NY Jets: Aaron Rodgers’s surprising recipe to attacking 49ers

The New York Jets’ revamped passing game will be immediately tested to begin the 2024 season.

The San Francisco 49ers’ pass coverage – encompassing both their secondary and their linebacker unit – is one of the team’s greatest strengths.

Here are some of the 49ers’ ranks against the pass in 2023:

• Interceptions: 22 (1st)
• Net yards per attempt allowed: 5.4 (5th)
• Yards per completion allowed: 9.6 (1st)
• Passer rating allowed: 79.6 (4th)
• Pass defense DVOA: 4th

The back end of this defense is loaded with talent.

Charvarius Ward (outside) and Deommodore Lenoir (slot) were both outstanding cornerbacks for the 49ers last season. Joining Ward on the outside will be free agent pickup Isaac Yiadom, who excelled for the Saints last season. This is poised to be one of the league’s best cornerback trios. At safety, second-year man Ji’Ayir Brown is looking for a breakout season after shining as a rookie.

Fred Warner, unanimously considered the league’s best cover linebacker, is still at the height of his superpowers. He will be joined by free agent pickup De’Vondre Campbell, a former All-Pro who is known for his abilities in coverage.

With all of these pieces… where is Aaron Rodgers supposed to go with the football on Monday?

To figure that out, I looked back at the plans utilized by the rare teams who achieved aerial success against San Francisco’s defense last year.

The Jets are playing this game on the road, so I figured it made sense to focus on games played at Levi’s Stadium. I analyzed the three games in which San Francisco allowed a 100.0+ opposing passer rating at home:

• Week 4 vs. Arizona Cardinals (QB Joshua Dobbs): 101.4 passer rating allowed, won 35-16
• Week 8 vs. Cincinnati Bengals (QB Joe Burrow): 132.6 passer rating allowed, lost 17-31
• Week 16 vs. Baltimore Ravens (QB Lamar Jackson): 104.6 passer rating allowed, lost 19-33

Across these three games, the 49ers went 1-2 while allowing 26.7 points per game. In their four home games where they allowed a sub-100.0 passer rating (excluding a game where they rested their starters), the 49ers went 4-0 while allowing 13.0 points per game.

Considering their only win while allowing a 100.0+ passer rating was against an abysmal Cardinals team, it would seem the Jets have a very strong chance of winning if Aaron Rodgers can reach a 100.0 passer rating on Monday. With a career passer rating of 103.6, the 100.0 mark is well within reach for Rodgers.

However, against this particular defense, hitting that level of efficiency will only be achievable if Rodgers has the perfect recipe for success. To learn what that recipe is, the Jets need to steal some tips from the teams who successfully did what Rodgers will try to do on Monday.

Here are some of the things the Cardinals, Bengals, and Ravens did to achieve their excellent passing efficiency in Santa Clara.

Don’t be afraid to challenge Warner

Fred Warner is a terrifying threat in the middle of the field. He led linebackers with four interceptions in 2023, and over the last two seasons, he led linebackers with 21 passes defended.

However, on the rare occasions where San Francisco’s pass defense struggled at home, Warner was the team’s primary culprit in coverage.

Across the three “down games” (we’ll use this label to refer to the three games where SF allowed a 100.0+ passer rating at home), Warner was charged with allowing a team-high 179 yards into his coverage, per Pro Football Focus’s tracking. Warner allowed the most yards on the team against Arizona (56) and Cincinnati (84), while he allowed the second-most against Baltimore (39).

Warner allowed 59.7 yards per game in the down games compared to 27.4 yards per game in his other 14 games. Opponents were also more efficient when challenging him. In the down games, Warner allowed 10.5 yards per target, and in the rest of his games, he allowed 7.2.

On this play, Arizona has Hollywood Brown run a post route through Warner’s zone. Warner bites on the play action and Brown runs free behind him. Joshua Dobbs drops it in for the easy deep completion.

Because of his elite athleticism, San Francisco trusts Warner to cover more north-south ground than any other linebacker in football. While he is capable of making plays in these roles that no other linebacker can, he’s still a linebacker at the end of the day. He’s not keeping up with the Hollywood Browns of the world. San Francisco asks him to do some really difficult things, and that can be exploited. The Jets shouldn’t hesitate to challenge Warner with their speediest weapons.

This next play isn’t necessarily a bad one by Warner individually, but it’s an example of how the 49ers can be exploited for using Warner the way that they do.

After the play fake, Warner gains a ton of depth, matching Zay Flowers (left slot WR) vertically. Warner is positioning himself to pick Flowers up if he breaks inside. Once Flowers breaks outside, Warner leaves him alone and squares back up to the QB. By this point, Warner is nearly 15 yards downfield.

Once Lamar Jackson scrambles, Dre Greenlaw (the LB to Warner’s left) has no choice but to vacate his area and pursue Jackson. This allows Gus Edwards to leak free into Greenlaw’s zone. Since Warner is so far down the field, he’s nowhere close enough to hold Edwards to a short gain. Edwards is given a massive amount of space due to Warner’s positioning, and he takes advantage for a 39-yard gain.

There isn’t anything Warner could have done differently there. He did what he was asked to do. Nonetheless, just like the Cardinals play, this rep shows that Warner’s unique usage has its costs. New York should look to exploit this hole in similar ways.

Feed your No. 1 wide receiver underneath

All three teams peppered their best wide receiver with targets, finding great success when doing so.

