Yesterday I broke down a couple of 49ers offensive line matchups with the Giants defensive front.
I want to point out something. The matchups will not always be as simple as Joe Staley vs. Jason Pierre Paul and Anthony Davis vs. Justin Tuck.
If you noticed against the Browns last Sunday, the Giants tried a variety of defensive linemen over all of the Browns’ offensive linemen looking for a soft spot and a favorable matchup to exploit.
Sometimes the Giants line up right defensive end Pierre-Paul on the other side if they feel he has a matchup advantage.
On obvious passing downs (third down, two-minute drill), they will also sub in four defensive ends (Pierre-Paul, Tuck, Osi Umenyiora and Adrian Tracy) and play two of them over the guards or one of their interior two offset on the center because they want to put their four best pass rushers in the game. A defensive end over a guard is a significant speed advantage.
That is one of the reasons the Giants have been so successful over the years rushing the passer.
That also is one of the reasons why the Giants are susceptible to runs on third downs when they’re in some of their nickel and dime packages.
Look for the 49ers to run on third downs more than usual on Sunday.
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Even the homers in NY are picking the Niners to win this game (at least 6 of 9):
http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/giants
The Giants didn’t generate any pressure with their base D rushing 4 last week. They had to blitz to put pressure and they do a good job of disguising blitz packages. On one play, their LB came on a delayed blitz and the pressure caused Weeden to through an INT.
This will be an area to watch on Sunday. If the Niners o-line can provide time to Alex, the Niners will put up 30+ on the Giants.
The pounding style of Harbaugh football has caused (allegedly) both the Jets and the Bills of kind of mailing it in beginning in the third quarter and throughout the fourth. If the pattern holds true against the Giants, the 49ers offensive line will send shudders through the rest of the league for the rest of the season. This will be a good test of how dominant the offensive line is or how weak the Jets and Bills were.
So in other words a measuring stick game.
oldtime–
As much as I would love to see the Niners maul the G-Men..
it’s possible, this will be much closer than that …
I’m thinking the Niners will come out on top.. and get their revenge… but it will be a much tougher go this time around..
Still.. the thought of the rug-rat (Eli) being served
his lunch .. (consisting of Candlestick Park turf) .. a few times during the game …
will be something I’ll be chuckling about throughout the season !
Go Niners !
Grant,
You make a good point. I won’t surprised to see the Niners run on third downs from passing formations taking advantage of Giant’s line over-pursuing.
On a different note, it seems to me that the Niners are not getting as much pressure on the QB from their front 7 in base defense as they did last season. I could be wrong since the sample size is small.
The Bay City Maulers will have another great day at the job site. Opening up running lanes, pass blocking, and dominating the line of scrimmage!
23-20
34-20
am i the only one who hates the jumbo package in the red zone. i hated it at stanford [after toby gerhardt] and i hate it with the 9ers. imho if you want to pound it in the red zone spread the defense. although it worked well in the middle of the field on smiths naked bootleg maybe it would be more successful if they ran more plays like that in thr rz
I agree Old Coach- I am a proponent of mis-direction, bootlegs, TE pops and play action in the RZ. Jumbo packages shrink an already small zone that the defense has to cover, spread’em out and ‘lanes’ and ‘soft spots’ will come.
old coach,
I agree to an extent. I think there are far too many times where Roman calls the play based on the fact he thinks the Oline can outmuscle the Dline and it has failed far too often. Having said that, I am starting to see some variations on how they use that formation including passing out of it which is very creative and will keep the opposition defenses guessing.
old coach: Yup. It would be nice to get stats on the success of the jumbo in short yardage and goal line situations. If a play/formation does not work well, it should eventually be modified or dropped. (Remember the 49er fans “No More Sweeps” chant?)
The 49ers seem to run extremely well, except in short yardage and goal line situations. (better the last two weeks). With the goal line jumbo’s, defenses seem to always knife a player into the 49ers backfield before the runner (or blocker) can gain momentum. The jumbo blockers tend to lurch into the second level looking for someone to block, while the runner gets tackled in the backfield.
It’s nice to have athletic big men that can run and block in 2nd level space, but I see too many of these plays getting tripped up before they can develop.
A solution? Maybe a few more quick snap run plays. Line up and hike the ball on hut 1.
As long as those runs are on 3rd and 5 or less im down with that. What I don’t want to see is a draw on 3rd and 8 or 9 thats almost like conceding the down and playing for the field position. We have enough weapons to convert 3rd and longs now so let alex throw, we know he will make the right decision.
…”so let alex throw, we know he will make the right decision.” Exactly right. And how many teams in the league would KILL to be able to say that?
Who’s got it better than us?