The Ringer NFL Show - The Future of NFL Defense

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Ben and Steven continue their offseason deep dive into some of the biggest questions around the league. This week, they take a look at the present and future of defensive schemes in the NFL. They start off by discussing the difficulty in adapting to evolving offenses, and the growing influence of of Vic Fangio’s 2-high defense (01:22). Then, they delve into the lowering blitz rates and the necessity to create pressure in lieu of an elite four-man rush (24:00). After, they look at the new wave of defensive coaches, Brandon Staley, and the prominence of curated game plans (39:44). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Ben Solak and Steven Ruiz Producers: Carlos Chiriboga and Eduardo Ocampo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Musical Elements: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Ariel Hawani, and I wanted to let you know that each and every week, I'm part of a great program called The Ringer MMA Show. I hosted alongside two absolutely brilliant minds. Their names, Chuck Mindenhall and Pizzie Carroll, and every Thursday, a new episode drops where we preview the weekend in mixed martial arts and react to all the biggest news. Plus, after every UFC pay-per-view, we give you a post-fight show. So this is what you have to do. Just follow the Ringer M-M-M-A show on your Spotify app.

So you don't miss an episode. We'll talk to you then. Howdy. I'm Ben Solack, and this is The Ringer NFL show. I am joined today by the Honorable Stephen Ruiz. Stephen say hi to the people. Hello, people. And today we are doing the second half of a two-partner.

Last week, you heard us talk about the future of NFL offenses. Today we're talking about the future of NFL defenses. If you haven't listened to the first episode, stop, don't pass, go, don't collect $200 yet to go back and listen because we'll spend a lot of today's pod responding to what we outlined in last week's show. What are the prevailing strategies for NFL defenses today? and what might they look like in a few years. Today on the ringer NFL show,

the future of NFL defenses. Stephen, I feel like offense was easy, and defense is going to be hard. I just like talking about the meta for league offense is simple because offenses choose what they can do. Talking about the meta for defense is trickier because defenses don't get to choose what they do to a degree because they have to react to offenses.

And because defense is a lot more responsive. The responses are a lot more varied. There's a lot of different shades of gray. And so when I like started like try to like figure out my families, like my buckets of guys and who does what, I felt like I was totally in a mess for a long time. Much more challenging on the defensive side of the ball. Yeah, I think it's made more challenging by where we think the future of offense is going. I thought like five years ago, for instance, or like after that first year Patrick Mahomes started, I thought it was easier to see where NFL defenses were going just because there were so. much borrowing from the college game so you could just look down at the college game,

see what defenses did to combat that, and then kind of translate that to the NFL. There's not really a college analog to what's going on, like where we think offense is heading right now. Like we're not seeing the under center Kyle Shanning and stuff, and we're not seeing like the more complicated run game out of those traditional pro-style looks. And it's hard to figure out how NFL defenses are going to answer that because you don't have that college example. Now, there are certainly some overlaps to like where the NFL is going on offense and where the college has gone. And I think the one meta that stands out to me is just getting more complicated. And we covered this on the Bengals and Bill's pod.

This was like the first pod we did. But I think that's the answer. It's not like specific stuff. It's like you need to have more answers on defense. And what those answers are, I think is what we're going to get into in this podcast. Yeah. I think fundamentally. I couldn't agree more.

Like the billboard to plaster at the top of this pod is like the future of NFL defenses, do a lot more, figure it out. You got it. There's a lot going on out here, brother. And you're going to have to have a ton of solutions to a ton of problems, with different personnel. And that's why this gets tricky is because meta conversations, where's the league right now, where's it going, are about generalizing.

And defense is about specific guys, specificing. Getting more specific. Specifying. Is that a word? Is that really it? Specifying? Yeah, that's a word. Is it specifying? Okay, it was one of those things like in my head. I was like, does this right? Like, I don't know if this is a word. I don't know if I'm making it up.

So getting more specific, specifying. And that makes this conversation more challenging. But let's get our teeth into it. We started the offensive pod with a overview of the establishment. We'll start the defensive pod in the same way. Stephen, how many defensive coordinators can you name? that have had their job since at least the 2020 season? Like three, maybe two?

I don't know. Who is it? Let's hear it. Damn, I might have just set myself up for failure. With the same team? Same team. Have had their job as the defensive play caller for that team for at least since at least 2020. Lou, Big Lou, obviously.

That's it. That's all. Spacks. Specks. And that's all I got. One more. There's one more. It's a disgusting one. It's a very sad one.

Gus Bradley? No, because Gus has been on a couple different teams. Jack Del Rio with Washington commanders. Just reprehensible, just terrible. Has had the job since 2020. Worth remarking Washington. Fifth in the league last year. In EPA per play allowed defensively.

Wow. Jack DeRio. DVOA. Ninth. Wow. Definitely checks a lot of boxes for me and what I wanted a defensive coordinator. That's a reference to a joke that got cut from an episode a couple weeks ago. Jack Del Rio has had the job now for the last three seasons.

Now, obviously, there's some exceptions to this, right? Like, I came in expecting D.C. to be more stable than offensive coordinator, and it really isn't in terms of like guy holding down job for multiple years. But you have your Bill Belichick's, who's obviously been running that defense for decades. Todd Bowles and Dennis Allen are kind of similar, right? They were both previous head coaches, previous DCs. They were D.C.s in Tampa Bay and New Orleans, respectively for a long time. And I've since become head coaches.

You can kind of put Mike Rable and Pete Carroll also into this bucket. They're like, they are defensive coaches who have been head coach of their teams for a while. But they've also had like a bunch of different D.C.s under them. And they don't necessarily have as like strong of an influence over the defense that their team runs relative to like a Belichick and Allen or a Bowles. And so there's head coaches who have a defensive background who have been around for Forever. Mike Tomlin's another one. You do have, and I think this is the important group for our conversation, guys who have been D.C.'s forever at a bunch of different places, right?

This is your Vance Joseph, who's been a D.C. or a head coach since 2016. Dan Quinn has been a D.C. or a head coach since 2013. Vic Fangio has been a D.C. or head coach every year since 2011, same for last year where he was just vibing with the Eagles, going to a Super Bowl, fixing Jonathan Gannon. Love you, Uncle Vic. Gus Bradley has been a D.C. or a. head coach every year since 2009. 14 years running for Big Gus. Seahawks 09 to 12,

Jacks 13 to 16, charges 17 to 20, Raiders in 21, and then the Colts in 2022 and 22 and 23. Jim Schwartz has pretty much been doing it since 2001. These are the Titans, Lions,

Bills, Eagles, did the Titans thing for the last couple years and it's now with the Browns. Those guys, Wink Morandale, Robert Sala, that's pretty much your like

establishment NFL defensive play callers. These are the dudes who've been doing it for a while. They just tend to bounce around to a bunch of different teams, take a head coaching job, fail at that head coaching job, and then go back to calling the defense somewhere else. Your last group is your, like,

guys who have had weird careers, and so it's tough to figure out. That's your Brian Flores is, who Flores could have been, like, the fourth longest, tenured head, defensive head coach in the league, if the Dolphins didn't actively attempt to hire Tom Brady as a QB slash owner,

and then collude, and also he hated Tua, and that whole nonsense, but anyway, He's been doing this for several seasons. Same is true of Rahim Morris, who was an interim head coach and then was the defensive coordinator under Dan Quinn and became the wide receivers coach, and that was weird for a little bit.

