Big Ben’s stats through three weeks are superstitiously jaw-dropping.
In speaking with the media on Wednesday, Ben Roethlisberger shared his concerns about the sudden schedule shift. He hoped that the unplanned bye week wouldn’t mess with the progress he was making post-injury or slow down his production.
It prompted me to take a look at where Big Ben’s stats stood through Week 3. I’m only slightly superstitious, but what I saw was nonetheless jaw-dropping.
You read it right. No. 7 has 7 touchdowns and 777 passing yards in his quest for the Steelers’ 7th Super Bowl.
Ben also has 7.1 yards per attempt, which, if you round down, is 7. OK, I know that’s pushing things.
Well, this probably takes the sting out of it for San Francisco fans.
Andrew Beaton and Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal published a fascinating story today that changes the way anyone should look at the result of Super Bowl LIV.
In it, they detail how the 49ers’ second-half collapse coincided with doctors in the Bay area rushing to prepare to treat their first COVID-19 cases. In fact, the University of California San Francisco opened a command center to deal with the virus the morning after the Super Bowl. Two patients who’d tested positive for the disease were admitted that day.
So, had the 49ers held on to win they would have given a city where coronavirus was likely already spreading a reason to gather — in large numbers and without anything approaching social distancing:
There could have been hundreds of thousands of fans on the streets of San Francisco at a Super Bowl parade a few days later.
Some experts who have studied the Bay Area’s containment of the virus have reached a surprising conclusion about these simultaneous events of Super Bowl Sunday: San Francisco likely won when the 49ers lost.
The story goes on to posit that between 500,000 and 1.5 million people could have gathered for the championship parade, and points out that such a gathering — with its packed-in crowds made up of happy, drinking, hugging people — would be ripe for spreading a respiratory illness.
Kansas City, meanwhile, was one of the last NFL cities to report a coronavirus case — a full six weeks later, by which time San Francisco was under a shelter-in-place order — meaning its parade was safe by comparison.
Honestly, it feels surreal to even think about the Super Bowl now. Sports (and life) has been shut down for more than a month, and nobody has a reasonable idea of when it might return. But if you want to re-live the Chiefs’ stirring comeback — or more precisely, the confounding way in which the 49ers failed to stop it — our Steven Ruiz has you covered.
It was Robert Saleh, not Kyle Shanahan, who was too conservative.
The 49ers were 7:13 away from being crowned world champions. Holding the Chiefs’ powerful offense to a measly 10 points through the first 53 minutes of Super Bowl 54, San Francisco was a stop on 3rd-and-forever away from putting the game out of reach for good. The NFL’s best pass defense, with a pass rush that had harassed Patrick Mahomes all night and a secondary that had picked him off twice, surely wasn’t going to be beaten in that situation.
Well, you know what happened next… Tyreek Hill found himself wide open for a 44-yard reception that sparked a 21-0 run for the Chiefs — and gave Kansas City its first Super Bowl title in five decades.
It wasn’t surprising that Mahomes, the NFL’s most talented quarterback, was able to connect with Hill, the league’s most explosive receiver, for a big play. It was, however, shocking that the 49ers secondary had allowed the Chiefs’ biggest weapon to get this open that far downfield.
How does that happen? Quite simply, Andy Reid called the perfect play for the coverage 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh had called.
Perfect play-calls don’t happen by accident. They’re the result of intense film study, pattern recognition and, in this particular case, a naive defensive play-caller who thought he could get away with showing one of the NFL’s sharpest offensive minds the same coverages over and over again. That one play didn’t cost the 49ers a championship. But it was just one of many failures by Saleh to change the picture for Reid and Mahomes, which helped them lead the furious comeback.
San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan was always going to receive the bulk of the blame for the blown lead. His conservative decisions at the end of the first half and the beginning of the third quarter drew the ire of the nerds. The 49ers’ run-pass ratio in the fourth quarter had football guys steamed. Both groups missed the real culprit. Shanahan (and his quarterback) certainly deserves some blame, but most of it should be placed on his defensive coordinator.
How much blame does Shanahan deserve?
(Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Before we get into Saleh’s missteps, let’s take a look at Shanahan’s.
