 of 165 passes for 1,035 yards, seven touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 78.2. So, it’s not as if he’s a complete disaster under pressure – this game was an oddity, but it presented most of the things about Mayfield that tend to give you pause. 

It’s now time for Mayfield to silence the doubters.

“When there are plays to be had, we have to take advantage of them,” Mayfield said this week. “It’s staying consistent – they play extremely hard. It just jumps out on film, obviously [with] the way [Lions head coach] Dan Campbell runs that team – everybody swarming to the ball, playing for each other, playing extremely hard with a lot of effort at all times. They’re a tough opponent and they make it hard on you.”

Mayfield will obviously have a better chance to advance to the NFC Championship round if he can avoid making it hard on himself.

In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys investigate the things that those around Mayfield have done to rein things in when necessary.

You can watch this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os,” featuring all the most important matchups of the divisional round, right here:

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You can also listen and subscribe to “The Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…

…and on Apple Podcasts.

Jordan Love’s final interception was a bit too much like a certain Brett Favre mistake

Jordan Love’s game-sealing interception against the 49ers reminded everybody a bit too much of a former Brett Favre mistake.

The deep cross-body throw is one of the most difficult feats a quarterback can attempt — it is not a high-percentage play. You’re throwing against your own momentum, usually with one or more angry defenders in your face, and you’re trying to hit a target 30 or more yards downfield, when you factor in the horizontal yardage involved. And if you’re making a throw like that in a game-defining situation.., well, you’d better be pretty sure of yourself.

One quarterback who was always sure of himself, to his own detriment at times, was Hall of Famer and negatively creative financeur Brett Favre. Ol’ No. 4 did most of his work with the Green Bay Packers, but near the end of the Minnesota Vikings’ 2009 season, Favre threw a cross-body pick to New Orleans Saints cornerback Tracy Porter, causing the game to go into overtime. The Saints drove downfield, won the game with a 40-yard Garrett Hartley field goal, and we had the game that changed the overtime rules.

In Saturday’s divisional-round game between the Packers and the San Francisco 49ers, it was Jordan Love who had a similar situation. With 52 seconds left in the game, and the 49ers up 24-21, Love tried a deep cross-body pass to receiver Christian Watson that was intercepted by linebacker Dre Greenlaw.

The throws, and the results, were alarmingly similar.

“I haven’t looked at it yet,” Love said after the game of that last throw. “I haven’t looked at any pictures, so looking back on it, yeah, throw it away. I don’t know if I had an opportunity to be able to run. Maybe get out of bounds, but I forced it across the middle late, which is a mortal sin. It’s something I’ll look at. That’s an area right there where I’ll be able to look at, grow from and get better in the future.”

C.J. Stroud’s S2 Cognition test score was potentially invalid and shouldn’t have been leaked

A new report indicates that C.J. Stroud’s S2 Cognition test score was potentially invalid and shouldn’t have been leaked. Not a huge surprise there.

The S2 Cognition test, which has replaced the Wonderlic as a supposedly good way to evaluate the processing skills of quarterbacks in the pre-draft process, has been taking a beating all season long. Why? Because Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud scored an 18 out of a possible 100 on the test, and he’s been one of the best rookie quarterbacks in pro football history for the Houston Texans.

“I’m not a test taker, so I play football,” Stroud said, via Scott Fowler of the Charlotte Observer, after the results were leaked. “At the end of the day, I don’t got nothing to prove for nobody. So, I’m not going to sit hee and explain how I process football. The people who are making the picks know what I can do, so that’s all that matters to me. There’s a whole bunch of people that know how to coach better, know how to play quarterback better, know how to do everything on social media. As the man in the arena — that’s what’s tough — is stepping into the arena with 10 toes. I’m going to stand on that. I know what I can do. I know what I can process. If I’m not the smartest quarterback in this draft, I know I’m one of the smartest quarterbacks in the NFL when I step in there tomorrow. I have that confidence in myself, and I don’t think you can play at Ohio State and not be smart.

“I don’t got nothing to prove to nobody, man. At the end of the day — if you don’t trust and believe in me — all I can tell you is, ‘Watch this.’”

Well, we’ve all watched this, and we’re all impressed. That includes the Baltimore Ravens’ defense, who will try to bounce Stroud out of the playoffs on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. EST.

The Ravens know they’re dealing with a different C.J. Stroud this time around

Now, the inventors of the test have told the Wall Street Journal that Stroud’s results may have been invalid, and certainly should have never been put out there in the first place.

