© Kyle Terada | 2020 Jan 19
MIAMI — Not every Super Bowl is entertaining, nor is every Super Bowl a close game. Most aren’t. Of the 53 Super Bowls in NFL history, only about a third of them (19 games) have been decided by seven points or less. That history is why game lines for Super Bowls are so rarely near even. In the history of the Super Bowl, there have been three matchups to close with a one-point favorite, and just one since 1983 (Seahawks favored by one point against the Patriots in 2015).
It’s why there is significance in the fact that this Super Bowl, between the 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs, opened with the Chiefs as just one-point favorites (currently at -1.5, according to Caesars’ Sportsbook, which would be the first 1.5-point line in Super Bowl history.) All three Super Bowls to close at 1-point lines have been decided by seven points or less.
That’s all empirical data to state the obvious, qualitative understanding that this will likely be both a very close and very entertaining Super Bowl. Both teams are too talented and too well-coached for that not to be true.
Will 49ers’ defense change approach to accommodate Mahomes challenge?
It’s a clear story with the lede of the NFL’s most dynamic offense, run by a veteran, offensive chameleon in Andy Reid — who was three points away from a Super Bowl victory 15 years ago — who has adapted his offenses to fit his personalities.
He has the league’s best quarterback, arguably the league’s best pass-catching tight end, and some of the most dynamic, speed-obsessed wide receivers in abundance. Even Damien Williams, the “running back” who can’t find a hole in the offensive line, is a solid pass-catcher.
That offense will face the NFL’s best pass defense, and one which almost exclusively runs zone coverage; something Mahomes, who has no discernible weaknesses, has been tremendous at exploiting:
#Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes vs. Zone Coverage (regular season/playoffs) —
• QBR = 91.3
• Completion % = 74.4%
• Yards per attempt = 9.4
• TD/INT = 14/2#49ers played zone coverage on 64.2% of opponent dropbacks (2nd most in the NFL).— Matt Bowen (@MattBowen41) January 23, 2020
As defensive coordinator Robert Saleh said, Mahomes is a genuine quarterback. He makes pre-snap IDs, audibles and checks, can diagnose coverages post-snap, knows how to read a defense, and can create angles and time to break down those coverages. Oh, and he might just have the best arm in NFL history, plus the speed to get out of the pocket and run if there’s nothing there.
It’s why he threw 26 touchdowns and had just 5 interceptions this season in 14 games and has 8 touchdowns and zero interceptions in the playoffs.
“His mobility is unique. His arm strength is ridiculous. He’s very, very accurate,” Saleh said. “But, what I don’t think people give him enough credit for is that he actually plays quarterback. There’s a lot of quarterbacks in this league that will say no to number one and then it just becomes street ball. He gets rid of the ball on time. He puts it where it needs to be. He hits a lot of throws in rhythm. And when he needs to take his shot, he knows how to buy time in the pocket and do it. So, he’s a superstar in every way you can possibly imagine and he’s going to be tough to deal with.”
Saleh said he and his staff approach the task of dealing with Mahomes and Reid similarly to any other matchup, but that they’ll go as far as they can into Reid’s coaching history. They then try to relay Reid’s philosophy to players in a digestible way.
“You don’t want to show them every play that coach Reid has run in the history of his system,” Saleh said. “You’d die, I think.”
The 49ers’ benefit is that they have a symbiotic relationship in the secondary with Jimmie Ward and Jaquiski Tartt providing positional flexibility and a shared intelligence (as teammates since high school) that allows for communication to be nonverbal.
“They have a relationship from a communication standpoint where they can just look at each other without even speaking to each other and understand each other, and that’s what helped us out a whole lot this year from the communication standpoint,” safeties coach Daniel Bullocks told KNBR. “That’s why you don’t see a lot of busts in coverages.”
Bullocks pointed towards Ward’s ability (both as an athletic player and former nickel) to play as a starting-caliber nickel. That allows the 49ers to disguise coverages, where they can stay in man coverage even if a receiver gets motioned across the formation away from nickel corner K’Waun Williams towards Ward. He also highlighted Tartt’s ability to play in the box as an extra linebacker, play single high and cover tight ends.
Crucially, he said, the pair has allowed the 49ers to make a tweak on third down and red zone coverage. Bullocks declined to reveal that tweak, but looking at tape from the past two seasons, it appears to be the employment of more two-high safety looks on third downs and in the red zone as opposed to a single-high safety.
“Teams can’t really get a bead on man, zone, reading whether they’re in man coverage,” Bullocks said. “It’s easy to see if you’re in man coverage, if you just give us in slot and put the corners over, Oh, they’re in man. Now you get all your beaters versus, ‘Oh, they in man or they’re in zone.’ So from that standpoint that’s been a big bonus.”
