49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo technically won two Super Bowls with the New England Patriots. The problem is he played zero snaps in any of the Patriots’ playoff runs during his three full years in their uniform. Garoppolo will get his first …
49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo technically won two Super Bowls with the New England Patriots. The problem is he played zero snaps in any of the Patriots’ playoff runs during his three full years in their uniform.
Garoppolo will get his first taste of postseason action Saturday when the 49ers host the Minnesota Vikings.
Typically the NFL playoffs come with some additional pressure due to the amplified importance of each game, but 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan on Tuesday told reporters he isn’t concerned about Garoppolo wilting in the moment.
“I felt like last week was a playoff game. That was pretty intense,” Shanahan said of the 49ers’ Week 17 win over Seahawks in Seattle. “Or whenever we played Seattle. I think he’s shown he can handle himself in poise. He’s played some really good games. Just like everybody, hopefully he does it this Saturday, which will be his first playoff game. But, I think Jimmy has played in some pretty big games. Anyone who is around him in those games and talks to him and stuff it’s not much different in those games with him as a preseason game. He stays pretty much the same.”
Garoppolo’s unflappable nature helped him orchestrate four fourth-quarter comebacks and game-winning drives this season.
Perhaps the most notable was the one in New Orleans when Garoppolo found tight end George Kittle on a fourth-and-2 to set up a game-winning field goal.
He also converted a pair of third-and-16s in a must-win Week 16 game over the Rams en route to conducting another game-winning field goal drive.
Even San Francisco’s first game against Seattle, Garoppolo had his club in a position to win late despite the fact he hadn’t played particularly well all game.
Shanahan’s overall point is that we’ve seen Garoppolo perform and perform well in high-leverage situations before. The 49ers’ quarterback was excellent in five games against playoff teams this season, and played perhaps his best game of the year Week 17 in Seattle.
Saturday is the biggest game Garoppolo and most of the 49ers have ever played in, but the quarterback buckling under the weight of January football doesn’t seem likely.
The Seattle Seahawks are set to return two key starters on defense, Jadeveon Clowney and Shaquill Griffin, on Sunday against the 49ers.
The Seattle Seahawks will head into Week 17 with a relatively healthy squad, which includes the return of two key defensive starters, defensive end Jadeveon Clowney and cornerback Shaquill Griffin.
“That’s huge,” coach Pete Carroll said on Friday. “It’s a huge deal. I mean, our top cover guy and a top rusher. That’s a big deal. It’s great to have those guys back out.”
Seattle is without two pieces of their offense, receiver Malik Turner and left tackle Duane Brown, and will probably be without safety Quandre Diggs – barring a miracle – but the return of Griffin and Clowney is a huge boost to a defense that has struggled the past few weeks.
Clowney missed Seattle’s last two games with a core muscle injury, an injury that also kept him out in Week 12. His return is certainly not a welcome one for San Francisco, who saw him record five solo tackles, five quarterback hits, one sack and one fumble recovery for a touchdown in the Week 10 overtime thriller between these two squads.
“He was unbelievable that game,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan told Seattle media members on Tuesday. “We know he’s going to bring that type of effort and talent this time on Sunday and we’ve got to make sure we’re at our best so we try to limit some of the plays he makes.”
Griffin is in the midst of a Pro Bowl caliber season, with 59 combined tackles and 13 passes defended. He had six of those tackles and two of those passes defended against San Francisco in Week 10.
Having both Griffin and Clowney back in the mix for Seattle gives them a much better chance of sweeping the 49ers and winning the NFC West outright, giving them a top three seed in the NFC playoffs.
In football, schematic innovation tends to trickle up. All of the new-age concepts you’ve seen infiltrate the NFL over the past few years were developed by coaches in high school and college. So, the premise of this list is a bit flawed.
The NFL has always been on a bit of an island. While lower-level coaches have never been afraid to experiment with new strategies, the pro coaches have been reluctant to adopt some of the things their peers are doing on Fridays and Saturdays.
It only takes one, though.
If one NFL coach has success with a certain concept, it’s not long before the entire league gets on board. Those guys may not have invented the strategy but they do deserve credit for bringing it to the NFL. All great coaches are receptive to new ideas.
