Film Review: A Closer Look at the San Francisco 49ers' Win over the Detroit Lions

Re-watching the game, the San Francisco 49ers' offensive game plan against Detroit was so sound, and Alex Smith in particular was so sharp, that it’s hard to come up with any other conclusion than Detroit was quite fortunate to only surrender 27 points.

I counted seven drops by seven different Niners receivers, so it’s not like any one guy deserves goat horns. Plus, just about all of the guilty parties redeemed themselves—and then some—during the game.

Think about that, though: seven drops. Considering that Smith finished the night a very fine 20-of-31 (64.5 percent), he easily could’ve been 27-of-31. That’s how accurate he was and how easily he read Detroit’s coverages.

Of course, Smith couldn’t have gotten the time and space he had in the passing game without the threat of the run, and it was in that area that the Niners beat the Lions' front line to a pulp time and again.

Actually, they didn’t overwhelm Detroit’s guys with brute force as much as they out-smarted them.

The over-aggressive Lions, particularly their defensive tackles, again fell victim to the wham play, where the guards pretend like they got completely beat off the snap, only to lay down a backside block to take a guy completely out of the play. The tackle seals his guy, the center seals his guy and you have a nice big gap for your back to run through.

The unsung hero of the offense against the Lions was Delanie Walker. He had only one reception—and one drop—but, by my count, made seven outstanding blocks to free up Frank Gore for nice runs.

You may remember that it was also Walker who laid a pair of wham blocks for long Gore runs at Detroit last season too. In that game, those blocks were overshadowed by the slant he caught for a touchdown on 4th-and-goal from the 6-yard line to win it.

Walker was known as a receiving threat who was a subpar blocker entering the league in 2006, but he has totally flip-flopped his game. They hardly look for him as a receiver anymore, but he’s consistently excellent technically as a blocker.

Vernon Davis had two great touchdown catches in the game, giving him seven in his last four competitive contests. He, too, had a handful of super blocks in the game. Unlike Walker though, Davis missed a number of assignments as a blocker or chose the wrong guy, leading to some fruitless runs for Gore and Kendall Hunter.

Gore averaged a very good 5.2 yards on his 17 carries and had a one-yard touchdown in the second quarter, but I thought his best two plays came on the team’s 13-play, 79-yard march in the fourth quarter that effectively iced the game—and neither were runs.

First, he hustled downfield to block a would-be tackler, helping Michael Crabtree convert a 3rd-and-14. A play later, he made a sharp cut to elude a Lion and pick up 12 yards on a swing pass when it initially appeared as though there wasn’t much there.

As far as the receivers are concerned, Crabtree was the standout. Sure, it’s easy to notice his three third-down conversions on that final drive, but what stood out to me was how well he blocked all night, the nice catch he made on the first series of the game on one of Smith’s rare bad throws, and the way he fought for the necessary first down on two of those three late conversions.

Getting to the linemen, I didn’t think any of the starters had what I would term a bad game, but I also don’t think any of them were as dominant as their postgame comments suggest either.

Joe Staley was a whole lot better than in the first game against the Green Bay Packers—not having to face Clay Matthews again might have had something to do with that—but he had a number of missed blocks in the game.

Staley was very good on toss plays to Kendall Hunter and had a couple of backside seals on whams, but his short-yardage blocking left much to be desired and he gave up a few pressures against Kyle Vanden Bosch.

Mike Iupati, I thought, was pretty sloppy all night. Maybe pretending he got beat badly on those wham plays messed with his head, because he got beat plenty when he wasn’t supposed to as well. The game plan didn’t play to his strengths, as the team never really ran behind his back and up the gut or let him pull to the right.

Jonathan Goodwin had a bad snap and a couple of other mistakes but was solid otherwise. He had the fewest mistakes of any of them, but also the fewest positives.

Alex Boone also graded out neutral for me: four good plays and four bad. Considering he had to go against Ndamukong Suh all night, that’s pretty damn good.

Anthony Davis didn’t have many runs to his side, and while he didn’t give up any sacks to Cliff Avril and kept him off the stat sheet completely, he did allow a few pressures. I have him halfway responsible for one of Suh’s sacks.

Leonard Davis played right guard for a couple of snaps due to a rule technicality that forced Staley out for a play and Boone to man his spot at left tackle. In those two plays, Davis let Suh go past him to whack Smith twice. Awful.

Finally, we come to Alex Smith, who, you can probably guess, I thought played outstanding football.

I counted 17 positive plays from Smith—taking audibles, throws against pressure, third downs, etc., into account—and only eight negatives, which is a terrific ratio in my charting system.

There were six plays where I thought Smith either threw to the wrong guy or audibled/didn’t audible into a bad play, but none of his mistakes were costly in the slightest. Six mistakes over the course of a whole game? That is really quite good.

