The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Decoding two-high defenses with Cody Alexander

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Robert Mays welcomes MatchQuarters’ Cody Alexander to break down the rise of two-high defenses across the NFL. They dive into what we’ve seen on film over the last several years, what teams are implementing it the most, how it’s impacted the run game across the league and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. The athletic football show is presented by State Farm, because like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Get a quote today. Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. Today is Wednesday, November 17th. I'm Robert Mays. Great show for you guys today. I wanted to kind of take a step back and dig into a discussion that has been kind of prevalent around the NFL this year.

We've heard so much, and we've talked so much on this show about the rise. of too high defenses in the NFL. Think about the ways that people have discussed the chiefs this year, right? So many conversations and so many just throw away lines about how teams are playing two high defenses against the chiefs. And I wanted to dig a couple layers deeper than that and talk about what we really mean when we're discussing the rise of two high defenses. If you guys remember a couple weeks ago when Seth Galena and Deaite Lee were on the show,

we talked about some of the numbers associated with two high defenses and how much it had ticked up even from last year. If you look at it, the number of middle of the field open snaps, so two high safeties before the snap, there's been about 200 more of those snaps through 10 games this year than there was last year. And compared to 2019, it's about 1,100 more. So over the past couple years, you've really seen an increase. And I wanted to talk about what that really means, what it looks like in, practice and what some of the details associated with that approach look like. And to do that, I wanted to welcome somebody that has written about this a lot, thought about

this a lot, knows this in and out in a way that I cannot even comprehend. And that is Cody Alexander, who runs the site match quarters. You guys should absolutely be checking that out as a resource on defense. He's a high school coach in Texas. He's the author of several books, all of which I own. Cody, thank you very much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Anytime I can talk about all I'm down. So let's chat about this. I want to start just on a very basic level. Why have you always been interested in this style of defense? Your site is called Match Quarters. You are a firm believer, kind of an evangelist for this too high sort of system. Why even at the high school level and trickling on up do you think that this is the way that defenses should structure what they're doing?

Well, I think the biggest difference at the lower levels is the quarterback run game. I think in being able to stay even when you have a quarterback that can run. Now, in the NFL, you don't necessarily get that as much. But what you are starting to see in the NFL is a lot more use of kind of these crossing routes and these option routes that are breaking in. And so quarters coverage because of the way that it is, it's an even coverage and you can split the field. and one thing that I like about is that you can get different variations of it, depending on where you are on the field.

Now, the NFL plays in the middle of the field, but at the lower levels, the hash actually matters, and 75% of the game plus is played on the hash. So you have a short side and a wide side and being able to manipulate coverage to the boundary into the field, depending on what formations and what set number. And all set means is how many receivers are to one side of the ball or the other. So, for instance, if it's a typical high school offense,

is going to have kind of probably a sniffer or fullback and a running back, and then you're going to have two receivers and another receiver on the other side. So that be a two by one set. And what that allows you to do is really manipulate the coverage a little bit more than cover three, which tends to be more predictable and kind of where you're going to spin. Yeah, you're closing the post, but at the same time, once you do that, the quarterback run game gets involved. And now your quarterback player is 15, 20 yards down the field.

So first of all, when you say sniffer, what does that mean? We've mentioned that term on this show a few different times, but I want to explain to people what that is. Yeah, so sniffer is kind of a funny term because all it is is it's a fullback that is right behind the tackle or the guard like he's sniffing his butt. And so you call it a sniffer. And it's kind of just that one of those football terms, it's pretty funny. You know, you get, you start getting into college and now it's a tied in and it's a Y in the C or Y in the core. And C just means C gap. So he's outside the tackler or is the inside of tackle.

and it's just one of those ways of just identifying what kind of what player you have on the field. It's becoming more prevalent in the NFL. The bills started using it a lot last year, and I think you're seeing more teams use it now. So it's just something to pay attention to. It's another small example of the way that lower levels are starting to trickle up into the league, which is interesting. So let's talk about when we just say two high defenses, when people are saying we are seeing more of them, it's becoming more popular. What do we mean when we say that?

