With 58 seconds left in the Saturday night game between the 49ers and Rams, and the game tied at 31, San Francisco quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo heaved a pass to receiver Emmanuel Sanders for a 46-ya…
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Was it acceptable for Jalen Ramsey to throw Taylor Rapp under the bus?
Doug Farrar
14 hours ago
With 58 seconds left in the Saturday night game between the 49ers and Rams, and the game tied at 31, San Francisco quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo heaved a pass to receiver Emmanuel Sanders for a 46-yard gain that took the ball from the 49ers’ 31-yard line to the Rams’ 23. Two plays later, Robbie Gould booted a 33-yard field goal that gave his team a 34-31 win, set the 49ers up nicely for the postseason with a 12-3 record, and eliminated the Rams — the defending NFC champions — from the 2019 playoffs.
It was the second third-and-16 San Francisco converted on the drive — earlier, Garoppolo had hit receiver Kendrick Bourne for an 18-yard gain in a similarly sticky situation.
“I felt like we were [getting] pressure,” Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald said after the game. We were there but he [Garoppolo] was making some good throws. We were about to get him, if we had a second longer. He made two good passes to help his team to win.”
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As it turns out, Rams cornerback Jalen Ramsey was entirely willing to recall what happened.
“It wasn’t me and Eric — he played the other side. It was [safety Taylor] Rapp,” Ramsey said, when asked by ESPN reporter Lindsey Thiry what he and safety Eric Weddle saw on the Sanders play. “We were in a form of 2-Man [coverage]. We had an adjustment check to it because [the 49ers were in a] condensed split, I played my technique, trusting that he was going to be over the top… and he wasn’t. That’s what happened.”
Rapp was the Rams’ second-round pick in 2019 out of Washington. He had seen his snaps increase over the last month due to injuries in the secondary (most specifically, John Johnson III’s shoulder injury), and it’s clear that in a 2-Man responsibility, this was not the right technique. 2-Man is basically a Cover-2 safety look with man coverage underneath, and safeties must be where they’re supposed to be so that the cornerbacks can play man coverage confidently.
There is also the question of how closely Ramsey should have covered Sanders through the route if 2-Man was the coverage. If you want to, you can assign all kinds of responsibilities to coverage meltdowns.
“One thing Jalen’s dead right about — his technique was awful,” former NFL defensive coordinator and head coach
Rex Ryan said on ESPN on Sunday morning. “They’re running what we call a
slice fist, meaning [the cornerback] is going to start from outside leverage, get your hands on [the receiver], and then get back to an inside trail. Jalen never touched the guy off the line, and Rapp ends up playing over the top. He’s supposed to be deep and outside, thinking that Jalen’s gonna be trailing the thing inside. Maybe the ball will be elevated. Well, guess what? Jalen wasn’t there. Rapp’s a young player; he’s going to do exactly what you tell him to — outside and deep. Well, guess what? Jalen, it’s your fault.”
So. Rapp made a mistake, but was Ramsey right to call him out publicly, since he made a mistake as well? One could say that, given the specificity of the question, Ramsey had no choice but to point out that it wasn’t Weddle who was the problem. And maybe he should have stopped right there.
Ramsey is a great cornerback, and he’s a tough competitor. That competitive edge
has worked both ways for him throughout his career. And while he is a fine player, he’s also not perfect — going into Saturday’s game, he’d given up 26 catches on 35 targets for 324 yards, and an opponent passer rating of 102.6 in his eight games with the Rams this season. Ramsey started his 2019 season with the Jaguars before an October trade, and in the first week of the 2019 season, he gave up two touchdown passes against the Chiefs. One can also imagine that Ramsey would not have been overly pleased if one of his teammates had given a blow-by-blow recitation of Ramsey’s coverage issues in the locker room right after the game.
Donald’s conclusion — we were close to getting Garoppolo, but he made good throws — seems like the way to go in cases like this. Ramsey wasn’t wrong in his analysis of the play, of course, but there are many different ways to bring that truth to the forefront.
