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Patriots game notes

TobyTyler

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I think lost in all the euphoria as well as the anguish of watching this game was the performance of the O line. They were stellar in pass protection for the first time in a long while. They came up big.
 

ChrisPozz

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Bill Barnwell on the 49ers reigning over the football world, plus the rest of the Week 15 news - Grantland

Just two passages from the article:

How did the Niners manage to get out to that 31-3 lead and overwhelm the Patriots? And how did they hold on? Well, it takes a little bit of luck and a little bit of skill. The luck side would be our old friend: fumble recoveries. There were eight fumbles in this game, and the Niners managed to recover seven of them.1 Unquestionably, the Niners were lucky to recover seven of those eight fumbles.

How lucky? In the past, I've written about fumble recovery rates and how research has shown that there's no team that shows consistent skill in recovering fumbles once they've hit the ground. What is true, though, is that different types of fumbles are recovered at different rates by the offense and defense, an idea to which Chase Stuart put numbers earlier this year. It doesn't appear that there is any consistent ability to recover fumbles once you account for the fumble type — the Niners aren't any more likely to recover an aborted snap on offense than any other offense, as an example — but to get the best idea of what a team "should" have been able to pick up from those loose balls, it's a good idea to adjust for the type of fumble.

In Sunday's game, four of the eight fumbles came on bad exchanges between Colin Kaepernick and 49ers center Jonathan Goodwin. Those plays were extremely meaningful — the 49ers ended one drive with an aborted snap on fourth down and had one basically end with a similar play on third down, with a third fumbled snap ending up in Frank Gore's hands before Gore ran into the end zone — but the 49ers were very likely to recover those loose balls. According to Stuart's research, 75.6 percent of aborted snaps end up sticking with the offense. They recovered two Patriots fumbles on running plays, which end up with the defense 60 percent of the time. A Ted Ginn muffed punt in the fourth quarter also fell safely back to the 49ers, which will happen for the offense 67.4 percent of the time. Finally, the Niners lost the ball inside the 10-yard line when receiver Delanie Walker put the ball on the turf and the Patriots recovered it. The 49ers had a 40 percent shot at that one. Once you put all those chances together, the 49ers would expect to recover 5.3 of the eight fumbles in the game, just about halfway between the number they actually recovered (seven) and the figure that a blind 50-50 expectation would expect them to grab (four). You can obviously picture how the game might have changed if the Ginn muffed punt, to pick one fumble, fell into New England's hands. It doesn't mean that the 49ers were lucky to win, just that they played well and some of the breaks of the game that had to go one way or the other went their way.


and

The skill, at least on the defensive side, came with stopping the Patriots on third down. New England entered into Sunday's game converting 53.8 percent of their third downs on the year, the highest rate in the league by an almost comical fashion. The second-place Steelers were at 45.4 percent heading into Sunday, leaving them closer to 21st place than to first. The Niners, meanwhile, only allowed teams to pick up 32.0 percent of their third downs, which was the second-lowest rate in football. The Texans were atop the leader board at 30.5 percent, but the Patriots had brushed them aside and picked up six of the 12 third downs they faced when they played Houston last Monday night, for an even 50 percent rate.

When these two titans clashed on Sunday, the defense was the side holding its ground. The 49ers did a magnificent job against the Patriots on third down, only allowing them to convert on two of their 15 chances. The Patriots were able to mitigate that some by going 5-for-6 on fourth down,2 but they were forced into make-or-break fourth-down calls by virtue of the game situation and San Francisco's effectiveness therein. The third-down prowess also helped the 49ers get out to that 31-3 lead, since the Patriots started the game by failing on their first seven third-down attempts. That's just about equivalent to losing seven consecutive coin flips; the odds that a team that converts 53.8 percent of its third downs would fail to convert even one of seven attempts is over 222-to-1. That doesn't consider how good the San Francisco defense is, of course, but the Patriots had suffered little resistance from a similarly talented third-down defense one week prior.