Now he's with the Rams as the DC, and Steve Wilkes has been around and just left for college for a year. So a lot of names, but in general, we have, I think, a good body of, like, establishing guys, who we've seen do work for the last five, six, seven plus years. When I throw all these names out just at you, Stephen, firstly, I think we can note right away, there's not really a lot of cohesive trees, which is something that we talked about a few episodes ago,

why Bill Belichick's coaching tree sucks. There's like a bunch of Carol guys and two Patriots dudes, and that's kind of it, right? There's not really like a good established tree here. It's like, oh, all of these guys went on to be super successful. Besides Carol's group, they all just hung around for a while. So no tree. But if there's no tree, what's connecting these guys for you?

How are you grouping these guys? How are you understanding these guys? See all of these names. Who to you are meta-definers? Who defines the league meta and how do they define it? I think it's similar to the scale we use for all. I'm not going to use some like strained soccer metaphor, but I'll just use Bill Belichick's terminology. He'll refer to teams as like a game playing defense and he doesn't really have a name

for the other thing. But the other side is like think of like Pete Carroll, Legion of Boom Seahawks. We're playing cover three. We're playing an underfront cover three every down. This is our system. We're just going to be really good at doing a little bit of a few things. And hopefully it matches up well with what the defense or the offense does. And then on the other and there's the Bill Belichick who can change his game plan every week and will change his game plan every week. One week it might be a lot of odd front. The next week it might be even front.

Might be four three. Might be three four the next week. Man coverage, zone coverage, all that stuff. Like it depends on the opponent. So those are the two ends I put them at. And I think guys fall in at different spots like Dan, not Dan Quinn, Gus Bradley. It's very, very hard to keep all these former Seahawks, bald guys. The federal coronators.

I need, I need somebody to have unique hair. Robert Sala, Gus Bradley, Dan Quinn, I need somebody to pull out a toupee. Help a brother out. I just cannot keep him straight. If Gus Bradley starts calling cover three with like a fedora on, at least wear a hat, something like that.

I can see Gus Bradley being a fedora guy. I'm thinking of Brian's hat, like the Tim Robinson sketch where he's got the hat with the Savoy flaps. I can see Gus Bradley rocking that. But yeah, I would put Gus Bradley on like the extreme edge. Like I'm playing cover three, whether it's Baker Mayfield or Patrick Mahomes

playing the shit. And then I'd put Bill Belichick on the other end. And then you could like kind of figure out where guys fit in. But that's how I would separate them. Yeah. Now, Dan Quinn, Gus Bradley, Jim Schwartz, Wink Martindale, Robert Sala, like, Vance Joseph. Like all of those dudes I just named right there are all like guys who have been DCing for like six plus years, seven plus years for a long, long time. I would categorize all those guys as line up and play it guys.

Like, Martindale's whole thing is like, you know, And hey, guess what? We're blitzing. Here we go, baby. We're living. Robert Sala, it's like, oh, I don't run the Seattle stuff. I run quarters. Yeah, but you do it all the time.

Like, you are four down rush and then play with seven behind. You'll change the look at the coverage. It's still the Seattle stuff. Like, there is a, I don't, have you listened to the play callers podcast yet? I'm very excited to. This is the play callers podcast. It's produced by the athletic football show. Jordan and Rodriguez interviewed a bunch of the guys.

We talked about in the offensive play caller saying like McDaniel and Shannon and McBey. I have a download I gotta drive back from Canada tomorrow 11 hours I gotta download it for that But there's a there's like a part where they're talking about

like Sala and Kyle kind of like clashing initially and having these battles in practice like there's a point where Kyle's like wait it's not quarters it's just all cover three

like you're still doing the same stuff and he's in Salas like yeah we're still doing the same Seattle stuff yeah so you have so right all those guys and then even Vic Fangio who Vic's a little bit different

and I think we need to talk about why Vic is so important in a second here. But all of those guys are just kind of line up and play guys, which is interesting because I came into this really confident that I was going to emphatically champion, be versatile, do different stuff, have different arrows in your quiver, have different pitches in your bag,

you have to be able to react to situations. And then you see a lot of these establishment dudes, and a lot of them are just, hey, we play our stuff, we do our thing. And you're not going to catch me defending Gus Bradley. real quick. Like the Gus Bradley defenses have not performed super well. So it's not how to say,

oh, the league just keeps hiring Gus Bradley, which means he's good. No, I think you can probably, Gus could improve his system and you can probably improve on your DC over Gus Bradley. But in general, there is a comfort and a value to saying, all right, we run this, we know this.

Offenses might know the weak points, but so do we. And we know the sort of body types that we can get to make this system go. and we know the coverage checks that we can call to try to hide those weak points. And there is a comfort in running that system, knowing it inside and out,

and living with some of the Achilles heels of it, living with some of the weak points. Relative to some guys who try to, like, have an enormous menu, solve a ton of problems, put a ton of stuff off the field, and end up, like, overloading their defense and being too heavy for it. One of the guys I'm thinking of here is

Brandon Staley with the Chargers, where like I think less so last year, but more so in his first year, like Staley came and tried to run a ton of stuff. And it was like, whoa, like, you don't, your, your players don't have this yet. Like they don't have their arms around it. They don't have an understanding of it.

Mentally, they're not there yet. Like, you, you were putting a lot on their plate on a week-to-week basis and it's overwhelming them. Like, if a coach were on this podcast, he would use the phrase, like, play fast. That's what coach is, like, we play fast on defense. They're basically, saying we keep things simple so our guys can just make decisions and go and then we try to win

those one-on-one plays and one-on-one opportunities. There's always going to be some wisdom to that. And I think it's important to acknowledge that before you and I inevitably go in on how much we want defenses to be versatile and how much want them to change. Yeah, I think like what you need in a defense kind of changes based on what offenses are doing. I think that's why we're going to end up champion these guys that do a little bit more. But also the other part of running that just line up and play defense is it's really hard in that you need talent. Like you can't run the Seattle style defense without a pass rush. That's why the 49ers defense was terrible until they were able to build up the best

defensive line in the NFL. And it takes a lot of losing. It takes a lot of top 10 picks and it takes a lot of money to shell out to get those. So there's no answer. There's no like, oh, this is the best way to do it. I think it's the same on offense where if you could run a simple offense, like it's probably the best thing in the world to run. And there's like this, it's kind of paradoxical or even counterintuitive when you think

about it. Like there is some mystery in running a defense where you just line up and play and you have the same looks every time. Like there is some mystery to that. Like for instance, if we're playing a lot of man coverage and we want Dorel Revis to track Justin Jefferson, I don't know why I'm like switching errors. But if he's following him all over the field, like when he follows him across the field and gets, ends up in a weird area, you're like, oh, they're playing man coverage. Like, that's why

he's following him. If you're playing against, like, the Seattle style of defense and Justin Jefferson goes in motion from, like, the right side to the left side, and Richard Sherman stays on the right side, you're like, well, they do that every time. It could be man. It could be zone. We don't really know. So there are drawbacks and there are positives for both styles. I don't think there's anyone that's right. I think you have to fit it to what your personnel is. And that's just the nature of defense. Like you, this is a quote that I brought up a couple times in season, Brandon Staley at the 2021, I want to say,

combine saying the fun thing about the NFL, like when you're playing defense, you do what you have to do, you don't do what you want to do because you can't do what you want to do because you don't necessarily have the personnel to do it. I think a good example last year, and we had a bit of a debate on the pod about the Vikings defense

where I was saying people were clamoring. How is Ed Donatel getting a mention in this podcast? In the future defense? Because he's the future, buddy. Try and keep up. But they were playing a bunch of zone because they didn't have the guys to play man coverage. You want to ask 40-year-old Patrick Peterson to play man coverage against some of the best receivers in NFL. It's not going to happen.

