2020 Super Bowl Preview

It’s Super Bowl time. Two fantastic, fascinating teams, with two very different styles and very different paths to get here. In a couple days we will crown a new champion, either Kansas City earning their first title in half a century or San Francisco becoming the third franchise to join the six-title club.

Players to Watch

There are obviously big name stars on both Super Bowl participants, but here are a few lesser known players who could be major factors in the game.

Fred Warner, LB, San Francisco

If you watch the 49ers defense closely, it may seem a little familiar to you. Robert Saleh runs the same system that has been used in Seattle for years, the same system that was so successful during their Super Bowl runs. The obvious connection is Richard Sherman locking down the left side cornerback, but with Nick Bosa playing the Cliff Avril role and Dee Ford serving as Michael Bennett, there are plenty of parallels to be drawn.

One of the players that always flew under the radar in Seattle was Bobby Wagner. Between the Legion of Boom and their versatile pass rush, we never really recognized just how good he was until many of those pieces began to slip away. They are all gone now, but Wagner remains one of the best defensive players in the league in Seattle, continuing a Hall of Fame career.

Warner isn’t as good as Wagner, yet. But in just his second year out of BYU, he has established himself as a true force in the middle of San Francisco’s defense. He covers a tremendous amount of ground side to side, and he delivers contact with the force of a runaway truck. He’s one of the key pieces in their run defense, but against Kansas City he will face a different challenge. He will have a lot of responsibilities in coverage, either tracking Travis Kelce or trying to contain Patrick Mahomes as he breaks from the pocket. If he can pull this off, it will ease a lot of the burden on the secondary behind him. If he can’t, then Kansas City may be able to dink and dunk their way down the field at their leisure.

Mecole Hardman, WR, Kansas City

Hardman’s job on Kansas City’s offense is pretty simple. Run fast, and catch the ball. A rookie out of Georgia, Hardman was taken by Kansas City in the second round to add yet another vertical threat to their offense. As coverages shift to try to keep Tyreek Hill from burning them over the top, this opens windows on the opposite side of the field, windows that Hardman’s 4.33 speed is ideally suited to attack.

Hardman caught only 26 passes in his rookie season, but he did as much with them as a receiver conceivably could. On average his receptions went for over 20 yards, and he turned six of them into touchdowns. And even when he isn’t catching the ball, his speed impacts the game. Two weeks ago against Tennessee he released down the field out of the slot, drawing the safety’s attention. That meant there was all the space in the world for Sammy Watkins to run in behind the safety for a big gain.

With Hardman, Hill, Watkins, and Kelce, the Chiefs have four extremely dangerous vertical threats. This makes it easy for them to run their favorite play, “Four Verts”. It is exactly what it sounds like, four receivers running vertically down the field, giving Mahomes his choice for which bomb to launch.

This play could be particularly effective against the 49ers. As Seattle has done for years, San Francisco plays a variant of a three-deep zone. The cornerbacks jam the outside receivers to take away easy stuff, then bail to handle the farthest outside threat deep down the sideline. This allows them to squeeze even tighter towards the sideline than a normal three deep zone, which takes away throwing lanes but puts more of a burden on the safety patrolling the middle. This worked in Seattle because they had Earl Thomas which, unfortunately, the 49ers do not.

Running four vertical receivers against a three deep zone presents problems. The safety has to try to play both receivers coming down the seams, which is easy pickings for someone like Mahomes. Or the linebackers have to run back in coverage with players like Hardman and Kelce. The latter simply isn’t an option for San Francisco, which means they will have to adjust their normal coverage schemes to handle the aerial assault they are likely to face on Sunday.

Kyle Juszczyk, FB, San Francisco

I almost didn’t pick Juszczyk for this, because as far as fullbacks go, he’s probably the best known in the league. But he is still a fullback, and the role he plays on San Francisco’s offense is so crucial and so unique that I have to bring him up somewhere in this preview.

