The San Francisco 49ers had a feeling that they were running into a buzzsaw last Sunday in the Cleveland Browns’ defense.
“He is one of the most talented guys I think anyone’s seen,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said of Browns edge-monster Myles Garrett last Wednesday. “And the style they play on defense is very similar to ours. They rush the passer every play and then react to everything else. Him combined with [Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator Jim] Schwartz’s scheme and the guys around him, it’s a problem. It’s obvious why they’re a top defense right now.”
Shanahan had equal praise for Cleveland’s defensive backs.
“Very good. When you have the D-Line they have, the downhill linebackers, you better have some good corners, and they have very good ones. They play a lot of man-to-man coverage. They’ll mix in some zone. But, when you play that much man-to-man and you’re also the number one pass defense in the league, you’ve got to have some good corners.”
Jim Schwartz also understood the challenges of the 49ers’ top-ranked offense and all the shifts and motions presented.
“But I think probably the biggest thing that stands out is they have so many multipurpose players, multi-position players,” Schwartz said last Thursday. “I think a common thing is people say positionless players. These guys aren’t positionless. They have multiple positions. [Christian] McCaffrey can be a wide out. He can be a running back. Deebo can be a wide out. He can be a running back. [George] Kittle can be a tight end. He can be a wide out. [Kyle] Juszcyk can be a fullback. He can be a tight end. He can be a wide out. He can carry the ball.
“They put a lot of I won’t say stress, but they make it where you just can’t defend one thing. They can be in 21 personnel, two backs, tight end and two wideouts, and they can make you defend twelve alignments, eleven alignments, empty alignments, two back alignments. And they’ll all use their wide receivers to block. Their wide receivers do an outstanding job of blocking. So we’re going to have to play our game and accentuate our guys. We have some multipurpose players that can do a lot of things. It’s going to be a great matchup. This is NFL football at its finest. This is an outstanding offense, a good defense. We’ll be ready for it.”
So, everybody knew what they were in for. The Browns were the NFL’s top defense in DVOA, and outside of a few hiccups against the Ravens in Week 4, they’ve maintained a historic pace all the way through the young season.
After Cleveland’s 19-17 win over the 49ers on Sunday, that pace fortified itself.
the browns defensive success rate percentiles this season per opponent:
•CIN: 100th percentile
•PIT: 99th percentile
•TEN: 99th percentile
•BAL: 61st percentile
•SF: 97th percentileas dominant of a defense as we've seen in a long time
— Tej Seth (@tejfbanalytics) October 16, 2023
How bad was it for the 49ers’ offense, and how good was it for the Browns’ defense? Quarterback Brock Purdy came into this game with an EPA of 51.96 — by far the best in the league. Tua Tagovailoa ranked second at 42.28. Against the Browns, Purdy’s EPA was -8.0. And Purdy was completely shut down in the ways in which he’s succeeded all season long. The failure rate against Cleveland’s defense was that much more shocking in comparison.
Before this game, Christian McCaffrey’s average yards before contact per attempt was 1.80. His average yards after contact was 3.35. Against the Browns, McCaffrey had -0.18 yards per carry before contact, and 4.09 yards after. So, when he was able to get out of the vise the Browns’ fronts had him in at and behind the line of scrimmage, McCaffrey represented himself pretty well. But getting there was a challenge at times.
After watching the tape on Monday, Shanahan concluded that his offense was mostly outmatched.
“I mean, they played aggressive man coverage. We knew that going into it. They had a couple of pressures that got us, we had a couple mistakes that got us in really negative situations. We had two drives in that game that didn’t have a negative play. That was the first drive that we scored a touchdown and it was the last drive where we ended up missing that field goal. We got in some negative situations where we had second-and-long and third-and-long. And then with that pass rush and the tight coverages, that makes it really tough on a quarterback. So I think just as a team wholly, just getting into some of those bad situations made Brock’s job a lot tougher. But he mixed it up throughout the game, did a good job.
It was tough on film going in, and it was tough during the game, too.”
It was, so let’s go to the film to see what the Browns did to Shanahan’s normally impeccable creation.
The Browns had Brock Purdy tied in knots.
Through the first five weeks of the season, Brock Purdy was the NFL’s best quarterback on throws of 10-19 air yards. Against the Browns, he was just about the worst. We’ll get more into how the Browns dealt with San Francisco’s motion concepts in a bit, but cornerback Martin Emerson’s interception with 10:13 left in the third quarter was a great example in the passing game.