So I think that's like a key point is like you can look at some fancy defense that some team is running, but they have the personnel to do it. And like your defensive coordinator is just trying his best. He's making do with what he's got. Yeah. So I want to highlight something you said here as we transitioned to talking about Vig Fangio. because I think the defining individual of the NFL meta of the last like three, four years is Vic Vanjo. And once you widen it to be like more than that on the defense side of the ball, it's Belichick. And you can't argue it's not Belichick.

But we're going to start with Vic. You brought up the like the ability to just kind of line up and play and how we're lined up is how we're lined up. We can be doing a ton of different things from this look and we're going to change how we look post snap. We're not going to react to you pre-snap. We're not going to change how we look pre-snap to give you information. We're going to change it at the snap. We are going to rotate post snap. That idea

is the single most valuable idea of the Vigangio defense, right? When Fangio started to become successful, Bears DC from 2015, or excuse me, he was the Bears DC 2015-2016. He was the Broncos head coach for late 2010s and then obviously had his year off and is now with the dolphins.

When Fangio really started to be successful, he was successful because he was the guy taking away the McVeigh offense, taking away the Shanahan offense. He was the best defensive response to this blossoming burgeoning, incredible offense in the 2016, 2017, 2018. Everyone remembers the Super Bowl in which Bill Belichick just sat on Jared Gough in the Rams offense, Super Bowl 50, what, 51, 52?

There's no way of knowing. But Belichick got that game plan and got those pictures from a Vic Fangio primetime game in which the Rams offense, which has been like 35 points, 38 points, 31 points, 34 points, six. And it was that sudden game against the Bears. the reason why post-snap rotation was so valuable and was so critical was because, when we brought this up on the offensive show, McVe's offense was asking Jared Goff to turn his back to the defense.

Under-center play action means the quarterback changes, turns us back to the defense, cannot see what they are doing for a second, a second and a half as the excuse the play fake. Shannon at this time was still doing a lot of that stuff as well. Well, Vic said, all right, if you're going to chair in your back, I'm going to use that one, one-and-a-half second, cause some problems. And so VIX lining up in a ton of two high coverages, right? Initially pre-snap, both of the safeties are deep. There's not a single safety sitting in center field.

That's what we'd call a single high coverage. But there are two safeties looking like cover two, looking like quarters, each kind of sit and just a little bit outside the hash is at equal depth. And when that undercenter play action fate comes, one of those safeties is going to drive down, become a linebacker, become a run fitter, become an underneath zone defender. Another one of those safeties is going to sink back and he's going to become a deep zone defender. You don't know which one it's going to be. And so now we're changing who rotates where. And that allows us to, okay, like, all right, if we're worried about the over route coming from the right side,

then we'll drop the right safety so we can leave the left safety there. And if we're worried about it from the other side, we can switch the guys. It also allows you to not drop one of those safeties and just leave both of them back there. So you now can rotate from too high to one high and change the look for Jared Goff when he turns back to the defense. Or you can do that a few times. Goff's like, all right, they're changing the look.

And then you come at it's the same. And he thought he was a step ahead of you. You were two steps ahead of him. So the rotation that Big Fangio introduced from playing two high coverages became really, really important. Now, defensive coaches ever will tell you, we don't want to be in too high coverages on early downs, right? We don't want to be in too high systems on early downs because we're taking a body out of the box. That's second safety, that too high player is a linebacker as a nickel corner. We're taking out of the run fit.

Now we don't have enough guys to play the box, right? And when we talk about Jim Schwartz and Gus Bradley, Dan Quinn, we're talking about coaches who want to have enough players in the box. to stop the run on first and 10. If you have six blockers, five offensive linemen and a tight end, I want seven guys in the box, one for each blocker, and then plus one for the running back, right? I'm going to be plus one in the box. I'm going to have enough dudes in the box.

But Vic decided, listen, I'm going to take that extra guy out of the box and try to solve running game problems with stunts and blitzes and defensive line games and two gaping and some creative solutions. And if I give up a five-yard run instead of a three-yard run, then I do that, whatever, you know what I'm saying? but I need this second body to stop the 15 plus yard play action pass, the 20 plus yard play action pass.

That's the real thing I want to stop. That line right there, I'm going to defend the pass at the expense of stopping the run. I'm going to play too high and take the actual body of the box. That became the tagline for the Vic Fangio defense because of Brandon Staley's success with the Rams and because of the subsequent years that came and Staley's playing all these super light boxes

and the running game Renaissance or whatever. That became the tagline. It's still a critical part of it, right? You have to understand when you're playing too high, you're taking a body out of the box. But I think the correct tagline of the Vic Fangio defense would be, I'm rotating my safeties post-snap. I'm rotating my safety at or immediately after the snap.

And that's going to screw with your receivers checks. It's going to screw with your quarterback's perspective. It's going to punish you for using play action where the quarterback turns back to the defense. That's the real tagline. And when I think about how Vic Fangio has defined NFL defensive meta, that's how I think about them. Yeah, I think it's been like a fight. I think like the tagline for the next couple years, and this change is so rapidly.

So it might only be like one or two years, but I think the tagline for the next couple of years is like the fight for the first half second of a snap. I think that's what you're seeing, like, that's where you're seeing like the tension between offenses and defense and play callers. And I think like one of the ways that they've combated, like Vic Fangio's kind of holding the cards close to his chest until the snap is the use of motion. I think that has been the answer. That's been the substitute for play action.

And when you do, when you like, if you send Tyree Kill, You're playing too high safety. You're sending Tyree Kill from one side of the formation to the other side on a fast motion. He's sprinting across. And right when he gets into a position, too, is going to call hike. Like, you can't rotate to that because it's Tyreek Hill. And he's going to burn your safety, and it's going to look embarrassing for you. So, like, you rotate your set.

You pre-rotate your safeties before the snap because you have to, just because of the stress that that motion is putting on your defense. So I think that's one of the benefits. And I think one of the answers that you're going to need to see defense, defensive coordinators have is answers for motion and being able to still hide and disguise your defense while answering those motions. And I thought a great example of this is the Chargers, Dolphins Sunday night game from last year. A classic. You did like a video on this too, but like Staley had had answers for the motion.