Well, it initially has always been that you're running some sort of quarters coverage or you're running cover two. And really a quick breakdown of quarters coverage is essentially man coverage with help underneath. And then cover two is with the corner in the flat and then the safety in a deep half. Now you can you can match that really tight and play kind of like a zone match or a man match that you see kind of what Sabin is made famous with cover seven. Or you could just go straight zone like people have been used to with like Tampa 2 in the early 2000s and things like that. And there's different ways of playing it. But typically when people have said too high, then it just means, oh, well, they're playing some form of a cover two or a cover

four and they're just presenting a too high shell. And I think what we're seeing now is a too high defense is becoming more unique in the sense that it's not necessarily quarters. And I think that's the biggest thing that people need to understand when they hear too high, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting covered to or you're getting cover four. That is a hugely important point, and I think it's actually really fascinating

when you look at some of the numbers. If you look at teams running cover two in the NFL, the Chargers, whose head coach is one of the people that is popular as this way of playing defense are dead last in the NFL in the number of cover two snaps that they have played. Two other teams in the bottom five are the Broncos,

who Vic Fangio is one of the people who, started this way of playing defense currently in the modern NFL and the Browns who also play a ton of two high shell as a base defense. So the fact that some of the teams doing this more often than anyone else playing these two high shells, playing in these light boxes are playing less cover two than any other teams in the league lets you know that that disconnect is real. So I wanted to go back a little bit because one of the things that came up a lot when I was talking about this with people this summer. One of the questions that I had was this feels like a situation where what's old is new again. Tampa 2 ruled the NFL in the early 2000s, where you have all

of this cover 2 and all of these two high shells. Why did that go away? Why did Tampa 2 get phased out in favor of the Seattle cover 3 system? And what was that initial changeover like? Well, you know, I wrote about it in hybrids kind of in my book that I wrote about kind of the evolution of the modern defense. One of the biggest things that happened with Tampa 2 was you're asking your Mike linebacker one to not only play the run, but now he's got to run through the middle of the field as fast as he can. He's essentially, you know, if you really think of Tampa 2, it's really not cover 2. It's really what a lot of people call double roll or double cloud where the two safeties are playing deep third over the outside. and then you have your Mike linebacker literally running through the middle third of the field.

So it really, even though it is called Tampa 2, it's really in structure and on paper, the way that it ends up playing out is kind of what a lot of people would call like a double roll or double cloud. The reason why it died out was for two reasons. One, it's hard to find a Mike linebacker that is a Hall of Fame player and that can play the run. the past simultaneously. I mean, you look at Brian Erlacker and the physical freak that he was, Derek Smith, for the Buccaneers. I mean, you just, you end up getting like, there's like two or three guys that can actually play that. And so what ends up happening is that, and I wrote about at hybrid. So everybody starts, we go into kind of Neanderthal ball there from the end of the

kind of towards the middle of the 2000s to really about another 10 years later. until we get to about, you know, 2010, 2015, when the NFL starts getting back up to where, hey, look, everybody's just playing 11 personnel. The hybrid tight end is back in vogue. And so what ends up happening is that the NFL becomes a cover three, cover one lead. And that's essentially what it shifted very quickly from, hey, where everybody's running Tampa 2 because this West Coast off, these kind of new iterations of West Coast offense are killing us.

And then all of a sudden, everybody says, okay, well, if you're going to, if you're going to put a small mic and you're going to start playing small ball, well, what are we going to do? We're just going to get big. We're going to pound a rock. And so that's when you start getting, that's when you really start getting the monster three-fours that we started seeing, you know, the old, when you think of Ravens defense, like, you know, the old school Ravens defense, they got Mike linebackers that are 260, which should be playing five tech in most of these, these Tampa two defenses. It's just that natural ebb and flow of football from past-centric to run-centric, passage to run-centric. It's interesting because I think one of the other things that distinguishes that version of playing two-deep defenses with those cover two looks and this version of it is that those

were static, right? There's not a lot of movement. You know what you're getting. If they're lined up in a two-deep shell, they're playing cover two, and you as an offense can plan on that. And I think that's the biggest thing to me watching what this looks like in this version of the too high shell NFL is that it's all dynamic. It's all changing. And that's a huge reason that teams have gone to these sorts of looks.

