The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Examining how NFL defenses are using pressure packages in 2021 with Chris Vasseur

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

Robert Mays welcomes on defensive guru Chris Vasseur (aka Coach Vass) to discuss pressure packages in 2021. They examine the Panthers’ defense and how they are using pressure this season. Plus, what are teams doing to keep themselves protected while being aggressive? How do they decide to fit pressure into their philosophy as a defense? They dive into those questions and much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. The presenting sponsor for today's episode of the Athletic Football Show is Visa, a network working for everyone. Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. Today's Wednesday, September 29th. I'm Robert Mays. Great show for you guys today. Mitchell Schwartz is on vacation. He's taking the week off.

He will be back next week. But we have a very exciting show in its place. I am so excited to welcome. Somebody I have a meeting to have on. for a while. It's been way too long. Chris Vassar, Coach Vass on Twitter. How are you doing, buddy? I'm good, but let's lower the expectations here.

There's a lot of pressure on me now. I've been meaning to do this. We've been chatting about it for forever. And I thought this was the perfect topic to do this on because I want to use these Wednesday shows to zoom out a little bit. It's removed from the schedule, and that's the perfect time to kind of take a bird's eye view at some of the stuff that's happening in the league.

And I wanted to talk about the Panthers defense, but I wanted to talk about it in a more general way. Obviously, they've been doing so much interesting stuff with their pressure packages and the way that they're just blitzing teams to death. So I wanted to talk about the Panthers, but in the scope of talking about pressure in general, how you build a pressure package, how you keep yourself protected while being aggressive, the way that teams kind of construct this stuff. I don't know a ton about it. You do know a lot about it. I want you to just explain to the people very quickly in 30 seconds a little bit about your background. So I started out as a student assistant at the University of Miami. And then I went to San Jose State, was a graduate assistant there.

And then I coached high school football for a couple years, went and coached junior college football, ended up getting back into college and deciding, you know what? I love high school football. So I went back to high school, moved to the Bay. area was it Tom Brady's high school for five years. Imagine this. A coach to the high school that had Tom Brady as an alum and Barry Bonds as an alum. So two of the bet, and I know this is arguable and there's a lot of other things that go into this,

but two of the best players in their respect to sports from the same high school, also home with David Bakhtiari. I moved to the Central Valley, California for a couple years, and then had some family stuff come up and I decided to start my own business, move home to Orlando, Florida, where I grew up. and now I'm here trying to help coaches throughout the country win football games, basically, and stop the communist offensive revolution. So you spend an inordinate amount of time, most of your waking hours thinking about defensive football.

Yes. An inordinate amount of time thinking about defensive football. And that is why I wanted to pick your brain about this, because I think that, you know, we understand the benefits of pressure and the way that it plays out, especially with some of the teams that we've gotten used to, right? What the Panthers are doing now, what the Ravens do consistently, the way that the dolphins have played under Brian Flores for the last couple years. But I don't understand a lot of the mechanics of it.

And I wanted to try to help people understand what goes into that as they're watching these games every single weekend, as some of these teams that are more pressure-oriented are in the news. So I want to start with how you decide to fit pressure into your philosophy as a defense. Because there are teams in the NFL. that don't use a ton of it. That's not what they're based on. You think about the Gus Bradley teams.

When he was with the Chargers, he didn't blitz. When he's with the Raiders, he doesn't blitz. There are other teams like that, right? The Rams last year were the best defense in the NFL. They didn't bring a lot of pressure. That wasn't central to their defensive philosophy. But there are other teams where it makes up a huge portion of their DNA. I was talking to an offensive coordinator this summer.

And he said, I put defenses in three buckets in terms of just overall structure. Stop the run, stop the pass, pressure and sacks. And those third teams, I think, are the teams that kind of come up here and are applicable to this conversation. So when you're thinking about just how pressure fits into your overall defensive philosophy in some of the situations that you've been in, how do you think about it and how do you implement it into your overall approach? So my thoughts on pressure and philosophy, it comes down to your personality. I've known thousands of coaches, guys over the last 15 years that I met when I was first starting out, but still good friends to this day. And it remains consistent.

I don't know a lot of guys who are, hey, let's drop eight, let's drop eight, let's drop eight. And then all of a sudden go through some evolution that they want to start bringing five and six people. And now that I'm talking on a regular basis, not in terms of there's situations. I played in the biggest game of my life where we dropped eight, which is not in my personality. And then we brought seven when we got in a certain situations. And the shock between the two was a huge. It shocked the offense and it worked.

But I'm talking about on a global level throughout a season. The first of it is the personality coordinator. My mentor, Keith Burns, he'd blitz you coming off the bus in 2006 when I met him. He'd blitz you coming off the bus today. You know, so, I mean, it doesn't change a lot. I think it's in your DNA. So I think that's the first part. Now, you know, and again, within that, every pressure coach has a drop eight.

Every drop eight coach has pressure. So I want to make sure it's very clear off the bat because there are certain situations where you're going to need to blitz anyway. The most conservative guys in the league, you know, if it's a four-minute situation and you're trying to stop the other offense and get the ball back, you're not going to sit and rush for it. It's not going to happen. So, so really, most defensive coaches look at. pressures in three buckets. You've got your plays, your mixed down stuff, which is it's first and ten, second one to six. You can even extend that distance.

We got to stop the run. You have to account for the pass, so you're not going to sell out. And then you want to make sure now the used to be boot rules, and I'm talking like traditional bootleg with the overrouts and things. Now it's your RPO rules. You got to make sure you're sound. So nothing too exotic, nothing too crazy. but something that can force the issue coming off the edge or plugging a gap inside. So really that's what you want to do is you want to look at your base defense and you want to decide from there.

Okay, where are we weak? Where do we need to change everything up? And where our team's going to attack us and how are we going to set traps? Because a lot of those guys, you know, you get the wink martindales where it's just coming from everywhere. And you just don't know where it's going to come from, where it's going to end up. But you get certain guys, there's that kind of philosophy. and then there's a philosophy that is we're going to line up the same exact way every time, every snap. And again, within reason.