He had he had answers, multiple answers, and it messed up that offense. It really disrupted their flow because they couldn't get to the things they were usually getting to because that motion wasn't serving the function that it had for Tua for the first, whatever, 12 weeks of the season. Yeah, and it's funny because McDaniel's also putting Tua in the guns, who doesn't have to turn his back, right? Keep his eyes up. So Tua's keeping his eyes up. The entire time his eyes are up, he's staring directly at a corner who's in beautiful position to cover his route, beautiful position to cover his first read. And then he just eats the first read anyway, because he just is not used to seeing this, right?

And it's a similar impact to the one that Vangio had on golf, where it's like, I'm, I'm, looking at this and I know it's wrong, but I'm still just going to throw it because it's been right for the last 10 weeks. How did it become wrong all of a sudden? You kind of get a QB to short circuit. You expose it. He doesn't know what to do next, right? He's been relying on this crutch for too long. All right, we got to let ads. We got to let this advertisements. They're going to say their taglines. Then we're going to come back. Okay. So that I think is Vic and a little bit of a dash of Staley, which like Staley, I think is a bit of a bridge for us in terms of getting from the old heads to the new heads.

If Fangio and Staley kind of represent the renaissance of, not renaissance of too high, but the increase of too high, right? True Media has numbers going back for the last four years. Middle of the field open coverages, which are two high coverages. We're being played at 32% of all snaps in 2019. Then it went to 35% 2020,

32%, 37% 21, 31, 38% last year. It's been going up for the last four seasons. It's probably going to plateau around 40, I think it's probably going to keep going up for a little bit. But we're probably getting closer to what that actual correct balance is supposed to be. So if Staley and Fangio kind of represent that, the blitzing conversation, I think, is represented by Don Martindale, who's the ex-defense coordinator of the Ravens,

and Mike McDonald, who's the current defensive coordinator of the Ravens, who previously worked for Martindale. But blitzing numbers, right, which we have a lot more of, tend to just like kind of like vacillate over time, right? Like there's not so much of a clear trend here so much as there's just like year over year nonsense. But you were seeing pretty much all dropbacks blitzed 27, 28, 29% of the time for most seasons until 2021. When that number dropped to 25% and last year it was still 25%. There was a little bit of a drop off in blitzing over the last couple of years. This is something I wrote about in the middle of the 2021.

season. After Patrick Holmes played like a couple of really good defenses, Buffalo, he played Cincinnati. No, he didn't play Cincinnati. He played Buffalo. Chargers, I want to say it was. He played the Estabely's defense for the first time. And then he played the Ravens defense at the time coached by Martindale. And Martindale, all right, I did not let wink Martin Dale blitz.

You got to like put a muzzle on a guy. You got to like, you got to lock him in a room somewhere and just keep the headset away from him. This is, he was blitzing at over 50% of dropback. Well, he was at his heyday as the DC of the Ravens. He blitzed Mahomes like three times in the second half. Just unbelievable. Leslie Frazier, the DC of the Bills, when he played Mahomes in 2021.

It was the first game of his entire career as a DC, which was a long career in which he did not blitz once. Teams stopped blitzing elite quarterbacks starting in 2021. Like that's a generalization. They were still doing it. There's still some guys who were bad against it. You could get them for it. But in general, you saw elite quarterbacks not get blitzed as much.

The Ravens moved on from Martindale and hired Mike McDonald. And one of the big changes that you saw in how that defense worked was, especially for the first half of the year, they were really, really, really, really reticent to Blitz. They just wanted to live with a four-down rush. They wanted to live with seven in coverage, get those extra bodies in coverage, help you stop the pass. Then the Ravens kind of realized that, like, oh, like,

we thought, like, you know, David Ojojojojo, come back from injury and Tyas Bowser and Odafei O'Owe, who was our first round pick from last year, we thought we were going to have enough in the pass rush, and we just don't. Like, we just don't have enough dynamic pass rush ability off the edge. We have to start creating blitzes. And so they ran some simulated pressures.

Simulated pressures are cool. They're basically four-man rushes, but one of the four guys is not a defensive lineman. So you're like three defensive linemen and a linebacker's coming on, like, a blitz, quote, unquote, while one of the defensive linemen is dropping into coverage. So you still get the benefits of a blitz, sending a surprising player,

while also still getting severing coverage, which is what these modern DCs really, really want. So the Raven started doing that a little bit. And I think that blitzing conversation is important because, one, the quarterbacks aren't going to stop being elite. And they're also not going to stop running, right? Quarterback mobility is here to stay. And when you blitz, you really live on a razor thin margin where like, yeah, you could get them. And if you get them, that's sick.

But if you don't, this cat's going to kill you. I mean, like, Mahomes against the Blitz is like the greatest quarterback that ever existed times 10. Aaron Rogers against the Blitz, Josh Allen against the Blitz, with their arms, with their legs. These guys dominate the Blitz. And so in general, I think you're going to see blitzing numbers go down. This serves as a reminder of how these Dan Quins and these Gus Bradley's and these Jim Schwartz's have been doing this for so long, Robert Sala. Four-man rush, man.

Like, there is no way you can do a league meta-conversation on defense without sitting down and going, okay, if you can rush with four and win the defense line, just do that, do that forever and never do anything else. If you can't, you've got to solve a ton of problems. But man, oh man, the panacea, the skeleton key, the cure for all ills, is just dominate with a four-down rush. As the Eagles, ask the Niners, ask the Cowboys, ask the Jets, ask whomever you like. If you can rush with four, you're going to be a good defense.

If you're not going to rush, if you can't rush with four, you're going to have problems to solve. Yeah, like, you or I might be able to call a top 15 defense if you give us an elite defensive line. That's not true. We would run the worst defense in the NFL by far. But I think you're right. I think teams are kind of coming to that same conclusion. As you said, like you can see with the blitz numbers dropping. But also teams also are self-aware and they realize I don't have Nick Bosa and I don't have Michael Parsons.

I don't have Hassan Redick. I don't have all these guys. I don't have this deep stable of pass rushers. So I got to figure out how to get pressure with a four-man rush when I don't have those guys. and that's where the creativity comes in. That's where those simulated pressures you're talking about come in. And I think one utility with those simulated pressures is the run game also. And I thought that's what, like we saw a moment in the Chargers season last year

where they were like one of the worst defenses in the league. And then over the last half of the season, they were one of the best defenses in the league. And I thought the major change that Brandon Staley made, which is kind of impressive, considering his whole thing was like, we're going to play too high. And we're going to, like, he has this quote where he's like, it takes a lot of four to five yard runs to equal a 40 yard pass. And like, that's our philosophy and that's why we give up the runs. I think he came to the realization that like, yeah, that's true.

But if I run for four to five yards on first down, on second down, I can now run play action. And it's a little easier to hit that 40 yard pass. Like, I think that was like the disconnect that he was missing. But I thought he improved over the second half of the season by calling more simulated pressures, by calling more blitzes or more pressures with zone behind it, not like all out zero wink Martindale blitzes, but zone pressures to stop the run game. And he was getting into different fronts post snap.

So it was kind of like disguising your coverages and kind of like the secret to the success of the Fangio stuff that you laid out, but in the run game now. Now you're like, you're thinking, oh, I'm seeing an overfront. You don't need to know what an overfront is. Like, that's just a type of front. Before the snap, it's like, these are the types of runs we like against an overfront.