Brock Purdy on passes of 10-19 air yards, Weeks 1-5: 26 of 32 for 475 yards, 4TD, 0INT, and the highest possible passer rating (158.3).
Brock Purdy on passes of 10-19 air yards against the @Browns: 2 of 7 for 50 yards, 0TD, 1INT, and a passer rating of (gulp) 17.3. https://t.co/8I5BZmejcJ
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) October 16, 2023
Cleveland was in Cover-1, and pre-snap, linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah matched McCaffrey’s motion outside. Ostensibly, this would open the middle of the field for Purdy’s reads, and that’s one reason Purdy has been so good with the intermediate stuff. But in this instance, the Browns showed a two-high look pre-snap. Safety Rodney McCleod didn’t replace Owusu-Koramoah as the middle hole defender until after the snap, but when he did, he took away the easy middle read to receiver Jauan Jennings.
Now, Purdy had pressure behind him from Myles Garrett, and he had to make a decision. It was third-and-10, so Purdy wasn’t going to make any waves by throwing to McCaffrey on the short Texas (angle) route. Instead, he took a chance on the dig route to Brandon Aiyuk, and he certainly wished he hadn’t.
On this third-quarter incompletion to Brandon Aiyuk, Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah dropped into the intermediate level as the middle-hole defender, deflected the dig ball, and nearly had an interception. By clouding the post-snap picture over and over, the Browns were able to take Purdy out of his comfort zone.
The Browns didn’t do what a lot of defenses do against motion-heavy teams — they didn’t play a lot of Cover-4 to keep the passing strength even to both sides. Instead, they played single-high (Cover-1 and Cover-3) a ton, and it worked. Against those two coverages in the first five weeks, Purdy completed 49 of 71 passes for 669 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 108.2.
In this game against Cover-1 and Cover-3, Purdy completed 10 of 23 passes for 121 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 56.6. Now, there were times when the 49ers’ backfield and boot actions confused Cleveland’s aggressive defense, as was the case on this 33-yard pass to Brandon Aiyuk with 13:52 left in the first half against man coverage…
…but the Browns learned from their few mistakes. On this incomplete screen to receiver Ray-Ray McCloud with 5:38 left in the first half, the Browns had it blown up with pressure from Owusu-Koramoah and Ogbo Okoronkwo, who pushed Trent Williams into McCloud, and that was a no-go. More and more, the Browns were able to tie pressure to coverage in ways that set Purdy on edge.
Even when Purdy had a clean pocket, he misfired into tight coverage. That happened on this deep incompletion to George Kittle with 1:54 left in the first half. Cornerback Denzel Ward matched Kittle all the way up here.
A healthy Christian McCaffrey might have saved the game.
“I thought we made way too many mistakes on offense,” Shanahan said after the game. “Losing a couple guys in the game, we had to switch a couple guys around, and we weren’t quite ready for that. That starts with me with too many mistakes. This is our first time having to come in after a loss in a long time. It’s time to get back in, go to work and make sure we come back stronger next week.”
The players the 49ers lost weren’t just “a couple guys” — they were receiver Deebo Samuel, left tackle Trent Williams (though Williams returned), and running back Christian McCaffrey, who left in the third quarter and did not return with rib and oblique injuries. The loss of McCaffrey was particularly notable — with all the talk about Purdy, the offense really runs through its star running back.
This was going to be a seriously bad matchup for the Browns. Through the first five weeks of the 2023 season, Cleveland allowed just 1.4 yards per carry on runs without pre-snap motion, and 4.5 yards per carry on runs with pre-snap motion. The 49ers led the NFL with 141 motion runs, averaging 6.0 yards per carry, and scoring eight touchdowns.
McCaffrey was able to upset the front on this 27-yard run, and the 49ers were able to use the Browns’ aggression against them. Both Za’Darius Smith and Owusu-Koramoah over-pursued to the wrong gaps, and you can’t do that against this particular run game, as buttoned-up as it is.
But once the Browns got their gap responsibilities together, McCaffrey didn’t have as easy of a time. Here, defensive tackles Dalvin Tomlinson and Jordan Elliott blew up San Francisco’s slide up the middle, and Cleveland had McCaffrey dead to rights all the way to the sideline.
Schwartz countered the 49ers' motion with some tricks of his own.