I don't literally mean every snap, but most snaps. So we know where the offense is going to attack us. They know where they're going to attack us. And then we have some things to kind of take that away. Then you have your stopper calls, which is they're running the ball. They're kicking our ass. And, you know, we've got to stop this play. Stop the bleeding.

Those are desperation may not. be the right way. You definitely want to say that in front of your players, but those are the things where, hey, we got to get this, we got to get off the field. We can't stop power. We can't stop outside zone. Whatever it is, we're going to put this. And then there's the past pressures. And it can run the gamut from bringing four and dropping defensive linemen to bring in six. Now, how you decide, and we can get into this now or if you want to wait, but how you decide to bring who and how to cover and everything, that's the whole art to this thing.

But you mentioned the Panthers, and the really interesting thing to me is I went back and watched all three of their games last night again, and I was so excited because in particular, and this is me personally, Phil runs, Phil Snow, the defensive coordinator, runs all of my favorite stuff from all of my favorite defenses. Like he had pieces of what the Pats do.

He had pieces of what the Vikings do, which I've been really into, which I know they've been doing it for a while, but this awesome. season I was clinked up on a lot of what they do and got to see some of the secrets and was blown away. And now I'm like, oh, that's why there's always so good. But he's taking a lot of these elements. He's running some of Bama stuff in the coverage game, or what it appears to me to be Bama stuff. And so, which I take a lot of what I do from college. So that's what was

exciting to me, particularly about Phil Snow and how he's changed from what I saw last year. So I want to dig into some of the mixed-down pressure stuff and then the pass-down pressure stuff, because I think that the mixed-down pressures, you talk about with RPO's, but I think it's almost become more important because of how much play-action teams are running in the NFL. Because if you look at some of the numbers, I mean, play action is more prevalent than it's ever been in the league. So if you can kind of blitz into some of those looks and really blow up plays, I think that's an interesting element of this. But I want to go back to the Panthers for a second because I think it's really interesting how you think about your personnel, along with your personality. and how it plays into this. Because, you know, the Panthers last year, they were not a heavy blitzing team.

You know, right now they're blitzing on about a third of opponent dropbacks, bringing five or more. You know, we could talk about pressures and how we define them and whatever. But bringing an extra pass rusher, they're doing it on about a third of dropbacks right now. Last year, they had the 24th highest blitz rate in the NFL. You talk about dropping eight. They had more three-man rushes than any team in the NFL last year. So now they have all of these crazy looks that they're bringing, I think, in part, because it's year two of the system under Phil Snow.

He's had these players for one year. And you think about really the main additions that they made on the defensive side of the ball this offseason. They went and signed to San Reddick and they went and got J.C. Horn. And I think those two guys are emblematic of the way they've tried to build this thing. Reddick has been somebody who's fallen through the cracks positionally since the draft. We weren't sure what he was. We weren't sure how to use him.

The Cardinals didn't figure that out for like three and nine. a half years and then he ended up becoming an edge rusher and that's what he does mostly now. But that blurred lines between positions, I think, helps the Panthers in a lot of ways. Jeremy Chin is like that. Brian Burns is like that sometimes. They have this very nebulous understanding of who's supposed to be doing what. And I think they use that to their advantage. So that's on the front end.

And then on the back end, they went and drafted J.C. Horn in the first round. This is a team that played a ton of zone last year. and now they went and got a corner in the top 10 that they thought they could unleash on people. So it's interesting to watch a team kind of adopt this personality and adopt this approach after they've made these pretty significant changes to the bigger pieces of their defensive personnel and said, you know what? Now we're a little bit more comfortable flying by the seat of our pants. Now we're a little bit more comfortable forcing the issue because we have the guys to do it. And I think that that's what you've seen them settle into this year. Yeah, and obviously my first point was you are who you are.

And again, there are exceptions now. I will say this, and I'm going to kind of contradict myself. And, you know, Phil Snow's a great example. Without being able to talk to Phil, we can guess all day. But here's what I'm going to, my educated guess is, is this first year in the league in 15 years. I think he was with the lions in the mid-2000s. You know, you're coming back in. It's COVID.

You're getting less time of your players. Totally. Your feet underneath you. you don't have a lot of time, you know, the world, you don't know if we're going to play or not. I know my whole world is coaching education. And when you don't know if you're even going to play, like, yes, you got to prepare like you're going to play. But still, there's some, you can't. And not that this happens in the NFL much.

This is more of a college thing, but you can't just fly to Minnesota and go hang out with Mike Zimmer when there's COVID. Or whatever that equivalent would be, you know, I'm sure he would be relying on his college. But he's NFL teams don't usually meet together like that, like you do is seeing college. I think that's part of it. The thing I'll say about what the Panthers do on the back end, and I think there's this misnomer sometimes that like to blitz, you have to have certain types of players. I think to run certain coverages you have to,

but there's some guys, they blitz for different reasons. And this is more of a global philosophy thing rather than before we get into the certain situations. I've seen guys, and again, at your comfort level of your players, how smart they are, how quickly they can pick stuff up, or depending on some stuff, only one guy's got to learn it. So there's so many moving parts. It's really hard to pin it down.

But I know guys that have been in situations where they have pressured more because they didn't have any good pass rush. It's like we got to bring it from somewhere. And like I said, I know there's the coverage guys and the rush guys. When I'm saying rushing guys, they're bringing one back or dropping an end off. So like Vic Fangio gets pinned as this guy who's a conservative coach,

but he brings non-traditional, all simulator pressures where you are bringing somebody from the second or third level and dropping someone off from the first level. But he's only rushing forward. He's still playing your best coverages. When I noticed about what Phil does is on most of the passing downs, and let's be honest, he's also not played some pretty bad offenses in two out of the three weeks.

But he was always, sound in the coverage. It wasn't any of this crazy man-free stuff where, oh, they had, you know, you're covering everybody underneath, you're bringing five, you got a safety in the middle feet on somebody pops loose, but the pressure is just so crazy they get to the quarterback before you can see it. Everything was covered sound. And you can tell he built that stuff from the back to the front. Let's talk about that because I'm so curious about that. How do you do that? Because in my mind, when I think about pressure, I think about the ravens and the Patriots and the dolphins. That's what I think. I think we're going to invest a ton in our corner so we can play

man behind all of these guys that we're bringing after the quarterback. And if you look at, like, the dolphins played man on 70% of their third down snaps last year. And they're a team that loves to bring these kind of funky looking pressures. And they were number one in the league as well. Yeah. Yes. And so you look at that and that's my understanding of it. So when you think about connecting maybe a more diverse set of coverages with the way that you're bringing pressure, How does that marriage happen? And how is it, how is a defensive coach, do you think about that plan? I think it goes straight to what you said.

