NFL Week 16 best and worst coaching decisions: Ravens’ defense flummoxes 49ers, Purdy

Cover 7 | Special Wednesday edition A daily NFL destination that provides in-depth analysis of football’s biggest stories. Each Tuesday (Wednesday this week), Ted Nguyen analyzes the best and worst coaching decisions he saw during the week’s games.

Defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald and the Baltimore Ravens put together one of the best defensive performances of the season, slowing down the high-powered 49ers offense. Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski unleashed his veteran quarterback’s arm on the Texans’ secondary. Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris dictated how the game would be played against the Saints. We’ll get into all this and more in the best and worst coaching decisions of Week 16.

Likes

Going deep on the Texans

The Houston Texans give up the highest percentage of explosive pass plays off of play-action, so what did the Browns do? They went for the throat on the first snap of the game and didn’t relent for three quarters. It was like Kevin Stefanski couldn’t wait to unveil his early Christmas gift: the 38-year-old arm of Joe Flacco.

14:53 remaining in the first quarter, first-and-10

Amari Cooper lined up in a short split and ran a big post, while Flacco took his time with a heavy play-action fake.

The defense was playing quarters with the corners over the top and the safeties playing inside and underneath. It seemed like the Browns made a conscious decision to attack deep away from corner Derek Stingley Jr., who plays on the offensive right side, throughout the game.

On the play, cornerback Steven Nelson wasn’t able to stay on top of Cooper and Flacco threw a bomb that traveled about 50 yards to Cooper, who had to catch the ball through some contact by safety Jimmie Ward.

And on the Browns’ first pass of the second quarter, they went play-action with a deep shot to the left again. Nelson missed some snaps with an injury, so the Browns went after his replacement, D’Angelo Ross.

12:42 remaining in the second quarter, first-and-10

You usually don’t see deep shots on full roll-out boot plays. The Browns must have told Flacco if the end bites on the fake and he had a clean edge to look deep to Cooper, who ran a double move on the outside.

Flacco rolled out after his play fake and had plenty of time to operate. He looked to David Njoku, running a crosser first to get the middle-of-the-field safety to bite, and then threw to Cooper running down the sideline.

Cooper had a career day finishing with 11 catches for 265 yards and two touchdowns. According to Pro Football Focus, 211 of those yards came through the air (not yards after the catch), which is the most ever in their database. Flacco finished with 368 yards passing and three touchdowns but was intercepted twice. Signing the wily vet from his couch might save the Browns season.

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Rams dictating Kamara’s role

Alvin Kamara still is one of the most productive route runners out of the backfield in the league and Derek Carr loves throwing to running backs. Kamara ranks fourth in receiving yards among running backs despite missing the first three games of the season. Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris understands Kamara is a huge part of the Saints’ passing game and had an excellent game plan to neutralize him and force Carr to look downfield.

Every team slides their protection toward Aaron Donald — that’s a given. Usually, when a linebacker blitzes away from the side the line slides to, the back has to pick him up. Knowing this, in passing situations, Morris lined up Ernest Jones, who is one of the best pass-rushing inside linebackers, away from Donald and continually blitzed him. Kamara was forced to stay in protection play after play. Morris dictated how the game was going to be played. Jones was able to use his strength as a pass rusher, while Kamara couldn’t use his as a pass catcher.

Before Week 16, on third and fourth downs, Kamara ran routes on 41.3 percent of dropbacks. Against the Rams, he had a season-low 16.7 percent. Without the threat of Kamara out of the backfield, the Saints only converted three out of 12 third and fourth downs with four or more yards to go (25 percent). Jones had five pressures and a sack.

8:38 remaining in the third quarter, third-and-8

This is an example of a “creeper” in which the defense doesn’t show pressure but brings a second-level defender, only rushes four, and drops into a zone. Donald lined up to the offensive left. Jones lined up to the right. Outside linebacker Michael Hoecht dropped into coverage, while Jones rushed.

The line slid toward Donald and Kamara had to block Jones one-on-one.

Jones quickly beat Kamara and hit Carr, affecting the pass and causing an interception. The defense only rushed four but it created a favorable mismatch, kept Kamara from releasing into a route and affected the quarterback.

The Saints never found a good answer to block Jones throughout the game. They tried to free release Kamara and quickly throw him the ball but the coverage would rotate toward Kamara. They also tried putting a fullback into the backfield and they tried max protecting. Whatever they tried, Morris was a step ahead of them.

0:21 remaining in the second quarter, first-and-10

In a two-minute situation before halftime, the Rams lined up in an overloaded front with Donald to the right of the formation and Jones mugging the B-gap to the left. However, this time, Jones dropped into coverage.

The Saints looked to be in max protection (seven blockers) and full slid (all five offensive linemen slide) toward Jones. There was a protection breakdown as Donald was unblocked. Kamara might have been responsible for blocking him away from the full slide, but that’s a terrible matchup for the Saints. Carr was hit again and the pass fell incomplete. All this confusion was because of Jones’ threat as a pass rusher.

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Stopping the 49ers

With their full cache of weapons available, the 49ers’ offense looked unstoppable. From weeks 10-15, they scored 34.5 points per game and averaged 1.29 EPA per drive (above 0.35 is considered elite). That came to a screeching halt when the Ravens and their No. 1 defense came to town. They made Brock Purdy look truly panicked for the first time in his young NFL career and intercepted him four times.

