Dallas Cowboys vs San Francisco 49ers: An “Official” Breakdown

Tendencies

Passing Offense

The Shanahan offense is a version of the short passing offense that Bill Walsh “perfected” in the 1980s with… the San Francisco 49ers. The offense will throw the ball to the short and intermediate areas of the field to move the chains, but I think the notion that they target the middle of the field more is maybe an outdated notion. (As exhibited by the side by side comparison below)

They are willing to target the middle of the field, but they seem to do it at roughly the same rate as other teams running an offense from different offensive trees.

However, unlike many offenses in today’s game, even offenses that stem from the Shanahan tree, San Francisco doesn’t try to pass off traditionally spread looks. They love bunching their players together so they can attack with switch releases, high-low reads, and coverage reads. It makes things simpler for the quarterback as receivers inevitably get open while also putting defensive backs in conflict when they play traditional spot drop zone.

Personnel

The thing is, the Cowboys don’t play much spot-drop zone coverage. They play a lot of Cover 1 or Match 3 Zone, which is kind of another version of man coverage. The beauty of such a development is that when teams bunch up their receivers to create these switch releases, the defenders drop and wait for the receivers to figure themselves out before the defender latches onto one specific receiver.

There are some routes from these formations that could exploit match looks fairly easily like slants, angles, and drags, but as long as the Cowboys continue to rush no more than five, they don’t risk leaving the middle of the field wide open for any receiver to generate substantial yards after the catch. (YAC)

If I had to pick man coverage assignments for the week, it would be these:

According to Jayron Kearse himself, he will likely travel with George Kittle based on the answer he gave about George Kittle at Friday’s press conference. That is a matchup I could understand, purely from Kearse’s build and athletic ability, however, Kittle catches a lot of passes over the middle of the field right in Micah Parsons territory.

As for Deebo Samuel, I think Kelvin Joseph (Bossman Fat) fits well because of his body type and athletic ability. He is relatively similar in stature to Samuel and has the change of direction and body control to play through contact with an incredibly strong player like Samuel. I would give the same argument for Brandon Aiyuk/Anthony Brown and Jauan Jennings/Trevon Diggs, with Brown potentially showing an advantage because he’s faster than Aiyuk.

I genuinely think Dallas’s pass defenders matchup with the weirdness of San Francisco’s pass catchers.

They have some receivers who are outliers for their positions; for that reason, I think matching up a receiver with a defender of the same body type results in a better defensive performance than placing the best defender on the opposing team’s best wide receiver. After all, who is San Francisco’s best pass-catcher between Kittle and Samuel?