Do you want to play man or do you want to play zone? And within zone, I'm talking about match coverages, not everybody dropped to a spot, which. Yeah. And there's, the quick explanation is a lot of people think that there's three types of coverage is there's four. And I'll do this in 30 seconds. Zone is I dropped to a spot. I look at the quarterback.

I read off of him. Straight man is, I'm going to. stay on my man no matter what I never leave my guy. Those are usually five, six man rushes. And then their zone match was I dropped to a spot and I pick up a guy, almost like a basketball zone. I'm going to go here, but if somebody comes, I'm going to take him. But I'm always going to play with zone integrity, meaning I'm going to be looking at the quarterback and kind of feeling the receivers around me and kind of, and that's the hardest one to teach because you have to have a lot of sense to you. And then there's man match, which is I have this.

guy unless. And so there's different families in there. But I think pretty much can we play man? Do we want to play man? Because there's, they're like, how do you beat play action at RPO? You play man. Because if I'm staring at the dude that's, you know, releasing out for a pass and they're faking the run, I'm not seeing them fake the run, which I know the, the

Panthers did a lot on their mix-down stuff, to play a lot of old school bear defense. And I mean, the old school where they're walking up on the tight ends and playing man demand like up on the line of scrimmage. Mm-hmm. But the reason all those play action stuff, it's all reactive. So I remember I didn't understand McVeigh's offense when I, when I started watching a couple years ago because there was a stretch where I didn't really watch the NFL because of my high school schedule.

And then I was like, how is this stuff working these overrouts and how, how is this open? And then I started watching the defense and it was all to cover three. Well, it's the cycle. It's the whole big cycle. Right. Right. And, and you watch what Belichick did. To McVane or Super Bowl, they played quarters and all that stuff was covered.

Or if they caught a pass, it was catch-tackle. There wasn't guys just wide open. But anyway, so I'm used to on my own show where we can talk for three hours and everybody will listen. And I don't want to go off the rails here. So I'm trying to be disciplined. But I think that's what it comes down to is, do we want to play manner? Do we want to play zone? You can obviously do both.

But the Panthers from where I can tell watching, even against offenses that are subpar. putting it nicely. And I'm agnostic when it comes to the NFL. So I know fans are really fired up. So if I'm like saying something bad about a team, I promise, I grew up a Dolphins fan, but I'm a fan of defense. So for a while,

that meant I was not a fan of the Dolphins. So I don't want you to think like I'm a hater or whatever. But anyway, disclaimer, end. A lot of that is, okay, what do we do best? What are we seeing? That's number one. Because I can, defense is mostly reactive. You know, I could want to bring all these double A gap blitzes and crazy stuff Zimmer does.

But if they're lining up and empty every snap, I don't get to choose really what I do. I'm always choosing from like a set of things that I'd like to do. Very rarely am I getting to actually get to do what I want to do because everything is reactive. But it all comes down and it starts with roster construction. And I talked about this. Mina Kimes had me on her podcast. And we talked about this was kind of the theme of the show. you know, the dolphins, the Pats recently, because, you know, when Belichick was, they started their, their run, their first, their defense line, their first three, uh, downline guys were all first round draft picks.

Mm-hmm. But now it's more like, we're going to invest in the back end. We're going to invest in a bunch of corners. And because everybody's trying to get the linemen, we're going to feature off the ball linebackers as our way to rush the passer. That's what the pets do. everything they do in fact they have call set up rush 54 oh meaning we're going to line up in a certain front we're going to pick our favorite stunt to get dante high tower free and we're going to play man free behind it we're going to rush five five man underneath one guy deep because people are devaluing that

so i can get you know who's more expensive miles garrett or dante high tower so instead of investing and don't get me wrong a generational pass rusher and that's where the seattle guys and I lumped them all together, rushing the passer, getting there. You can also throw in the Tampa two guys from the 2000s where, you know, a Miles Garrett, a Bosa is a game changer. However, if one of them gets hurt, look at the Niners last year. And I know what there was a lot more complicated than that. But, you know, if one of the corners goes down, I get another one.

I've spread out my assets more rather than sinking a lot of money into a certain player. That also plays into it. And that's where it all starts. And so from there, you. decide what, okay, what are we going to do? And what's been interesting to me to watch Phil is I've known Shaq Thompson since he was not

personally, but I mean, I was aware of him. He played in the Bay Area at Grant High School. I knew about him when he was a sophomore. So it's been super cool to watch him clips of him as a sophomore because we play teams that his team played. And he's the guy that they're featuring a lot. So when you're building that package, you're going,

all right, who's my best blitzer? Where does he play? You know, I guarantee you if Phil, Phil's dropping his ends a lot. and we can move on from this. But, you know, Phil's dropping his ends a lot. And yeah, Burns is a great pass rusher. But if he had a Miles Garrett,

I guarantee you he wouldn't be dropping him very much. It'd be very, very rare. So sometimes having hybrids or having guys that aren't super dominant allows you to be more creative. And, I mean, all of those guys, again, there's a lot of overlap. The body types are very similar. So you mentioned that they were,

some of the stuff that they were doing on early downs, the Panthers. And I want to talk about that very briefly because the idea of a mixed down pressure where it's not that exotic third down look, but it's actually something you're doing on early downs when an offense has anything on the table. The numbers for what the Panthers are doing in those situations are crazy. So they've faced 33 third down or first down dropbacks as a team this season. They've blitzed 11 times, brought five or more. Offenses are one of nine for negative nine yards with two sacks on those 11 dropbacks.

The Broncos are also just destroying people on early down pressures. They've had seven dropbacks where they brought five or more. Teams have a pass a rating of 2.8. So when you're thinking about those early down, first down, I have to be sound, but I still want to bring pressure. How is that different than something you want to do on third down where you understand that a team is going to throw. On a global level,

so defense, the thing that I learned, and I was lucky to learn this early on in my career, is coverage dictates the front, not the other way around. Most people think front to back, and when I'm on the sideline calling defense, I'm looking front to back.

