Can 49ers’ improving secondary slow Packers’ elite Rodgers-to-Adams combo?
The 49ers have a pretty good idea where Aaron Rodgers is going to throw the ball Saturday night at Lambeau Field.
OK, so maybe they don’t know where Rodgers will throw it, but they certainly know the target.
Davante Adams could line up just about anywhere for the Green Bay Packers in an NFC divisional playoff game, and it’s going to be up to more than a single cornerback to keep one of the NFL’s most prolific targets under control.
“He doesn’t stay in one spot,” 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans said Wednesday. “He can move into the slot, he can play outside. He’s all over the place. We know that he’s the top guy.”
A quick glance at the statistics makes that clear.
Adams leads the Packers with 169 targets in 16 games (he missed one on the COVID-19 list) and he finished with 123 receptions for 1,553 yards and 11 touchdowns. The next most targeted receiver is Alan Lazard with 60, and he has 40 catches for 513 yards.
In a 30-28 win over the 49ers in Week 3, Rodgers threw 33 passes and 18 of them went to Adams, who caught 12 passes for 132 yards and a touchdown.
The biggest one was a 25-yard catch on firstand-10 from the 25 with 37 seconds to play after the 49ers had taken a 2827 lead. Two plays later, Rodgers hit Adams again for a 17-yard strike at the 49ers’ 33.
It set up a 51-yard field goal by Mason Crosby at the gun.
The 18 targets to Adams are tied for the second-most in his career in a game. And that number
doesn’t even include a 32-yard pass interference call on Emmanuel Moseley which helped lead to a Green Bay touchdown.
Adams, a Palo Alto High product, has a connection with Rodgers dating back to 2014, which makes him more difficult to defend than Amari Cooper and CeeDee Lamb of Dallas with Dak Prescott or even Cooper Kupp of the Rams with Matthew Stafford.
“He’s a big guy who can always create an edge on a defender, and if you can create an edge wherever they’re at, then you can separate to explode away,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said Thursday. “When you pair him with a quarterback who doesn’t need much separation to get the ball wherever he wants it, it’s a very lethal combination.”
While defending the Packers and Adams will take all 11 men, cornerbacks will be under a microscope.
Moseley has been back in the lineup for the last two games after a high ankle sprain and has played well. The other cornerback spot has been manned by Ambry Thomas, a third-round draft pick out of Michigan who started slow but made great strides in the
last three games.
Thomas, however, came out of the Dallas game with a bruised knee, was limping early in the week and listed as questionable.
If Thomas can’t go, the 49ers would look to either Dontae Johnson, a veteran who has played all over the secondary, or Josh Norman, who was signed early in the season after Jason Verrett was lost to a knee injury.
Norman showed a penchant for forcing fumbles, but struggled in coverage. He hasn’t played a snap on defense in either of the last two games. When asked directly about Norman, Ryans gave a vague answer that didn’t include using his name.
Shanahan wasn’t saying, either.
“It will be one of those two guys,” Shanahan said. “I’m hoping he will go. I think he’ll be all right but that will come down to seeing how he is on game day.”
If Johnson and Moseley were to open as outside corners (K’waun Williams has been a mainstay at nickel corner) it would be the seventh different combination of starters — Deommodore Lenoir and Verrett, Norman and Lenoir, Norman and Moseley, Johnson and Dre Kirkpatrick, Thomas and Norman and Thomas and Moseley are the others.
Not exactly the kind of continuity the 49ers were hoping for.
Whoever has to deal with Adams will have help, and it’s clear the 49ers are a much better team than when they played the Packers in Week 3.
“The way we’re moving, the way we’re swarming now, it looks different, it feels different on film,” Ryans said. “We’ve had different guys and they’re stepping up and making plays. Our pass rush is definitely better.”
The pass rush has gone hand-in-hand with a rushing defense that has been rock-solid for the last five games. During that span, the 49ers are giving up just 379 yards on 122 carries — an average of 3.1 per attempt.In the first Green Bay game, the Packers rushed for 100 yards on 25 carries, with Aaron Jones leading the way with 19 carries or 82 yards. After that week, A.J. Dillon, a 250-pound power back, was given a bigger role. He led Green Bay with 803 yards, and Jones added 799.
From his end, Adams isn’t putting much stock in what he did in Week 3, but he isn’t overly concerned about getting worked over by the 49ers as the Packers were in a 37-20 in the NFC Championship game in 2019.
“You’ve got to come out firing. You’ve got to throw everything you’ve got at them and not hold anything back,” Adams told reporters in Green Bay. “We know what type of team they are, but we’ve won the last two and we have a pretty good rhythm with that. They’re not just going to lay down and let us win a third in a row, but we to a certain extent have their number right now so it’s about having that intensity.”