1. Play Action Pass from 12 personnel - Hanna/Witten are your TEs with Murray as your single back. Dez and Williams as your WRs with close splits to the formation. Both Hanna and Witten stay in to block the edges and Dez runs a crossing route underneath as Williams runs the post so you have only 2 guys out on routes w/ Murray as a check down.
Two things, the call is on 1st and 10 and Romo sells the fake by turning his head to Murray. This in turn is good and bad, good in that he gets the defense to flow to his right to key on the run, but bad because he loses sight of the defenders in front of him and also losing reads on Dez and Williams on their routes.
Which brings me to my opinion on this play. As Romo looks down field, Williams is making his break behind the traffic towards the left pylon. By the way that the play quickly unfolded, it looks to me like Romo had pre-determined his throw to Dez pre-snap. If Romo had just scanned the field a tick longer he may have seen the SS drop right in front of Dez and moved on to his next progression which should have been Williams or the check down to Murray.
2. Play Action Pass from S11 personnel - Witten/Murray w/ Dez, Beasley, and Harris as your receivers. Witten stays in to block then leaks out still covered. While Beasley runs a flat route, Dez a crossing route in the back of the end zone, and Harris runs a sluggo. Murray helps with blocking as well.
Again it's 1st and goal here, and Romo sells the fake again by turning his head to Murray. After the fake Romo wants to hit Harris but sees both LBs eyeing him down. I think he doesn't trust himself to fit the ball to Harris behind the LBs and then Murray's man has Romo scrambling to the right. Whether it was a bad throwaway or poor decision by Romo whatever that was it was ugly.
3. Play Action Pass from 13 personnel - Witten/Hanna/Escobar as your TEs and Murray as your single back. Dez is your lone WR that runs a skinny post and Witten goes out on a pattern too. (couldn't tell what is was) Hanna and Escobar stay in as blockers but Escobar and Murray are the check downs this time.
1st and 10 again - see the pattern yet? Romo again sells the fake with his head turn but this time he quickly snaps it back to scan the field. The problem is that Romo never sees the backside corner drop into the deep center of the field. Romo never accounted for him and unloads the ball to Dez hoping that Dez can make the circus catch.
Here's my extended analysis on these particular plays. All of them were PA passes and they were all called on 1st and 10. In the offseason Tony's stats when throwing PA passes was posted here and everyone was screaming for more PA passes because we rarely ran them. Well PA passes are great, but one of the big issues when trying to run them is to, #1 sell the fake to the defense to suck them in, and #2 make an easy completion for your QB.
Let me talk about #1. PA pass fakes is an art form that must be perfected at the NFL level. It's just not about going through the motions. First and foremost the QB has to sell the fake to the runner. If the QB keeps his vision down field and doesn't really sell the fake then the LB are going to drop in their zones and read pass all day. You can always sell the fake in other ways too, with the OL, by going low hat or use a pulling OG but you invite yourself to quick QB pressure. On play 1, I don't think Williams was ever part of his progression because as soon as Romo got to his landmark he set his feet and unloaded the ball into triple coverage. As Romo turns his head to sell the fake, he doesn't see the SS drop right in front of Dez or that the FS commits to Dez from behind. On Play 2 it seems like Romo doesn't trust himself more than anything as he sees Harris but doesn't pull the trigger. On Play 3, Romo never accounts for the backside corner #20 dropping into the deep center as help. Cowboys are in a heavy run formation and the 49ers are in their base defense, in hindsight they probably should have ran there as they have the personnel advantage to run there vs the 49ers base defense.
On with #2, making the easy completion for your QB. PA passes are designed to suck the defense in order to get your play makers behind them. And while Dallas was able to get the 49ers to commit on 2 of 3 PA calls, they failed to make the easy completions. Play 1 is a basic Hi/Lo concept where you want the far S to commit to the crosser or the skinny post and whichever he commits to you go the opposite. Play 2 was more of the QB not trusting himself to get the ball in a window. And Play 3 was a play call that was probably doomed from the beginning because of the defense on the field.
So where do we go from here? I simply don't know because the sample size is too small. The Cowboys ran more PA passes and Romo was fine on those but they were on different downs and distances. Maybe scrap the idea on 1st downs and go with a run or straight up pass play instead?
Maybe tweak the passing concepts to make the reads easier for Romo so that he can make the correct read when he hits his landmark on the fake?
Maybe send more route runners out at the expense of less protection? That's a risky proposition considering Romo could get rattled pretty easy with one good hit.
As the season goes on though, we will see how Linehan and Romo fix these issues.
