The Browns’ defense took Kyle Shanahan’s beautiful 49ers offense to the woodshed last Sunday. Here’s how they did it — and why other defenses can’t.
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The San Francisco 49ers had a feeling that they were running into a buzzsaw last Sunday in the Cleveland Browns’ defense.
“He is one of the most talented guys I think anyone’s seen,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said of Browns edge-monster Myles Garrett last Wednesday. “And the style they play on defense is very similar to ours. They rush the passer every play and then react to everything else. Him combined with [Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator Jim] Schwartz’s scheme and the guys around him, it’s a problem. It’s obvious why they’re a top defense right now.”
Shanahan had equal praise for Cleveland’s defensive backs.
“Very good. When you have the D-Line they have, the downhill linebackers, you better have some good corners, and they have very good ones. They play a lot of man-to-man coverage. They’ll mix in some zone. But, when you play that much man-to-man and you’re also the number one pass defense in the league, you’ve got to have some good corners.”
Jim Schwartz also understood the challenges of the 49ers’ top-ranked offense and all the shifts and motions presented.
“But I think probably the biggest thing that stands out is they have so many multipurpose players, multi-position players,” Schwartz said last Thursday. “I think a common thing is people say positionless players. These guys aren’t positionless. They have multiple positions. [Christian] McCaffrey can be a wide out. He can be a running back. Deebo can be a wide out. He can be a running back. [George] Kittle can be a tight end. He can be a wide out. [Kyle] Juszcyk can be a fullback. He can be a tight end. He can be a wide out. He can carry the ball.
“They put a lot of I won’t say stress, but they make it where you just can’t defend one thing. They can be in 21 personnel, two backs, tight end and two wideouts, and they can make you defend twelve alignments, eleven alignments, empty alignments, two back alignments. And they’ll all use their wide receivers to block. Their wide receivers do an outstanding job of blocking. So we’re going to have to play our game and accentuate our guys. We have some multipurpose players that can do a lot of things. It’s going to be a great matchup. This is NFL football at its finest. This is an outstanding offense, a good defense. We’ll be ready for it.”
So, everybody knew what they were in for. The Browns were the NFL’s top defense in DVOA, and outside of a few hiccups against the Ravens in Week 4, they’ve maintained a historic pace all the way through the young season.
After Cleveland’s 19-17 win over the 49ers on Sunday, that pace fortified itself.
How bad was it for the 49ers’ offense, and how good was it for the Browns’ defense? Quarterback Brock Purdy came into this game with an EPA of 51.96 — by far the best in the league. Tua Tagovailoa ranked second at 42.28. Against the Browns, Purdy’s EPA was -8.0. And Purdy was completely shut down in the ways in which he’s succeeded all season long. The failure rate against Cleveland’s defense was that much more shocking in comparison.
Before this game, Christian McCaffrey’s average yards before contact per attempt was 1.80. His average yards after contact was 3.35. Against the Browns, McCaffrey had -0.18 yards per carry before contact, and 4.09 yards after. So, when he was able to get out of the vise the Browns’ fronts had him in at and behind the line of scrimmage, McCaffrey represented himself pretty well. But getting there was a challenge at times.
After watching the tape on Monday, Shanahan concluded that his offense was mostly outmatched.
“I mean, they played aggressive man coverage. We knew that going into it. They had a couple of pressures that got us, we had a couple mistakes that got us in really negative situations. We had two drives in that game that didn’t have a negative play. That was the first drive that we scored a touchdown and it was the last drive where we ended up missing that field goal. We got in some negative situations where we had second-and-long and third-and-long. And then with that pass rush and the tight coverages, that makes it really tough on a quarterback. So I think just as a team wholly, just getting into some of those bad situations made Brock’s job a lot tougher. But he mixed it up throughout the game, did a good job.
It was tough on film going in, and it was tough during the game, too.”
It was, so let’s go to the film to see what the Browns did to Shanahan’s normally impeccable creation.