It wasn't as if the 49ers were stoning the Patriots on early downs and forcing them into third and long, either. The Patriots needed to pick up an average of 5.9 yards to convert their third downs on Sunday. They've been picking up 53.8 percent of their third downs this year while needing 6.7 yards to go on their average third-down attempt. San Francisco simply came up with defensive stops when they needed to on third down. As the game went on, they found themselves unable to stop Brady once the Patriots decided to give him a second crack at most third downs.
 

ChrisPozz

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ReFo: 49ers @ Patriots, Week 15

https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2012/12/17/refo-49ers-patriots-week-15/

Just a few of the highlights. This game deserved a much better, more expansive breakdown. It's a tad shorter on 49ers notes than pretty much every other review they've done this season. Bummer.

One of the biggest questions on how to defend the likes of Tom Brady is whether you attack with the blitz or sit back and hope your base pass rush gets there. Well, for the 49ers the answer was clearly to trust your pass rush as they blitzed on ONLY 12 of Brady’s 69 drop-backs, and they were successful with either tactic. The key was to make the most of pressure, which they did by recording a sack on one in five of the drop-backs on which they recorded pressure, while collecting their pair of interceptions on plays where they didn’t pressure Brady.

The Patriots’ quick passing neutralized the 49ers’ pass rush for much of the game, but when Brady held the ball (or was forced to) for more than 2.5 seconds his completion percentage plummeted to 32.8%, and his QB rating was a miniscule 26.2. A formula for others to repeat?

– He may have been held without a sack, but this was the sixth time that Aldon Smith has recorded six or more pressures (2 Ht, 4 Hu) in a game this season.
 

deep9er

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Just horrendous! The margin for error is so slim in the NFL that you just can't take your foot off the gas and relax like they did. Hopefully they learned a lesson yesterday and fortunately is was not an expensive one.

true, but that is also human nature. you see it on all levels of sports, even in park leagues.

you have to give Brady and their offense SOME credit too. cause when any passing offense is sharp, you can't stop it. when Brady throws quickly, with timing, and basically on target, you can't defend it.
 

ChrisPozz

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Bob Lange:

49ers vs. Patriots game to be featured on NFL Network's NFL Replay on Tuesday night. Time TBD - either 5pm or 6:30pm PT
 

TobyTyler

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true, but that is also human nature. you see it on all levels of sports, even in park leagues.

you have to give Brady and their offense SOME credit too. cause when any passing offense is sharp, you can't stop it. when Brady throws quickly, with timing, and basically on target, you can't defend it.

You can if you get in the quarterback's face; see the very next two drives right after the Crabtree touchdown where the 49ers did just that and shut down the Patriot offense by doing so.
 

deep9er

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You can if you get in the quarterback's face; see the very next two drives right after the Crabtree touchdown where the 49ers did just that and shut down the Patriot offense by doing so.

yes with the key word being IF?

my friend watching the game was shouting this almost the entire 3rd quarter, but i told him most of those passes are getting away quick. there just wasn't time to pressure.

btw - Brady throws most of his passes short too. by the 4th quarter - the part you're referring to above, Brady started looking more downfield.

the 49ers did TRY to pressure, but we all know easier said than done. Fangio blitzed LB's and even Rogers, so he wasn't sitting back.
 

TobyTyler

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yes with the key word being IF?

my friend watching the game was shouting this almost the entire 3rd quarter, but i told him most of those passes are getting away quick. there just wasn't time to pressure.

btw - Brady throws most of his passes short too. by the 4th quarter - the part you're referring to above, Brady started looking more downfield.

the 49ers did TRY to pressure, but we all know easier said than done. Fangio blitzed LB's and even Rogers, so he wasn't sitting back.

They were just as quick on the two drives I mentioned, but the DBs stopped playing passively and got in the receivers faces and the 49ers put in fresh pass rushers and a new scheme to sack Brady twice and hurry him on every other throw. Bottom line is that you cannot play passive coverage on Brady. In press coverage, Brady cannot get rid of the ball quickly. It seemed that the 49ers understood this in the first half but got away from it in the second. Do you agree?
 

NinersFan80

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Something that nobody is mentioning is the clock management. This has been an issue the first 4 games for Kap but last night he handled it really well. I am glad they worked on that more and it seems like CK is getting better at it and is more aware of the play clock.
 
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