Almost always Smith threw to the right guy when pressured, and those throws were on the money. As I wrote, he was victimized by seven drops, especially on a second-quarter, third-down play to Crabtree and a third-quarter bomb to Vernon Davis that was perfectly thrown.

Overall, I thought it was one of the three or four best games Smith has ever played, though the stats won’t necessarily reflect that. If he plays at this level consistently, it will be literally impossible to beat the Niners.

Similar to the offense, which didn’t have many eye-popping big plays but won the day with a steady stream of 12-yard gains and solid contributions from many guys, the defense also put in a solid shift against the Lions. They did this not by forcing a ton of turnovers or planting Matthew Stafford repeatedly, but simply by taking away the deep stuff and tackling well underneath.

The Niners played a ton of Cover 2, as is their custom. I was a bit surprised that Stafford never challenged them by forcing a ball into double coverage for Calvin Johnson and seeing if his guy could out-leap two defenders.

Also, Stafford never attempted the other tried-and-true methods of beating the Cover 2: the deep out to the sideline over the corner and away from the safety or the seam route to the tight end over the linebackers.

The Lions game plan was wildly unimaginative.

They never tested the intelligence or discipline of the 49ers defenders in any fashion outside of the countless pick plays they used to free Johnson underneath. Almost always, inside linebackers Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman were up to that challenge. Safety Donte Whitner missed just one tackle in that situation, but the game had already been all but decided late in the fourth quarter.

To their credit, the Lions tried, persistently, to run against the Niners' nickel defense, but while they got positive yardage—three or four yards—they weren’t really winning plays.

I was amazed the Lions didn’t use four wideouts to get dimeback Perrish Cox into the game, because the Packers had a lot of success exploiting him. You’d think rookie Ryan Browles against Cox would’ve been a decent matchup for Detroit.

I also wondered why the Lions didn’t try to build off all those rushing attempts by using play-action. I guess it’s hard to fool San Francisco’s defense since they’re always expecting the pass first, but the run action still might have given them a misstep from one of the safeties.

The principle of the Niners defense is that they dare you to beat them with patience. They’ll give up short passes underneath all day, but then close quickly with Willis and Bowman.

Little backs and slot receivers don’t really want to be slammed by those guys coming in with a head of steam all game, so eventually you get alligator arms and guys asking their coordinator to call something else because they don’t want that punishment.

The only way to beat the Niners defense is to break those tackles underneath, which seldom happens, or to get open on the perimeter, swing passes, bubble screens, the deep middle or deep sidelines—if your quarterback has the arm to get it there.

What defensive coordinator Vic Fangio is banking on is that the opposing offense won’t have the patience to take the easy short stuff or the talent to beat the scheme. He knows that teams like Detroit will eventually get greedy, look for things that aren’t there downfield and give his front four time to put pressure on the quarterback for incompletions and sacks.

Obviously, it helps when just about every running play is a wasted down.

Individually, the guys who stood out to me were Justin Smith, Aldon Smith, Chris Culliver and Dashon Goldson.

Justin Smith collapsed the pocket despite drawing constant double-teams all night and ruined Detroit’s efforts of trying to run in Aldon Smith’s direction. He got worn down a bit in the fourth quarter but was outstanding for the first three.

I thought Aldon Smith did a great job of setting the edge all night, and he continues to look like more than a capable all-around outside linebacker in Fangio’s scheme. Smith had a few pressures of Stafford and I’ve got him for 1.5 sacks, though they were really of the coverage variety.

Culliver was the team’s most consistent corner and Stafford rarely looked in his direction. He got whistled for one bogus pass-interference penalty, which gave Detroit an early field goal, but Culliver was more than equipped to handle Johnson’s physicality. It was telling that the Lions chose to match up Johnson with Tarell Brown instead for most of the night.

Goldson had a terrific diving grab—safeties aren’t supposed to have hands like that—on a horribly thrown pass. He was superb charging in from deep center field like a heat-seeking missile at the Lions running backs on the second level.

On the other side of the ledger, I thought both Willis and Bowman were functional, nothing more, against the Lions. Perhaps I’ve grown so accustomed to their excellence and I grade them too harshly. Mainly, I thought they cleaned up well on the backs after the front four did a great job of swallowing up Detroit’s linemen.

Willis was far more active here than in Green Bay, so at least he’s going in the right direction, but I still counted a handful of mistakes from both him and Bowman. Nothing catastrophic, just little things here and there.

I also thought Ray McDonald probably had the worst game of any 49er defender. He did split a sack with Aldon Smith and had a couple of other pressures, while also caving in the pocket on a couple of runs, but he also got pushed back on a handful of runs, and whatever success Detroit had on the ground was directly at his expense.