Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots January 28, 2018 - Super Bowl Terminology

Episode Date: January 29, 2018

Mark Schofield breaks down some of the terminology we're going to hear a log of as the buildup to Super Bowl LII continues.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good evening and welcome on into Lockdown Patriots for Sunday night, January 28th, 2018. Mark Schofield here with you in the big chair as I will be every single day leading up to the Super Bowl. Super Bowl 52, the New England Patriots taking on the Philadelphia Eagles out in Minneapolis. Reminder, you can follow me on Twitter at Mark Schofield. Follow the work over at LockedOnPatriots.com. Follow the work over at InsideThePylon.com. Got some Senior Bowl recap stuff up on both sides.

Got a piece up on Locked On Patriots as well. Looking at some of the themes that I took away from my rewatch of the NFC Championship game with respect to Doug Peterson's play call-in schemes. Since this is a Sunday night show, we're going to do something a little quick, a little clean. What I want to talk about

some quick, nerdy stuff. I want to talk about terminology. Just for a couple minutes on both sides of the ball because there's going to be some terms we're going to be talking about this week i want to sort of get them out into the open here at the outset before we really get into some hardcore super bowl preview type stuff i want to start when the eagles are on defense and the first thing to know jim schwartz, in terms of a base scheme, he's a base 4-3 guy. There were times in the NFC Championship game against the Minnesota Vikings, they came out and showed just their base 4-3 defense.

Four down linemen, three linebackers. Primarily, though, when they're in a situation where they're facing 11 personnel which is one tight end one running back three wide receivers they'll play more 4-2-5 nickel while the way they can kind of get cute with that is there are times when it's your basic sort of 4-2-5 nickel you've got two linebackers it's usually you know mikhail kendricks and Daniel Ellerbe. Sometimes it's Ellerbe and Nigel Bradham. They'll switch things up there. But there are other times when Malcolm Jenkins, one of their safeties, he will drop down at times into one of those linebacker spots.

But in terms of sort of a base package, they're a base 4-3 defense. Where it gets to be a lot of fun is when we bring in to play something called the wide nine alignment when you talk about the positioning of defensive tackles defensive ends up front they're given sort of a numerical guide to where they line up and we've talked about this somewhat on the show and it sort of starts a zero technique defender lines up, head up on the center, and it sort of builds out from there. Nine alignments are the guys that line up well to the outside of the tackles. Schwartz has what's called a wide nine alignment from his defensive ends, from his edge defenders. And, you know, there's a little bit of consternation over whether it's

really a wide nine alignment or it's just a nine alignment. We don't see a lot of nine alignment. That's why we've given it this magical, mystical term of wide nine. But you will see their defensive ends. Familiar face Chris Lawn. You will see guys like Brandon Graham, guys like Vinny Curry, Derek Barnett, their rookie. You will see these guys lined up well outside of the tackles, well outside Nate Shoulder, Cameron Fleming, or Adrian Waddell if he's back and ready to go. And the reason Schwartz does this is he believes that his guys on the edge are much more quick and athletic than the offensive tackles. And he wants to give these guys the ability to win with speed off the edge.

And it makes some sense if you think about it. You're going to have offensive tackles that are sort of retreating, backpedaling in their pass protraction, while these guys get a chance to get perhaps a full head of steam as they come after the quarterback and with Schwartz you don't see a ton of blitz and we're going to talk about one blitz that they do use here in a second but you know Schwartz only blitz around 26 27 percent of the time last year his numbers were about the same this year they've just been more effective with it this year partly because they were about the same this year. They've just been more effective with it this year, partly because they've got the addition of Chris Long. They have Derek Barnett, the rookie. They've got some better athletes up front, and they can go basically sort of too deep

at the edge spots now. So they can keep those guys fresh up front and continually generate pressure on the opposition quarterback using that wide nine alignment. You watch that NFC Championship game. So the pivotal play that turned that game early was the pick six that Case Keenum threw. And what happened on that play? Eagles were able to get pressure with four. Chris Long, off the edge, using that wide nine alignment against the right tackle beats the right tackle with a speed rush to the outside and is able to impact the arm of

Case Keenum he gets a hand on Keenum's arm as he throws the football the route was open the receiver Keenum was targeting was open but because Lawn using that wide nine alignment, was able to get quick pressure on Keenum, he impacts the throw. It's underthrown. It's intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Another sort of pivotal play in that game was in the second quarter, Vikings were driving. They had a chance to – they had a third and goal situation. They had a chance to put some points on the board. Actually, it was a third and five in the red zone, excuse me.

And again, the wide nine alignment comes into play. They've got Derek Barnett in the game. Rookie defensive end, he's one of their backup guys. Sometimes they will do speed package stuff where they'll have Barnett and La on the outside and slide brandon graham one of their edge guys they'll slide them down to the inside so they can use a sort of a speed package like that and what happens is again using the y9 alignment barnett's able to get pressure into the pocket now something that's interesting in that play is vik Vikings try to get a little bit cute with their protection scheme. They ask the tight end to block Barnett across the formation.