The typical image of a fullback is someone who runs straight forward, smashes into a linebacker, and carves open a hole. A simple task, not a lot of versatility required. That isn’t what Kyle Shanahan is looking for in his fullback however, and it isn’t what Juszczyk does for the 49ers. He moves in a way very few fullbacks do, and it is a key part of their offensive gameplan.

Linebackers are taught to read plays by monitoring a “triangle”, the two guards back to the fullback. While running backs and quarterbacks like to play fun games to try to confuse defenders, the blockers will typically tell you where the ball is going. Shanahan knows this, and he knows how to play with expectations to open up holes in the running game.

As an example of this, I want to refer back to an otherwise unremarkable play from the third quarter of the NFC Championship Game. It was, on the surface, a basic end around to Deebo Samuel that picked up 11 yards, one of San Francisco’s least successful runs of the night.

An example of how the 49ers use motion and misdirection. Kittle comes across formation. Juszczyk follows him at the last second to feign run right ... and then it's an end-around to the left. Watch Juszczyk pretend to cut Za'darius Smith, who isn't looking in the right direction. pic.twitter.com/McXNOMW76G

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) January 29, 2020

The 49ers come out in a basic I-formation, with two running backs stacked directly behind Jimmy Garoppolo. But before the snap they send Juszczyk in motion—just a few steps to his right, not much, but enough to make the defense identify that as the strong side of the formation. You can see the linebackers shift in that direction, preparing for a run either straight at them or stretching to the edge.

On the snap of the ball, Juszczyk runs to the left. He moves underneath the quarterback parallel to the line of scrimmage, a direct line to the unblocked defensive end on the left side. The end sees him coming and expects to be kicked out, setting up a counter play in behind Juszczyk. And Juszczyk lowers his shoulder as if going for a cut block, slowing the end’s path upfield and getting him to bring his hands down in self defense.

And then, Juszczyk keeps running. Samuel gets the ball behind him and sprints to the edge, with Juszczyk now ahead of him in space as a lead blocker. In total he does three things on the play—lures the linebackers in the wrong direction with his alignment, gets the end to lose contain with his feint, and puts himself in position to clear more defenders for Samuel ahead, setting up an easy first down conversion of the sort that are all too common in Shanahan’s system.

Daniel Sorensen, S, Kansas City

The story of Kansas City’s defense this year has been their secondary. After leading the league in sacks a year ago, they fell out of the top ten this season, not a surprise after losing Ford to a trade and Justin Houston to free agency, as well as having a few games missed by Chris Jones due to injury. And yet their pass defense as a whole jumped into the top ten in DVOA, despite their loss of pass rush.

Over the second half of the season Kansas City’s defensive backs have been playing as well as any in the league. Charvarius Ward has broken out after being buried in the depth chart a year ago, and free agent addition Bashaud Breeland has stabilized the other side, allowing Kyle Fuller to move back to his natural position in the slot. Alongside stellar play from rookie safety Juan Thornhill, this almost overnight became a top notch secondary.

Unfortunately, Thornhill tore his ACL in the final week of the regular season. Which is where Sorensen comes in. In his sixth year with the Chiefs Sorensen has hung around mostly as a special teams contributor, only seeing significant playing time on defense in 2018. He started six games over the past two seasons combined before being thrust into a starting role at the back end of Kansas City’s defense in the playoffs, and so far he has been up to the task.

Sorensen’s job is to sit in the deep middle of the field and focus on the passing game, a job that seems simple enough until you remember how aggressive defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo likes to play. He regularly sends linebackers and cornerbacks as blitzers, leaving huge swaths of open field for Sorensen to cover on the back end. And yet so far they have mostly avoided giving up any big plays, not shutting down the opposition but at least keeping them in check.

Their ability to trust Sorensen is a key factor in their usage of the player in their secondary who I haven’t mentioned yet: Tyrann Mathieu. Mathieu is one of the most unique players in the league, a safety/linebacker/slot cornerback combo weapon who is given a lot of freedom to follow his instincts. A player like this can be a lethal tool on defense, but he can also be a liability, all depending on how much they can trust someone on the back end to cover for him. So far, Sorensen has been up to that task.