It’s clear the 40-year-old coach handled the end of the first half poorly with his decision to (1) not use a timeout after the Chiefs were held on third down with 1:59 to go in the second quarter and; (2) start the ensuing drive out with two runs, essentially killing any chance the 49ers had of adding points before the half. But how much did those two decisions really cost his team? We can use the “Expected points” model to get an idea.
Let’s start with the timeout. Let’s just assume the result of the punt (a touchback) would have remained the same. After the third-down stop, the 49ers could have called timeout at the 1:47 mark. The punt took nine seconds off the clock, so we’ll give them the ball at the Chiefs’ 20-yard-line with 1:38 remaining and two timeouts to work with. According to the Expected points model, the 49ers would be expected to score about 0.8 points in that scenario. With 0:59 seconds on the clock and three timeouts, that number drops down to about 0.6, so the failure to call timeout cost San Francisco about 0.2 expected points. The 49ers eventually throwing downfield and going for points complicates matters, but Shanahan ultimately was content to go into the half with a 10-10 score, which cost him 0.8 expected points and a percentage point of win probability. It wasn’t the optimal decision, but it wasn’t a game-changing one either.
That wasn’t Shanahan’s only conservative decision, though. After the halftime break, the 49ers drove down to the Chiefs’ 24-yard-line, where they faced a fourth-and-2. Most analytics devotees were advocating for San Francisco’s offense to stay out on the field, but Shanahan opted for the three points, much to the chagrin of Analytics Twitter. It actually turns out that kicking the field goal was the best decision in that case, at least according to ESPN’s model…
Also in postmortem, FWIW, our model supported SF's FG on 4th and 2 from the 24. I was personally surprised. Can't know exactly the 'reason', but suspect it liked a 2nd-half lead, and the 24 is not as juicy a 4th dn region as longer/marginal FG ranges or nearer the goal line.
That makes sense. On fourth-and-2 in that area of the field, NFL teams have a conversion rate of 57.7% since 2010. Teams average about five yards per play on those attempts. For the sake of argument, let’s just give the 49ers those five yards and put them on the Kansas City 19-yard-line. The Expected points in that situation is about 4.5. So, at most, Shanahan’s decision cost San Francisco 1.5 expected points, but that’s also assuming a 100% chance of conversion on fourth down.
Even when taking the most cynical view — at least a cynical view backed up by numbers — Shanahan only really cost his team about three points with those two heavily scrutinized decisions. That’s obviously not ideal, and game management has absolutely been an issue three years into his head coaching, but when factoring how good of a game he called, Shanahan did more good than harm. Thanks to his designs, Garoppolo finished the night with an expected completion percentage — which is based on a variety of factors including receiver separation and depth of target — of 69.8%, per Next Gen Stats. For context, Drew Brees led the NFL during the regular season at 68.0%. The running game averaged 0.23 Expected Points Added per attempt, which nearly doubles the Ravens’ league-leading mark of 0.12. That’s next level play-calling.
Of course, there are those people who believe that the loss falls on Shanahan not because of his suboptimal decision-making but because his decision to abandon the run after the 49ers took a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter. San Francisco ran 17 snaps in that final frame. Only four of them were runs.
That sounds bad, but when you add situational context, that ratio makes a lot more sense. Let’s start by pointing out that seven of the 49ers’ 13 dropbacks came after the two-minute warning with the team trailing. You cannot blame Shanahan for any of those calls as his team was in a must-pass situation.
That leaves six pass calls to four runs.
Before the two-minute warning, the 49ers ran on every one of their first-down plays in the fourth quarter. So, no problems there. The reverse was true on second down. Garoppolo dropped back on all three second-down snaps in the fourth quarter before the two-minute warning. The first of those dropbacks resulted in a 12-yard catch for George Kittle. The second play was actually changed at the line by Garoppolo, so you can’t pin that decision on Shanahan. So that just leaves the second-and-5 play call, which got Kittle. Unfortunately, the pass was batted down by Chris Jones.
The 49ers (wisely) called pass plays on their two third-down plays. The first was a third-and-14 where the protection broke down and Garoppolo was forced to scramble. On the next third-down play, Shanahan dialed up his “Arches” concept and got the look he wanted. But Garoppolo didn’t take the wide-open throw to Kittle and a miscommunication with his receiver led to a punt on fourth down.