Because just because you're in that shell doesn't mean you're playing a two deep defense. So explain some of the ways that you can manipulate what an offense is seeing when you're starting in that too high shell in the way that the Rams do, the pack. do some of these other teams. Right. So the number one coverage that of the Fangio system, which is kind of the system that's kind of everybody is kind of associates with this kind of this defensive movement is their number one coverage is what's called three Y. So what they're going to do is they're going to spin the safety down to the tight end every time. And then that's their base call.

That's their base structure. That's the base way they do it. So they're going to start in a two high shell. and at the kind of towards the indicator. And the indicators in gun, that would be when the quarterback kind of puts his hands up, gets ready, you know, for lower level, gets ready to clap, things like that.

That's when you're going to start seeing that guy go down. Under center, it's kind of on cadence. You kind of get it used to. Most of these teams have somebody, they record, they understand what the cadence is going to be. And so then you start creeping down. So it's no surprise that at the bottom of the, coverage list and who actually runs cover two is you're going to find the Fangio system because

in reality they really don't run a lot of middle of the field open defense. They do a lot of middle of the field closed. But the way that they're doing it is wherever you set your tight in because it is an 11 personnel league, that's where they're going to spin down that guy to get that extra to get that extra hat near the box. So what does that do for an offense? If you're going to play that anyway, what advantage are you gaining as a defense by lining? up in the two high shell as opposed to that middle of the field closed defense? It's really all about leverage. So I really feel like this is the NFL's version of the three high safety system.

And what I mean by that is that the three high safety system at the college level is essentially a leverage defense. You're leveraging the outside. You're funneling everything to certain areas of the field, but you're using it from depth. So you're using leverage as your friend. I mean, we're probably not going to see NFL teams line up in a three down. and try and survive the run games with the offensive lines. We'll see it in certain situations on third down and things like that.

But in terms of the NFL, we're probably not going to see a three high system as a base. So this essentially to me is their version of what that is for lower level at the college and at the high school level is, look, we're going to leverage a safety from depth. So what that allows that safety to do is have time to determine whether it's play action or whether it's actually a run. If it's a run, he's already got a full head of steam. All he's got to do is trigger and now just fit. If it's a pass, he's sinking down with tempo. He can easily work to kind of the high hole area, cut off a glance route, which is just kind of an elongated slant. He can he can cut a crosser coming from the other side of the field, depending on what that

tight end is doing in that three Y system. So to me, what that is essentially does. So to me, what that is essentially done is what they've now decided, look, and kind of what I've always believed in, because at the beginning you were talking about, why do you believe in a two-out system? Well, I believe it's easier to play down than it is to play back. It's hard to play back. Once you're down, it's hard to then accelerate all the way back unless you're a really talented player. So for me, what that is, it's the NFL's version of that leverage defense that we're

seeing at the lower levels of, I'm going to set a safety at about 15 yards, and he's going to work down to about 10 yards at the snap. he's quick enough and athletic enough to then either fit that gap or, hey, he's already in an area that's being attacked by the defense in an intermediate passing zone. It's interesting because disguise is obviously a huge part of the NFL game, right? You can't give quarterbacks the answers to the test before it begins. So you see a lot of spinning safeties, but think about how many times the chiefs are a perfect example.