Matchups to Watch

Chiefs Interior O-Line vs 49ers Interior D-Line

This is, for me at least, the most fascinating matchup of the entire game, and potentially the one that will go farthest to determining the outcome. Kansas City’s offense is a living, breathing nightmare, a monster that so far no one has really had an answer for. They have an insane amount of speed at wide receiver, going three deep with game breaking deep threats in Tyreek Hill, Sammy Watkins, and Hardman. They have one of the best tight ends in the league in Travis Kelce. They have two Pro Bowl level tackles. And of course, they have Patrick Mahomes.

If you watched them play in their previous two playoff games this year, it’s fair to wonder how anyone is going to stop this offense from scoring. They spotted Houston a 24 point lead, and they had enough firepower to come back before the game even reached halftime. They fell behind against the Titans again, then coasted to an easy victory. They have too many receiving threats to lock them down in coverage, and few edge pass rushes can get past the combination of Mitchell Schwartz and Eric Fisher. If given time in the pocket, Mahomes will find an open receiver. And he always has time in the pocket.

The one vulnerability of this offense is right up the middle. The heart of their offensive line is solid but not elite, and for the first time this postseason they will be facing competition on the other side that truly is elite.

The 49ers have aggressively built their defensive line, spending four picks in the top half of the first round on those positions and then also adding Dee Ford in a trade, just for kicks. Nick Bosa gets all the attention as an emerging superstar, and Ford is the guy earning the big bucks, but quietly they are just as dangerous rushing up the middle. Arik Armstead had a career year in 2019 with 10 sacks, more than doubling his career total over his first four years. And DeForest Buckner remains one of the best players no one ever talks about, a true interior force who dominates one-on-one battles in space and closes ground rapidly once he’s in the backfield.

Normally Kansas City would throw everything they have into shoring up their interior. Keep running backs into block, leave their tackles on islands. But that may not work with players like Bosa and Ford on the edge. There are no weak points on San Francisco’s defensive line. Someone is going to have a one-on-one matchup, and they are probably going to win it.

This places an even larger than normal burden on Mahomes. He’s the most dangerous quarterback in the league when he breaks from the pocket, but if the 49ers remain disciplined in their rush lanes, they can coral him from multiple directions at once. A free rusher up the middle can force him to Bosa on the edge. A solid push can leave him nowhere to step up. The Chiefs are explosive, but there isn’t much they can do when Mahomes is being dragged down deep in the backfield. Mahomes is one of the best quarterbacks in the league at avoiding sacks, and he will still find ways to make plays. But this may be enough to stifle a couple Chiefs drives, which is probably the best San Francisco can hope for.

Jimmy Garoppolo vs Tyrann Mathieu

Garoppolo has been better than I expected in his first full season as a starter. He finished 12^th in the league in Total QBR, and he comfortably managed his team to a 13-3 record. At times he showed the ability to step up when needed, notably in their shootout victory over the New Orleans Saints. He isn’t a star, but he is exactly what the 49ers needed him to be at quarterback.

In the first two playoff games, they really didn’t need a quarterback at all. Through two games he’s thrown only 27 passes, including a 6 for 8 performance in their NFC Championship win over the Packers. The 49ers realized against both Green Bay and Minnesota that they could run the ball for whatever they needed, so they didn’t bother taking the risk of putting it in the air.

This is a risk because, for all his advantages, Garoppolo has been a bit loose with the football. He finished 2019 with 13 interceptions, a 2.6% interception rate that ranked 25^th of 32 qualified quarterbacks. This was actually a slight improvement over his first two years in San Francisco, where he threw interceptions on 2.9% of his passes.

Most of the interceptions in Kansas City this year came from their safeties. As I mentioned above, Thornhill will unfortunately not be present, and he won’t be able to cap off his three-pick rookie season. But the leader in interceptions on their team was the do-everything safety who always seems to find a way to be around the ball, and who will be perfectly positioned to make a game altering play.

