Hazard's Huddle: Robert Griffin III vs. San Francisco 49ers (1st Half)

Last week, after Robert Griffin's rough performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, everyone and their mother came out of the wood work to pile on top of the former 2nd overall pick. This lead to a week of bad quotes, press conferences, scrutiny, on-the-record, off-the-record, instagrams, tweets, and facebook statuses that swirled around Redskins Park with Griffin at the epicenter of it all. I broke down the issues that Robert Griffin had in the game and had many positive reviews. My work was even mentioned by Chris Russell of ESPN 980 (HERE). On the flip side, I also received a bunch of negative feedback. Tweets, hate mail, etc. saying I was an "Rg3 hater" and things like, "why didn't you show any of the good plays?!?"  This week's film breakdown is for the readers that were disappointed in my performance of last week's film breakdown. Let's take a look at the positive plays against the 49ers.

1. Jay Gruden runs a concept here called "Smash Wolf." A Smash is a corner route with a hitch route underneath it while a Smash Wolf is a corner route with an out route underneath it. Jay also runs it out of a stack formation making it harder for man coverage to line up against it. The 49ers are showing a Cover 2 so Griffin just needs to determine if it's man or zone. If it's man coverage, you go with Andre Roberts on the out route. If it's zone, you go with Pierre Garcon on the corner route anticipating the out route is going to hold the CB. It's man coverage.

Griffin gets to the top of his drop but has to wait a half second for Roberts to break.

Griffin leads Roberts to the sideline where the defender can't make a play. A gain of 7 on a 3rd and 5.

2. This is one of those "comfort calls" I talked about last week. Griffin gets the play-action with a deep post and deep crosser.

The play-action sucks up the linebackers towards the line of scrimmage while Pierre Garcon is climbing behind them.

Griffin finds the lane between the LBs and delivers the ball. I didn't realize the hit that Griffin took on this play. Aldon Smith just got up and underneath Logan Paulsen's pads, drove him backwards like he wasn't there and leveled Griffin. Good job by Griffin to get this pass off for a gain of 24. It's funny, even though he missed it last week, the 2-man route concepts that everyone loathed are the ones he's been most comfortable and successful executing. (I do realize there is a wheel route on the backside but that's specifically for certain coverages)

Well..........that does it for the first half highlights. Check back later today for the 2nd half.