But when you're designing a defense, it always starts in the back end because that dictates how you're going to play at front. The example I always use is if you get in a 4-3 defense. If you're playing cover 2, you have to fit runs differently to the weak side than in cover 4.

You're not moving a single piece on the front end, but you have to fit it differently because in cover 2, the guy on the edge of the defense is the corner. Well, I can't make the ball bounce out to the corner. He's way the hell out there. And he has to play outside the receiver. So even if it gets out there,

but if we're playing quarters, then his safety's coming down, well, I can knock the ball out because he's going to come down. He's going to be fast. I mean, the difference we can cover two safety who's at 16 yarns, getting the hell out of the stadium versus 10 yards sitting flat-footed.

That's a world of a difference. And so it starts with coverage. What I noticed about the Panthers was on early downs, they're playing a lot more man. And here's where I think some of those stats get skewed. When they're running the bare defense, the bear defense, and this is the old buddy Ryan stuff.

You have a guy over the center, two guys over the guards outside. You have two edge rushers. And then if there's any tight ends in the core of the formation, they just bring somebody up within a yard or two of them and playing man to man, so they can't just go up and get a lineback. You're basically trying to keep the linebacker free.

They're playing man in downs where you're going to get play action. And there are some play actions that can hurt you, like the slider play where you're bringing the Titan across the formation and leaking them out the other side. And there's ways. And if you look in college, there's some really creative ways to play that stuff. But they are proofing themselves by getting their eyes on the guy that's going

to release. but where I think the pressure stats are a little skewed is I watched the Panthers all three games. And I only saw a few what I would really call true pressures on those downs. Their bear front is getting called as a pressure because five guys are coming. But like when I called the bear, the bear was the base defense. I never thought of, oh, we're going to run the bear and that's a blitz. Because you're just bringing, you know, you've got the three guys inside, the guy off each edge and they're coming. But I don't think of that as like, oh, we need to blitz.

Now, they did some really creative stuff off the edges and up inside. And basically, when you're building those mixed down calls, you're saying, all right, what coverage do we want to play in the back end? Obviously, Coach Snow, I'm getting uncomfortable. The coach is coming out of me. I'm calling him Phil like he's my buddy. I need coach Snow. He's coach Snow to me. But he's choosing that route to play man.

But you want to build, you say, hey, how are we going to cover down? And then where do we want to go from there? and he what's interesting though and we'll get to more of that later but on the pass downs he's playing more his own so he trusts this guys to play man in those the rPO play action scenarios and to be and to be honest a lot of it can be dependent on the offense so they play the jets and the Texans who two of the teams they play they're under center they're more of a traditional quote unquote offense so you're going to play different stuff i guarantee you forget the talent discrepancy, but if they were playing the

Chiefs, the Chiefs were gun spread past teams, so their calls would be different. So I want to also caveat that. Like, if you line up against Mahomes and play Bear Cover 1 every snap on first and second down, that's a quick route to the unemployment line. But so you're building that. You're making sure your gaps down. You're making sure you have

edges. Ugly football plays happen outside and deep. We always told our kids that something they could still recite in their sleep. You want to protect the edges. You want to feature your best players. So you either want to blitz them or you want to what he's done on early downs is hey jack thompson's one of our best guys we're going to keep him clean and let him run into the ball and run of the ball he has but your structure again teams are going to

attack what you call bubbles in your front so they're going to try which a bubble is defined as an open gap that is not covered by a down lineman so knowing that knowing okay this is how we're going to line up this is a hina attack us you have to have some sort of change up you're setting traps or you're saying hey i know and this is kind of what i talked about earlier is you line up the same way every time, you know where they're going to attack, or you create that moving target. So you're making sure your gaps down. You're making sure everybody's covered down.

And the biggest thing when you're building defense is erasing conflict. One of the things that made certain coverage is so good is, and where RPO has heard it, and we're going to talk about, I'm going to go back to college for one split second, and talk about how it's influenced the revolution in the NFL, is cover four, quarters. What made quarters great when I was teaching it back, you know, 10 years ago was you had everybody key in men.

And if they went out for a pass, you did this. If they went out for, or if they ran the ball, you did this. Here's the problem. They're doing both now. Yeah. The RPO offense was designed because quarters got too good, too fast. And so what they did was, okay, you're playing quarters coverage. You're a linebacker that's walked out of the box.

You're responsible for a gap that's inside and a guy going out into the flat. not a winning business model. You have conflict. So what Staley did, kind of bringing this back around and talking what Phil's doing, he's just doing it out of man. What Staley has done is he says,

you know what, quarters is the best play action coverage. Quarters is great for play action. It was when they were running the ball, able to run and throw the ball. Because even on play action, you can close your eyes and hear the difference. And in fact, some coaches,

they'll tell young linebackers, if you close your eyes, you can hear the difference between a run and a play action with the line. but you know the best coverage we have is quarters but the best run stuff we have is what Seattle and this bear stuff how do we combine them and it's really big Fian geo and coach staley has taken that idea and run with it

and that's where you're seeing I think the bear revolution coming back to the NFL because it's funny because guys are doing the bear to stuff that used to be like oh you can't run the bear versus that and why I got run out of the league and now they're only running it versus that stuff let's give me an example what's something that you couldn't run it against that now teams are trying to do it. The number one thing that even Buddy Ryan did it against or stopped doing the bar against. And Buddy Ryan was like, I'm going to run my defense.

I don't care what you do, blah, blah, blah. But the one thing that he changes defense was three by one, tight end attached and like counter week was like a no, no. You had to have an adjustment because if you're walking those guys up on the tight end, you've only got one linebacker. One of my pullers kicks out the end. The other puller comes for your linebacker and you got nobody there, especially if you're playing, you know, if you're Greg Williams and you're playing your safety at 27 yards

from the middle of field. He's, you're screwed. So that's what it's about. Because now if you cover all those gaps up and you're playing quarters, which Phil did some of that stuff, coach no,

did some of that stuff too. You take out the conflict. So that's really what they're trying to do on those early downs is because on cover three, the problem is and why you see these guys going back to the play action stuff.