The Ravens typically will crowd the line of scrimmage and bring simulated pressures (pressures with four rushers with one of the rushers coming from the second or third level). Most of those pressures involve linebackers blitzing up the middle of the line but against the 49ers, who attack the middle of the field better than any other team, Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald didn’t have their linebackers mug as much as they usually do and brought pressure from the edges. The Ravens didn’t want to make it easy for the 49ers to gash them in the middle of the field with hot throws. On the third play of the game, they had linebacker Roquan Smith mug the line and blitz and they got burned for a 58-yard pass to George Kittle. After that play, MacDonald seemed to adjust and went away from their usual style of play.

One of the key plays of the game came on a corner blitz in which corner Brandon Stephens blitzed and tipped Purdy’s pass that was intercepted by Marlon Humphrey. I asked Stephens about the play after the game.

14:25 remaining in the second quarter, first-and-10

The 49ers line up in a lot of compressed formations, which shortens the distance that corners have to travel for blitzes. This was actually a pretty impressive read by Purdy to see the blitz coming. The free safety only slightly moved outside to get on top of Deebo Samuel (top of the screen) right before the snap. The play call was a run but Purdy saw the blitz coming and wanted to throw a “now” route to Samuel.

“If he realizes it’s a corner blitz, I know the quarterback is going to go to a ‘now’ with no one being outside,” Stephens said. “I just timed up the jump and gave our guy Marlo a chance to make a play on the ball.”

Technically, Purdy made the right read and play but Stephens did a great job of tipping the pass and Humphrey, who was blitzing from the other side, made a play on the ball.

Later in the game, the Ravens did blitz a linebacker but did it in a unique way.

13:36 remaining in the third quarter, third-and-5

Here, linebacker Patrick Queen lined up close to the sideline almost like he was trying to hide from Purdy’s vision in the middle of the field. The Ravens were in man coverage across the board. Smith mugged the B-gap to the offensive left so the line slid that way, while no one accounted for Queen, who came from the right.

Corner Ronald Darby did a good job of cutting off Willie Snead running a slant and Purdy didn’t get to his second read quickly enough as Queen was closing in on him. Samuel was wide open and would have easily gotten the first down and more.

Stephens described Purdy as a “spot thrower” and said that they just needed to be in the spots that he likes to throw to based on film. I believe he means that Purdy is an anticipation thrower and he’s going to throw with anticipation into windows that he believes will open based on the coverage. Though Macdonald deserves a lot of credit for his play calling, he had the Ravens prepared to capitalize on Purdy’s tendencies.

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Dislikes

Chiefs’ desperation razzle-dazzle

When the Chiefs’ offense was humming, their fun trick plays delighted fans everywhere except for maybe those of the opposing team. It was fun watching Andy Reid pull a play from the 1968 Navy team and score a touchdown with it in 2022. At the time, it didn’t seem like the Chiefs needed to run those types of plays, it seemed like they ran them to keep themselves entertained and engaged. This season, it seems like they are running trick plays out of desperation — anything for a spark.

Up 7-3 with five minutes left in the second quarter from their 13-yard line, the Chiefs had running back Isiah Pacheco hand the ball off to Patrick Mahomes. The handoff was botched, the ball landed on the ground, and defensive tackle Bilal Nichols picked it up and scored a touchdown.

The Chiefs usually call these types of plays in the red zone but they were so desperate for a big play that they called this one in negative territory and it ended in disaster. On the next offensive snap, Mahomes threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown. Those two defensive touchdowns were the only ones that the Raiders scored the entire game. The Chiefs’ defense only surrendered six points to the Raiders’ offense all game. As much as it may pain Reid and Mahomes, they have to embrace that they are a defensive team and their goal on offense now is to protect the ball. They failed to do so against the Raiders and it cost them.

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Dolphins’ goal-line fade

The goal-line fade is one of the lowest percentage red zone plays. People love it because it’s spectacular but it’s hard to complete. The Dolphins don’t have reliable big targets who can box out defenders. It’s not their game. Yet on a critical fourth down from the Cowboys’ 5-yard line in the second quarter, Mike McDaniel called one to Cedrick Wilson. Tua Tagovailoa threw the ball a little too far toward the sideline and Wilson couldn’t land in bounds. This call is particularly bad because McDaniel called himself out in front of the whole team for dialing up a goal-line fade against the Titans the week before on HBO’s “Hard Knocks.”

“That was a trash plan on my part,” McDaniel said. “Against their (cover) zero, there’s better s–t than having to throw a fadeaway jumper.”

Letting James Cook cook too much

Last week, I included Ken Dorsey’s decision to go run-heavy against the Cowboys in my Likes section. Josh Allen only threw 15 passes and the Bills ran for 266 yards and they had a rushing success rate of 62.8 percent on 46 carries (not including kneel-downs). This week, they faced the Chargers, who have one of the worst run defenses in the league. It made sense to try to repeat a similar run-heavy game plan against them but the problem was they weren’t running with close to the efficiency that they did the previous week and they didn’t adjust.

The “Cook Index” is measured by “how frequently teams pass the ball on first and second downs in the first 28 minutes of regulation, before time remaining and score differential influence run-pass tendencies.” Against the Chargers, the Bills had their second-lowest Cook rate game of the season (last week was the lowest). They also had their third-lowest rushing success rate game of the season against the Chargers and just kept running. When you have Josh Allen, a mutant playing quarterback, you can quickly pivot away from the ground game when it’s not working. You don’t have to bang your head against the wall. It took a last-minute field goal to beat a Chargers team 24-22 without Justin Herbert because they didn’t adjust quickly enough.

(Top photo of Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)

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