Mathieu isn’t an Ed Reed type safety who lurks deep in the defensive backfield to cut off a deep bomb. He’s more of a Troy Polamalu, a phantom who appears suddenly where the quarterback least expects him like he was the intended receiver for the pass. Garoppolo has been perfect for Shanahan’s offense because he is able to execute the play actions and fakes with such conviction, but at times he can fall prey to that as well, getting mechanical based on what he thinks should be his decisions rather than reading the field in front of him.

Garoppolo is going to need to be aware of Mathieu’s location at every single moment of every play. As a blitzer, in man coverage, or dropping into an unexpected zone. And I’m sure the Chiefs and Mathieu will have something special cooked up just for this game, with the extra week to prepare. The 49ers are already at a disadvantage when it comes to scoring, and they can’t afford to give any possessions away.

George Kittle vs Travis Kelce

Obviously these two won’t actually be on the field at the same time. But I was raised on years of “Brady vs Manning” storylines, so I think we can bend the rules to take a look at the two best tight ends in the NFL facing each other, even if it isn’t strictly speaking “head-to-head”.

Kelce and Kittle are clearly in a tier of their own among active tight ends, which is fascinating because they are two very different players. They are obviously both extremely gifted, and they would have success wherever they played. But they are also both perfect fits for the offenses they’ve found themselves in, and are the key weapons in each team’s passing attack.

Kittle is what you would think of as a more traditional tight end, in a more traditional offense. Obviously his receiving ability draws most of the attention, as in 2018 he set the single season record for receiving yards by a tight end with 1377. He was less productive this season with only 1053 yards, partially due to injury but also due to a change in his role in the offense.

A year ago Kittle was the best receiving threat the 49ers could throw out there. That’s still true, but the margin has gotten a lot smaller as they have added capable wide receivers like Emmanuel Sanders and Deebo Samuel. This in turn has allowed Kittle to turn his focus to what was considered the true strength of his game coming out of college: blocking. As good as he is as a receiver, he might be even better as a run blocker, paving paths for San Francisco’s churning running game to follow.

In San Francisco’s two playoff games so he only has four receptions for 35 yards, but he has been a major factor in both thanks to his ability to overpower defensive ends and linebackers in space. Multiple times each game he could be seen driving his man deep into the defensive backfield, opening up the lanes that Tevin Coleman and Raheem Mostert took advantage of.

The 49ers used Kittle as a blocker in these two games because they got early leads, and they were able to find consistent success on the ground. If they fall behind in this game however, Kittle has the ability to open things up down the field. He has good hands, and he is phenomenal after the catch, with the strength to break away from tacklers and the speed to turn a medium gain into a big one.

Kelce isn’t as versatile as Kittle, but he is more athletic and more polished as a receiver. More often than not he will line up in a two point stance out in the slot, as a big receiving threat working the middle of the field. Very few players have the size to handle him, and even fewer have the coverage and ball skills to keep up as he works down the field.

Kelce may actually be at his best when the play breaks down. While Kansas City’s other receivers streak down the field for the big play, Kelce has the best sense for how to work into open space when Mahomes breaks from the pocket. There is no quarterback in the league better at making tough throws on the run than Mahomes, and these throws often find their way into the hands of Kelce, a target with the size of a tight end and the skills of a wide receiver.

Andy Reid vs Kyle Shanahan

We are often prisoners of the moment, but I don’t think anyone would have blinked an eye if, even before the season, you had referred to these two coaches as the two most clever offensive minds in the game. Reid has already clinched a spot on this throne by virtue of two decades of sustained excellence as a play caller, even if he’s (unfairly) become something of a punch line for the other parts of his coaching style. Shanahan has been a bit slower to catch on, caught in a muddy situation in San Francisco and still working to escape the reputation as the beneficiary of his father’s career.

But as we enter the Super Bowl with these two now going head-to-head, I don’t think there should be much debate. Kansas City is obviously the most dangerous offense in the league, as loaded with talent as they are with strategic brilliance. And while San Francisco doesn’t rise to those same heights, the success they’ve been able to achieve with a much lower level of talent is a testament to the play calling and design of their head coach.