You have backers attacking the line of scrimmage and safeties and DB's getting the hell out of there. There's 20 yards of, of horizontal space. You can attack. You can get in between the lines. Think like soccer. Like you're getting in between the midfield and the defense.

It's really what you're doing. But now you take that away. You take away the conflict in the gaps. And now what does the offense do? Now they have to beat you with sheer power rather than or speed or whatever rather than just beating your rules. And so that's what it's trying to do is mitigate those conflict. That's what all comes down to.

So let's talk about rules very briefly here because I think that's, aspect of this is really interesting to me. When you're thinking about how to attack protection schemes, how does that, where does that start? Because obviously you're not in that building. You don't know how they're teaching that. But I assume there's only a limited menu of protection schemes, especially in the NFL, that a team is going to see.

So if you're game planning for a specific week and you're saying, all right, this is how they're going to react if we do this, how does that process typically happen? And how do you try to manipulate those rules? That's a really good question. So the first thing that you want to do, the interesting thing is, and I talked to somebody who was in the NFL for a long time and who game planned a lot of pressures. And we had this exact discussion.

You goes, listen, there's two types of, there's two types of protections in the NFL. There's a third. We're not talking play action. Yeah, just drop back. Everybody says, oh, play action is good whether you run the ball. And I know the stats bear that out. Like whether you run the ball or not play action is. good one. Why come nobody play actions on third down?

It's always my question to them. If running the ball doesn't matter to have good play action, then why not play action on third and 12? Well, the answer is pretty obvious. But so what you're looking at is in the NFL, you're really going to get two protections. Okay. The first thing when you're studying protections, but then we'll take personnel aside, like who's good at protecting? Because obviously that's different from every team. Sure. But speaking with this coach that was in the league for a long time, he said, listen, the protections are going to be the same, but it's how they teach it.

It's the footwork they teach. The rules are pretty universal. The only thing we're really gets what's changed, like, for example, the number one, it's debatable, but one of the top two protections in football is two and three jet, which you've probably heard 100 times on different shows on the NFL network and on this show and wherever else, but it means half man, half slide. So the line is going to slide to one side, it's going to play man on the other side, and the reason he slide is to pick up blitzes.

It's just like, and, you know, it comes down to this when you're game planning, and I know I'm jumping ahead, but, you know, if they're in man protection, you pick them just like you went on offense. If teams in man coverage, you either beat them with matchups, or you do rub routes and things like that to get guys free. If you're in zone, you flood the zone. You just have one more than they have. So the rules are pretty standard when you're just in a standard look.

The art of it is, and where you're really trying to dig deep, is what are their rules when you line up in funky fronts? And that's where I know I got to and a lot of my coaching friends got to is teams got smart. In general, if you're seeing whether it's zone or man, you want to attack the running back. And really the question is, are they going to protect with five or six? And if they're desperate, seven. So you wonder how many they're protecting with because, again, you've got to build your coverage first.

You got to say, okay, well, how many threats do we have to? Because you can love running fire zones, which are five-man pressures, what Zimmer is great at. but if they're releasing five out in the pattern every time, you got to be careful because you may have a guy like being in the Panthers and I know he's hurt right now, but in McCaffrey, just wide open with or somebody's really far away from him. So now it's an open field tackle.

So when you're breaking this down, you're like, all right, how do we attack their worst guys with our best guys? And we really want to attack the side of the back or the man side. Well, offense has got smart. So what they'll do is they'll,

they'll line up in the, the pistol or flip the back or they'll they'll line up offset and then flip them or they'll slide them across because there's sometimes like with the Zimmer stuff where they're flitsing up inside it's actually easier to come across at an angle and block a guy than it is to step in front of the quarterback from the same side so you have to figure out where is the center turning because the center is usually going to go away from the back ends up so that's what you're studying and that's what you're building on and that's where Zimmer's made a lot of money is they have a lot of rules based on, you know, the center calls are where they point.

Zimmer's whole package, and this is not really talked about, and I was kind of blown away, because they found this out, and I thought it was being one of these things like everybody knew about, but they don't. So this is some really cutting in stuff that's really been around for a while, but it's just starting to come out. Is a lot of what these guys do are based on where the center actually points. So in some of Zimmer's blitzes, he'll actually have it built in where this This side's going to go, but as the center points at that side, we flip the blitz.

Or you'll see the backers walk up. You'll see it. Or they'll read it. So, you know, you see some of the stuff like, God, they're always guessing right. There was a blitz. One of the first blitzes, the Panthers ran this season was one of the Zimmer Blitz. Where they brought, I can't remember which side it was coming from was either the deep safety or the nickel. And they brought the backer.

But usually you want to overload a side. Like I said, you want to attack protections by putting one more than they have the block. Very simple. Again, football is a simple game complicated by people like me. Let's just be honest. So instead of bringing from the same side, the backer from the other side came and he came Scott free. And it's like, oh, my God, they must have guessed right now.

They're reading the center. So they know if the center blocks me, I'm going to drop to my past responsibility. If the center blocks away, I'm going to blitz. And then if you scrunch everybody up inside, we'll bring two off the edge. And then it's basically you want to attack where they're not going to be. and that's where the study comes in. How do teams handle? And that's what's interesting about watching the Zimmer and stuff,

which Phil Snow is doing, is how teams respond. And like you think it was, oh my God, I'm blanking here. Who did they play second? It wasn't the Seahawks. Yeah,

I was watched the Vikings last night, too. So. Oh, my God. The Saints. The Saints. Yeah, they played the Saints. So I don't remember if it was the Vikings doing this versus Seahawks or the Panthers versus Saints.

so I apologize. But it was an obvious passing down, so they knew it was coming. So they knew it was a pass. The Saints knew it was a pass. The Panthers knew it was a pass. So they walked the backup so we could block those guys. And to see the team's responses to these exotic looks. The other thing you can do is as a defense, you can plan around like, okay,

if I'm playing a team and they always keep the running back in and they run this certain type of protection, I can line up in a way knowing how protection rules, work to make them change their protection. One of the things I got tired of was with the move in the back and doing all this stuff, like I said, you can do a read blitz where you're reading or based off the point. When you're in high school, sometimes it's so bad, it's so bad it's good. Like we ran some of the Zimmer package. We walked at the linebackers up in the A Gap and we're like, all right, we're going to

show like we're coming and we're going to bring the nickel off the edge. The back's going to step up. We're going to have a free runner at the quarterback. I'm going to be a hero. Both backers bail. the back doesn't even look at them. So the ball snapped and he doesn't even like honor that there's two guys walked up right over the ball. He blocks the edge guy who comes.