Thanks to a handful of innovative coaches, the NFL game has changed dramatically over the past decade. Which coaches are most repsonsibile for those changes? Let’s figure that out…
1. Bill Belichick
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This seems like an obvious answer but I don’t know how many football fans truly appreciate the influence a young Belichick had on modern defense. While in Cleveland, he and his defensive coordinator — some dude named Nick Saban — first developed the idea of pattern matching coverage. Everyone knows what man and zone coverage is, but Belichick and Saban created a hybrid of the two.
You’re probably wondering what a concept developed in the 1990s has to do with this decade. Well, Saban brought those coverages to the college level, and a few national championships later, almost every college defense in the country was playing some form of pattern match coverage. This was like 15 years ago. But that wasn’t really the case in the pros. Of course, there were teams that started utilizing those coverages at the turn of the century, but, even when Belichick was building his dynasty in New England, traditional, spot-dropping zone coverages were still the top option for most defensive coordinators.
That has started to change over the last decade, though. As passing games have grown more varied and complex, defensive coaches have had to adjust in order to keep up. Thanks to Belichick (and Saban), they have options outside of zone or man coverage.
(Obviously, Belichick’s influence extends beyond this one concept. I could have gone in a bunch of different directions with this one.)
2. Pete Carroll
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Single-high coverages were popular well before Pete Carroll got to Seattle, but there’s no denying that the success he found with the Legion of Boom transformed the defensive landscape of the NFL for nearly the entire decade.
In retrospect, Carroll’s influence may not have been a good one for the rest of the league. Teams tried to replicate his Cover-3 and Cover-1 heavy scheme and didn’t have nearly as much success, which I wrote about my in my offseason series on the evolution of NFL defense. It turns out that running that scheme doesn’t work as well without Earl Thomas patrolling the deep middle, Richard Sherman eliminating one side of the field and Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright and Kam Chancellor lurking underneath. Personnel matters!
Even still, Carroll laid the blueprint for how defense would be played in a post-Tampa 2 world. The NFL remains a single-high coverage league.
3. Chip Kelly
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Stop laughing.
Are you done?
OK, I get that Kelly was ultimately a failure as an NFL coach, but there’s no denying that he greatly impacted the league in the short time he was a part of it. I think his schematic influence is a bit overstated, but some of the concepts he popularized during his time in Philadelphia have become NFL staples.
Kelly’s use of tempo has probably had the most profound impact on NFL strategy during the last decade. And that goes back to his time at Oregon when Belichick was picking his brain and had the Patriots running a no-huddle attack before the rest of the league caught onto the value of going fast.
Kelly’s biggest impact may have come off the field. His use of sports science was seen as revolutionary at the turn of the decade. Now it’s commonplace. And his streamlined approach to practice gave teams a model to copy after the 2011 CBA cut down on practice time, something NFL coaches are constantly complaining about.
Reid has been a brilliant offensive coach for a long time, but I don’t know if he would have made this list if I wrote it a few seasons ago. In the past few years, though, Reid has evolved what was once a classic West Coast offense into something new.
He’s made the long-time NFL staple his own by blending it with concepts we were used to seeing on Saturdays but had never been the foundation for a consistently successful pro offense. Along with college staples like option run plays and RPO’s, Reid borrowed Air Raid passing concepts to help make Patrick Mahomes’ transition to the NFL easier.
Having a quarterback like Mahomes obviously makes schematic innovation easier, but Reid was having no problem getting top production out of Alex Smith using similar concepts. And as coaches from Reid’s tree have moved on to head coaching gigs of their own, his influence has only grown. It won’t be long before most NFL offenses resemble the scheme he’s crafted in Kansas City.
5. Kyle Shanahan
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I suppose the elder Shanahan also deserves a ton of credit for influencing the league, but Kyle has taken the concepts popularized by his old man and dressed them up with mind-boggling pre-snap motions that leave defenses dazed and confused.
Shanahan has a distinct offensive philosophy — outside zone running plays meshed perfectly with a deadly play-action pass game — but he’s done a masterful job of adapting it based on his personnel. The best example being the 2012 season when he remade his offense to suit Robert Griffin III;s strength, and, in doing so, established the zone read as a concept that could work in the pros.