The chiefs are going to spin to cover two at times where they'll have someone bail out. But like you just said, it's difficult to play that way. You have to have special players in order to effectively and efficiently disguise your coverages like that, where you have a safety bailing back toward the back half of the field. I think a really good example is what the Vikings used to do with Harrison Smith a few years ago, where he can do that, but they're so comfortable in that defense that they are not putting themselves in a bad spot with all of that pre-snap movement. So by lining up this way and just having your disguise be somebody walking forward five steps, you're not giving quarterback the answer to the test,

but you're also not asking your players to be scrambling right before the ball is snapped. Right. And I think, too, you can leverage the defensive weapons better. One of the best ways that teams do this, like, and you see this really with the chiefs, or if there's like a really dominant tight end, I know the rate. The leader's got this a ton when Waller would be singled up on the three receiver side. Or when you bring them across, I'm already got, I've already got a guy that's going to be sinking down. So the other big one that they run is what I call like a six cross or a six buzz,

meaning that that safety, that linebacker is going to take the back week and he's going to be what's called the final fourth. So he'll take the flat area to the weak side away from the trips, but that safety is going to a sink right inside, essentially where that linebacker was initially lined up. But that vertical hook, and you hear this with coaches that talk all the time, especially on that backside of trips or the weak side of coverage, is that vertical hook of getting that area right near the hash around 10 to 15 yards? Well, what do the chiefs love to do?

They like to take hill and they like to just run them across the field. Well, why? Because it's a track me. It turns into a track me. Instead of going vertical where you can have somebody sitting on top and have and leverage. that and what I call a cap. What you're getting is they're running him across. So they're running away from the coverage. And what they're doing is they're saying your linebackers aren't fast enough to then robot, which is basically roll into these crossing routes that you're not going to do that. Well,

what you now have is a safety sinking down to that vertical hook to the weak side. And he's just flipping his hips and turn into the three receiver side. And so that's one of the big things that I think it really illustrates the leverage part of this is just that now, okay, you want to run that crossing route. And I've got a guy sitting right there that's already occupying that area. That's just as good of an athlete as what you got to cross. So instead of you running, we're going to force you to run vertical and outside, which is a low percentage throw. We're literally going to cut off your high percentage throw running those crossing routes across the field.

You mentioned crossing routes. You mentioned glance routes. You mentioned middle of the field attacks that offenses are going to in the NFL. this is a product of or this is the idea behind a lot of the play action based outside zone, wide zone, Shanahan type offenses that we've seen. In your mind, in what ways, is this type of defense a direct response to the rise of those sorts of offenses? Well, I think initially it's really good if you stay too high.

When the quarterback's under the center and you're in a wide zone offense, you really have to sell the fake. That's the only way that you can get those boot action and the play action to really get is that I want to really sell this this wide zone fake. So that quarterback's going to take an angle, hold that ball out. He's going to be completely blind to what's going on behind him. And here's the thing that a lot of people don't think about is these middle models that these players think. And we're humans. So we want to predict what's going to be in front of us. So we know that we know that in front of me, I have a too high show. Okay. So I want to look at the the next step is what they're going to do is look at the contour of it.

The contour is like is a safety lower than than another safety? Or are they showing their cards early? If it's just a static alignment and I go to turn the ball around and I turn back around and now I've got a safety in the middle of the field, I've got to identify where that other safety is. And I think that's and then that processing of the restructuring your mental model to now I have to, I saw one mental picture. I have an idea in my mind of what it's going to look like when I turn around. the moment I turn around, not only do I have probably an edge rusher, because that's the other thing that goes along with this is now they're not even telling those edge rushers to run down the heel line anymore.

Why would you? They're just going, they're going, hey, go right to the quarterback. And so now I turn around, I've got immediate pressure, and now I've got to readjust my middle model within a split second. Otherwise, I'm going to have to, I'm going to get sacked, or I'm just going to throw it up and it's going to end up being a pick because I'm throwing to the middle of the field. And I think that's the biggest reason why this too high show and then sinking down post snap is really affecting these quarterbacks because now they have to make it a snap judgment. And it's so funny because now you look at a team like the Niners and we'll get to them in a second one because I want to talk about what the now the offensive counterpunch is going to be.

But a team like the Niners, they're in shotgun all the time now. They're not doing as much of the under center play action stuff as some of these other teams are if you think about what Tennessee has been over the last couple years. The Niners don't look as much like that anymore. So just kind of those teams putting their own spin on things because of how defenses have responded is really interesting. So I want to talk about a couple examples of this because we know that the Fangio teams are doing a lot of this kind of stuff.

