Now that Super Bowl LVIII is set between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, it’s time for Doug Farrar of Touchdown Wire, and Kyle Madson of Niners Wire, to get heavy into the biggest game of the season in “4-Down Territory.”
This week, the guys have some serious questions to answer:
- What must the San Francisco 49ers do if they want to win this game?
- What must the Kansas City Chiefs do to take their third Lombardi Trophy in the last five seasons?
- Who will be the Secret Superstar in Super Bowl LVIII?
- Finally, who will win the game, and why?
You can watch this week’s “4-Down Territory” right here:
You can also listen and subscribe to the “4-Down Territory” podcast on Spotify…
1. What’s the one thing the San Francisco 49ers must do to win Super Bowl LVIII?
Doug: Get Brock Purdy in situations where he has easy reads, and he can decipher coverage switches and throw with anticipation. It could be argued that the 49ers made it to the Super Bowl despite the fact that they were outplayed in the divisional round by the Packers, and in the NFC Championship game by the Lions. Purdy had a lot to do with that – he threw late a lot, he missed wide-open receivers far too often, and his gifts for throwing his targets open were noticeably absent. Kyle Shanahan will need to start Purdy off with easy stuff to get him in a rhythm, and from there, Purdy may have a better read on what the Chiefs have in store for him from a coverage and pressure perspective. Not that it will be easy against a Chiefs defense that can throw the proverbial kitchen sink at you with their defense, but Shanahan needs to at least make it easier for his second-year quarterback. If he expects Purdy to wade through tight-window throws against Steve Spagnuolo’s anarchic coverage switches and frequent dime defense looks, it could be a very long Sunday for the guys in red and gold.
Kyle: They need to tackle. This is the beginning and end of it for me. San Francisco missed a whopping 150 tackles this season and they were abysmal defending screen passes. In 2019 this may not have been as big of a problem considering how much of what Kansas City did was predicated on its intermediate-to-deep passing game. This year it’s very much a problem for a couple reasons.
First, Isiah Pacheco is running as well as any back in the league. His shifty, downhill style has been good for 4.7 yards per carry in 375 career attempts, and he gets so many tough yards. It’s so rare that one person gets the former seventh-round pick on the ground, so the 49ers will need to ensure they’re rallying to the ball and getting two or three bodies on the running back.
Second, Mahomes lives at or behind the line of scrimmage this year. 63.1 percent of his throws came behind or within 9 yards of the line of scrimmage. He tossed 112 screen passes according to Pro Football Focus. With a receiving corps that’s severely lacking, Mahomes has started taking his checkdowns and relying on sick Andy Reid screen designs to generate explosive plays in the passing game. It’s worked to varying degrees of success, but if the 49ers can tackle, it gives them a real chance to slow down a Chiefs offense that hasn’t been dynamic really all year. If they’re missing tackles, I’m not totally sure how they get off the field.
2. What’s the one thing the Kansas City Chiefs must do to win Super Bowl LVIII?
Doug: Limit the 49ers’ zone run game with Christian McCaffrey, and occasionally Deebo Samuel. The 49ers with McCaffrey have led with inside and outside zone, and out of either zone or split zone this season, McCaffrey has led the NFL in carries (234), yards (1,265), yards after contact (755), and touchdowns (15). The Chiefs have faced the NFL’s seventh-most zone runs (316), and they’ve allowed 1,256 yards, 774 yards after contact, and five touchdowns. Steve Spagnuolo is great as devising coverage and pressure as we have discussed, but they’re not a great run defense, and against the Ravens, even when they stacked the box, the Ravens ran on them… and should have done it a lot more. We do not expect Kyle Shanahan to abandon the run game under any circumstances. Factor in the motion the 49ers use to displace defenses and establish blocking advantages, and this will be a very tough task for Spags and his guys.
Kyle: Win on first down on both sides of the ball. This is typically the case for every team, but the 49ers don’t have the tools necessary to overcome losing first down on either side of the ball. Second-and-long and third-and-long rob San Francisco of its dominant rushing attack, and it turns Purdy into a straight dropback passer. Forget for a moment that the 49ers have trouble creating separation (outside of Brandon Aiyuk) – the dropback game isn’t where Purdy is at his best. He’s capable of converting on third-and-long, but that’s not a sustainable model for success for San Francisco’s offense. If the Chiefs can shore up their shaky run defense and make the 49ers play one handed, it’s hard to see even this version of Shanahan’s group racking up enough points to win against a locked in Steve Spagnuolo unit.