So, really, you can only question one of Shanahan’s run-pass decisions, and even that play should have worked. The 49ers’ play-calling was good throughout the game. At least the offensive play-calling was good…
The 49ers’ defensive game plan
Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
I’m an idiot. I just wanted to point that out before I get into the 49ers’ plan for stopping the Chiefs. Because you need to realize this: if an idiot like me recognized some of this stuff, I know a play-calling savant like Andy Reid certainly did.
So what was the 49ers’ plan? It won’t take long to explain, actually. On first down and second-and-short (under 7 yards to go), the 49ers essentially played two coverages: Quarters and Cover 3. And it wasn’t difficult to figure out when they’d play which coverage. When Mahomes was in shotgun, they played Quarters; when he went under center, they played Cover 3.
Every time.
We’re talking a 100% tendency for the entire game.
Here are all of Kansas City’s under-center snaps in the game…
It’s all Cover 3.
Now, the Quarters calls did change based on the pre-snap distribution of the receivers. Against formations with three receivers to one side and an isolated pass catcher to the other, the 49ers played a variation of Quarters some coaches refer to as “Solo.” In that coverage, the corner to the single-receiver side plays man coverage on that receiver and the linebacker to that side takes the running back. This allows the defense to flood its zone coverage to the three-receiver side to avoid being outnumbered.
Here’s an example of the 49ers playing “Solo” against the Chiefs…
The key man in “Solo” coverage is the backside safety, who is responsible for the No. 3 receiver (the receiver lined up furthest inside) if he goes vertical. The Chiefs had dominated defenses all season with deep crossing routes from three-by-one alignments, so Saleh playing this as a base coverage against three-by-one sets made a lot of sense.
But playing it every time the Chiefs got into one particular formation did not.
Especially down the stretch when Reid would have picked up on the tendency. Again, I’m an idiot and it didn’t take long for me to pick up on it, but Saleh decided it was a good idea to show Reid and Mahomes the same picture down after down. The Chiefs ran nine first-down plays from a three-by-one gun formation during the game. San Francisco played “Solo” on every single one of them.
When the Chiefs lined up in a two-by-two shotgun formation, the 49ers played Quarters 93% of the time. On third-and-3+, they played Cover 1 man (sometimes with a safety lurking over the middle, sometimes with an extra pass rusher) 80% of the time. On third-and-extra-long (more than 10 yards to go) Saleh would call Cover 3 Buzz, which is sorta, kinda similar to “Solo” coverage in that you have the backside safety looking to take the No. 3 receiver if he goes vertical…
Here’s an example from the game.
The Chiefs faced third-and-extra-long three times outside of the red zone. The 49ers called Cover 3 Buzz every single time. Converting on third-and-long is difficult, but it gets a lot easier when the offense knows what coverage it’s getting, as San Francisco would find out later in the game.
With all of these easily diagnosed tendencies, Saleh might as well have been calling plays into Patrick Mahomes’ headset.
Andy Reid adjusted … Robert Saleh did not
Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
The obvious rebuttal is “It was working!”
The mighty Chiefs offense had scored only 10 points through 53 minutes, so why would Saleh change things up? But was it actually working? Consider this: in the first half, the Chiefs averaged 2.5 points per drive. They averaged a league-leading 2.7 points per drive during the regular season, so not much of a difference there. On their drives before the 21-point run, the Chiefs averaged 45.7 yards per possession. During the regular season, the Ravens led the league at 41.8 yards per drive.
Kansas City’s offense was moving the ball just fine, but two uncharacteristic interceptions thwarted promising drives in the third quarter. Mahomes wasn’t going to keep throwing it to the defense. Saleh had to at least throw some changeups at Reid and his young quarterback. He didn’t, and Reid took advantage.
Knowing he’d get Cover 3 if the Chiefs lined up under center (100% tendency), Reid dialed up “Y-Leak” and created an explosive play downfield.
Knowing the Chiefs were playing man on third-and-long (80% tendency), he called this pick play to get an easy first down completion.