And if you look at what the Rams have done, what the Packers have done now with Joe Barry, what the Broncos continue to do. Though the Broncos have played a lot more man this year than they have in previous years, I think probably as a response and just, again, you have to stay a step ahead with this kind of stuff. Who are the other teams that you think outside of that direct world have embraced these ideas a little bit more this year? Yeah, I think the bills for sure, you know, you go look at some of the games that they've played against the Titans and the Chief, you know, being in that too high shell and kind of keeping that is another one team that to keep an eye on. you know, Zimmer has always shown that he'll run too high and change up his system.

And then him going out and hiring Carl Scott from Alabama this year before the season was kind of an indicator on where he was trending towards as well. I think those teams tend to be really good. I know you mentioned the Browns. You know, it's interesting the Redskins were such a high, too high team last year. But I think it was just the domination that they had up front that they were able to kind of sit behind in two shell and kind of let everything happen up front. And I think those kind of teams like you go and you look at it, they're using movement post-snap the same way that offense is trying to use movement pre-snap. And it's not that far-fetched to think that because of so much what we're seeing now, pre-snap movement and high usage of play action on first down, that the answer to that would be to go to a too high system because it keeps you even. And then you're playing, like I said earlier, you're leveraging your if you are going to run middle of the field close.

you're leveraging the defender from depth instead of just going ahead and putting him down there and make it really predictable. It's interesting because the bills, you know, they have not run nearly as much cover three as some of the other teams that we talked about out of that. They've run the second most quarter steps in the league. And under McDermott, they've been a heavy quarters team. But you look at some of the other things, they've run a lot more man this year than you you might ascribe a typical zone team running.

And that to me is the biggest part of this, is that, it's about finding ways to be unpredictable and dynamic and mixing it up. This is a baseline philosophy of the way that you want to line up and kind of apply your resources. But the whole point of this is that you can go in any different direction that you want to when you're lining up this way. And I think that a lot of really smart coaches around the league have embraced that as a baseline of what they're trying to accomplish. Right. And that's why I said it's kind of to me what we're seeing now is the NFL's version of the three high system. Because if you think about what's going on in college at some of these three high systems,

I mean, you've got three safety. So you literally can do anything. You can drop them down on the hash and just run what I call just three seam. You can roll them out and play Tampa 2. You can send a corner. You can do this. You can do that. And you can drop them from any position.

And I think what we're seeing in the NFL is like, look, we're not going to allocate that because we're going to lose anger points at the front. and we're not going to get much of a pass rush. This is a passing league. So what's the answer to that? The answer to it really has been when you get into 11, a lot of these teams are going more to a four down front with nickel package and then spinning from a two high shell to these different variations of cover three and putting the safety where they need him,

whether it be in the middle of the field or dropping him on the tight end, dropping him over the trips, or like I said, versus trips, dropping him weak and letting him cut any crosser that's coming across to assist with with the outside leverage that you're seeing a lot of times on the other side. And the other part of this, and I think that again, it's just the different avenues you have and the different resources you have. You have mechanisms to double guys when you line up this way, right? So explain that a little bit because every time I'm talking to defensive coaches about this,

it comes up. I remember talking to Carl Scott this summer, who used to be the DB's coach at Alabama, and now he's on the Viking staff. And you talked about all of the cover seven stuff that Alabama does with it, all these variations of the match quarters that they play. And that was one of the things that he was telling me about is that you can double so many different guys in so many different ways when you've lined up this way because you have an extra defender back there. So just what are the different considerations when you're thinking about all of those double team

possibilities out of a look like this? Yeah, the number one thing is can I handle the single six? I mean, that's kind of where everything begins. So can I handle the single receiver? Because a lot of times and traditionally, that's kind of been to do, right? You single them up on one side, whether it's from a three by one or a two by one with some and putting a tight end on an area. You're trying to get a one-on-one with the best receiver.