Defensive backs coach Joe Woods told KNBR he doesn’t plan on making any monumental shifts when asked about potentially using more man coverage as opposed to the Cover 3 scheme they generally use. As he put it:
“We’re in this game for a reason. They’re in this game for a reason.
“So we have to go out there and do what we do best. And when you go out there, we’ll see who makes more plays but we don’t want to get real exotic. We know what they do. They know we do. We just want to go out and execute to the best of our ability. And if we do that, we feel like we have a good chance to win.”
At the same time, when asked about Kelce, who is arguably the best tight end in the NFL at finding gaps in zone coverage and sitting down in them, and is frequently split out wide in one-on-one situations, Woods admitted the 49ers will have to mix things up.
“I think you just have to use a mixture of coverages, you have to make them run through some zones, play some man double on them at times,” Woods said. “Try to get hands on him at the line of scrimmage. Whether you use an end or somebody hitting him, but use different things and just try to take the timing off. And for us, if our rush is hot, and we’re doing different things and we’re delaying that timing. Now yes, that’s how you could take somebody away.”
While Saleh has rarely blitzed this season, the former linebackers coach has thrown wrinkles in to disrupt offenses, like flashing double-A-gap blitzes from his linebackers, and blitzing Williams off the edge. The Detroit Lions, who lost to the Chiefs 34-30 earlier this season, employed a version of that, taken right out of Chiefs’ defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s playbook.
When he was with the New York Giants, Spagnuolo, who learned from the late Jim Johnson, frequently used double-A-gap blitzes, or threatened them, by using linebackers lined up in between the center and the two guards, and thus flashing six potential rushers. It forces quarterbacks to account for that threat with a protection adjustment, meaning a tight end and/or running back has to account for a rusher.
The Lions, who had a great deal of success against the Chiefs defensively in the first half of that Week 4 matchup, ran a lot of man-to-man coverage and employed Spagnuolo’s tactics against him, using what he called “Bombs” with the Giants, where the linebackers and edge rushers switch positions.
Lions running a variation of Steve Spagnuolo’s Double-A-gap blitz that he called “Bombs” with the Giants, against his Chiefs in Week 4 pic.twitter.com/7pQqWr5txs
— Jake Hutchinson (@hutchdiesel) February 1, 2020
While Saleh tends to avoid getting exotic defensively without cause, his greatest ability as a coach may be how he adjusts series-to-series and finds ways to exploit offensive tendencies. The 20-7 win over the Los Angeles Rams was a perfect example of that and if the Chiefs are going scorched earth on the 49ers, don’t be surprised to see Saleh bring or threaten more blitzes, and/or utilize more man coverage, or switch from his preferred single-high look to a two-high safety coverage — which, as Bullocks hinted at, is something they already do in key downs.
Mahomes and Reid will no doubt get theirs. They are too dynamic a pairing with too many weapons to be silenced. But Saleh and his staff are too intelligent and prepared to be completely run riot against with a fully healthy defense at their disposal (which they did not in their worst defensive game of the season, the 48-46 win over the New Orleans Saints).
The mismatch of the game: Shanahan’s offense versus Spagnuolo’s defense
This is not an indictment of Spagnuolo, who proved his Super Bowl pedigree when he and the Giants blitzed Tom Brady into oblivion in that 2007 Super Bowl upset. But while Spagnuolo’s defensive front is impressive now in a similar way to that Giants team— the pairing of Chris Jones and Frank Clark along with Tanoh Kpassagnon, Derick Nnadi and Terrell Suggs — his options at linebacker and some of his secondary are liabilities.
Linebackers Anthony Hitchens and especially Damien Wilson are horrendous coverage linebackers, and by no means dominant in the run game. Cornerback Bashaud Breeland might not have even made the 49ers’ roster and Daniel Sorenson is questionable in the secondary. The jack-of-all trades Tyrann Mathieu is relied upon to play multiple positions and cover a massive swathe of territory. Charvarius Ward is a decent coverage cornerback and Kendall Fuller isn’t egregiously poor, but much of their success is owed to Mathieu.
The 49ers don’t need to avoid his side of the field in the same way that teams have avoided Richard Sherman, but head coach Kyle Shanahan will certainly look to design plays away from him and attack the linebackers.