Knowing he’d get man coverage on third-and-long within 25 yards of the end zone (100% tendency), he called slot fades for both Travis Kelce and Hill and let Mahomes pick a target based on the movement of the free safety.
Knowing he’d get either Solo or a Cover 3 Blitz on second-and-long (100% tendency) — and that either way Sherman would be locked onto Sammy Watkins with no safety help — Reid called for a fade route.
And that brings us back to the play that changed the game: Hill’s 44-yard catch on third-and-15. Thanks to NFL Films, we know the play Reid called, at the behest of Mahomes: “3 Jet Wasp Y-Funnel.”
And thanks to Saleh’s schematic rigidness, Reid knew the 49ers’ play-call: Cover 3 Buzz. So Reid used Kelce’s over route to occupy the strong safety, while Watkins’ dig route would draw the attention of CB Emmanuel Moseley. That left Jimmie Ward, playing the deep middle, to cover Hill all by himself. With Hill looking as if he were running a post route, Ward opens up his hips to run with it, only for Hill to break back toward the sideline, leaving him wide open.
There was no read there. Mahomes didn’t have to go through his progressions. He simply had to buy enough time for Hill to get open, because, based on everything he had seen that game, Mahomes knew Hill would get open. He said as much after the game:
I asked Patrick Mahomes about "2-3 Jet Chip Wasp” shortly after he left the field following Super Bowl LIV. pic.twitter.com/itaxQ3fbxR
“They were playing this kind of robber coverage all game long where the safety was coming down and kind of robbing all our deep cross routes, and we had a good play call on it where we had (Travis) Kelce do a little stutter deep cross. We had Tyreek getting one-on-one with that safety, but the biggest thing was we needed really good protection.”
There’s no shame in losing to Patrick Mahomes and Andry Reid. Robert Saleh fell victim to a duo that has left many defenses in its wake. But the 49ers defense deserved more from its coach. Saleh had the league’s deepest and most talented defense at his disposal. He had two weeks to put together a game plan. And this is what he came up with? Mahomes and Reid do not need any extra help to make an opposing defense look silly, but Saleh gave it to them anyway.
Saleh’s simple approach to play-calling had served the 49ers well all season. With a stacked group of pass rushers, an athletic linebacker corps and a smart secondary, he had more than enough talent to just line up and beat opposing offenses even if they knew what was coming. Against Andy Reid and this offense, which was just as talented, that was a mistake. A far bigger mistake than any Shanahan made that night in Miami.
The Kansas City Chiefs will celebrate their Super Bowl 54 victory over the 49ers with a parade down the streets of Kansas City, Missouri, on Wednesday – but hours before the parade kicked off, a driver who may have been impaired led police on a scary chase down the parade route, as masses of Chiefs fans were gathering.
According to reports, a car drove through a barrier onto the parade route, and refused to stop when police responded, even after multiple police vehicles attempted to box the driver in.
Appreciate the quick action of the @kcpolice ending a chase of a suspected impaired driver at the parade route. We’ll stay vigilant about the threats like these throughout the day. #KCMO#KCPD
The 49ers’ Super Bowl window is closing rapidly and flipping the QB for draft picks is the only remedy.
The 49ers’ heartbreaking loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl 54 has fractured San Francisco’s fanbase into two groups: One believes that Jimmy Garoppolo, who has started only 26 games during his career, is still inexperienced and just needs time to develop into the franchise quarterback they needed him to be against the Chiefs on Sunday night in Miami.
And then there are the realistic 49ers fans. The fans who see a 28-year-old quarterback who has been in this league for the better part of a decade now and is already two years into a contract that made him the highest-paid player in NFL history at one point in time. They also realize how short Super Bowl windows are — especially when that window is, in part, propped open by a dominant defense. There isn’t time to wait and see on Garoppolo. Windows open and close in an instant in the NFL. Just ask the Jaguars, Bears and Rams. Three teams that thought they had time to let their young quarterbacks figure it out … until they didn’t.