And then I just bought one of the backers, just one. I would have got Scott Free and had a sack. They complete a long ball and it's like, I'm an idiot. I outsmarted myself. But at that level, they can proof it by being able to read because, you know, they got guys in the building for hours and hours a day. Or you can just be like, we're going to line up like this and you have to respond this way. And then based on that, we know what you're going to do.

So that's where the dolphins, the Patriots, and even the Panthers borrowed from this on a couple snaps, where they line up in a look called some people call 5-0 look, which is, again, a bare front, but for pass-downs. You have a guy over the center. You have a guy on each guard. You have a guy off each edge. The offense, no matter how good they are at half-slide protection, they can't do it. where are you going to slide to? If you slide, you got to slide everybody.

Now you got a running back on a defense then. That's not good. So you can dictate by the looks and knowing the different responses to these exotic looks. And that's where you study what other teams do to these teams, not even so much to like steal their ideas to say, all right, we're going to run this blitz. But, you know, if I'm the, I'm the dolphins, the first thing I'm going to do is say, hey, did the paths play these guys? Have they played them yet?

They mostly have the same opponents. But have they played them yet? what's their response, but it's pretty universal what's going to happen. And then guys have gotten really good at the simulated pressure stuff, which we can get into in a second. I want to talk about that because that's the thing that I feel like outside of, you know, overloading and obviously using your resources and making sure that you're bringing more than they can block is important.

But I think one of the things that you're seeing consistently with the teams that are really good at this is guys just getting wasted. Guys just not blocking anybody because of a lot of the simulated comments. compliments that you're seeing. With a simulated pressure, we mean you're in kind of a pressure look, but you ended up only bringing four. So it's a way to kind of help waste some of the offensive linemen where you're bending their rules again.

They think they have to respond a certain way, and then you have somebody that's not blocking anyone. So let's talk about that a little bit. When you're talking about simulated pressures and kind of their role in all of this, how does that fit? Now, some people will, as a caveat, some people will call any kind of pressure. where you're bringing a second or third level defender, meaning a lineback or a safety corner,

and dropping a D-end as a simulated pressure, even if they're not showing pressure. Gotcha, okay. So I just want to throw that in there because some people consider that. Some people don't. I'm from the Dave Aranda family of learning this stuff, the head coach of Baylor, long-time D.C. at LSU in Wisconsin,

and he calls those things differently. So in my brain, I categorize them different, but a lot of people put them in the same bucket. So when you're trying to blitz on passing downs, besides getting the matchup you want and attacking the protection. The ultimate goal is you either overload the protection, meaning you got one more than they have the block, or you're trying to get an advantageous one-on-one matchup.

Now, I know that sacks are the thing that gets everybody off their seats, these big sack fumbles and all this stuff, but you got to be careful. Because Rex Ryan ran himself out of the league, driving himself crazy trying to get one more at the quarterback. And he did what his dad did, which was, we're going to bring six. well, the offense keeps seven into protect.

Well, we're going to bring seven or they're keeping six in. We're going to bring seven. And always trying to get that plus one. Well, now you're in cover zero on the back end. And guys are better at throwing the football now than they were 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 10 years ago, even at lower levels. So they're coming up more ready-made train. So you've got to be careful with that. What simulated pressures are, and this is a great analogy, but, and this is Dave

Miranda, so I can't take credit for this. but he said, bring in a bunch of people's like carpet bombing. You're just trying to bring everybody and you're trying to get somebody loose and you're kind of hunting and pecking and trying where simulated pressures are like laser guided precision bombs. Like, we are going to attack this guy and we're going to line up this way or we're going to line up vanilla. So Fangio is really good at this. We're going to line up in a vanilla way to get the offense to do what we want and we're going to get the one-on-one match if we want. So everybody wants this.

scheme up a free runner, but that's hard. It's hard, especially at that level. Although, and this is kind of a side piece of this, but the, the Panthers kept getting free runners at the Jets by doing the simplest thing of all time, which was they put a three technique to the back, so a guy outside shoulder of the guard, they would spike him into the A gap, and they would bring a backer right at the face of the back. The back kept releasing, and the end would peel off. So you have this, you know, how many million dollar left tack?

blocking nobody and the backer by the time if you time it upright that end or that that that tackle has to honor that defensive end by the time he's realized oh he's out of there he's dropped chack thompson's in the backfield and that's a that's a that's one of the most well-known NFL blitz is called whipfire zone i did a whole video on i did like a 45-minute video on youtube on that one blitz and i talked about how you can build a package around this one pressure and that's what fanjia did at the niners because Yeah, the Niners had good defense alignment, especially inside, but they also had Navarro Bowman and Patrick Willis. And they would get, because everybody in America goes, you know,

and third down, if you're in trips, you put the back away from the trips so you can get a two-man passing game. And I have clip after clip after clip of Fangio at the Niners, and Patrick Willis either getting a one-on-one or a one-on-one-on-one. Like, hey, you might want to block one of the best linebackers in the 20 years. it's like blocking optional. And these backs are standing out there with their hands up. You got a defense event standing right over them that's dropped.

And Patrick Willis is laying on top of the quarterback. And so you're attacking these protections with precision. But most importantly is you're playing max coverage and not drop eight, but a drop seven, very sound coverage. And again, it all starts with the back. If I told Phil Snow, hey, you know, and I don't know this to be a fact, but I'm guessing based on what he does. If I told Phil Snow,

the only way that you can run all these crazy pressures if you play man on third down, he probably wouldn't do it. He probably wouldn't do it. Which is counterintuitive, right? Because that's the first thing. That's the first place my mind goes to. Yes.