And for as improved as the Chiefs were in defending Derrick Henry on the ground, much of that has to do with a rest advantage and the one-dimensional nature of the Tennessee Titans’ offense. The Titans are based on a power rushing scheme who beat teams by grinding them to death and holding onto their lead, and they did so to arguably the worst right guard in the league in Nate Davis. The Chiefs took advantage of Davis and the Titans’ predictability in a way that won’t be possible against the 49ers.
The 49ers likely won’t be able to run the ball in the comically-dominant way they’ve done against both the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers because the Chiefs will cue in on the run. When Jimmy Garoppolo does throw the ball, he’ll have to make post-snap identifications of coverage, which Spagnuolo disguises intelligently.
In reviewing the Chiefs’ playoff tape, they went from running four-linemen nickel packages, standard 4-3 sets to 3-4 bear (which is really five linemen) sets and a variety of coverages including straight Cover 0 man-to-man, Cover 1, Cover 1 robber, Cover 2, Cover 3, Cover 3 robber and Cover 4.
49ers quarterbacks coach Shane Day told KNBR Spagnuolo is excellent at mixing up defensive looks.
“He does a really good job with disguising coverages pre-snap and post-snap,” Day said. “So whenever we play a team like this, we have to be able to ID the coverage post-snap, because they’re not going to give you a lot of indicators pre-snap. They do a really good job with this disguise — probably as good job as we’ve seen this year.
We’ve had quite a few other opponents that have been similar, but these guys do a really good job, so we really just focus on, “OK, when we’re watching film. Do we have a tell or not? I don’t know with these guys if we have to tell but we definitely can do it post-snap and just feel the rotation and how they want to get to it, so it keeps us on our toes.”
If there’s anyone who’s well-prepared for such a challenge, it’s Shanahan, who’s clearly the best offensive play-caller in the league. While his approach is built off a dominant outside zone scheme, he mixes in gap blocking and counter schemes to set up play-action passes that stretch the defense vertically and horizontally.
When he makes a call, it’s never random; it’s with specific intent to exploit a weakness in the defense.
“He definitely always has a vision for what a play is going to look like,” Day said. “He’s calling it for a particular reason to attack a defense, and that’s why when it doesn’t happen — when we see a coverage and we know where the ball is supposed to go and then it doesn’t go there it’s like, ‘Wait, what just happened?’ Because it’s usually a huge play…
“It is almost like he can predict what the call is going to be on defense and 90 percent of time it seems like he’s right on that stuff and every once in a while when he’s not it’s, it’s crazy but he’s right more often than he’s wrong and it does feel like he’s kind of predicting the future. It’s pretty cool.”
Day, and run game coordinator Mike McDaniel and passing game coordinator Mike LaFleur have said that Shanahan leans on his assistants for advice and that they can tell when he’s looking for feedback on plays. Sometimes though, there’s this almost fantastical rhythm they describe Shanahan as getting into with his play calls.
“When he is in the zone, and he’s calling plays, and you’re just like, ‘Oh, that’s going to be good. Oh wow, that’s a big play right there.’ And then the next call and the next call,” Day said. “And there’s been quite a few times this season, like everybody points to the New Orleans game — it’s just like every call that came out was a huge play we’re just like, ‘Oh my gosh this is amazing.’ And he does get in those rhythms play as a play caller. And it’s really fun to be a part of because when the play is coming out and he’s calling it you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, this is gonna be huge.’”
That’s going to happen on multiple occasions on Sunday. While Shanahan said he’s not storing any plays in a vault and that “no coach” does that, you’d be betting safe to expect more than a few genuinely jaw-dropping play designs that haven’t been seen before this season.
Prediction: 49ers rejoin the Patriots and Steelers atop the NFL with sixth title
Score prediction: 49ers defeat Chiefs 37-31.
I understand that Patrick Mahomes may turn out to be the greatest quarterback in NFL history and there’s the whole, “Andy Reid is due to win a title” thing. But Kyle Shanahan is a lunatic. As McDaniel described him as “the most OCD, extreme guy of all time.”
“We’re as ready as we can be,” Shanahan said according to Saturday’s pool report. “We just need the game to get here. It’s been two weeks of (practice), and we are itching to go.”
Of course the Chiefs are going to be well-prepared, too. But Shanahan’s neurotic, compulsive preparation ripples throughout his staff. There’s also a uniquely calm, positive nature to this 49ers team and while it’s more enticing to bet on the best quarterback in the game, Garoppolo has done nothing but step up in key moments this season, and the difference in defensive quality between San Francisco and Kansas City is chasmic.
The 49ers have never been blown out this season. Neither have the Chiefs. This will be a close game between two quarterbacks who have the ability to come through in key moments, but only one elite defense. The 49ers’ defense has come up time and time again, and Sunday will be no different.