On the other side the 49ers have really struggled to stop the run in the playoffs. Winning on first down and opening up all the possibilities that come with second-and-manageable puts San Francisco’s defense in a bind that they probably can’t overcome. Patrick Mahomes with Pacheco playing as well he has, and with the benefit of play action, is an impossible offense to stop. The Chiefs WRs outside of Rashee Rice have not been good, but they can find a ton of success if they’re consistently playing ahead of the sticks.
If Kansas City consistently gets first-down wins on both sides of the ball, they could turn Super Bowl LVIII into a laugher.
3. Who’s your Secret Superstar of Super Bowl LVIII -- the player we're not talking about enough?
Doug: Chiefs cornerback L’Jarius Sneed. He’s not a complete secret, but this guy is one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks, and I don’t think he gets the recognition he deserves. This season, Sneed has 78 tackles, 25 stops, six quarterback pressures, and he’s allowed 51 catches on 98 targets for 522 yards, 207 yards after the catch, one touchdown, two interceptions, 11 pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 62.5. If I’m Steve Spagnuolo, receiver Brandon Aiyuk is my biggest worry from a big-play perspective in the passing game, and Sneed can travel to either side of the field to lock down the other team’s most explosive guy. Sneed has the downfield speed and step-to-step technique to match and carry the league’s best receivers (Aiyuk is among them, in my opinion) all the way up the field.
Sneed has a great sense of how to play a little off and bait quarterbacks into making throws they shouldn’t make, even when it looks like they should, and his sense for the ball is quite impressive. Let’s not forget his amazing play to force Zay Flowers’ fumble just short of the end zone in the Chiefs’ win over the Ravens in the AFC Championship game. Sneed was about five yards away from Flowers when Flowers caught the ball on a short crosser at the Kansas City seven-yard line, and he somehow caught up to Flowers to pop the ball out. The Chiefs were up 17-7 at the start of the fourth quarter when this happened, and a Flowers touchdown there obviously changes the complexion of the game. Sneed is a plus defender in every way you want a cornerback to be, and he won’t be Brock Purdy’s best friend on Sunday.
Kyle: 49ers rookie safety Ji’Ayir Brown is going to be a target of Reid’s most diabolical offensive plans. Brown is a fine player who’s been thrust into a starting role due to an injury to starting strong safety Talanoa Hufanga. An injury to Brown knocked him out for the final two games of the year though and robbed him of some crucial in-game experience. He’s a super aggressive player and a physical tackler with a penchant for generating turnovers. Those were his hallmarks in college that led the 49ers to trade up for him in the third round of this year’s draft. They’re also the things that lead to some of his biggest mistakes.
Brown at times gets caught flat-footed in coverage, he’ll misfire on play action reads, and his aggressiveness can lead to key missed tackles. Getting out of position against Reid, Mahomes and the Chiefs is how bad things happen to a defense.
That said, Brown’s athleticism and penchant for creating takeaways make him a crucial piece of the 49ers’ defense against this version of the Chiefs’ offense. He’s capable of playing high or in the box, and at his ceiling it’s conceivable that he’d be able to cover virtually any player on the field. If he plays his best game as a pro – the 49ers have a very real chance of holding the Chiefs’ offense down the way the Ravens did in the AFC championship game.
4. Finally, who’s winning the game?
Doug: I think it will be close, but I have to go with the Chiefs, 27-24. Their offense has finally found its pace in the playoffs after a very weird regular season, and Spags’ defense is the primary reason they’re here this time around. And I do believe that Kansas City running back Isiah Pacheco will be the difference-maker in the game. He doesn’t have to run 25 times for 150 yards to be The Guy – if he’s able to power through San Francisco’s front six as he’s done to other defenses all season long, that could be enough to set that defense on edge, become more “static,” and give way to Patrick Mahomes and his alien stuff.
Kyle: The easy answer here is that the Chiefs have the better quarterback, better coach and better defense. All of those things point toward a Kansas City win. Combine that with how much the 49ers have struggled to get stops in the playoffs and it’s increasingly difficult to draw realistic paths to a San Francisco victory. The 49ers do have the more talented team top to bottom, and if they can stop the run with any sort of consistency it dramatically alters the complexion of Sunday’s game. Stopping the run has been a huge problem for them though, which renders a lot of the Chiefs offensive weaknesses moot. San Francisco doesn’t want to have to play catchup, but that’s probably where they’re headed if their last two playoff games are informative in any way. Give me the Chiefs 30-23.