In his presser today, Kyle Shanahan was asked if he felt defenses had figured out the zone read. His answer was fantastic pic.twitter.com/dSa9FfGGHn
In Atlanta, he turned Matt Ryan into an MVP with an offense built around two versatile running backs and Julio Jones. Now, in San Francisco, he has the 49ers offense humming with a tight end (George Kittle) and an H-back (Kyle Jusychyck) as the focal points. Shanahan always gets the best out of his personnel.
Last year, Sean McVay was being hailed as the NFL’s newest genius, but his style was birthed by Shanahan. And Shanahan has been doing this offensive genius thing for a while now.
Coach Kyle Shanahan got choked-up and emotional in speaking to the 49ers when talking about the death of C.J. Beathard’s brother.
The San Francisco 49ers delivered a thrilling victory over the Los Angeles Rams on a field goal by Robbie Gould as time expired Saturday. After the game, Coach Kyle Shanahan addressed the team in the wake of the tragic, stabbing death of QB C.J. Beathard’s brother, Clayton, in Tennessee.
The coach was emotional and choked up in speaking to the team about the Niners’ family losing someone so close at the age of 22. Clayton Beathard was a quarterback at Long Island University and came from a rich, football family.
“He barely could talk, and he said to me, ‘You guys go make sure you win this game.'”
San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan got choked up after the team’s 34-31 win over the Los Angeles Rams on Saturday night in Week 16.
After quarterback C.J. Beathard’s brother was fatally stabbed outside a bar in Nashville this weekend, the game became about more than football.
Shanahan addressed his team in the locker room after the win, and had nothing but nice things to say to his team — even if he didn’t use the nicest language. (The TV broadcast showed the speech with explicit language, but the 49ers’ digital team managed to clean it up.) Shanahan explained that Beathard asked one thing of his coach: win that game on Saturday.
“Guys I think we’ve done it every way, but you guys keep finding another way to win,” Shanahan said in the locker at Levi’s Stadium after the win. “That was a hell of a job, everybody dude. By no means was it perfect. The heart for everybody here throughout that whole game — the highs and lows we went through for you guys to persevere. Guys, two third-and-16s. Right where we want to have them, right? Guys, this means so much to all of us, everyone who works here. Guys, as cool of a win as there could be. 12 wins for our team. We know we’ve got one more.”
Shanahan then turned his attention to a graver topic as he got choked up.
“Also, I didn’t know what to say to you guys at the beginning of the day, because you guys know what happened last night. Having to go spend an hour with C.J. last night and just being with him during that, you guys know how tough it is for him and his family right now,” Shanahan said. “He was like any one of us would have been: distraught, struggling to talk. He barely could talk, and he said to me, ‘You guys go make sure you win this game.’ And I didn’t want to say that at the beginning because this game doesn’t mean anything compared to his brother. … (Beathard’s) got our backs, just like we have his. It was a special day for you guys, and I’m so glad you guys could do that for him.”
Perhaps the 49ers provided a small win for a young man who is dealing with a tremendous loss.
The 49ers eliminated a division rival, the Rams, from the playoffs while keeping San Francisco in the hunt for the No. 1 seed in the playoffs. Their Week 17 matchup against the Seattle Seahawks could determine which NFC team finishes with home-field advantage and a first-round bye.
The Redskins were the only team to ever fire Matt LaFleur, but it landed him where he is today, so he has no hard feelings.
For the second time this season, the Washington Redskins are preparing to face off against a coach they were once able to call their own.
Matt LaFleur is one of the many coaches who is now finding success outside of Washington, this time around as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers. In his first year as a head coach, LaFleur has found great success with Aaron Rodgers up north, as he’s started with a 9-3 record and a good chance to make a run in the playoffs.
Green Bay is the fifth team that he’s coached for, and every time he’s left an old team for a new team, he’s done so on his own accord. That is except for Washington, however. The Redskins are the only team that has fired LaFleur so far.
“I never took it personal, I know that’s part of the business,” LaFleur said, via The Athletic.“I once heard somebody say there are two kinds of coaches. There are coaches who have been fired and there are coaches who are going to get fired. That was my approach to it.”
