The 49ers must be thrilled heading into this NFC Championship Game.
No slight to the Los Angeles Rams, but if practice makes perfect, then the Niners should have their best game of the season on Sunday with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line.
Yes, the Niners have won six straight games against the Rams. Yes, the short travel and home-field advantage San Francisco will have at the “Rams House” will be advantageous.
But Sunday will be the third must-win game the 49ers have played against the Rams this season. The moment and the opponent will be familiar, and that gives the Niners fewer things to worry about before the biggest game of the year.
Just treat it like Week 10, or Week 18, and the Niners should have a great shot at winning.
That said, the Rams are a dangerous team. Their presence in this game is no fluke and if the 49ers don’t come to South Los Angeles correct, they won’t be returning in a few weeks for the Big Game.
Obviously, with the familiarity these two teams have, there’s not much that will be a surprise come Sunday, but in watching back those two previous matchups and the last few games for each team — all while diving into the numbers — here’s what stands out to me before Round No. 3:
• The Rams are the NFL’s prolific team when it comes to disguising coverages and it’s a blast to watch during the game. According to Pro Football Focus, the Rams only run what they show at the line of scrimmage 55 percent of the time. We saw Kyler Murray struggle with it in the Rams-Cardinals playoff game, and even Tom Brady was flummoxed by the sleight of hand — until the Rams went into a prevent defense up 27-3 and Brady was able to better diagnose at the line of scrimmage.
You might be thinking “Dieter, that doesn’t sound great for Jimmy Garoppolo” and let me tell you, on spec, I would tend to agree. After all, Garoppolo does not read the field well.
But the Niners have the antidote to the Rams’ defensive tricks: No team runs more motion in the NFL on offense than San Francisco.
Credit to the great Eric Eager of PFF for pointing this out: On more than 70 percent of the Niners’ snaps — a full level or two above any other team in the league — Kyle Shanahan moves around the pieces on the chessboard. He forces the defense to show their hand, lest they be caught woefully out of position.
Both of these concepts are simple, but the offense — if it simply moves players around pre-snap — has a marked advantage. The 49ers might not have a quarterback who can read the field like Brady before the snap, but they guarantee that his pre-snap homework is less challenging. (Tampa Bay used motion on roughly half of their snaps this season and were hardly using it much last weekend vs. the Rams.)
Never let someone tell you this isn’t an offensive league.
• The 49ers’ offense has another advantage over the Rams’ defense: Los Angeles is light.
The 49ers led the NFC on early-down rushes this season. The Rams have had the fewest players in the box on early downs for the last two seasons, running a ton of nickel (five defensive backs) and dime (six defensive back) looks, all while going lighter at linebacker as to put pass rushers on the field. They’ll often put six men in the box, leaving one linebacker on the field.
It helps stop modern offenses — Kansas City, Cincinnati, Tampa Bay and the Cardinals — but there’s nothing new-school about Shanahan’s attack.
Add in the motion the Niners employ, and it’s a simple issue for the Rams: They don’t have enough men.
Now, Aaron Donald and his underrated defensive line cohort Greg Gaines can make up for the Rams’ lack of weight and personnel up front — both will command double-teams on Sunday — but the issue for Los Angeles and the advantage for San Francisco is still the same: the numbers game favors the Niners.
• I had serious concerns about K’Waun Williams before Saturday’s game with the Packers and I have even more now with Cooper Kupp, Odell Beckham and Van Jefferson looming in the Rams’ 11 personnel (one back, one tight end, three wide receivers) group.
After watching back the last few 49ers and Rams games, I went to Twitter to suggest that the Niners bench Williams for Dontae Johnson. A bold stance, to be sure.
Former 49ers safety and my KNBR cohort Donte Whitner wasn’t having any of that suggestion. He pointed out how Johnson isn’t built for that inside life with a few videos from the Week 18 matchup.
But is Williams still about it?
https://twitter.com/dieter/status/1485090120218951683?s=20
The Niners’ nickelback/slot cornerback (pick your poisonous term: bad band or oxymoron) was once one of the NFL’s best and he remains a force in the run game.
But since returning to the lineup for the Wild Card game against Dallas, he’s been burned in man-to-man coverages. He hasn’t looked very good in zone coverage, either.
Whitner was apt to point out in our back-and-forth that it’s impossible to know what Williams’ job is on every play. I get that.
All I saw was a common denominator of Williams trying — and failing — to stick with the slot receiver for the Niners’ opponents.
And this week, those opponents are outstanding. Kupp is arguably the best wideout in the NFL today, and Beckham is one of the most talented players in professional sports. Truth be told, I don’t know how you defend those guys.
But don’t sleep on Jefferson, the sophomore out of Florida, either. He has long strides and serious deep speed with good hands to boot, scoring three touchdowns over 50 yards this season.
The Niners have their hands full with Kupp and OBJ, but they can’t sleep on the kid.
https://gfycat.com/illembarrassedbarnacle
• Expect another big game from Brandon Aiyuk on Sunday, as the Rams have a single-high safety on the vast majority of their plays.
The best attack for such looks? Crossing routes, deep ones — and Aiyuk is the Niners’ best receiver at running those routes (though Deebo Samuel gives him a run).
Aiyuk went for 107 yards on six catches in Week 18, his best game of the season. Given how the Rams didn’t show much adjustment between these two teams’ Week 10 and Week 18 games, I’d expect the Niners to have Aiyuk running over the middle early and often again Sunday.
• Want to know another advantage for the Niners, just to top things off?
They don’t do the thing on defense that the Rams want them to do.
Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford is in his first season in Los Angeles after being traded from the Detroit Lions, and he learned a little something in his Lions days, like how to handle pressure up in his face.
This season, against the blitz, Stafford had an Expected Points Added (a catch-all NFL advanced stat) of 89.1. That’s a crazy number. It’s the highest rating ever, per NFL Next Gen Stats.
We saw in the Rams’ first two games of the postseason the Cardinals and Bucs blitz Stafford again and again and again. They couldn’t help themselves — they were blitz-happy in the regular season so they stuck with what they knew. And here the Rams are — one win from the Super bowl.
But the 49ers don’t blitz. They had the fourth-lowest blitz rate in the league over the season, per Pro Football Focus. And they are certainly not blitzing much over the last few weeks, as the team’s four-man defensive line has found its top form.
Since Week 10, the Niners have blitzed less than 20 percent of the time but have a top-five pressure and sack rate per PFF. They’re the only team in the NFL that can say all three of those things over that period of time.
It’s the same formula that the Niners used to reach the Super Bowl in the 2019 season. Get home with four and let the seven players behind that line blanket the field in a zone defense.
Stafford — who has played the Niners twice during that stretch — has completed only 64 percent of his passes and thrown four interceptions to go with four touchdowns in those two games.
An added reason to not blitz Sunday: When the Niners have blitzed this postseason, it has left Williams on a one-on-one island. Dak Prescott took advantage with a game-changing touchdown pass to Amari Cooper. Aaron Rodgers missed a possible game-winning first down in the fourth quarter when he didn’t throw to Alan Lazard, who had beaten Williams in the slot and stood wide open in the middle of the field.