The 49ers should be a good team in 2020. Kyle Shanahan will still be cooking up the offensive game plans and calling the plays. It’s irrational to expect the defense to perform at the same level it did in 2019 (that doesn’t tend to happen with historically good defenses), but it will be good, at the very least. But simply “running it back” and hoping for a different ending will not go so well. The 49ers have to get better, and it’s going to be hard for them to do with their offseason resources.
(You’ll find the 49ers all the way on the left, toward the bottom … where no team wants to be on this graph.)
As a result of the trades for Dee Ford and Emmanuel Sanders, the 49ers do not have a pick in the second, third or fourth rounds of the 2020 NFL draft. They also have less than $20 million cap space, while several key players are headed for free agency, including Sanders, DE Arik Armstead and FS Jimmie Ward. The team will also have to give raises to exclusive rights free agent CB Emmanuel Moseley and do-it-all FB Kyle Juszczyk, if the 49ers pick up his club option for 2020. LT Joe Staley said before the playoffs that he isn’t thinking about retirement but it appears to be a distinct possibility the team will have to plan for. On paper, the 49ers were arguably the deepest team in the league but that will not be the case next season. They’ll have to let some of those free agents walk and do not have the draft capital or cap space to replace them
But there is one way to get more of both: Trade Jimmy G.
It would be a radical move, for sure — and one that a lot of 49ers fans would take issue with — but the team could save $22.4 million in cap space by moving on from the 28-year-old while also bringing back some much-needed draft capital.
NFL teams have typically balked at moving on from a competent QB even if it’s clear he’s not The One. Mostly because there usually isn’t an obvious replacement available via free agency or trade. But that’s not the case this offseason when there should be several viable replacements available, including Tom Brady, Philip Rivers, Jameis Winston and Teddy Bridgewater, to name a few. And it’s not like we haven’t seen Kyle Shanahan cobble together productive passing games with underwhelming talent at the quarterback position. Just last year, his offense allowed undrafted free agent Nick Mullens to average 0.13 Expected Points Added per dropback. Garoppolo averaged 0.19 this season … with a much better supporting cast and against an easier schedule, per Football Outsiders. San Francisco should not be afraid to re-enter the quarterback wild.
It’s really the only hope. If the rest of the 49ers roster is going to be worse off (and that’s looking like a certainty barring some offseason wizardry from GM John Lynch) an upgrade at quarterback is a must if this team is going to make it back to the Super Bowl.
The only resource they really have to make that upgrade is Jimmy G himself. There is just enough shine left on him — even after an underwhelming performance in the Super Bowl — to dupe some poor team into trading for a 28-year-old vet who still can’t get to his second read or throw consistently outside the numbers. The 49ers don’t have to dip their toes into the free-agent waters or draft a developmental QB prospect. They can just give Carolina a call and enquire about Cam Newton, whose future with the Panthers is still up in the air.
Newton would be a perfect cog in Shanahan’s offensive machine. The 49ers run game was already among the best in the league; now imagine throwing a run threat at quarterback in the mix. Opposing defenses haven’t stood much of a chance playing 11-on-10 in the run. Playing 11-on-11 against a Shanahan offense would be brutal, as we saw during the 2012 season when he was working with a rookie Robert Griffin III. Newton is also an underrated pocket passer who will allow Shanahan to call more dropback passes instead of relying on the tricks he used to make Garoppolo functional: play-action fakes and passes no further than five yards past the line of scrimmage. His menu of play calls would expand tenfold — and it’s already pretty robust as things stand.
Even if it’s not Newton, the 49ers need some change at the position, which should have been made clear after their postseason run. Shanahan made things so easy on Garoppolo during the playoffs, and he still couldn’t hold up his end. He threw the ball only 58 times over the course of three games and his passes traveled 7.6 yards downfield on average. Yet, Garoppolo still managed to throw interceptions on 5.2% of his throws. How bad is that? Well, Jameis Winston threw interceptions on 4.8% of his passes during the regular season and his average pass traveled 10.5 yards downfield. And it’s not like Garoppolo putting the ball in harm’s way was some new development. He threw 13 interceptions during the regular season and had another eight dropped by defenders. There’s a reason why Shanahan doesn’t ask him to do too much thinking.
