Around the NFC West: 49ers' hasty on QB?

Gwen Knapp of the San Francisco Chronicle asks whether the 49ers acted too hastily in publicly committing to Alex Smith as their veteran quarterback for 2011. But in looking through the list of alternatives, the 49ers' decision on Smith makes more sense, in my view. The team projects Colin Kaepernick as its longer-term quarterback. None of the quarterbacks likely to become available would have enough appeal for the 49ers to justify making an investment significant enough to displace Kaepernick. In the meantime, Smith was the perfect ambassador for new coach Jim Harbaugh, who needed someone to promote his offense while the lockout prevented the 49ers' staff from interacting directly with players. Matt Maiocco of CSNBayArea.com says Smith and 49ers players are planning another camp for this week. Maiocco: "The 49ers own the rights to 31 offensive players. That includes 26 players under contract and five unsigned draft picks. Twenty-two players were on hand for the first Camp Alex, which ran June 6-9. That total includes two unsigned veterans: Smith and center David Baas, who flew in from Florida for the final day of classroom and on-field activity." Craig Harris and Ginger Rough of the Arizona Republic say the Cardinals and other Arizona sports franchises have sought to improve their political standing by offering free tickets to lawmakers. Harris and Rough: "For the Cardinals, giving away free tickets was a way to go head-to-head with the Fiesta Bowl, which for years battled the NFL team over stadium issues. The Cardinals didn't have any bills before the Legislature during the time it gave out the gifts. Nonetheless, the team gave 35 lawmakers pairs of tickets to its home opener in 2006. It gave a pair of loft tickets 47 times to lawmakers or incoming legislators for a dozen different home games from 2007 to 2009, according to the team. Each loft ticket had a value ranging from $132.50 to $167.25. In most cases, however, the lawmakers attended only one game during the calendar year. That meant they were not obligated to reveal their acceptance of the gift on their annual financial disclosure forms, since the value fell under the $500 reporting threshold." Clare Farnsworth of seahawks.com reflects upon Peter McLoughlin's first nine months as the team's president. The team extended its stadium naming-rights deal by five years as part of the switch to CenturyLink Field.

West Coast Staples: Snag, Spot and Y-Stick « Saturday Nite Lites

This post is intended to provide some insight into a few of the basic passing game concepts that you see duplicated at all levels and fit into different styles or brands of offense like spread, airraid, west coast, power I and more.  You can find these core concepts in many different playbooks – and although, from team to team, the terminology may differ, the execution will remain the same – each with different combinations of personnel, formations, motions and route packages to ‘dress up’ the play and make it their own.  The impetus of these concepts can be traced back to Bill Walsh and the ‘west coast offense’ in what he terms, X & Z Spot & Y-Stick.  (Be sure to keep reading below for a more detailed observation of some memorable 49er moments from the past.) True to form of the ‘west coast offense’ these concepts are excellent ball control, short passing plays which rely on accuracy and timing between the QB & WRs to take advantage of different defensive structures and coverages.

Snag is a great passing concept that is used at all levels.  Read a breakdown from Chris Brown, of smartfootball.com, on how it’s used in the college game , where one point is to get a high-low with the corner route and the flat route (except now the flat is controlled by the runningback), with the added dimension of an outside receiver running the “snag” route — a one-step slant where he settles inside at 5-6 yards. This gives you a “triangle” stretch, where you have both a high/low read (corner to RB in the flat) and a horizontal read from inside to outside (snag route to the RB in the flat).

The top left diagram on the second page is an example of packaging the snag concept with a quick game concept.  Here we used a simple slant/arrow combination to take advantage of a pressing slot defender with no safety help over the top – hoping to clear out the underneath defender to hit the slant against off-man coverage.  If the QB was to see a safety over the top of the two WRs before the snap, then he would look to the snag side and read the flat defender to decide where to go with the ball.

I found some good video clips illustrating this diverse but simple concept on Youtube from otowncoach and

For SF west coast offense purists, enjoy this litany of additional cutups of the SF 49ers running y-stick.  Check out Ricky Waters at the 7:43 mark scoring a 55 yard touchdown against the San Diego Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX, breaking the game open on a variation of the play called ‘X-stick H Seam’.  The great thing that the 49ers coaching staff did prior to that game, in the regular season and playoffs (also included in film), was to run a lot of Y-stick from similar formations and motions.  This probably started to give defenses a false sense of security as their underneath players would anticipate the play when they recognized familiar sets and motions consistent with down and distance breakdowns (from film study) – prompting them to jump the flat and stick routes.  49ers Offensive Coordinator at the time, Mike Shanahan, took advantage of this conditioned he was creating, and added variations such as Stick Nod (a double move by the TE), and Stick Lion (a quick skinny route from the back-side to take advantage of weak ILB strong flow to the primary side), but saved the most effective quick strike variation with the H seam component for the title game of the 1994 season.  This play was able to rip a whole right through the heart of the Charger Defense as they undoubtedly overplayed the arrow route and became vulnerable to Waters’ fine tuned route running and pass receiving skills (a quintessential element of the ‘west coast offense’) as he faked to the flat and burst to the seam for a dramatic throw, catch and run.  The best part is that they set the whole thing up and most likely knew they were going to score on that play from that area of the field before they ever kicked off to start the game.  Now that’s .

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