Then it moved to the slot. Well, it's easy now to put, just put a safety on top of a slot. That makes it easy if you're not moving them around. and then it was, okay, well, we'll just move him across the field. Well, that's great. We've got another safety sitting on the other side. So you can move him across. Now all we got to do is we still got a DB that can stay on top.

Then you start thinking about, well, how can I defend different ways of two receivers? Well, you can have it to where your nickels is third corner and their dude's the number one guy outside. Okay, well, we'll take that safety and we'll move him to the middle. We'll move him to the middle. We'll let that corner play outside leverage and we'll create a funnel. over the number one receiver knowing that we can handle the number two receiver with the slot corner, you know, or hey, we can make that backside safety work to the middle of the field. And now we're almost kind of like looking like we're rolling to the trip,

but we're really playing just kind of poach coverage on the back, which is just a quarter technique to get to close the middle of the field. And we're doubling the outside guy. So to me, I mean, that's when you have two safeties, you can do a lot of things, especially when you keep them deep. The problem that you get in in cover three and, cover one when you actually drop a guy down is that it's really hard to then how are you you are choosing where your double is going to be. So it's, you know, the famous one double number that

Belichick runs is great if you know you can handle the other receivers. If you can only handle one, if you only need one guy that you can't handle, then well, hey, we'll just go one double and we'll always lean in safety. And I mean, I've done that to different teams at my level at the high school level. But in quarters, I literally could double the single receiver on one. in with leverage and then I can double another guy. So now I've essentially taken two receivers out. And yet we really haven't lost anything inside the box if we can, you know, depending on leverage. So talk about the box.

And that is where the weakness of this comes up, right? Is that if you're going to play that second safety back, you have fewer guys in the box and near the line of scrimmage. And it already feels like we're starting to see the pendulum. swing a little bit. You think about the game that happened last night. We're recording this on Tuesday. And what the Niners were content to do against the Rams, who line up in light boxes more than any other team in the league. They said, we're just going to run it. We're going to run it 40 times. We're going to be content, getting four yards of pop, and we're

just going to slowly move the ball down the field. And it really does feel like we could see a return to the prominence of the run game if this becomes a more popular way of playing defense in the NFL. Do you think that we're already trending in that direction? And what do you think that transition might look like? Yeah, the biggest thing, too,

is like even if you're going to run your three-wise stuff and you're going to drop a guy from 10 yards, what the 49ers showed last night was like, look, we're just going to get in these really tight sets. Go ahead and bring that guy down. And it's the old Alex Gibbs, the old Broncos O line coach, the famous wide zone zone enthusiast right of hey we don't block corners we're going to make that corner tackle and i think that's going to be the thing in the NFL like that was the deal with

the tampa two was that those corners were really just safeties and they just beat up receivers and they just kind of hung around those guys are like six two 205 two 10 i mean i know we've got that big but they're they're few and far between in the NFL you know and so what essentially you're doing is saying, look, we're just cutting the angles down. And that's one of the things that you're seeing at the college level, at the high school level to combat these three high systems, is that, hey, we're going to bring everything in. We're going to use some quick motion to kind of move you,

and then we're just going to wall you off. And as we run, as we run to it, and then we're going to make your corner make a tackle. And so what you're getting now is, hey, you may get that three-wide, you may bring him down, but he's going to be making a tackle at five, six yards. Well, you talk to any offensive coordinator in America, if they're getting five, six yards of pop on the run game, they're not going to stop running the ball because you can't stop that. That's just physical dominance. And so I think you are seeing a trend towards that.