Here is how each team’s WR1 performed in San Francisco’s three down games:

• Hollywood Brown (ARI): 7 catches, 10 targets, 96 yards, 0 TD, 5 first downs
• Ja’Marr Chase (CIN): 10 catches, 12 targets, 100 yards, 1 TD, 5 first downs
• Zay Flowers (BAL): 9 catches, 13 targets, 72 yards, 1 TD, 6 first downs

Combined, they averaged 8.7 catches, 11.7 targets, 89.3 yards, and 5.7 first downs.

The main ingredient to these players’ success was their consistency. While the results were not explosive, they were reliable and efficient.

They only averaged a combined 10.1 yards per reception, which is modest for a WR1. However, they caught 74% of their targets and each generated at least five first downs. While their combined 5.7 first downs per game might not jump off the screen, it’s an actually an elite number when put into context. That number is higher than Tyreek Hill’s league-leading mark last season (5.2).

The key to this type of production was to feature these players in the underneath game. Brown, Chase, and Flowers combined for only 5.8 air yards per reception against San Francisco; in other words, their average catch was made under six yards past the line of scrimmage. This strategy allowed the three teams to consistently find their WRs for chain-moving receptions in important situations.

On this third-and-2 play, Cincinnati feeds Ja’Marr Chase a quick bubble screen, and he easily moves the chains.

It gets slightly cut off at the start of the clip, but it looks like Joe Burrow checked into this. The 49ers had a soft look across from Cincinnati’s three-receiver look on the wide side of the field, so the bubble screen to Chase was easy money.

This is an opportunity that should be available fairly often in these types of situations. Much like the Jets – as Robert Saleh has brought the same mentality over to New York – San Francisco is a defense that prefers to keep everything in front to limit big plays. That means you can have your way in the short game if you’re willing and patient enough to take it.

Aaron Rodgers is more than willing to play that brand of football. While Rodgers still has the arm strength and confidence to take shots when they’re there, his bread-and-butter at this stage of his career is to identify his matchup, stay in the pocket, and get the ball out quickly to the most favorable spot of the field. If you want to give him easy 7-yard pickups for first downs, he’ll audible into it every time.

And with a WR1 like Garrett Wilson, Rodgers is ready to mimic the high-volume/high-consistency model that Arizona, Cincinnati, and Baltimore set with their WR1s.

Wilson is poised to see an extremely high number of targets this season as the WR1 in a Rodgers-led offense that has questions across the rest of the WR depth chart. For multiple reasons, this week’s game has a chance to end up as Wilson’s most-targeted game of the season.

Projected WR2 Mike Williams is set to be on a pitch count to start the year. New York still figuring out where the other WRs fit in; we currently have no idea who has the best chance to finish third in targets among the WRs on Monday. Finally, as we just broke down, San Francisco showed last season that it can be exploited by a high-volume/high-consistency approach from the WR1.

There will be plenty of games this year where Wilson hauls in multiple bombs. This might not be one of those games. On Monday, the plan should be to pepper Wilson with high-percentage throws underneath. San Francisco has shown it will let you ride your WR1 to first down after first down, and the Jets should gladly accept the offer.

With his YAC ability and his route-running skills in the short-to-intermediate range, Wilson has an ideal skill set to dominate in a role that feeds him a high volume of short targets. The Jets should seek to have Wilson at least match the 9-10 catches and 5-6 first downs that Chase and Flowers hit in their respective victories.

Use the WR1 threat to generate big plays from other players

Capitalizing off the respect demanded by Wilson’s high target volume, the Jets can hit their complementary weapons for big plays.

In their games against San Francisco last year, Chase and Flowers each had three teammates who recorded at least one catch for over 20 yards. Meanwhile, none of Chase and Flowers’s combined 19 catches went for over 20 yards.

Cincinnati hit a big one to three other wide receivers: Tee Higgins (33 yards), Tyler Boyd (22 yards), and Trenton Irwin (21 yards). All of Baltimore’s explosives went to non-wide receivers: running back Gus Edwards (39 yards, seen in previous clip where Flowers drew Warner out), running back Justice Hill (23 yards), and tight end Isaiah Likely (34 yards).

Here is an example of the Bengals using Chase to open up a big play for a teammate.

Chase runs a seam route as the innermost of two slot receivers on the right. The 49ers drop Fred Warner to cover Chase’s inside, while there is a safety sitting to the outside if Chase breaks out.

With Warner vacating the shallow middle of the field to cover Chase deep, there is space left underneath of Chase for Trenton Irwin to run a short in-breaker over the middle. Warner’s absence forces the linebacker on the other side of the field to come all the way across and make a difficult tackle attempt on Irwin, which he misses, leading to a 21-yard gain.

In addition to this play being an example of how the respect of a WR1 can create big plays for others, it is also another example of how the Jets can exploit San Francisco’s usage of Warner. With how often he runs deep, that short middle will be available.

Aaron Rodgers can be successful if he finds the soft spots

San Francisco’s pass defense is about as good as it gets in the NFL, but every defense can be beaten if you have the right plan. Surprisingly, the right plan for the Jets just might be to challenge one of the 49ers’ best players. All three teams who passed the ball efficiently at Levi’s Stadium last season had success at exploiting Fred Warner’s usage.

You know Aaron Rodgers has obsessively watched the film of these three games. It is likely that he picked up on the same thing. Look for him to try and exploit the soft spots in the middle of the field on Monday night.