But after the snap, like, the linebacker would plug the A gap immediately, and a guy would, like, stun over to the C gap, and it would turn into like a 3-4 barefront after the snap. And all of a sudden, that run that you call against the overfront is going up against the barefront and it doesn't work anymore. So I think that's where Staley kind of evolved. And that's like the beauty of the simulated pressures. Not only can you, you know, get the blitz effect on a quarterback in the past game,

but you can fool the offense in the run game. Yeah, I think that when it was 2010, and we were all just lining up with enough bodies to win against the run, right? They got six blockers. We have seven guys to stop the run. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy, second and seven, right? That was all well and good.

Now you enter a too high world, and you have to come with creative solutions in the running game. And I think the summary for, like, how do I solve a running game problem on first and 10 when I'm into high coverage? The summary is this. I want to show them an open B gap and then take it away at the snap.

The B gap is the gap between the guard and the tackle. And I don't know, like every single run in the entire world wants to hit the B gap. The B gap is everything, right? It's just, if we can get the center guard double team, we can get the tackle to kick somebody out, and we can come down mainstream in the B gap, like, that's it. Like, runs that don't hit the B gap are so distinct

that the version of power that hits the A gap is legitimately called A gap power because it's just like stunning that it's not hitting the B gap, right? There are a couple different ways to do this to show a gap and then take it away. Some of it is changing the look with four guys in the front, right?

This is stunting and twisting. This is, I think, a lot of what like OG Fangio stuff is is running those run game stunts with just your four guys, right? Nick Saban does this a ton at the college level. It's a big thing that's come to the NFL level in terms of stunting the guys to take away gaps and to change who's in with responsibility.

I think that some of the more modern guys, right, some of the younger guys we transitioned to like Staley, Mike McDonald is definitely one of these guys. Yeah. They take it away with with four plus, a linebacker, four of us, two linebackers,

four plus a linebacker and a nickel. And that's why you see all of a sudden, like Jalen Ramsey's playing in the slot, like Jailen Ramsey's the star for the Rams under Staley. He's now with Fangio and the Dolphins He's going to be the start again. And it's just like,

whoa, like Jalen Ramsey's playing the slot, baby, it's crazy. And it's like, why is he doing this? It's because they want that body, six foot,

205, big fella. They want that athlete to be able to get involved in the box for them, right? They need to be able to, he has utility for them there in terms of adding that additional body to the rug fit.

They're not just going to put like a 5, 10, 180 pound nickel there anymore. So that problem. How can I present a gap and then take it away. So I trick the offense into running bad runs. That problem right there is like, that's the modern issue for a defense coordinator because that's your first and 10 problem. You got different

problems on third and three, on third and seven, on second and five. But your first and 10 problem is how can I get this extra body in pass coverage and then solve the issue with the running game up front? Like that'd be my first question if I were interviewing a DC as an owner. Yeah. And that's like, you know, that's not a new problem necessarily, but I think the problem has gotten more complicated it because QB run. Like now all of a sudden, you have to add a gap to every run play.

If there's, like Jalen Hertz, it's not just, let's say Jalen Hertz lines up and empty and there's, there's five offensive linemen, which means there's six run gaps. There's a gap outside the left tackle's left shoulder.

There's a gap between him and the left guard. There's a gap between the left guard in the center and so on. So there's six gaps. That means we just need to plug six run gaps. But now it's Jalen, it's Jalen hurts back there. So he could run, you can run,

you could pull Jason Kelsey outside, and he can run outside. So now that's a six gap. You have to account for another body. And now it's like, okay, if we play too high, we're fitting with like, we're already down a guy. And now they have a running quarterback. So we're down an extra guy, like theoretically.

And now we got to really do some crazy shit to make up for it. And like, that's what the game is. And that's what offense and defense has always been. There's a referencing the play college pod again. Another Robert Sala quote, he says, they're chasing space. He's referring to offenses. You can't defend all the space in the world. Because you only have 11, I'm saying this part, you only have 11 guys and the field is very wide.

But you can move the space on them. And I think that's the key is like we present space one place before the snap. We're like, oh, look at this nice, juicy open A gap, or open B gap. You could run through it. Come on. And then you call hike and then all of a sudden a linebacker, necro linebackers is plugging that gap. And it's not there anymore. So I think that's the nature of it's always going to be that.

And it just gets more complicated. And I think that's where we are. It's like just the game just keeps getting more complicated, especially on the defensive side of the ball. The only answer is to have answers. And this is the really cool feedback loop where like offense informs defense, which informs offense.

So Shanahan and McVey are running outside zone play action. This is like everything that Steve and I talk about for the rest of the time is going to start there, right? Defense is trying to solve the problem. Vic comes up with a solution, right? I'm going to run these five-man fronts, these six-man fronts. I'm going to solve the outside zone problem.

with these looks, right? And so defense will start to whizen up. Okay, there's ways to solve the zone running game. We can put a ton of bodies up there. We can also mess around with the gaps a little bit, right? We can change pictures in terms of who's going where and and, and mess up the communication that comes with zone run blocking, right? And so what do you see a huge renaissance of across the league?

Just power blocking, right? Let's get a line, let's get a fullback. Let's get a tight end. And if they want to, you know, sneak around and put a, a slanting, twisting, 280-pound guy who's kind of off-balance in the B-gap? All right. Let's uproot them. Let's pick them up and move them with a double team.

And let's choose a gap and put four bodies there and dominate that gap. Dominate the point of attack. Shanahan was ahead of this curve. Had you, Sheik, understood how to get this done. McVeigh was a little bit behind it and was like, all right, I'm running duo, right? I'm running like zone. I'm running like power. That's not really power.

I'm running like the zone-blocking version of power. that's like a total bastardization of duo and coaches listen to this, we'll hate that, but whatever, it's fine. That wasn't sufficient, right? They didn't solve the problem for him and his running game falters behind and he has to now catch up, but Ben Skoronic and fullback for the first like six weeks of the season that's trying to, you know, come up with something here.

So that like offense informed defense, defense found a solution and then defense changed now how offense runs the football. And now you've got to be able to run gap. You got to be able to run power. You have to be able to run a lead blocker because defense have a lot of solutions now for how to steal gaps and how to win against zone blocking. They've just seen it so much.

So to put a bell on this segment here, I think one of the most crucial things to talk about when it comes to defense is on first and 10, you're trying to solve the run and solve the pass at the same time. And you just can't. You just, you absolutely cannot. Like, this is the third and final shout out to the athletic football show. No more athletic football show free advertising.

But Deonti Lee, who's there, excellent, excellent, a writer and podcaster, he is a defense high school coach in California. He was talking about defensive ball for them a couple of weeks ago. And he brought up the fact that like the solutions you need to solve the running game on defense and the solutions you need to solve the passing game on defense have never been further apart. Yeah. You used to be able to just like four down cover three.

We've got like 80% of things covered. Four down cover three has got like 55% of things covered at this point, man. Like you, the solutions you need to solve the running game are getting more specific. quarterback run being a huge part of that problem. The solutions you need to solve the passing game are so much more specific. Spread and play action and motion being huge parts of those problems.