The hope is that Garoppolo improves and eventually develops into a quarterback who no longer needs schematic training wheels to produce at the level he did this season. But I just don’t know how that happens if Shanahan is forced to keep those training wheels on for the sake of the team. The 49ers roster is built to win now, not to be in “develop a quarterback who is already 28 and gets paid like a top-tier passer” mode. “Practice” isn’t any better of an answer; Garoppolo has been practicing for six years now and still needs half-field reads to be comfortable in the pocket. The best-case scenario — or at least the most realistic one — is Jimmy G following the same developmental track as Kirk Cousins, where he incrementally gets better but never quite fully figures out the issues that make him a liability in the first place. I don’t think “Maybe one day he’ll turn into Kirk Cousins” is something any NFL fan should be hoping for.
Whatever the 49ers end up doing, moving on from Garoppolo has to be taken into consideration. The front office wisely gave itself an out when putting together his contract; it was essentially a front-loaded two-year deal with a team option. Most of the guaranteed money was paid out early (his salary cap number was $37 million in year one but is closer to $27 for the remaining three years). San Francisco will owe only $4.2 million in dead cap if it moves on now, and it has time to make that decision: $15.7 million of Garoppolo’s 2020 salary becomes guaranteed on April 1, well after free agency has begun.
Will they be smart enough to bail or will they continue down this path to nowhere? The 49ers defense isn’t going to get any better. And neither will the team if the quarterback situation doesn’t change sooner rather than later.
Statistically speaking, Troy Aikman has some of the more underwhelming credentials for a Hall of Fame quarterback. He’s never passed for more than 23 touchdowns in a season. His completion percentage is 61.5 percent. It’s easy to look at Aikman’s stats and pile on about how he was never in the same stratosphere as Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (he wasn’t).
Aikman does, however, have three Super Bowl rings, and he understandably holds that over Mahomes. But Aikman should remember that the internet doesn’t forget, especially when it comes to sports fans.
Back in September, a tweet from The Athletic Kansas City pointed out that Mahomes had already thrown 36 percent of Aikman’s touchdown total in 8 percent of Aikman’s career games.
ICYMI: "Patrick Mahomes has thrown 36% of Troy Aikman's career touchdowns, in about 8% of the games" https://t.co/VAJmRm9gmT
The former Cowboys quarterback didn’t take kindly to the perceived statistical slight, so he responded, “Talk to me when when [sic] he has 33% of my Super Bowl Titles.”
Well, after the Chiefs’ 31-20 win in Sunday’s Super Bowl 54, Mahomes’ MVP-winning performance was good to get him to 33 percent of Aikman’s Super Bowl titles. And Chiefs fans wanted to have a word with Troy. The tweet went viral after the game.
ICYMI: Mahomes now has 33% of Aikman's Super Bowl Titles in just 16.7% of the Seasons played by Troy. https://t.co/PtyXRQM3es
Don’t blame the guy who had a part in 28-3. Not this time.
Kyle Shanahan is going to get the blame. Had he not been a part of the Falcons’ collapse in Super Bowl 51, that may not have been the case, but when you blow a 28-3 on the sport’s biggest stage, you lose the benefit of the doubt. After the 49ers blew a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl 54, the takes were already being crafted: This so-called offensive mastermind had blown yet another Super Bowl.
Shanahan certainly deserves criticism for his conservative decision-making and poor clock management, which cost his team points. But it’s hard to put all the blame for the 49ers 20-point output all on the coach, as Shanahan pitched a near-perfect game from a play-calling standpoint. If not for Jimmy Garoppolo’s poor performance, we’d be celebrating Shanahan’s genius right now. Not questioning it.
As expected, the 49ers’ run game was dazzling with a wide receiver, rookie Deebo Samuel, surprisingly at the heart of the ground attack. Shanahan consistently created space for his speedy skill players with brilliant designs that had the Chiefs front seven running in circles. San Francisco averaged 0.23 Expected Points Added, per run. To put that in perspective, the Ravens led the NFL in rushing EPA at 0.12 per run.
The passing game should have been just as productive. Per Next Gen Stats, Garoppolo’s expected completion percentage was 69.8% for the game. He completed 64.5% of his passes, giving him a Completion Percentage Over Expectation (CPOE) of -5.3%. Only one quarterback produced a worse CPOE over the course of the regular season: Lions backup David Blough.