You know, most of the time you don't use to only see cluster sets when you saw teams that were running high volumes of cover one. Okay, because why do you get in tight? You do that to switch routes and run guys across and you make guys chasing, make guys switch. well now what you're seeing in all these zone heavy schemes is like look we're going to get tight because we know you're going to spend somebody and when you do we're just going to wall them off and we're going to make your corner make it make the play and so i think that's kind of where that evolution that cat and mouse game looks like it's kind of headed is like look you better have a corner that can tackle a little bit or you're going to you're going to be in you're going to be in some trouble and that seems like especially with the niners i mean they're the best at this but also the ravens do a decent job of this as well where when you have that hybrid fullback type player when you have all those tight ends on the field and you're using it to get the ball on the perimeter essentially you're trying to wall off one side and get the ball on the perimeter and it seems like that's going to be something that might become more prevalent just the perimeter run game with some of these teams if we can get the ball outside with all of these motions all

of these shifts all of these big personnel packages we feel like we can create an advantage for ourselves right because you're funneling it right to the guy that you want to try and make the tackle which is the corner which who usually is just used to covering people. And so that's kind of the, that's kind of the thing that you've seen in the NFL is like, those guys aren't asked to tackle other than a receiver that's right in front of them. Now you got, now you're sitting there. Not only do you have to do that, but let's say, let's run a gap scheme now. Now I got somebody pulling and now you got to take a 330 pound offensive lineman on top of that. And you're really a highly tuned, skilled athlete that's

only used to basically, you know, coverage. So I think that's what you saw last night a little bit. I thought you saw two. I thought the Packers did a tremendous job in the playoffs last year of manipulating that Browns defense with the five-man front saying, okay, look, you're going to go 5-1. We're essentially going to make your safety, make a play from 10 yards, using a lot of these two-back quick motions, and then attacking you vertically right downhill. And again, making a DB make a tackle when he doesn't have any other leverage point off of them. Like, hey, this is a one-on-one tackle and you're going to have to make it coming from depth,

which, again, what do offenses want since Chip Kelly is we want to make, we want to create as many open field tackles as we possibly can because the numbers are there. The offense is going to win those more than that. Is there any other aspect of this that you feel like we're not talking about enough? Just a little tiny detail or an aspect of this type of defense that you feel like is a real big reason teams run it well or teams don't. It starts with your front. I mean, I thought, again, go back to that Packers game, you know, they knew Aaron Donald wasn't healthy and they took a bang of it and playing that gap and a half. I mean, Staley's talked about this multiple times is when you get in that five man front,

yeah, you're kind of gapped out, but you've got to play gap and a half so that your safety isn't constantly making the tackle in the A gap. I mean, Sabin has even talked about this before in his system where they'll bring that safety down and put them in the A gap. They're doing something up front in order to alleviate the pressure on that safety. So when you're just sitting there in a 5-1 and you're leveraged and you're saying, look, that safety is going to make tackling the egg up, you're going to get in trouble. I think, too, you're going to see people start playing with personnel.

We're seeing now, like, for teams that have two really good tight ends that you can have, it will just go back to, it's funny, it's funny, times a flat circle. So you go back to the 70s, and that was the advent of the two tight-in system where you have an inline tight-line tight-in that's a black circle. block a tight in. And then you have an off the ball tight end that moves around because he's a receiving threat. Okay, well, then it's the same thing with, you know, Gids flipped it and said, we're going to put a receiving threat on the line. And then we're going to use our blocking one to move around because we've got to block Lawrence Taylor in the three, four fire zones.

So what we're seeing, again, is just this recycling of ideas. It just looks different because it's 2021. So now you're seeing guys like with the hybrid fullbacks that they can also run, catch, and do whatever else you need them to do. And how that becomes a matter. matchup issue. Are we going to run our five man front? Are we going to be in what really essentially is a peso package, which is your two edges and two inside interior guys, you know, which is a four down nickel, you know, how are we going to match it up? Or we're going to have a third corner. Are we going to have an extra safety? And it all comes down to to really who you have on that defense. And I think that's kind of be the biggest thing. If you don't have edge rushers and you don't have inside guys

that can play gap and a half, you're going to really struggle against the run because that's essentially what you're going to have to do. You have to win that one-on-one matchup, and you have to win that double team with wherever that center goes if they're going to run heavy zone. Does it feel like we're getting to a place where defensive linemen are going to be more uniform across the board where you don't necessarily have that 240-pound edge rusher

