4-Down Territory: Dan Campbell. Ravens’ offense, Kyle Shanahan, Worst of the Week
Now that Super Bowl LVIII is set between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, it’s time once again for Doug Farrar of Touchdown Wire, and Kyle Madson of Niners Wire, to come to the table with their own unique brand of analysis in “4-Down Territory.”
This week, the guys have some serious questions to answer:
Should Dan Campbell be pilloried for his fourth-down decisions?
What have we learned about the Baltimore Ravens after their AFC Championship game loss?
Why should Kyle Shanahan have more faith in a possible first Lombardi Trophy?
What was our Worst of the Week?
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. Should Dan Campbell be ripped for his fourth-down gambles?
Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell will be pilloried all offseason long for his two failed fourth-down conversion attempts in his team’s 34-31 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship game. Should he be?
Doug: No. When you’re discussing these kinds of things, you have to remove yourself from the catch-all term “analytics.” and really look at what the situations are in the moment. Campbell was well within his rights, and his coaching personality, to go for it on fourth down once in the third quarter, and once in the fourth. My problem was entirely with the plays called by offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. On both plays, the calls were for longer-developing pass plays. Set this up with the fact that the Lions had San Francisco’s run defense on skates through the game, and this was the worst matchup for the 49ers coming in. On the third-quarter incompletion, the Lions had Goff in pistol, and running back David Montgomery offset. On the fourth-quarter play, the Lions were in an empty formation. This game Steve Wilks carte blanche to pin his players’ ears back and go for the pressure, and Goff was pressured on both plays.
This season, the Lions have done a lot of their best work with Goff under center, and a lot of their best pass plays with Goff under center and with play-action. Montgomery had carries of 14, 15, and 16 yards in that game in which Goff was under center, and the 16-yard run came a couple minutes before the fourth-down play. So, I would posit that the fourth-down attempts were exactly within the Lions’ personality – they had attempted 40 fourth-down conversions before the NFC CHampionship game, and they’d converted 21, which is a high rate. If anybody’s the goat here, it’s whoever called the plays that were so antithetical to what the Lions had done so well on offense all season long.
Kyle: I’m 100 percent with you on this. It’s process vs. results and the process is correct. Going for it in those spots instead of settling for long field goal tries was the right move. The result didn’t go the way the Lions wanted, in part because of the play calls, but the logic behind going makes a ton of sense.
My larger issue with Campbell’s game management came at the end of the first half. Detroit led 21-7 with 10 seconds to go in the second quarter had a fourth-and-goal at the 49ers 3. Instead of going for the proverbial kill and trying for a touchdown that would have put the Lions ahead 28-7, Campbell sent out his field goal team to go up 24-7 at halftime. Taking the points with the short field goal certainly makes sense, but it felt antithetical to the ethos that drove Campbell and the Lions to try the two fourth-and-3s in the second half. Detroit was ripping off 6.5 yards per play in the first two quarters and running it at a blistering clip. They averaged more than 6.0 yards BEFORE contact on first-half runs. It felt like a spot where they could have been aggressive and put the game away, and instead they left the door open.
2. What did the AFC Championship loss tell us about the Ravens?
The Baltimore Ravens looked just about unbeatable as they started their AFC Championship contest against the Kansas City Chiefs. Three hours later, the Ravens were out in a 17-10 loss, and the Chiefs were headed to their fourth Super Bowl in the last five years. What did this tell us about the Ravens?
Doug: That you can’t get greedy against a Steve Spagnuolo defense. And you need to run the damned ball. The Ravens were one of the NFL’s best and most diverse rushing teams this season, and under Steve Spagnuolo, the Chiefs have covered very well and played a ton of dime defense. In cases like that, you are inviting your opponent to run the ball. This season, the Chiefs had employed light boxes on 52% of their snaps, and stacked boxes on 14% of their snaps. The Ravens then chose to attack that with just eight attempts from their running backs – i.e., not Lamar Jackson. One of those was a 15-yard run by Gus Edwards against an eight-man box out of nickel in which Baltimore’s offensive line bullied Kansas City’s defense all the way through.
Meanwhile, Lamar Jackson was overshooting deep throws all over the place. He completed two of seven passes of 20 or more air yards for 84 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 77.1. There are defenses against whom you might want to lean into that particular strategy; this was not one of them. Spags will throw everything and he kitchen sink at you from a coverage perspective; his options with run defense are more limited. That Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken didn’t go after that hard was pretty weird.