It's just, it's really, really challenging to handle that full menu on first and 10. It goes back to that Robert Solid quote. There's too much space. So now we have to try to find a way to present space and then take it away, trick them into going to the wrong space. This is, this is what I think where we're at.

We're going to go away. Advertisers are going to talk to you about products that they're selling. We're going to come back. We're going to talk about some of the new kids on the block and what they're doing well. Okay. When I think of impactful, new defensive minds,

obviously, like, Brandon Staley is the big name. And, like, the Staley moment for defense, I think people, like, expected it to be, like, as big as, like, the 11 personnel moment. And it wasn't, but it was still really big. Like, this is, like, a huge tectonic shift in how defense was played. It absolutely was.

I also think about my son, Domeco Ryans, my dad, the best coach in the entire NFL. No further questions. Here's the DC of the Niners last few years. He's now the head coached the Texans. I think about Mike McDonald, who I brought up the current DC of the Ravens.

Previously he was with the University of Michigan, but he was a long time on the Ravens staff. And then I think of these big Fangio castoffs, right? I think about the branches of the budding Fangio tree that's trying to achieve that, which the Carroll tree kind of has achieved and really proliferate into a significant percentage

of NFL defense. as Clint Hurt, who's the current Seahawks defensive line coach for a few years. Sean DeSai was a Fangio's secondary coach for a few years. He's been the DC with the Bears, was a senior defenseism with the Seahawks and it's now the DC of the Eagles. Giro Evera was a safety's coach under Brandon Staley. He was the DC of the Broncos last year, was sick.

It's now the DC of the Panthers. And then Joe Barry, you know, kind of a black sheep of the family, who is a outside linebacker's coach with Staley, had a DC stint previously, and is now the DC of the Packers. Where's that Donato? More Ed Donatelle erasure. Oh, my God. It's just the guy can't get any respect.

What does the guy got to do? Have a top 30 defense or something? You tell me right now where Ed Donatelle is working. No, I'm joking. I don't care. He shouldn't be on the list. He's currently not employed by an NFL team. Just doesn't just kind of lay that one out for you.

I'm actually offended that you brought up Joe Barry's name on this podcast, too. That's another. I can't mention the Fangio tree. without acknowledging the fact that there is a withered branch of it, and that is whatever Joe Barry is attempting to doing greenback. Shonda's size branch isn't thriving either. Let's point that out. Listen, lesson, lesson, lesson, lesson, lesson, lesson.

Welcome to Philadelphia Eagles' defensive coach rehabilitation, all right? Are you a struggling defensive coach in need of a resume boost? Would you like to hang out with Hassan Reddick and Jordan Davis and Jalen Carter and Josh Sweat and Dariuslay and James Bradbury? Would that be good for you? This will help you produce a top 11 defense and will get your name and head coach circles by NFL Insider articles by the end of December. Welcome to Philadelphia. It was like, you know how all all the guys were going after Fangio to be their defensive coordinator. It's

like the opposite. Like all the Fangio guys were going after this job to kind of like make themselves look better. Yeah. And it's funny because Fangio was a consultant with the Eagles last year. And I just wish the Eagles really just threw the bag at him. He's from Eastern Pennsylvania. Shout out East Trouswood University baby. Hometown Uncle Vic Fangio. All right. These young guys, I When I looked at the young dudes on the offensive side of the ball, I had no question

that some of those dudes were really impactful in terms of how offense is being played. Defensively, I have that question. Like, Staley emphatically matters in terms of like how defense is played. He's been a big part of recent changes. The second best guy in that list is D'Amico.

And like, I love D'Amico. I'm not sure D'Amico's going to change much about how defense is played. Like, Domeco's running the Sala stuff, which is the Seahawks stuff with a couple of iterations. And Domingo's bringing a twist to it, which is that on third down,

Domingo's... Right, yeah. Because it comes for the throat. D'Amico, and we go, and we mess around, third and seven, we're messing around with a four-down rush now. We're coming with heat. No, he's, like, this is Sean McDermott,

10 years later. Like, Sean McDermott, as a defensive coordinator in Carolina, that was his defense. Like, we were going to be sound on, first down. We have this great defensive line. We have Luke Keeckley and Thomas Davis who just kill everyone. Any screen, don't run a screen on us. And then we have like an okay secondary. Like that's the 49ers defense. That is the formula. But on third down, hey, we're putting two guys in the A gap. We're putting Luke Keekely and Thomas Davis in the A gap and you got to figure out

what they're doing. That was the 49ers defense. But I do think Damiko, there were times, like it didn't happen often, but there were times when he threw like a game playing curveball at you. Like I referenced the past. Packer's playoff game. Like, what he did to take away Devante Adams was, it wasn't the typical Seattle stuff. It was like a different style of game plan. So I think Demico does a good job of kind of straddling that philosophical spectrum that I kind of laid out where, like, you have the game playing guys on one end, you have the system guys

on the other end. I think Demico's definitely closer to the system guys, but I think he's more in that, like, 25 percentile range rather than like the zero percentile that Gus Bradley's in. Yeah, honestly, that's actually a good point. like, Domeco's not going to push defensive football in terms of like bringing innovations that have previously been unthought of and changing the way a bunch of defense. Did Belichick, though? Yeah, but that's the thing is like, the guy that actually came to my mind when you were talking there was Zimmer, right? Like, what, what did Zimmer do that was, like, disdainteens that was characteristic?

It was on third down. Yeah. Mike Zimmer was coming for you. Like, like, Zimmer was just waiting, holding his breath, muttering curses. under his breath until he could get to third and seven at which point his eyes light up and he felt the joy of life again. He was like, all right, seven on the line. We're going to

change the way that you protect. We're going to move your offensive line. We're going to keep the back in and we're somehow going to get a free rush out of this and we're going to hit the quarterback. That's the thing that D'Amico does super well. He brings that aggressiveness to a defense of coaching tray, Sala and Bradley and Carroll and whoever

that doesn't necessarily do that as much on third down. The thing about D'emico that I think makes him such a good coach, and I've, I fully 100% believe in Demico's ability to turn the taxons around. Not this year, but a year from now. The thing is, like, he's just an extremely smart guy. Like, he's good in the way

that Belichick is good. He's good in the way that Zimmer is good. He's going to the way that Luanarumo is good. We're like, he just knows how to get you in a, in a tough spot, and then win that tough spot. He's going to win late down. He's going to win situational football so frequently, which is why he's a really good DC and he's going to be a really good head coach. So, D. Miko, I think, yeah, not too much, like, schematically changing the league metas.

But I still think he's one of the best DCs because he just has a great thumb on the pulse for how the game works. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what separates him from, like even the Fangeo offshoots. I felt like they were a little too committed to the bit. And that was kind of their downfall.