Through three quarters, Garoppolo’s numbers were looking pretty good. “Super Bowl MVP” good, even. Going into the fourth quarter, Garoppolo was completing 85% of his passes and averaging over nine yards-per-attempt, but that was mostly the result of Shanahan’s schemes providing him with easy throws that allowed 49ers pass catchers to rack up yards after the catch. Garoppolo’s average completion traveled only 4.7 yards downfield on average, per Next Gen Stats. And nearly all of his production came on play-action passes…
Jimmy Garoppolo has used play action on 60% of dropbacks through the 3rd quarter, which would be the highest rate by a QB in a game this season with at least 10 pass attempts.
Through three quarters, Shanahan’s system had effectively hidden Garoppolo. And then the fourth quarter happened. In the final frame, the 28-year-old completed three of his eleven attempts for 36 yards and an interception. The numbers are bad, but the plays he left on the field will haunt 49ers fans for years.
With the 49ers leading 20-17 with just over five minutes remaining in the game, Garoppolo had a chance to pretty much put the game away on third-and-5. Shanahan dialed up his “Arches concept from a bunch formation,” a perfect call against the Chiefs man coverage.
The receiver at the point of the bunch runs an in-breaking route that clears out space for George Kittle on the short post route. The play worked as planned; but, for whatever reason, Garoppolo decided not to throw to Kittle, who had beaten his man inside and would have easily picked up the first down.
The 49ers were forced to punt and seven plays later, Patrick Mahomes found Damien Williams for a go-ahead touchdown with 2:44 left on the clock. More than enough time for Shanahan and Garoppolo to put together a Super Bowl-winning drive.
On the sixth play of that drive, Shanahan dialed up what should have been a championship-winning play. Once again, the play-call was perfect. The 49ers went with a passing concept commonly referred to as “Mills,” which has the slot receiver running a deep in-breaking route and the outside receiver running a post over the top.
Both Emmanuel Sanders and Kendrick Bourne got open on the play and Garoppolo had enough time to make the throw from a relatively clean pocket. But the perfect play-call is useless if the quarterback can’t make the throw, and…
Shanahan will get torn apart for his late-game play-calling. The fact that he called only two run plays over the last 10 minutes of the game will certainly be a thing. But he gave his quarterback, whose contract made him the highest-paid player in the history of the league at one point, multiple opportunities to win the game. That’s all you can ask of a coach. The play-calling couldn’t have been much better. If Garoppolo makes either of those two plays, Shanahan’s run-pass ratio wouldn’t be a story. We’d be celebrating the next great offensive mind instead.
Andy Reid is going to celebrate with a very well-earned cheeseburger.
Andy Reid had already solidified his status as one of the best and most influential coaches in NFL history before Super Bowl 54, but after the Chiefs came from behind in the fourth quarter to stun the 49ers, Reid finally captured the championship trophy that had eluded him for so long. After 21 seasons as an NFL head coach, Reid is now a Super Bowl champion – and he can’t wait to celebrate with a massive cheeseburger.
Reid joined NFL Network after the game and said he wanted to celebrate by getting “the biggest cheeseburger you’ve ever seen…. might be a double.”
Andy Reid's going to get the biggest cheeseburger he can find, might make it a double pic.twitter.com/BjTeYvtPsb
In the end — this end, at least, the one everyone will remember now — Andy Reid didn’t have to make a decision about when to call time out. His quarterback didn’t vomit or not vomit in the huddle. Nothing came apart.
Reid kept the same mildly bewildered, mildly perturbed look on the mustachioed face he scrunches in between his hat brim and coat collar, even as his Kansas City Chiefs pulled away for a 31-20 win in Super Bowl LIV. He clutched that play card, the way he always does. Nothing about him said anything. Like usual. It had been this way for most of 22 seasons as an NFL head coach.
It looked all the same as it always had, just the way Andy Reid would want it, right up until the moment the orange gatorade hit him and he turned and shouted, releasing years of pent-up frustration, vanquishing the doubts caused by losing Super Bowl XXXIX, putting to rest any already ridiculous notion that he isn’t one of the better coaches in NFL history.
