So, we’re past the point where anybody is assuming Lamar Jackson is anything but a pure quarterback, right? Yeah, we thought so. Jackson’s bravura performance against the Rams on Monday Night Football — he completed 15 of 20 passes for 169 yards, five touchdowns, and no interceptions against Wade Phillips’ helpless defense — put the league on notice (as if the league wasn’t already on notice) that Jackson can beat you just as easily with his passing as he can with his rushing abilities. Through the 2019 season, Jackson has taken great strides as a quarterback, improving his ability to throw with anticipation and accuracy into tight windows, and to work through his progressions to find the ideal target.
“It was impressive,” Rams head coach Sean McVay said after his team’s 45-6 debacle. “When you sit there and watch, and you feel the operation up close and personal — you just see how sharp they are with their execution, what a dynamic playmaker he is, what a great job they do of creating conflict before the snap, changing your fits. And then on third down, they were really impressive. Just his ability to find some completions and make some plays with his legs — there’s a reason why people are talking about him as an MVP. It felt like it tonight.”
This Sunday, another NFC West defense has Jackson to deal with. The 49ers will travel to M&T Bank Stadium to try and shut Jackson down — or, at least, slow him down. On its face, San Francisco’s defense would seem to have a decent chance. The unit led by defensive coordinator Robert Saleh ranks second in the NFL in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted defensive metrics, behind only the Patriots. They rank second against the pass, and 16th against the run. San Francisco’s defensive front and linebacker corps is a quick-moving group in which everyone loves to get to the quarterback — especially rookie edge-rusher Nick Bosa, who has nine sacks, nine quarterback hits, and 36 quarterback hurries on the season, per Pro Football Focus’ metrics. The 49ers are also coming off a 37-8 Sunday night demolition of the Packers in which Aaron Rodgers and his crew couldn’t get out of first gear at all.
However, the same things that make this pass rush so formidable make the same defense vulnerable to the run — especially to specific run concepts. San Francisco ranks 13th in FO’s Defensive Adjusted Line Yards metric, and they’re not good at all against runs in the open field, ranking 25th in yards earned against runs 5-10 yards past the line of scrimmage, and 30th in yards earned beyond that.
49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was asked this week of Jackson’s success as a runner this season — he has 124 carries for 874 yards, a league-leading 7.1 yards per carry average, and six touchdowns on the ground — was the result of the NFL not yet catching up with Baltimore’s multi-faceted run game.
Shanahan had a ready answer for that.
“I don’t think it necessarily is catching up,” he said. “Just like I didn’t think the defense ever caught up with the zone-read either. It’s not a trick play. It puts guys in a bind. It makes teams play 11-on-11 football. You’ve got to decide whether you want to play 11-on-11 or if you want to keep things the same and play 10-on-11. Most people, usually the quarterback makes you pay if you play 10-on-11 when you have these type of quarterbacks. You do have to change some stuff up and then what else does that open up and how good are you at that? Eventually, you can take stuff away. Then you’ve got to balance it out and see what holes that opened up because they take it away. I Think it will be that way until the end of time. I mean, no one catches up with this stuff. It’s not a gimmick play, it’s a very sound way to run an offense and they are doing it at a very high level right now.”
So, the 49ers are aware of the problem. Even if they are able to limit him as a quarterback with their coverages, they will have to be on alert against his running abilities — and this is a specific vulnerability of Saleh’s defense. Designed quarterback runs, especially to the outside, have absolutely gashed the 49ers. In Week 11 against the Arizona Cardinals and rookie quarterback Kyler Murray this season, Murray attempted seven designed runs, six of which were to the outside. On those plays, Murray averaged 9.3 yards per play and had a 22-yard touchdown run.
The 49ers’ inability to contain Murray was obvious, and disconcerting with Jackson on the docket. The touchdown run is a graphic example.
There was also this 21-yard run, which mirrors some of Baltimore’s misdirection concepts. Teams are using San Francisco’s speed and aggressiveness against it in the run game, and it’s working.
It also worked for Seattle’s Russell Wilson the week before on this 18-yard scramble.
“We brought a five-man pressure and they blocked us up with seven and it created a lane for Russell to run through that C-gap,” Saleh said a few days later, when asked if the Wilson play represented a gap integrity issue. “The coverage we were playing on the back end caught us a little bit deeper than we wanted, and it gave him an exit lane.
“I wasn’t expecting the tight end to stay in. It was a good call by them.”
It’s a common problem, though Saleh said last week that it isn’t an overarching concern, and that Jackson brings different things to the run game.
