SANTA CLARA — Conventional NFL roster-building says to build from the inside out. The closer you are to the ball at the line of scrimmage, it’s alleged, the more critical you are.
Niners coach Kyle Shanahan doesn’t subscribe to that school of thought.
And, sure enough, six games into the 49ers’ campaign, it’s undeniable that San Francisco has an issue on the interior of its offensive line.
It’s the type of issue that might not change Monday night’s game with the Vikings, but it will almost certainly prove problematic when they play the NFC’s best down the line this season.
Yes, it took six games to find a flaw in the 49ers’ winning machine, but now that it’s been identified, it won’t be easy to ignore. In fact, you might not see anything else.
It was right there, in the middle of everything.
How did we miss it?
The Browns’ defense created a blueprint for how to beat the 49ers last Sunday. It, ironically, is to play a lot like the Niners’ defense.
It starts with a relentless, four-man defensive line that goes all-out on every snap. There is no control of the line of scrimmage here — the motto is to get upfield or pulled. Pressure up the middle is critical.
Behind that are linebackers and safeties who value speed over strength. Cleveland eschewed Shanahan’s efforts to match personnel, make them “heavier” in the process — taking defensive backs off the field and playing more linebackers — and that agility, paired with aggressiveness in the run game and tight man-to-man coverage in the pass game, held San Francisco to 215 total yards in the Browns’ 19-17 win.
“Browns ran their scheme,” Shanahan told me Thursday. “They did their scheme just very well.”
While, indeed, not every team can run this kind of scheme, some teams can — the Philadelphia Eagles, for example — and this scheme attacks the Niners’ weakness on the interior of the offensive line in ways that will take some real offensive genius to counter.
I’ve railed against Pro Football Focus grades before, but in this case, they’re informative: The 49ers’ starting guards and center have been awful this season.
Left guard Aaron Banks has been one of the worst offensive linemen in football this year (and there’s stiff competition), posting run- and pass-block ratings of 49 and 45 (out of 100) in 364 snaps.
Niners center Jake Brendel has been pushed around in the pass game, posting a pass-blocking score of 38.5 and allowing 10 hurries in 381 snaps. (No, that’s not a good rate.)
And I have checked and re-checked this now 10 times: Right guard Spencer Burford has a pass-blocking score of 13.9 on 182 snaps. Thirteen point nine, out of 100! He has allowed 15 hurries and incurred five penalties so far this season.
This is all pretty brutal.
And the issues seem compounded by the Niners’ run-blocking schemes.
I remember a long conversation with then-Niners run game coordinator, now-Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel before Super Bowl LIV about how the Niners, midway through the 2019 season, started switching from Shanahan’s famous outside zone runs to more gap (man-to-man) runs.
That conversation was pretty one-sided — McDaniel got on a roll, and you don’t interrupt that. The summation was that teams knew the zone run was coming, so running gap plays (power, counter, trap) would keep defenses honest.
We’re now four seasons removed from that campaign. McDaniel, alleged to be the genius behind the Niners’ run game success, is long gone. Shanahan is still operating on that same premise.
“People get a lot better at defending outside zone and when they’re committed to defending outside zone, what do they get worse at?” Shanahan said Thursday. “That’s why we try to balance everything out. We try to make sure that they’re playing certain things. We just try to see what the defense is playing and we try to attack it.”
But when you have a running back like Christian McCaffrey, gap-scheme runs are downright limiting. They pre-determine a path for a player with the vision and ability to create his own behind zone blocking.
What gap blocking does, however, is provide angles to offensive linemen. Playing trigonometry can give pulling guards and centers an advantage on blocks.
And heaven knows the Niners’ interior line needs it.
But here’s the problem: The Browns were able to jump the gap runs, beating the Niners’ linemen (who are slow) to their spots. Gap blocking only works if the linemen can get to the gap first.
Shanahan’s runs, even with the best running back and left tackle in the league, have become too predictable and the Browns showed the league how to exploit that.
Of course, no one needed a blueprint to push back the Niners’ interior line in the passing game.
Again, not every team in the NFL can execute what the Browns did on Sunday. Few can. We saw the Cowboys, believed to be a good defense, get carved up by the 49ers a week before San Francisco’s first loss.
Four teams in the NFC might be able to replicate the Browns’ model, though. I’m unsure about the Rams’ and the Buccaneers’ ability here, but they’re the first two teams on the list. The talent and coaching are there.
The Lions, I think, stand a chance too.
But the one team I know can copy Cleveland is the Eagles. They are tailor-made for that game plan.
This should seriously concern Shanahan. The Lions and Eagles seem like the Niners’ only real competition and they both have a new weapon at their disposal.
So what needs to change?
The Niners can return to the offense’s foundation and run more zone-blocking plays. The simplicity might help more than the angles, especially for the guards.
But personnel changes are warranted, too.
Injury might bring about one change: Banks is battling an ankle injury that knocked him out of Week 5 early but allowed him to play against the Browns. Playing Jon Feliciano, who has been quite good in limited snaps this season (21 at left guard, 15 at center), instead of Banks could prove beneficial. That might happen this week without Shanahan needing to make a call.
He should, however, be calling around the league to see if he can replace Burford.
The Niners have the most salary cap space of any team in the NFL this season. While the front office wants to roll as much of that nearly $40 million into future seasons, it also allows the Niners to trade for almost anyone in the league.
Minnesota guard Ezra Cleveland, Green Bay guard Jon Runyan and Tennessee’s Dan Brunskill (a former 49ers starter at guard) should all be considered before the Oct. 31 trade deadline.
No matter what, changes are needed. One loss is hardly the end of the world in the NFL, but Sunday’s loss to the Browns felt prescient. The Niners might be the best team in the NFL, but the old adage will prove true before the end of the season — the closer you are to the ball, the more critical you are.
And for the Niners, that spells trouble.
Question, comment, criticism? Dieter’s available via email, call, or text (510.479.0932)