Kurtenbach: Brandon Staley’s time with the 49ers was unremarkable. His Saints defense is anything but

The NFL is a small world a high school reunion with shoulder pads Guys are shuffled around the deck of teams year in year out And all too often they end up staring across the field at someone they used to contest plan with That s what s happening this Sunday in New Orleans Kyle Shanahan and his San Francisco ers will be in town and on the other sideline waiting for them will be Saints defensive coordinator Brandon Staley And Staley who was an assistant with vague assignments for the Niners last season he was certainly not the gang s shadow defensive coordinator has a defense that s an absolute nightmare for Shanahan s wide-zone run contest Yes this event will be anything but Big Easy for San Francisco Related Articles The Bob Show DC Robert Saleh is here to save the ers season Kurtenbach You thought the ers chaos was limited to last season Think again The ers defense is leaning on rookies Here s how they did in Week Kurtenbach An act of mercy it s time again for the ers to cut kicker Jake Moody Kurtenbach The ers season-opening win was all kinds of messy Get used to it Staley s defensive scheme was ironically popularized by Shanahan s predecessor in Santa Clara Chip Kelly It s called the Tite Front and it s a real nasty look to face if you re a club whose entire identity is based on the wide zone run It s a - - front which means you ve got two big defensive linemen lined up in the i technique smack dab between the offensive guards and tackles in the B gap and an even bigger nose guard staring the center eye-to-eye It s a front designed to gum up the works for a organization that wants to stretch the field horizontally And that s exactly what the ers want to do Particularly with a backup quarterback at the helm likely down the company s top two pass catchers from Kelly the offensive mad scientist cooked this scheme up back in his Oregon days He made it to stop his own offense Seriously His run-pass-option scheme became so dominant he had to invent a defense to counter all the teams that were ripping it off It turns out that defense is just as good at making life miserable for the wide-zone mafia that dominates the league The basic idea is that those defensive ends at the i force the offensive tackles to occupy them The whole thing creates a traffic jam that makes it near-impossible for offensive linemen typically the guards and center to do their two main jobs on zone runs double-teaming along the line and then getting to the second level to block linebackers While the greater part guys on defense these days want to get into the backfield as fast as doable Staley preaches a different kind of gospel His linemen are supposed to fill one gap off the snap and then depending on where the ball carrier moves fall into another It s called a gap-and-a-half defense and when it works it frees up the linebackers to clean house and stop the run before it even gets started It also lets Staley keep two safeties deep in the pass tournament but because those second-level blocks rarely arrive on time if at all they can crash down in the run encounter too In short the Tite Front allows defenses to receive all the benefits of stacking the box without veritably doing so This is the kind of defense that once made Staley a hot commodity on the coaching territory Both Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan saw his work and decided they d rather hire the guy than have to face him McVay brought him to the Rams in after seeing his work with the Bears where he helped devise a late-season defensive plan against McVay that later became the basis for the Patriots Super Bowl encounter plan You know the one that left the Rams with three points As the Rams DC in Staley s defense was the best in the NFL That got him the head coaching job with the Chargers Related Articles Timeline How Mac Jones ended up being the ers starting quarterback How to watch the ers vs the Saints on Sunday ers keys to winning without Purdy Kittle at New Orleans Saints ers good humor man Mac Jones ready for his opportunity replacing Brock Purdy ers injury woes continue Trent Williams questionable against Saints After three years with the Chargers he came back to the Niners last season as an assistant No one can quite tell you what he in fact did for the crew For whatever reason the Niners didn t see fit to put him in charge of the defense either before or after last season Perhaps it was the other coaches and the way they requested to do things the Niners run a very different defense So now Staley s with the Saints And he s inherited a roster that s better suited for his defense and a head coach and front office that s all-in on his plan to blow up the Shanahan offense league-wide The first thing Staley did as Saints DC was commerce for -pound nose guard Davon Godchaux an absolute beast who is a nightmare to handle at the technique Thoughts and prayers to Niners center Jake Brendel this week Last week the Saints held the Cardinals to just yards on outside-zone runs and the majority of that came on one play where two Saints defenders ran into each other leading to a -yard scamper You take that away and the Cardinals running backs averaged yards per carry Compare that to the Niners Week when San Francisco with Brock Purdy at quarterback averaged just three yards on outside-zone carries against a five-man front from the Seahawks What s going to happen when Mac Jones who defenses don t ever have to consider as a runner is running this show It goes back to when Kyle s dad was calling plays back in Denver Staley mentioned this week They re going to run their offense It really forces the defense to declare itself Unless Shanahan has a few new tricks up his sleeve and the guys up front who can execute those tricks that declaration isn t a difficulty for the Saints Their defense built by a former Niners head coach and brought to the NFL by a former Niners defensive coordinator s prot g as well as Shanahan s former assistant and now top rival was built to stop Shanahan s basics It s a small world this NFL And that could very well be a big matter for the ers on Sunday