Back in 2013, LaFleur coached a quarterback room in Washington that featured both Robert Griffin III and Kirk Cousins. The team finished 3-13 on the season, and he was shown the door. Now, LaFleur has seemingly found his calling as a head coach in the NFL, and he’s done well in his first year, keeping the trend alive of offensive coaches like Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay leaving Washington and finding great success.
Maybe someday the Redskins will learn to stop letting their best offensive coaches go find a better home.
The New Orleans Saints will host the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, and they’ll have to win several key matchups to finish out with a win.
The New Orleans Saints are set to host the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday at 12:00 p.m. C.T. in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. After the Seattle Seahawks’ victory on Monday Night Football, the Saints now hold the number one seed in the projected NFC playoff picture heading into their clash with the 49ers. A victory here can go a long way towards sealing it.
Both New Orleans and San Francisco have a lot to play for this Sunday. The Saints could solidify their hold on the number one seed in the conference, while the 49ers will look to reclaim their lead in the NFC West and get out of a wild-card spot.
This game will come down to which side can win several key matchups. We’ve broken down a few that could have huge implications on the outcome:
Saints RT Ryan Ramczyk vs. 49ers DE Nick Bosa
Ryan Ramczyk has been an absolutely lockdown tackle for New Orleans this year. His continued success this season has allowed the Saints offense to run efficiently. This year alone, Ramczyk has made the likes of J.J. Watt, Jadeveon Clowney, Dante Fowler, and Shaquil Barrett look pedestrian.
Nick Bosa could pose to be Ramczyk’s toughest foe yet. Bosa is the leading candidate for Defensive Rookie of the Year with his eight sacks, 24 tackles, and one interception. However, his contributions go well beyond just the statline. His ability to constantly put pressure on the quarterback disrupts the offense immensely. Ramczyk will have his work cut out for him on Sunday.
Who was good and who was bad in the 49ers’ loss to the Ravens?
The 49ers lost their second game of the season Sunday in a hard-fought game in wet, sloppy conditions in Baltimore. They played one of their best games of the season against arguably the best team in the NFL. The Ravens have now won eight in a row, but their 20 points were their fewest of the year, and their 288 yards were their second fewest.
Here are the 49ers’ studs and duds from Sunday:
Stud: RB Raheem Mostert
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Mostert was the best part of a 49ers offense that at times struggled to move the ball. He had a career day with 146 yards on 19 carries and a 40-yard touchdown run. It felt like a majority of his runs were chunk plays, and Baltimore’s third-ranked run defense struggled all Sunday with him. Mostert’s performance was huge for the 49ers offense with Tevin Coleman struggling for just six yards on five carries.
45 minutes down, 15 to go in Baltimore in what has been an amazing game of football.
45 minutes down, 15 to go in Baltimore in what has been an amazing game of football. The 49ers scored the lone points in the third quarter on a Robbie Gould field goal that tied the game at 17.
Here’s what stood out in the third quarter:
Marcell Harris with the potential play of the year for the defense
Baltimore started the second half with the ball and it looked like more of the same from the first half. They ran five times for 41 yards. The sixth run of the drive was the biggest as Jackson had a 14-yard gain, but at the end of the play, Marcell Harris was able to rip the ball from Jackson and force the turnover. It looked like Baltimore was going to drive down the field once again, but Harris took the ball and gave momentum back to San Francisco.
After a first half that saw Mostert carry the ball six times for 89 yards, the 49ers offense seems be riding their veteran running back. They opened their first drive of the second half running Mostert five consecutive times for 35 yards. He’s now up to 137 yards on 14 carries and has by far been the most important piece of the offense on Sunday.
Another deep shot on fourth-and-short pays off
Just like in the first quarter, Kyle Shanahan called a deep shot on a fourth-and-short and the move paid off. Garoppolo targeted Emmanuel Sanders and Marlon Humphrey got there a tick too early and was called for pass interference. With the weather, field goals aren’t guaranteed and Shanahan is calling the game like such. The decision led to another four plays and led to a Robbie Gould 32-yard field goal to tie the game at 17. The 49ers are now two-for-two on fourth downs.