That's a tough ask, blocking across the formation. What makes it even tougher? That wide nine alignment. Because it's just a few more yards that that tight end had to come across the formation to get to Barnett. He couldn't get there in time. Strip sack of Keenan. Ends the drive. Eagles take over. So why nine alignment is going to be a critical component to both what the Eagles do defensively and how the Patriots are going to

look to attack this defense. At a start, I'd expect to see a lot of chipping from the guys on the edge. Gronkowski, if he's back, maybe they use two tight end sets. Get Allen on the other edge. Help those tackles. Just get a chip on those guys so you can kind of stun their momentum, slow their pass rush, slow that speed rush, and give the tackles a better opportunity to slow them down. The other way to slow it down is the screen game.

You don't get the ball out of the hands quickly out to the outside. It prevents them from getting that run up field to get after the quarterback. So wide nine alignment, that's some terminology we're going to be hearing this week. Something in terms of a blitz scheme, cross dog. Schwartz, like I said, won't blitz a ton. Doesn't like to blitz a ton. He tries to get pressure with the four guys up front. Sounds like, you know, the Giants in the Super Bowls of the past. Sounds a lot like that Jaguars team that we saw last week, where they want to get pressure with the guys up

front. But one of the blitzes they do do is a cross dog. This is something that forced a quick throw against the Vikings on a third and six situation. They were able to make a quick tackle downfield and get off the field and force a punt. It's another situation where they use the wide nine alignments. They have Barnett in the game lined up to the outside of the left tackle. Chris Lawn is in the game. He's lined up well outside the tight end on the other side. They kick Graham down inside. He's head up on the left guard. And then they have Fletcher Cox, a defensive tackle. He's sort of in the B gap between the right guard and the right tackle. And this is another one of those plays where they have Kendricks and Bradham.

Those are the two linebacker guys. And then they bring Jenkins down into the box over the tight end. So you've got seven guys in the box. And as an offensive line, you're not 100% positive if four guys are coming, five, six, or even seven, that gives you a little bit of versatility as a defense. But what happens? They send six. The four down guys that we talked about, Jenkins, the safety, he drops off into coverage, but then they use that cross dog where the two linebackers, Kendricks and Bradham, they both blitz,

but what they do is they cross. They don't each come straight forward. Bradham lines across over the left guard. He attacks towards the right guard. And the other linebacker, Kendricks, he lines across the right guard, and he attacks towards the left guard. They switch up front. It's just one little thing that they do that sort of causes some confusion inside.

They get free. They get quick pressure on Case Keenum. He's forced to sort of causes some confusion inside. They get free. They get quick pressure on Case Keenum. He's forced to sort of make a quick throw. They make the tackle downfield of Stephon Diggs on a quick short route for a gain of one and force the punt. So when they do blitz, one of the things they would do is that cross dog blitz. But the thing that they really like to do when it comes to sort of generating pressure is stunt. That's their preferred means of sort of attacking the quarterback and one of their favorite stunts is something we've talked about before but just for a quick refresher that tackle end exchange or tex stunt that's where you have the defensive tackle on the inside

and then in this case with the eagles you're going to have that defensive end on the outside. When that wide nine alignment will loop behind into the inside. So the defensive tackle, he comes straight upfield. And the person outside of him, that edge defender, in that wide nine alignment, will then loop behind him and towards the inside. And on that strip sack of keenum that we talked about earlier we had the y9 alignment that caused the problem on the one side but to the other side you had brandon graham lined up over the right tackle he attacks right towards

that right tackle tries to occupy him guard might try to help him that's when you get Chris Long looping behind and then attacking hopefully where that guard vacates you try to have that defensive tackle the inside person occupy the tackle and the guard and then if there's a little crease that's created that's when that defensive end loops behind attacks that crease and hopefully finds a path to the quarterback. So that's some of the terminology when the Eagles are on defense. Up next, we're going to talk about some of the terminology you'll expect to hear this week when we talk about the Philadelphia Eagles and what they do on offense. That's next with me, Mark Schofield, in Locked on Patriots. Now let's take a look at some of the terminology we're going to hear this week

when we talk about what the Philadelphia Eagles are going to do on offense. And the main one we're going to hear is RPO, short for run pass option. We're going to hear that a ton. So I wanted to talk just briefly about RPOs, what they are, the different varieties of them, and what we can sort of expect to see from this EOS offense. And at the outset, RPO, run-pass option, basically means that the quarterback has two potential play calls on one given play.

In the past, sometimes an offense would call two plays in the huddle. They would call a pass and play, and they would call a run and play. And the quarterback would get to the line of scrimmage sometimes you know turned a check with me and when he got to the line of scrimmage and read the defense he would then decide okay i'm going to call option a which is the run or option b which is the pass and then you've got to have everybody sort of on the same page executing whichever play the quarterback calls. Now the run pass option kind of simplifies that process because it builds in both a run component and a passing component

to the same play. So basically everybody other than the quarterback does the same exact thing whether it's a run or a pass. It's just up to the quarterback to make a determination at some point in that process, whether he's going to run the football, whether they're going to run the football, or if he's going to execute the pass in part of the play. And there are usually two different ways where the quarterback will make that determination. And the one that we can start with first is sort of a read determination and this sort of happens on the fly the simplest way to explain this is this quarterback will take a snap usually shotgun snap and he'll turn and put the football in the belly of the runner back all the while he is staring at and reading a defender usually the weak side linebacker.