Kyle: Yeah as good as Jackson is you have to try and get at least something going on the ground. There needs to be some semblance of balance. Defenses want teams to be one-dimensional, and Baltimore willingly went down that path against a defense that left itself susceptible to the run. It’s a little ironic given the issues they had with former offensive coordinator Greg Roman and his inability to design an effective passing game. Now the Ravens are out because they leaned too heavily on their passing attack.
Lamar Jackson is awesome. He should be the MVP this year and he’s not the reason the Ravens aren’t playing for the Super Bowl. However, he can’t do it alone and until the Ravens find a more effective balance and exploit defenses better in these huge games, they’re going to continue falling on the wrong side of them.
We also learned not to reach for the goal line. (More on this later!)
3. Why might Kyle Shanahan finally bag his first Lombardi Trophy?
Kyle Shanahan now has the opportunity to erase his postseason demons and beat the Chiefs in the Super Bowl as he couldn’t in Super Bowl LIV. Why will he be able to do that, if he’s able to do that?
Doug: Because he finally has a Brock Purdy. You’ll remember how things went in that last Super Bowl, with Jimmy Garoppolo either staying within his severe limitations as a passer, or sailing potential touchdowns to Emmanuel Sanders downfield. Early on in Purdy’s time as a starter with the 49ers, somebody asked Kyle Shanahan what Purdy brought to the team, and Shanahan was quite up-front about it. He said that now, we have a deep passing game.
And for the most part throughout his brief NFL career, Purdy has shown the ability to throw intermediate and deep balls with tremendous anticipation, and to decipher coverage switches as they happen. Both of these attributes will be key against that aforementioned Steve Spagnuolo defense, and that’s something Garoppolo just never had. Purdy will never be Patrick Mahomes, but he also doesn’t need to be.
Kyle: Honestly at the moment it’s nigh impossible to paint a picture where the 49ers beat the Chiefs. They’re really not playing particularly well and their inability to stop the run is going to be a major problem.
But if they are going to swing an upset, I agree on the Purdy point. He’s better than Jimmy Garoppolo and creates enough outside of structure that it opens up the 49ers’ offense to being a little more defense-proof. However, that success from the QB is going to start on the ground. They need to avoid the trap the Ravens fell into where they abandon their rushing attack. As good as Purdy was this year, it’s clear the 49ers’ offense is at its best when RB Christian McCaffrey is churning out yards on the ground and getting defenses on their heels. That opens up the play action game, and it opens things up for the rest of the team’s slew of weapons.
Even if the Chiefs get a lead, the 49ers have to lean on their best player and let Purdy be Purdy within that context.
4. What was your Worst of the Week?
What was your Worst of the Week?
Doug: Zay Flowers. Baltimore’s rookie receiver had a pretty good day on the stat sheet, with five catches on eight targets for 115 yards and a touchdown. But his drive that started late in the third quarter was a master class in Oof.
He started out by smoking Kansas City’s defense for a 54-yard catch with 49 seconds left in the third quarter. But Flowers also got 15 yards shaved off after an obvious taunting penalty. That took the ball from the Kansas City 10-yard line to the Kansas City 25.
And THEN, at the start of the fourth quarter, Flowers had a shot at his second receiving touchdown of the game. Instead, Flowers fumbled the all just short of the end zone, encouraged by Chiefs cornerback L’Jarius Sneed, who made an unbelievable heads-up play to put the ball back in the Chiefs’ court. As the game ended with a 17-10 score in Kansas City’s favor, that was pretty significant. Flowers then injured his hand by smacking a sideline bench in frustration. You feel for the kid, but there was something very Naked Gun about that entire sequence.
Kyle: I’ll jump to the NFC title game for this one. While everyone will harp on Dan Campbell’s fourth-down decisions, there were plays to be made on the field that Detroit didn’t make that ultimately led to their demise. Wide receiver Josh Reynolds had two huge drops on a third down and a fourth down in the second half. His first one came on the first fourth-down try with the Lions ahead 24-10. He got open and got a good throw from QB Jared Goff and let the ball bounce off his hands. Then on a third-and-9 after San Francisco tied the game at 24, Reynolds had a Goff throw hit him in the chest and let it fall to the ground.
