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More fallout from Monday night’s delightfully intense 49ers-Seahawks spectacular: Seattle defenders have told Crackerjack NFL reporter Jim Trotter that they were deciphering Jimmy Garoppolo’s signals late in the game.
Interesting insight from the Seattle locker room after OT defeat of the 49ers: If it looked like the D had a good read on Jimmy G late, LB Bobby Wagner told me it was in part because he and KJ Wright began picking up on Jimmy’s checks. …
— Jim Trotter (@JimTrotter_NFL) November 12, 2019
Not only that, but:
Wagner: “Once we started reading keys, me and KJ started hearing the calls and picked up on the checks he was making, and it allowed us to break faster.”
— Jim Trotter (@JimTrotter_NFL) November 12, 2019
Not only that, but Wagner told Trotter, “They’re a team that runs so many different things that it’s hard to get a tendency, but I felt like the last couple of times that we played them we were able to figure out what they were doing.”
That’s smart.
What’s not so smart is reporting to a breathless world that you know some of the keys and signals of a divisional rival.
True, football teams self-scout to make sure they aren’t tipping intelligence to the enemy, such as the fact that Joe Kapp, as Cal coach, loved to pitch to the short side of the field. And like the way Steve Mariucci, as 49ers coach, had a tendency to run the ball after an incomplete pass on first down. Then there was the Raiders game at Indianapolis once upon a time when heady Raiders linebacker Greg Biekert picked up the signals of a young Colts quarterback — I want to say some jamoke named Manning — allowing the Raiders a clear and easy path to victory.
“I just kind of got a handle on what they were doing,” Biekert said. “I was calling out their draws and slants.”
But there’s a difference what Biekert did to Manning and what the Seahawks did to Jimmy G. For one thing, the Colts and Raiders were not bitter divisional rivals. The Seahawks and 49ers play each other twice a season (not including the playoffs). And for another, there was no Twitter platform from which to trumpet one’s mad counter espionage skills.
Yes, those skills enabled the Seahawks to squeeze past the 49ers on Monday night. But now San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan is on notice. And the 49ers meet the Seahawks in the final game of the regular season on Dec. 29.
So if you’re looking for a Christmas gift for your favorite NFC West head coach, it says here a decoder ring would be just the ticket.
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