where you have edge guys that maybe are a little bit more stout against the run that can hold up? Because that's kind of what it feels like to me, where pure edge rushing juice may not be as important if you're switching to this sort of system. Yeah, because what you're leveraging is like, look, we'll go five. Like if we think we can get, we can go five one, we'll create man blocking. I mean, that's essentially what the Rams did last year. They said, look, we are going to go five one and where you know you're going to,

you're going to man block and we just have better players than you. And so if you want to pull someone, we'll just fold in that, that edge player to that side. we'll get that extra hat in the box and we've got the safety coming down. Now we've got our four, three, seven man box look. It's just going to come from a different look. I think that if you have two inside guys that can really hold up those guards and play kind of that, that knockback fallback technique and control that, that's where you're going to see teams winning in the run game. Because everybody knows, if you go too high, you've got to do something up front,

either movement-wise or you're going to have to play a gap in a half and you're just going to have to win your one-on-ones up front. in order in order to win that matchup and let those linebackers kind of ball fit off of it. And I think to me, that's going to be that's going to be that. And you can't do that with 140-pound edge rush guys. Like that are basically outside line. Like you see in college, you can kind of get away with that. But that's in the NFL, it's a man's game. Like you can't, you can't sit there with a 240-pound guy and let him just take on a 330-pound tackle

day in and day out for 60 snaps and expect to win that game. It's really funny that, and I want to dig into this a little bit more probably on a future show, but it is really funny that the run game may have its day again and that these teams that are varied in the run game that are multiple, that find different ways to create angles and that are willing to stick with it may have an advantage with the way that football is currently being played because it really does feel like that. And this idea that we may be transitioning from a world where teams were passing it 70% of the time and defenses almost want you to throw the ball 70% of the time with the way they're

lining up. It's almost impossible to imagine five years ago, but it feels that that might be on the horizon, which is crazy to think about. Yeah, and it goes back to kind of the analytics revolution that we're seeing in the NFL right now. I mean, most people would admit that this analytically running the ball is less efficient than passing the ball. And so offenses have kind of gone hyperpass. And you're going to get a reaction from that. And it's, you know, because defense is reactionary and normally the pendulum swings. So the defense goes, you know, Uber pass oriented. And what does the defense? What does the offense do? Okay, well, the running game's now open. And so eventually you're going to get people slowly moving back towards the run game.

And so what's the defense going to do? The pendulum's going to swing back over. So, I mean, that's just the natural ebb and flow of this game. And all we're seeing it now with analytics is that it's kind of speeding it up a little bit more. But defenses, yeah, they're saying, look, we're giving you a light box because we want you to run the ball. But the problem now becomes as if we can't stop the run, now that becomes an issue. And so now we've got to put an extra hat down there, which kind of creates even more issues for us now

because offenses now know how to attack everything and awful play action and different things like that. It's fascinating. Just the cycle and the way that it keeps turning and turning and turning. There's nothing like it. Cody Alexander, thank you very much, man, that you know this stuff in and out. in a way that very few people do.

I love chatting with you about it. Please tell people where they can check out your work and read more about your ideas about this and various other things. Yeah, so you mentioned it earlier. Matchquarters.com is kind of where I house all my stuff. I do have a substack, matchquarters.com that you can find me at. And I release an article every single week. And a lot of it talks about this kind of stuff.

And then obviously you can find all of my books. I've got five of them. You can find those on Amazon. I highly encourage people to go check those out. They are all on my shelf at home. You will learn a ton. People always ask, where can I learn more about this stuff? Where can I become a smarter fan?

What sort of resources are out there? The work that Cody's doing both at his site and in those books is a great place to dig into all of that kind of stuff. Thanks for the time, man. It's always great to chat with you. Yes, appreciate it. Thank you. All right, guys.

That's all we got for today. Really appreciate you guys stopping by. We'll be back tomorrow with Lindsay and one of our athletic team writers. always really appreciate you guys listening. Please rate interview the podcast on your podcast platform with choice. It mean a lot to me. Please subscribe to the athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll talk to you guys soon. This was the athletic football show.