The Browns knew they’d have to have answers against the 49ers’ motion and misdirection. Otherwise, this was going to be a trip to the ice cream factory for their defense.
“About 80% of their snaps include some sort of shift or motion, including double shifts in motion,” Schwartz said in anticipation of the matchup. “And I think on defense, we do a lot of things to try to change the picture for the quarterback after the snap. Right? I think that’s important to us just to try to buy us a little bit of time for our pass rush to get home. And sometimes it looks like, man, all of a sudden it’s zone, or it looks like zone, it’s man, it looks like you’re playing off and all of a sudden you’re up or it’s blitz, a surprise blitz, or you’re up in a blitz and it’s a bail. Well, they do the exact same thing with their shifts and motions. They present you a formation and then all of a sudden, at the last second, change it to something else. It puts pressure on your communication and your assignment. So I think that we have a lot of challenges in the game, but dealing with that kind of stuff is important.
“That’s a huge part of this game, is dealing with all that different stuff. And it’s not just on first and second down. It’s not just run game. It carries over to the passing game. It carries over to third down. It’s one of the things that they do. And our job is to try to find a way to defend it.”
Browns defensive line coach Ben Bloom agreed.
“The eye candy thing is real,” Bloom said last Friday. “We know that’s a tactic that offenses use to try to distract you. That’s something that we need to work on, we need to get better on. When you have attack-style ends that play the way we do in our system, that’s one way offenses will try to combat. So, we just put an emphasis on our focus and on our eyes and where we need to go and what the important blocks are for us too.”
The Ravens gave the Browns some issues with all that, which portended to trouble in this game.
But Schwartz and his crew had answers other defenses didn’t have. Along with those multiple, aggressive fronts, the Browns countered the eye candy with discipline on the back end. Outside of the occasional overcommitment like the aforementioned 33-yard pass to Aiyuk, Cleveland stayed within its rules, and that made all the difference.
“With them, they like to motion, get your eyes in different places,” safety Juan Thornhill said after the game. “Coach Schwartz made it simple, honestly. If you notice, we were chasing a lot, we literally were just sitting there bumping every motion, playing man to man, and just having a good eye.”
There were good eyes everywhere on this quick pass to McCaffrey in the first quarter. McCloud motioned back and forth behind the line, and you could see the Browns passing it off in Cover-3. The protections failed — aided considerably by Myles Garrett throwing Trent Williams out of the way — and McCaffrey had Owusu-Koramoah and Anthony Walker on him before he could even turn around.
The result? An eight-yard loss.
And on this fourth-quarter incompletion, the Browns had two motions to deal with — Kyle Juszczyk and Ray-Ray McCloud working to extend the formation horizontally, hoping to get anybody out of their coverage rules. But everyone had those good eyes, Purdy was pressured again, and the play was over before it began.
Is this a blueprint for other defenses?
When a dominant offense or defense is taken to the woodshed, we like to wonder if the opposition has presented a blueprint for future use. In this case, I think the Browns showed that if you have great defensive players at all three levels… and you’re facing an offense that lost its two most dynamic players to injury, and its best blocker was compromised by injury… and that defense is playing as well as any we’ve seen in the last 50 years… well, sure. There’s your blueprint, guys.
I mean… most defenses don’t play man this well in any season — this is teach tape for Cover-1.
The Browns did such a nice job plastering the 49ers' receivers. Jim Schwartz had faith that his guys could keep up with those route concepts and combinations, and when it was time to shut things down in man, boom. pic.twitter.com/bXGnJgYgKC
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) October 17, 2023
The Browns also had the bye week to further prepare for what they were getting, and Schwartz and his staff came up with another hummer of a game plan. They were also able to counterpunch after the 49ers came out hot.
“We just came to the sideline, and [Coach] Schwartz was like, ‘That’s their only one,'” cornerback Greg Newsome II said of the pace of the game. “Everyone just started doing their job, what we do everyday at practice. They didn’t give us us anything new. They are a team that is going to stick to what they do. We just did our job, and we were successful.”
This was not a referendum on the 49ers’ offense per se. Now, it’s Shanahan who has extra time to put new things together, as the 49ers deal with the Vikings’ blitz-heavy defense next Monday night. As much as Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores might want to replicate what the Browns did here… well, who wouldn’t? It’s just that most teams don’t have the ability to match the Jimmies and Joes with the Xs and Os as the Browns do.
That’s what it’s time for the NFL to recognize.