They never really adjusted and never found an answer. Like in ways that I think Staley started to find answers last year. And in ways that Fangeo really never had that problem. Because Fangio is the guy that obviously made the system. He knows how to fix it. I don't think, I think these guys know how to coach it. I don't know if they necessarily know how to fix it. And I think that's the key to being a good defensive coach and being a good defensive

coordinator, we keep repeating this, but you have to have answers. I don't think those guys have as many answers as, like, say, Domeca Rines, which why, like, I'm not so confident that he's going to be able to turn around the Texas and be a head coach is because the podcast we did a couple weeks ago where that was the takeaway, we don't know. But, like, defensive coordinator, I guarantee you he's going to be good at that for the rest of his life because of that skill. I believe in him. I believe in his ability

to break the curse of really good D.C. It can't be good head coaches. I want to, like, define Staley as it is right now. Friday, July 14th, we're recording this,

will be early, 20, 23. At the end of the 2020 season in which Staley was with the Rams, Staley was the Sean McVeigh identified Wiz Kid who can do defense in a way it's never been done before it's because he's putting two

safeties back there and nobody's ever done this in history and that's crazy and that was probably a poor miscategor that was a miscategorization of state at the end of the 2021 season with the Chargers staley was the guy who took the Chargers job and tried to run a bunch of the light box stuff it just got absolutely obliterated defensively didn't have the personnel for it was a first-year head coach he was like scrambling to get a foothold in the team whatever at the end of the 2022 season like Staley's only been a head coach

for two years and he's been a more than a coordinator a coordinator plus for only three seasons and there's like a large discourse and like Staley's not a good coach Daley isn't what we thought he was like this guy is not it

like this is a snake oil salesman he's not the thing I first say I just don't think that's fair period he's had three total years like call a unit right and he's dramatically changing what he does

and trying to figure stuff out the Chargers last year were eighth in Blitz rate. It's all the fire zone, too. Yeah, exactly. In terms of sending extra guys, this after he got Kahlil Mack and Joey Bosa, which like I don't think Kahlil necessarily delivered what they wanted. And obviously, Joey was out for a big part of the year.

And for a Chennauosu to leave and they'd be really good in Seattle, sucks and it's frustrating. But that's like we crumble sometimes. So they had to solve problems with blitzing. But like, the staley that you and I saw in 2020, we watched the stuff. We were like, dude, this guy's got the goods. Like, this is unbelievable.

like that that guy never would have we never would have thought he would have been like top quartile in the league and blitz rate right so there's like dynamic stuff there in terms of him trying to figure things out if you look at at his coverage rates right like in terms of like quarters they ran like a league average amount of quarters this year which like 2020 all we would have said was like oh like what's daily doing is running quarters running quarter quarter half cover eight like all this stuff is incredible man coverage the charters ran above average amount of man coverage last year we would not have said that coming off

2020, or 2020, excuse me. So this is like, like, Staley has changed a lot. And so I think it's fair to categorize what his impact

was in 2020, how he changed defenses. We're going to stop the past the expense, stop in the run, we're going to run a lot more too high. I think he was a huge part of that change. But now as you look on him in 2022, with the changes that Staley has made,

do you think that he's swinging back? Do you think he's just addressing his personnel and trying to solve the problems of his unique job as the head coach of Los Angeles Chargers? Like, what does Staley, represent now for you when you think about defensive metas? I think he's a reactive, pragmatic coach.

And those are the guys that are on that end of the spectrum, that game plan that changed their defense up from, like, he didn't necessarily need to do it a bunch in 2020 when he had Aaron Donald and he had Leonard Floyd and he had Jalen Ramsey, he had all these guys. He had Johnny Johnson. Like, you didn't need to switch it up. But still, even in that season, like week to week, you saw little tweaks. Like, it wasn't just the too high coverage stuff. I know that was like the headline.

That was the selling point with him. But I thought the most impressive stuff was the things he did around those two high coverages to be able to play the two high coverages. And I think that's the stuff that's starting to translate and starting to translate last year. I think the problem is just like how we in America judge coaches. Like we're just like you either win. You dropped in America. Holy smokes.

We as a people. We in this culture. I'm making a reference to the Austrians in the coffee house who are just coached. respectors because the guy's like philosophically influencing people like we don't have that in america like mike mike dantonie this is a different sport NBA Mike d'antone everyone you bring him up he's a joke it's like oh that guy fucking sucks he's a fucking loser he like just innovated basketball for like a decade and everyone treats him as a joke but he doesn't get respect yeah where's the ring stephen where's the it's just so frustrating but i think the same thing is happening

with staley like staley has clearly influenced the league he hasn't won anything with the charges and And he kind of look like an idiot that's at some time, like at some points. Like last year he blew like one of the biggest leads in playoff history. But who cares? Like, I mean, it sucks for the Chargers. But for our purposes, I mean, the stuff he's doing is still pretty fucking cool. Like, we can get excited about it. Would you rather as your head coach?

Like here's another example. Like Kyle Shanahan. People think Kyle Shanahan is like a bad head coach because of like the 2016 Super Bowl with the Falcons. Why do you think they were in that Super Bowl? So who would you rather have as a head coach, an innovator or a winner? There's no way of knowing you're getting a winner. Yes. No, just hire a proven winner.

Like, who's won a Super Bowl? Yeah, but then they don't win for you. Mike McCarthy is a winner. Right, yeah. He's got the ring, right? And that's what it is, right? Like McCarthy, like McCarthy, I don't know how we got on Mike McCarthy. It's my fault we got on Mike McCarthy.

But McCarthy won a Super Bowl with the Packers and then was fire at the Packers. And then the Cowboys hired him. And what did McCarthy do in the season where he was gone, right? Where he didn't have a job. He tried to brand himself as an innovator, right? He got a PFF account. Exactly. Yeah, he was like, I'm studying film and I talk to analytics guys now, and I went to PFF.

That's pretty cool. You think he used the promo code? Promocode Seth. Whose promo code McCarthy used when he signed up for PFF Edge is that's reporting right there. That's journalism. Now, he tried to brand himself as an innovator. and he goes and the Cowboys hire him and when the Cowboys hire him they're like

because innovation man like he's he's a proven winner but look at all the changes that he's made and then he goes and just does the same old McCarthy stuff and it's like no you you hired him because he was at one point of championship head coach and you wanted a championship head coach like that was the whole logic there he had him because he was a winner and you're right like winning doesn't predict winning

as well as innovation intelligence like good football coaching predicts winning in the aggregate right obviously in Brandon's studies case he has coached better than his record would suggest. So it's not predicting it well, but I think overall it does. That's why, like, I remember jokingly last year on one of the pods,

we said the wins are not a team stat, right? We were like, listen, the Falcons are five and four. What does that mean? Winds are not a team stat. Don't worry about it. Winning does not predict winning as well as we would like it to in the NFL. That's why power rankings are an interesting thing, right? That's why DVOA matters.

That's like these statistics exist and these pieces of content, like power rankings exist because we know that, just records, just when lost records, are incomplete. Anybody who covered or was a fan of the Minnesota Vikings last year understands this. We're all watching that going, that's not real. That's fake. That's made up, right? So I think, like, that as a defense of Staley is fine.