“Big Red” had trouble finding words to describe his feelings as the confetti showered him and his team. He appeared to not hear the question a Fox reported asked him, then replied with a brief cliche and let Patrick Mahomes step in.
It’s not like football coaches, on the whole, are very knowable. They strive to never say much. They’re often stern and serious, sometimes comically so (looking at you, Bill Belichick press conferences.) All of which is probably the product of having to lead 50-some elite athletes playing a brutal, exacting sport.
But Reid has been more of an enigma than most. The average NFL fan may have come into Sunday thinking he was a good but not great coach who was large and wore Hawaiian shirts and happened to appear in two sort-of-funny videos:
Reid was so consistently successful (except in the big games) that he sort of faded into the background of a league where young geniuses tend to make headlines. When he crossed over into the national conversation, it was too often because he’d long ago become the avatar for poor clock management (and that was overblown, as things tend to be.)
Before joining the Chiefs, Reid coached in Philadelphia for 14 seasons, endearing himself to fans by orchestrating a turn around in his second year and then leading the team to four-straight NFC East first-place finishes, losing in three NFC championship games before reaching the Super Bowl and losing to the Patriots. The Eagles then sandwiched fourth-placed finishes around another division title, and Philly fans, craving something more than an effective and steady coach, began tiring of Reid. He wasn’t retained after the 2012 season — the Eagles had just failed to make the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time in Reid’s tenure — and the city exhaled.
Reid was then, and remains now, often drab. His players and friends say he jokes around off the field, and has myriad interests, but he rarely showed it. Nor was he liable to shout or snarl. He’d mumble through injury updates and then he’d drop what became his signature line when it was time for reporters to ask questions: “Time’s yours.”
That was Reid: efficient and uninterested in ostentation. Which can be grating when the team isn’t winning.
The Eagles, though, sent this perfect tweet after the game:
Players appear to adore Reid. By most accounts he’s an extremely hard worker who is honest with them. Which is what players want. He’s considered a players coach — he wants them to show their personalities, there’s no overriding Eagles or Chiefs way — who gets his message across when he needs to.
Reid’s life has hardly gone without tragedy; his oldest son Garrett, died of an overdose at Eagles training camp in 2012. Garrett and another brother, Britt, had previously served time in prison on drug charges. Britt is now a coach on the Chiefs staff. I’m looking forward to reading the story of those two finally getting a quiet moment in the next few days to reflect on all they’ve been through .
There was some question in Philadelphia last week about whether Eagles fans should delight in Reid winning a Super Bowl. There was only ever one serious answer to that question. Reid deserved to win a Lombardi Trophy as much as anyone can, and football is so often a sport where that doesn’t actually matter.
Which is probably why Reid, at his moment of triumph, did not suddenly find his words. There were no epic speeches or proclamations. What he seemed most interested in, what the cameras caught here and there, and reporters on the scene described, was giving bear hugs. Because with those, the message could not be more clear.
Richard Sherman got roasted on Twitter during Super Bowl 54.
Richard Sherman is one of the biggest trash talkers the NFL has ever seen. He’s not shy about letting you know how good he is.
And who can blame him? He’s a Hall of Fame cornerback at the end of the day. Anyone that good would be a great trash talker.
But, of course, there are rules that come with trash talk, fam. If you dish it out, you KNOW it’s going to come back hard when you have a misstep. And you’ve got to be able to take it.
Y’all know the rule. “If thou speaketh garbage upon a man, thou shall get garbage in return.” It’s in the book. Page 73, section 113. Check it out.
Sherman knows that. And that’s where he’s at right now. After winning the NFC Championship he promptly engaged in a back and forth with Darrelle Revis on Twitter that basically ended with him telling him to watch the Super Bowl from the couch.
I would go in on this has been but I have a Super Bowl to prepare for. Enjoy the view from the couch. Your ninth year looked a lot different than this. Lmao https://t.co/jj3pwWYhVa
Whew boy. What a move. What a route. What a catch. Great stuff by Watkins.
But y’all know Twitter. They were absolutely NOT going to let Sherman live that one down. A whole lot of “Darrelle Revis was right” going around right now.