The interesting thing about these two coaches is that they both, indirectly, descend from the Bill Walsh coaching tree. Andy Reid spent seven years with the Green Bay Packers under Mike Holmgren, who was a coach in San Francisco under Walsh. Kyle Shanahan is unquestionably influenced by the schemes of his father, who never worked directly under Walsh but spent time in San Francisco with George Seifert after Walsh’s retirement.

The core of the West Coast offense can still be found in both of these schemes, but they have gone radically different directions in other ways. In Kansas City Reid has embraced many philosophies that have flowed up from college, tendencies developed by people like Mike Leach and Hal Mumme for their “Air Raid” offense. This involves a lot of vertical routes in the passing game, and a heavy emphasis on spreading the field.

It also deemphasizes the run in favor of the pass. As Leach has explained, he doesn’t see a “balanced” offense as one that gives equal share to both the running game and the passing game. He sees balance as an even distribution to all his playmakers, which would mean roughly 20% for his running back and the other 80% split between four wide receivers. Obviously Reid doesn’t go that far, but the Chiefs still lead the most pass-heavy offense in the NFL. Where many teams get frightened of the possibility of throwing three straight incompletions and handing the ball back, the Chiefs are happy to completely toss the run aside if they don’t think it’s working, trusting their aggressive passing attack to save them if they get stuck in third and long situations.

Shanahan comes at things from a very different angle. His offense is built around the running game, and around a passing attack that works through play action. Where the Chiefs do almost every snap from shotgun with their formation spread across the field, the 49ers run almost everything from under center, with tight ends and fullbacks added to the mix to keep things tight.

The key to both offenses is to attack open space. The difference is how they find that space. Reid works with the philosophy that the field is 120 yards long and 53.3 yards wide, and he is going to use every inch of that to draw up his plays. San Francisco works in much smaller areas, but they use clever designs to move defenders out of position, opening gaps in the defense for them to attack.

The contrasts in offensive styles make this the most fascinating Super Bowl that I can recall in the past several years. San Francisco prefers to slow things down and keep things tight, but they have the ability to put up points by getting the ball to players like Mostert, Kittle, and Samuel with plenty of space to generate yards after the catch. Kansas City wants to go as fast as possible, to air the ball out and try to score on every single play. Whichever team can force the other to play their way has a clear advantage, and will likely emerge victorious from this game.

Prediction

Kansas City has gotten off to slow starts in each of their two playoff games, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen again. The 49ers always have good scripts to start games, and I think they put a couple early scores on the board. Unfortunately, I expect their offense to sputter when it gets down into scoring territory, and they’ll settle for a couple ill timed field goals that keep them from establishing a big lead.

San Francisco absolutely needs to play with a lead for most of this game. If they fall behind, they will find themselves facing even more pressure with each possession, and this will lead to them getting away from their core game plan of feeding the ball to their running backs and tight ends. Kansas City certainly won’t let up on the scoring, and if Garoppolo is forced to drop back and to try to go pass for pass with Mahomes, there is no way it ends well for San Francisco.

I think we’ll see a first half heavy with offensive production but lighter on points, as both teams are a bit cautious working their way down the field. They will avoid any negative plays, but they will struggle to convert when they get down into situations where they have to take risks in the tight spaces down around the goalline. This will break down at the end of the half when the Chiefs kick their offense to full speed, coasting down the field and taking the lead into halftime.

This lead will only grow in the third quarter, and once San Francisco finds themselves down two scores things will get ugly. Garoppolo will throw an ill-timed pick trying to make a play down the field, and Kansas City will capitalize. By the end of the third quarter the game will more or less be over, barring some catastrophic clock management from Reid. One late score from San Francisco will make this a momentary possibility, but the Chiefs will easily move the ball once they start trying on offense again, and the 49ers will never possess the ball in the fourth quarter with the game within a single score.

Final Prediction: Kansas City 38 – San Francisco 27