What I will say is this. Being five years ahead of the defensive coaching curve in terms of, like, what to do and how to do it, does not benefit Staley in terms of, like, doing his coaching job or doing job security. I'll frame it to you this way. Staley and every, like when he was the DC of the Rams in 2020 and when he's been the head coach of the charge last two years, has had to teach his players what to do. Five years from now,

the castoffs of the Staley system will go to different defenses and they'll have defensive coordinators who are no Vic Fangio stuff and they will know what to do. They'll already technique-wise know how to play a gap and a half, know what it means, know what it looks like, know how to get away with it. Like, like, when you innovate, like, you, you are like on a frontier. You are coming up over a hill. And like, it is a bit of an uphill slog in terms of changing the way your defensive

players think about and look at the game, right? Like, like, you take Khalil Mack was like an eight plus year NFL veteran. You're like, use your eyes differently, use your hips differently, angle your feet differently, use your hands differently. You can train Mack on that for as much as you like in August. When the bullets are live in November, he's going to go back to what he knows. And that's where I think you start to struggle as like, okay, a guy who's bringing a lot of new stuff and I'm changing the way we think about football,

but you're going to meet internal resistance. You're going to, like, there's going to be learning curves that you're going to have to handle, and that's going to slow you down. And your challenge is to hold onto the job for long enough to retain, to be the head coach of the Chargers and convince the Spanel's family that it's fine long enough to get your team over that hill.

And I think Staley's close. I think it's going to be a great year for the Chargers. I think firing Joel and Barton, hiring Kelly Moore was a great step in that direction. But that is one of the issues with, like these young, like defense coaches were innovating. You do need a long leash to kind of get your system working and get it off the ground. Yeah, and I think maybe we get too hung up on the innovation, like what actually comes out of it,

like the too high thing. I think it's the fact that you are able, you have the capacity to innovate and like change yourself on the move. That's really like what you're looking for. That was really Belichick's like the secret to his success was being able to change. It wasn't like, oh, I came up with this one style of defense. And we're just going to play that and drill it into people's head. I think we're starting to see that with Staley.

And I think that's why I'm more optimistic about him going forward than maybe most people are in the public. But like the stuff you just covered with him, the changes he's made, those were answers to problems that he, that they had and they worked. Like we have now seen two iterations of this defense be successful. I know like the Chargers didn't win anything last year. They didn't win anything in 2020, really, but they were the best defense over the course of a season. Last year, they were one of the better defenses, especially against the past,

over the second half of the season. And that's a big reason why they made the playoffs. Like, the offense wasn't that good. It wasn't as good as it should have been. We all know that. The running game stunk was the worst in the NFL probably. They made the playoffs. Like, I know it ended poorly, but they made the playoffs. They won 10 games. And they did it because the changes that he made in the second half. Like, he brought a very, very, injured team, one of the most injured teams last year with a bunch of stars going down. He brought that team to the playoffs.

And a part of it was the changes he made over the second half of the season. That's more impressive to me than whatever he did in 2020 and all the too high stuff. And he did it without those, if you want to call it gimmicks, I'll use that word just because I can't think of a better one. But he

wasn't using the stuff that got him popular, that got his name out into like the discussions we're having right now. Yeah. The, when I think

back on like defensive moments in the 2022 season, I will think about that back-to-back set of weeks

where the dolphins played, the Niners, and then the Chargers. And the Niners said, cute offense, we have Fred Warner.

It sucks, doesn't it? And then the Niners defense did a great job against the dolphins, right? They gave a 75-yard touchdown

of the first play of the game, and they were lights out. every place after. And then the next week was the Chargers. And it was Braden Staley. And they don't have a Fred Warner over there. They had Drew Franklin and Kenneth Murray,

which is directly the opposite of having a Fred Warner. And it was okay. Is Staley going to be able to find a way to achieve that which D'Amico achieved schematically without having the personnel that makes the entire 49ers defense work? And that's not an exaggeration. The entire 49ers defense was predicated on the fact that they have Fred Warner and nobody else does. And Staley did.

Staley found ways to get safeties to solve that problem. say he found ways to get press corners and then use Michael Davis and he achieved that which Damico did without the queen on the chessboard that Damico had and it was like holy smokes that's what Staley's about is like

this one week curated game plan is just so good from him it's like him and Belichick and him Belichick and him Belichick and Lou with the Bengals where it's just if you had to win one playoff game if you had to stop one playoff caliber offense those one you'd want one of those three guys with a random assortment of 11

defensive players, you'd want one of those three guys to stop that playoff offense. It's the ability to curate that one game plan, get that one off. That's so impressive. And then the very next week, the Dolphins played the Bills. All the talent in the world defensively. And the Bills just lined up and played their same old stuff

and just got hosed and then played them in the playoffs and gave up 34 points to Skyler Thompson, and then Leslie Fisher was out of a job. And that's kind of where you're at defensive meta-wise. How well can you curate a game plan for this Sunday. If you are line up and play, you get beat in this league. Like you, you, you, you, you can beat a lot of good to bad, like to middle to bad offenses if you line up and play in your elite. The Eagles with John Gannon, man, you can beat 31 of the 32 offenses in this league when you're line up and playing. You have stars. But then you run into the teams that you run into in January and February. You run into a Patrick Mahomes. And you, if you try to line up and play, you better score 40 on the other side of the ball because you ain't stopping nobody. And that's, that's where defense is that. It's that curated game. And that's what that's, I think, yeah, I think that's what the modern Staley represents.

I think what, but where Staley has to kind of like fill in the gaps for himself is like the non-cureated stuff, like playing an average offense and making them look terrible. Like he was able to do that with Aaron Donald because Aaron Donald and Jaila Ramsey and all those guys just like destroyed worst players. But now I think that's where you're finding him struggled to find consistency. But I do think we started to see that change. Like, they were a very good, they, the second half of last year, they played a bunch of bad offenses and a bunch of good offenses. It was like either or they were playing either the chiefs or they were playing Jeff Saturday's Colts. And they played well against all of them. So I think we're starting to see that.

I want to see what it looks like over the full course of the season and whether like the lessons he learned last year and the changes he made applied to this year and whether that what we get out of that. Like, do we get like a hybrid of that 2020 year and last year? or do we get something completely different? But I'm willing to go out on a limb and say Brandon Staley's a good coach. And I would hire him if I was looking to hire a defensive coach especially. I feel like is Brandon Staley a good coach, question mark, is the title for another pod, a later pod, not this pod, because this pod is over. This has been our two-part series on kind of where offense is at,

where defense is at, where offense is going, and where defense is going. We will be back next Friday, we think, because training camps are starting. Schedules are starting to get a little bit tricky. We have still some airtime to fill. So expect to see us back next Friday. This guy will might get a little bit more erratic than it has been, just as Stephen and I are traveling. We're on the road.

But if you subscribe and review, then you will always know when the next pod is. If you leave a review, a little known fact, then when a new pod drops, you will divine it. Intuitively will come to your mind and you will know that is there. Sixth Sense. So review. Only if it's a good review. Only if it's a good review. If it's bad, then, no, if it...

Yeah, no, only if it's good. Leave good reviews. Be sure to thank producer Carlos Chiriboga, who stepped in this week for Eduardo Ocampo. We appreciate it, Carlos. Thank you, as always to Arjuno O'Brien and Connor Nevins for their additional production supervision. Thank you to Stephen.

We will catch all of you next week.