“I’ll throw the caveat in there that Russell needed 16 drives to do what he did in the overtime period, but I thought in regulation we were doing pretty well,” Saleh said. “You always go back and look to what worked, what didn’t, how you can get better. So, you’re always trying to evolve. And then of course, this scheme is much different than those two. They’re completely different schemes. The whole idea of when he’s a passer, to me, stays the same, with respect to your rush lines, but with regards to the run game and how they use him is much different than the way they do Kyler and Russell.”
The good news, we suppose, is that the 49ers are a heavy zone defense, and zone defenses are about as close to Kryptonite as Jackson has these days. As I wrote last week, per Sports Info Solutions, all five of Jackson’s interceptions have come against different zone coverages in 2019 — three against Cover-3 (three-deep coverage), one against Cover-4 (“Quarters,” or four-deep coverage, and one against Tampa-2 (Cover-2 with a deep-dropping linebacker up the middle of the defense). Of course, he tore the Rams’ defense apart against zone last week (11 of 13 for 138 yards and three touchdowns).
As it has been for most defensive coordinators facing the Ravens over the last two months, you pick your poison, with the knowledge that you probably won’t make it through that particular experiment. And Jackson is especially effective as an outside runner. Per SiS, he’s taken about half his runs outside the tackles this season, averaging 9.1 yards per carry. And over Baltimore’s last three games (a span in which the Ravens haven’t had a drive end in a punt when Jackson’s been on the field), he’s gained 159 yards on just nine outside attempts.
This is where the immovable force meets the exceedingly movable object. Per SiS, San Francisco has allowed 6.7 yards per carry and three touchdowns on 52 outside runs this season, as opposed to 4.2 yards per carry and two touchdowns on 210 runs that were either inside or off-tackle.
So, there’s that.
One defense that’s similar to San Francisco’s and has already faced the Lamar Jackson challenge belongs to the Seahawks. Saleh was a defensive quality control coach for Seattle from 2011 through 2013, and he has credited Pete Carroll with a lot of his own defensive philosophies. Both teams play heavy Cover-1 and Cover-3 shells, with the occasional 2-man and renegade blitz thrown in. Both defenses are schemed well, but ultimately rely as much or more on execution than playbook genius.
“This is a game that really calls for great discipline,” Carroll said the Wednesday before that Week 7 game, in which the Ravens won, 30-16, and Jackson gained 116 yards and scored a touchdown on 14 carries. “To play the running game and defense, it’s always discipline first. You think it’s just being hard, tough and physical. We like that, too, but that’s just part of it. You’ve got to do things right. This offense, more than any offense that we’ll face, will demand that we have to do right. That means you’ve got to gap-control stuff. The way we scrape. The way we fill and thin our run plays. They tax you to the maximum. It’s all about being really tuned in and being really focused. Every single play you have to do right, or the ball will break. It’s a great challenge. It’s exciting for us to try to figure it out and see if we can do it.”
Obviously, they couldn’t.
There was this 28-yard run, in which Jackson seemed to want to make Seattle’s entire defenses miss him at some point in the play …
… and this 30-yarder, in which he put a speed test on Seattle’s defense before he got tripped up.
Not to mention this eight-yard touchdown run, in which Jackson proved fearless when running inside as an additional compartment of a rushing attack nobody appears able to stop,
“I always wanted to play against Michael Vick,” Seahawks defensive end Jadeveon Clowney said after the loss. “I guess I’m getting the new era with Lamar Jackson right there. I’m a fan of him, though. He’s a great player, did his thing today and won the game. He’s on a different level. He’s on a whole different level. He’s in a lane of his own. Fast guy. He can make anything happen for that team. [They’re] on a bandwagon riding what they’re supposed to do, getting behind a quarterback.”
When facing Lamar Jackson, everybody preaches the gospel of containment. Do your job, and all that. The problem is, Jackson turns that football fundamentalism into hesitation more often than not, forcing defenses to play on their heels as they now wonder whether he’ll kill them with his arm or with his legs. Saleh and the 49ers have a fighting chance with their secondary, but they lost in overtime to Wilson’s Seahawks, and escaped with two close wins against Murray’s Cardinals. They’re 10-1 with the NFC’s top seed, and there’s no doubting the 49ers’ overall excellence, but as much as Lamar Jackson has been a problem for everybody else, it appears that he will be an epic issue for this particular defense.
The clock is ticking for Saleh as he tries to re-create that narrative.