Is man coverage on third down. Yeah, it used to be zone on first and second man, but the game, because you want to get eyes on the football for the run. And then in pass, you don't have to worry about, you know, the run so you can just stare at your guy.

But the problem is, these offenses have gotten too good at playing and picking guys and switching off guys. But here's the thing. And there's no right or wrong answer. What's really interesting to me, and I'm referencing this. I know it's from a couple years ago, but I did a really deep dive on the Patriot Super Bowl run in 08, in 18. When they played the Chiefs in the playoff game, they had some rookie undrafted or sixth round. I don't even remember the kid's name on Tyree Kill.

He was, he ran a 4-3-40. he was super obviously I was about saying he's super fast yes I know I just said that I didn't need to say said it without saying it but they they just put him and run around and then stick a guy in the middle of the field kind of shade him to that side and they they beat him but what happens if you lose a miles garret what happens if you knock on wood what happens if you lose a bosa you can't easily replace those guys and so that's where sometimes not having some marquee rusher it was interesting I studied fan geo and 17 and 18. And you could see the difference. And I know they got him early in the year, but you could see the difference in the defense when they got Kaleo Mack before they had Kaleo Mac.

And it was a big difference. And sometimes when you don't have that marquee guy, it unlocks your freedom to come after guys. And then from there, it's all just a, you know, it's all just a creative game and how much you can get the guys to remember. and what's interesting about Coach Snow is he has had three different distinct game plans on third down, completely different.

And it's also as a side note really interesting to me to watch him. Like he ran the same blitz versus the Saints three plays in a row. And he got home every time. And it was, it's an old dimmer. It's bring the, bring the weak safety, have the backers read. Because it used to be, and everybody in the NFL did this, where you could tell because they would, bring a backer and drop the other one, and then the end would loop all the way around.

Well, and I was talking to a buddy of mine in the league, and I was like, how come everybody stopped doing that? So, well, you're paying a guy $20 million to rush the passer. You're not going to loop him four gaps. We just let him rush off the edge. And so he ran,

and it's in that world, I mean, it looks exotic on paper, but in that world, it's like the number one blitz you put in. You bring the nickel blitz. You bring the Harrison Smith weak safety blitz. And then you flip them based on the point,

or you flip them where the back is, and you base everything off those two. He brought the day one blitz, three plays in a row, and got to the quarterback almost every time. And then in the next week, he only rushed four against the Texas and did those simulated pressures.

And what it was happening is he was covering guys and letting him, making him hold the ball, and it's getting pressure. It's like a covered sack. Yeah, absolutely. Just make him double clutch one time. And that's the benefit of those simulated compliments

to all of that. I think the Fangio stuff is so interesting because, you know, I was talking to somebody from the Shanahan tree this summer. And we were talking about just like two high shells and coverage more than anything else. But he was saying to me is like, the thing about Fangio, why he was screwing with us for so long and why we hate going against him, it started with pressure. It started with him understanding exactly what he needed to do for us to keep the back in every single time. And that's the cool part about this is that when you have somebody, like Zimmer, like Fangio, where they can just twist the rules to their own ends, that's where it's really, we're really cooking there.

That's when it's really, really interesting to watch because that's when these guys can be dictating the game in exactly the way that they want to. But it blows my mind, Robert, because, like, I talk to coaches all this is what I do. I talk to coaches every day, all day, I don't know all day, but every day. And do you remember my reaction when we watched? So you were doing an interview with Brandon Staley. You know like, let's watch some Ram stuff together before I interview. I'm like, yeah, okay. And it was like the second or third clip.

I just started laughing. And you were like, why are you laughing? Because there's no linebacker in the box. Yeah. And then they were doing stuff. And then I kept hearing about Staley because last year I paid attention more to to college. And everybody kept being like, oh, Brandon Staley.

And I knew Brandon Staley. I met him when he was at Northern Illinois as a graduate assistant and talked to him. and he helped me out. I was really liking what they were doing there. And I went and saw him at the National Convention or whatever. But everybody came out. Oh, they're in too high. I'm like, yeah.

And then it was like, dude, where's my car? I'm like, and then? Well, they're showing too high before every snap. I'm like, okay. Because every team in college does, like in high school does that. Yeah. And I'm like, so what do they do off that? And he's like, well, they just play quarters.

And I'm like, that's what we're, like, that's what we're, like, that's what's going on. Now, when I dug deeper and saw what they were, doing on their bare stuff with quarters very creative but all that stuff comes from college and i know i've talked about zimmer a lot i'm on a it's funny i haven't really thought about him much before this year and now i've like this giant man crush on him but that's not surprised yeah they hired car scott from minnesota yeah from alabama they hired him from alabama he had a long conversation this summer i very much enjoyed it he's awesome and they're putting in they put in bama's midform mod package and that's their their version of the tight front that they got

from an Iranid disciple back in 2015. I watch a lot of the stuff and like Staley last year was running, when they played, it was either Seahawks to the Eagles, they ran Sabin's Mint Formod package that I guess he got from them and they called it Mint Forman. Like they used his language.

So a lot of the stuff is coming from the ground. So it's great for me. And I think this is why I've been so excited about the NFL in the past couple years. Really this year in particular is offenses trickled up and defenses were trying to defend that stuff with old school NFL ideas.

And it's not going to work. You know, I could still remember Monty Kiffin, one of the greatest defensive coordinators in NFL history, getting abused by Vic from the Zone Reed game of like 2006 or whatever it was. They ran for like 300 yards. And, you know, the ideas are starting to trickle up. I mean, a lot of what Staley does and did was influenced by, it was Vic Fangio and Nick Saven.

And he used the Fangio ideals when he played the college offenses, or the pro offenses, pro style offenses, quote unquote. But when he had to face the RPO stuff, it looked like a Nick Saban defense. And I've always said, if somebody took Nick Saban's defense and brought it to the NFL, they'd wipe everybody away. And I, even the guys, it's the Giants that were at Tennessee that ran his defense. It's like they come to the NFL and we can't, we can't man match him or we got to play

spot dropping zone. So I was really excited when Jeremy Pruitt and Kevin Cher went to the Giants. But it's, it's like you can't. can't do in the NFL and get away with it at lower levels, which is insane to me. Usually you think it's the other way around or because, oh, we don't have the athletes to do this, but no, because the athletes are so good. It's so, some of the stuff is so unsound. I mean, the Texans defense early in the game, there's guys like 15 yards, nobody within 15 yards of the guys.