Whether this is the case, or whether this is damage control from the test’s inventors, it’s yet another reminder that these tests obviously aren’t the be-all/end/all when it comes to quarterback evaluation. After all, Dan Marino scored a 16 on his Wonderlic, and the average for quarterbacks is 24.

Ravens, 49ers have the advantage of defenses that can do anything… and everything

The Ravens and 49ers are the one-seeds in the playoffs, and they both have defenses without specific tendencies. That’s not a coincidence.

It’s probably not a coincidence that the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers — the two one-seeds in the 2023 NFL playoffs — have defenses without a specific coverage type. In today’s NFL, with more formational and schematic concepts on offense, if you go out on the field without some things to mess up the opposing quarterback with different things, you’re left with an execution-based defense, and there’s very little margin for error if that’s the case.

The Cleveland Browns discovered that in their wild-card loss to the Houston Texans. In that 45-14 Houston win, the Browns stuck with their usual plan, to their direct detriment. C.J. Stroud had demolished single-high coverage all season long, and the Browns had run a higher rate of single-high in the regular season than any other defense. Cleveland decided to stay there in this game, and Stroud completed 12 of 16 passes for both of his touchdowns. On none of those 16 attempts did the Browns throw any kind of late movement at Stroud. It was line ’em up, and let’s go.

Browns’ refusal to adapt on defense cost them dearly against C.J. Stroud

When the Texans face the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday in the divisional round, Stroud will be tested in ways he certainly wasn’t last week. The Ravens do not have a specific coverage type. This season, they’ve run single-high coverage on 46.4% of their snaps, and two-high on 53.3% of their snaps. It’s been Cover-3, Cover-4, Cover-1, and Cover-6 in that order. You don’t know what you’re going to get from snap to snap, they do all of it well, and they’re very adept with coverage switches. 

The Ravens have made it very clear that the Stroud they’re dealing with now is a much more evolved than the Stroud that tried to navigate it all in his regular-season debut. The best way to counter that evolution is to make Stroud work through different coverage concepts. Mike Macdonald’s defense has no problem with that.

The Ravens know they’re dealing with a different C.J. Stroud this time around

On this deep incompletion against the Ravens in Week 1, Stroud had to manage a couple of things. First, Baltimore threw a six-man blitz at him with defensive back Kyle Hamilton off the edge, edge defender Odafe Oweh dropping into coverage, and linebacker Roquan Smith coming from the second level. And pre-snap, the Ravens showed a defined single-high look before moving to Cover-2. Brandon Stephens joined safety Marcus Williams as the second two-high defender. The combination of pressure and coverage must have made Stroud feel as if he had 13 or 14 defenders arrayed against him, and a near-interception was the result.

The 49ers, who play the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, are another amorphous coverage defense.They’ve played 50% single-high this season, and two-high 50% of the time. It’s Cover-3, Cover-4, Cover-1, and Cover-2 in that order. The 49ers flip to a bit more single-high on third down, but as is the case with the Ravens, they play what works for them and they don’t change a lot from a systemic point in a situational sense. 

Packers quarterback Jordan Love has been as good as anybody playing his position in the second half of the season, but even the best quarterbacks can be made uncomfortable when faced with the right concepts in concert. In Week 2 against the Los Angeles Rams and Matthew Stafford, the 49ers got an interception by disguising their intentions. Stafford is a 15-year NFL veteran with as developed a sense of what defenses will do as any quarterback you’ll ever meet, but here, Steve Wilks’ defense won the day.

Stafford would have 2-Man coverage to deal with post-snap, but that wasn’t the look pre-snap. With a single-high safety, and linebacker Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw close to the line of scrimmage, Stafford probably thought he’d have something easy over the middle of the field. This was a four-man rush in which the 49ers plastered Stafford’s receivers all over the field, and cornerback Deommodore Lenoir jumped Stafford’s backside slant for the pick.

No matter the quarterback you’re facing, you have a better chance of beating him if your defense is creative enough to throw as many different looks at him as possible, with the discipline to have everyone together on their assignments. The Ravens and 49ers each have this on lock, and again, it’s probably not a coincidence that the two best overall teams in the Final Eight can say that about themselves.

In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys get into both defenses, and how they’re able to switch things up at such a high level.

You can watch this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os,” featuring all the most important matchups of the divisional round, right here:

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You can also listen and subscribe to “The Xs and Os” podcast on Spotify…

…and on Apple Podcasts.