And he's going to react to what he does. And if that guy crashes down towards the run, he's going to pull it and usually throw a slant behind him. That's like the quickest, easiest, and cleanest example of that. There are obviously variations of that. That's a second-level read where you're reading the linebackers, the guys at the second level. You can have first level reads. Those are typically more your, either the quarterback hands it off or the quarterback keeps it himself. Kind of the things we saw with Marcus Mariota.

Sometimes there are even third level reads. USC, for example, has a play where they have a post route in the red zone. And if the safety to that side bites down on the run, you pull it and you throw the post to where that safety has vacated his spot. So that's sort of the read action RPOs. Then there are also what we call box count or ratio RPOs. And that's basically the same design. You have a run element and a pass element built into the play. And the quarterback isn't reading anybody.

He's just simply counting. You know, they'll get up to the line. They have five offensive linemen up front to block. If you can block the number of guys that are down into the box, you run the football. If you can't, you throw the ball. And let's just sort of walk through it conceptually. Say you have a play

where you have your five down linemen in the tight end. That's six blockers. If you face a 4-2-5 defense and they only have the four down linemen and the two linebackers up front, that's six versus six. You can run the ball because you should be able to block everybody up but then say they drop the safety into the box it's six versus seven you can't block everybody up so what do you do you just run the play but you've got the pass built in sometimes a bubble screen sometimes

a quick passing concept like a slant flat to the outside. You've made the determination based on the numbers. You can't run against that look, so you're going to throw the football. So those are basic sort of RPO structures. There's obviously more detail to it than that, but that's sort of the basic premise of them. The Eagles used them a lot two weeks ago against the Vikings. We're going to see a lot of it i assume in the super bowl so that's something the patriots have to be ready for it's

why you know i talked already about cover two man under i expect to see a lot of cover two man under leave the safeties high maybe rotate one down late play man underneath make sure everybody takes care of their man coverage responsibilities, and go from there. Next thing we're going to see from the Philadelphia Eagles, terminology switch concepts. Something we see a lot in the collegiate game, the Eagles do a lot of this as well. You can have a variety of switch concepts, but at its basic premise, you have an outside receiver and an inside receiver, and they sort of switch where the outside receiver might come underneath on a post,

and the inside receiver then releases towards the outside, sometimes on an out route, sometimes on a wheel route, sometimes on an out and up. It's just a way to sort of cross those defenders up, and if you get man coverage, and if the switch is sort of executed rather in close proximity, you can get sort of an easy artificial rub off of that. If you get zone coverage looks, you want to switch concept against that. It might be a situation where, say, you run that design. You have the outside receiver on a post, the inside receiver on a wheel. The outside receiver's post mount against a cover three look draws that safety,

and it opens up that wheel from the inside receiver then along the boundary. But the Eagles do it at all levels of the field. They'll do deep stuff. They'll do quick stuff. They'll run switch concepts with a curl and a flat. Sometimes they'll do it with a slant and a flat, which is basically a switch concept, but they'll stack the receiver sometimes to create that rub.

So switch concepts are going to be big for this team. And something we're going to talk about a little bit more in tomorrow's show is they ran against Minnesota a switch concept with an out-and-up from the tight end against Harrison Smith. And they did it in a situation where defense is probably expecting the Eagles to try to get out of bounds because it was a clock situation. Caused it at the right time, ran that little switch concept, got a big game. So RPOs, so switch concepts.

There's other stuff like zone blocking and things like that that we can get into, but the other thing I do want to talk about before we finish is the slot fade route. Fade routes, particularly in the red zone, they've become a staple of all offenses. But now what teams are doing, particularly the Eagles, and they were doing this a ton with Carson Wentz. Wouldn't surprise me to see them do this with Foles in the bowl is not running it from the outside but running it from the slot

you know because those defenders on the outside they're more experienced in defending that route the eagles like to run the fade route out of the slot because it gives you more room to work towards the boundary because you're starting from an inside position and You're working against slot corners They'll do it with their tight ends getting them against strong safeties or even linebackers guys That aren't used to defending sort of on those routes particularly working in space And so guys like Patrick Chung guys like Eric Rowe guys are going to be asked to cover inside receivers in this game, they'll need to be ready to defend the slot fade route.

It's a staple of their offense. It was making Carson Wentz look like an MVP candidate. You know they have a couple of these plays dialed up, particularly in the red zone, but they'll run it anywhere on the field. So expect to see that as well in Super Bowl 52. So that's been kind of some quick terminology that I'm expecting to hear about a lot this week that I wanted you guys to be ready for. Tomorrow, we're going to dive into more of my expectations for Super Bowl 52.

Some themes that I took away from re-watching that NFC Championship game on both sides of the football. Stuff I expect the Eagles to do on offense, the Eagles to do on defense. Ways I think the Patriots can make plays on both sides of the ball. That will be on our show for tomorrow. Until then, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield. And Locked on Patriots.