And I'm just, well, that's the ultimate example. That's the extreme example. And that, it's interesting. It's miserable. And I remember Roger's telling me this summer, he's like, you know, we're going further and further away from a world where spot drop zone is just a standard thing in the NFL. He's like, he told me, which I thought was really interesting, he said, I don't think about it now pre-snap as much man's zone, I think one high, too high, where it used to be the way that

we would think about players and the way that I was thinking about where I would attack people, I would think is it man or is it zone? He's like, now I think is it one high or is it too high because man and zone is starting to overlap so much more, which I thought was really interesting. And I think that is a direct response to a. a lot more of these match coverages that are the norm in college but had not been the norm in the NFL.

Because even if there was a world where there was more quarters, the quarters covers that have been a standard NFL coverage for a while was spot drop quarters. Now it seems to be a different version of it. Which I think that's why it's so interesting that so many of these things

are blending in a way that is making the game more interesting. It's the same thing with offense. Right? Like offense is inherently more interesting and exciting in the current NFL than it was 15, 20 years, than it was 15 years ago where everyone was running some Xerox copy of the West Coast offense or something else.

And now that doesn't exist anymore. You know, we have these coaches that are like, fuck it. Let's just do what works. And I think that's why it's really cool. And that's why these lines are starting to blur in a way that makes the game inherently more exciting because the cross-pollination is just making it, You just find these nuggets everywhere, right? It's like, oh, that's that.

The mint front stuff is exactly right. When Nate and I were watching the Vikings against the Cardinals, we were like, oh, shit, there it is. Yeah, I was like, there it is. And that Carl Scott came in. And as soon as they hired him, I was like, oh, that's, I wonder how that's going to go. And when I was talking to him, I was, you know, he's not going to tell me. He's not going to open the book for me. But it's one of those things.

Like, well, what do you guys talk about? Like, what kind of stuff are you like, oh, he's like, well, it was more about terminology. And like we call this, this and just little tiny ways and all this stuff that they do at Bama, the mechanisms they have double people out of those certain looks are so interesting. And it's just, that's why it's so cool. It's just no one's reinventing the wheel. But it's just these ideas that you can just kind of say, all right, I can throw this idea at this very specific look in this very specific situation. And that's why it's so cool when you have these coaches come from other places. Right.

well and one thing Vic Fangio is obviously great and he was in college too in 2010 he was at Stanford after losing a little power struggle with the Ravens that's that's for another pod for another day we'll talk about that but uh I got some good stories for you but anyway um no but all all kidding aside the thing that makes Fangio and it's so it's it's one of these things that like with anything when somebody explains it to you it's like so brain dead simple but then you're like why didn't I think of that is because Because people are thinking one high, two high, what's your indicator? The weak safety.

Most quarterbacks are taught read the week safety. And I went on some trips this summer and talked to some guys and how they're screwing with the quarterbacks. And the thing you're going to see, you know, pay attention to this listeners, you're going to start to see, and it started with Dean Peas a couple years ago when he was at the Titans. You're going to start to see non-traditional Tampa rushes. So you're going to see the combination of the simulated pressure. but using the backside safety as the Tampa runner because if everything comes in patterns.

So if you're bringing a Mike linebacker, you're not thinking in your head, oh, they're going to play Tampa too, right? Because that's the middle guy. That's the guy that runs down the middle of the field. I mean, that's been written about that ad nauseum. So what teams are doing, for example, and I won't name names because I don't want anybody coming after me, but it's, I know it's coming. I saw it.

I'm juice for it. but you're going to see teams use the backside safety as the Tampa Middle Reed player. They're going to take the corner and do stuff with them, and they're going to take different pieces and move them around. And the chiefs already do this, but they don't do it out of pressures, where they have certain ways to get the Honey Badger, who's lined up in the middle of the field. It shows one high, and then on the snap of the ball,

the weak safety drops to the half, the nickel drops to the half. And now it's Tampa, too, but the Honey Badger, the best player on their defense, is playing the hardest and most important role in the defense. You're going to see teams do that with those pressures now. So you think those blitzes that were good out of cover three that I talked about, that Fangio did, the WIP Fire Zone, which is super old. It's been around for 20, 30 years. It's great.

Wait until you start seeing those same patterns with Tampa 2, but an even better pass coverage in my estimation, especially in the league. You don't have to worry about quarterback run game on third down. Nobody's going to run like Q Lee draw or anything like that. Watch it. It's coming. And if you watch P's, I know the Falcons aren't great on defense and everything, but I, you know, full disclosure, I had him on the podcast, you know, and I know him well and everything.

So I'm obviously biased in that sense, but they're going to start seeing it. And there's some exciting stuff coming down the pipe. And you watch, when you watch teams on third down, when you watch the replay, watch what they're doing with the weak safeties. Because that's how they're going to screw his quarterbacks. Well, it helps when you have three safeties. And that's what a lot of teams are doing out of that. That's the safe. the chiefs play with three safeties a lot.

Matthew's the third one. The Giants also do a lot of this where they'll be playing this weird to cover two out of different looks because they play with a lot of three safeties. And I think that the Browns also, like just so many of these teams, and that's why how personnel helps dictate this.

All right, we got to go though, because we can do this for like six more hours. Can I give you one quick nugget real quick? Yes. So into that point, Honey Badger, when he's a nickel, he's in the deep center, when he's the dime,

he's over the slot. So not only dependent on where he is, but why package, so it multiplies everything. It multiplies the reads the quarterbacks have. It makes something simple like Tampa 2 coverage infinitely more hard to read. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you, give me the chance to talk about some defense. And I'll hopefully get to talk to you more soon. Thank you so much.

Thanks, buddy. Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. I hope people learned a lot. We could do this for a long, long time. Yes. Thank you to everyone for listening. I hope that you took a lot out of this.

I know that I did. please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. Please subscribe to The Athletic, theathletic.com slash football show. We will be back tomorrow with Lindsay and our Giants writer Dan Duggan, digging into everything going on with that team right now. Until then, appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was The Athletic Football Show.