When the San Francisco 49ers faced off against NFC West foe Los Angeles Rams for the first time in 2019, the Niners’ defense stumped (and stomped) the Rams offense.
The Niners held the Rams to just one offensive touchdown en route to their 20-7 win in Los Angeles. In fact, the Niners held Rams quarterback Jared Goff to a paltry 78 passing yards – or 48 if you deduct for sack yardage.
Sacks, turnovers, and execution played a role, of course. But when the Rams traveled to San Francisco in Week 16 for a re-match, it wasn’t more of the same. In fact, the Rams were a missed field goal and some improbable (or clutch, depending on one’s perspective) third-and-long successes away from evening the series.
In their second matchup, the Rams still lost but hung 31 points on the that vaunted San Francisco defense. Goff improved his yardage numbers from 78 to 323 on 46 attempts, about seven yards per attempt.
The Packers find themselves in a similar situation – they received a full-on shellacking from the Niners’ defense during their Week 12 matchup. And while the Packers, like the Rams, committed their fair share of execution mistakes, including a killer turnover on the opening drive, it also seemed like they didn’t have an answer to slow down San Francisco’s front seven.
If there’s anything to take from the Rams film, it might be the Rams’ disparity in approach. In Week 6, Los Angeles ran some of their usual pre-snap jet motion offense, but it was limited. The Rams more or less kept the pre-snap backfield tomfoolery to a minimum, and they only scarcely utilized the play-action game.
Needing more from his offense, Rams head coach Sean McVay adapted by going all-in on the aforementioned tomfoolery, especially the play-action. On the Rams’ first offensive drive in the Week 16 matchup, McVay called for three play-action passes alone. Additionally, of their seven plays in the drive, all but one contained some sort of backfield motion or split zone “sift” block by the tight end or slot receiver.
A rough estimate has the Rams running play-action 26 of a possible 70 snaps; they had some sort of pre-snap motion and/or split-zone sift block on over 50 percent of offensive plays.
The change in approach was clear for the Rams. They wanted to slow San Francisco’s downhill defense. Moreover, the extensive use of play-action allowed Jared Goff to get outside the pocket and make a few more half-field reads, such as on the “levels” concept. Once settled, the Rams found a bit more success in traditional shotgun sets.
The 49ers are an extremely talented defense on the front end and a schematically sound defense one on the back end. The Packers need to do everything in their power implant the idea that, on any given play, they could attack the defense on multiple planes – inside, horizontally and vertically.
There are other factors at play, execution being No. 1, but if the Packers offense is to sustain drives and create points, they might heed the Rams’ approach.
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