The Seattle Seahawks love to use the zone-read option. It can cause confusion between the opposing front seven. Unfortunately for the San Francisco 49ers outside linebackers, they struggled. Five-year veteran LB Ray-Ray Armstrong failed to maintain gap control off the scrape-exchange three times while OLB Eli Harold failed twice.
The scrape-exchange is a scheme aimed at alleviating any guess work off the zone-read option. Typically, the defensive end will crash-down on the running back or quarterback horizontally, while the free-flowing linebacker fills in his place. All of this with outside containment of course.
Both Armstrong and Harold failed to fill-in allowing Seahawks QB Russell Wilson to either run for first-downs or pick up huge gains.