The Ringer NFL Show - The Offensive Epidemic From a Defensive Point of View | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

The positions to focus on when building a defense, collegiate schemes pro defenses should adopt, underrated defensive coordinators (1:35), tendencies at the lower level that will show up in the NFL, understanding “pattern-matching” defense, stopping the play-action pass, and how to stop Patrick Mahomes II (18:15). Hosts: Robert Mays, Kevin Clark Guest: Cody Alexander Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We've all made some bad choices in life. I know I have, but this isn't about me. It's about you. Don't make where you play fantasy football a bad life decision. Play Yahoo! Fantasy Football. Yahoo offers up free expert advice and is the best player experience, and they'll never delete your league history like other apps. I go back and look at that all the time, so I sincerely appreciate it.

Yahoo also has all kinds of fantasy games like the new best ball. Just draft and you're done. No trades, no waivers, no drama all season. Yahoo is the number one rated app by FSGA. Make better choices. Choose Yahoo Fantasy Football. To the Ringer NFL show, I'm Robert Mays, joined as always by Kevin Clark. Kevin, how you doing, bud?

I'm doing great, ready to talk defense. This is one of the shows that when we were planning all of our big picture podcasts, we both knew from the start we needed to do. And there has been so much talk about offense and football and the NFL especially over the last year as scoring has exploded, the high-scoring year in NFL history as we kind of wade into a world where Patrick Mahomes and guys like Kyle Murray are about to take over. It seems harder than ever to stop people.

And one of the people I wanted to discuss that with was Cody Alexander, who is a high school coach in Texas. He's written a couple books about defense. He is the author and kind of creator of Matchquarters.com, which is a fantastic resource. Cody does more work about defensive football at the lower levels and how it can affect the NFL than pretty much anybody I know. And we are thrilled to have him on the show today. Cody, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

I'm excited to be here. Cody, Robert alluded to this, but this is the, basically the juiced ball era for football. The last eight years, I think scoring has increased seven times. It's unbelievable. The most touchdowns in history were scored last year, I think it was the second most points ever. But what intrigues me going into 2019

is what defense can do to stop that. And I think that the Super Bowl was really interesting because not everybody has Bill Belichick, not everybody has that personnel, but they did, I mean, it is objectively true that that was a defensive struggle

against a really high-powered offense. Are there lessons that teams can take from the Patriots and from that game going into 2019 schematically? I do, you know, I went back and I watched the game, and really all he did is he stayed in,

what would be what most people would assume as a nickel, a four-down nickel, you know, with Chung as kind of that nickelbacker onto the tied end. And then instead, what he did is he left Van Hoy, who's kind of that outside linebacker being hybrid, instead of taking a true will linebacker who's meant to be in the box, all they did was, I call it walk.

So they just walked the will linebacker up to the line, and it created a four, basically a six one look. And what they did is they just played with the secondary they're in the different ways depending on what they're doing. So if you look at it, just in terms of what the Rams are trying to do with it, the Rams are very zone-centric team. They're going to do a lot of window dressings with what I call pop or quick motions. And they basically were like, we're going to have overhangs on both sides of the ball.

We're going to clog up the middle, and you're not going to be able to block one of these guys, whichever way you go. And I think the one takeaway that you could take away from Billichick is that in the modern game, you have to be adaptive almost every single week. And I think this is something that I see at the lower levels where we're seeing different offenses every week. And so now you're starting to see in the NFL where you get the Rams who are very kind of 11 personnel,

but they're doing a bunch of bells and whistles pre-snap, but they're really just running zone and a bunch of crossing routes. And then the next week you could go and you see a team where, you know, they're like the chiefs where they're running basically spread sets every single play from the gun. and they're motioning and doing things like that. So being adaptive and being able to say, hey, we're going to make you left-handed,

I think a lot of people can take that away. So when you're looking at, I was reading your book yesterday, and it's called hybrids, and it's really just about a evolution of modern defense, but just kind of how the positional lines have started to blur. And I think that Patriots are such a good example of that, when you consider Van Nuoy, when you consider High Tower,

how they use those guys. So if you were kind of looking at those blurring lines of certain positions, whether it's big nickel or how you make a front, if you were kind of building your defensive personnel right now, what are kind of the lesser-known positions or the positions we don't talk about enough that you would really focus on? Well, it's a position that if you,

basically if you look at Sabin and Billet-Chic, they call it a moneybacker, and it's not really a will linebacker in the sense of that the old-school, kind of he's in the box, but he's halfway out of the box kind of guy. He's a guy that is a linebacker, that can match up with a tight end. And they do a lot of different things to cover him up

to make sure that he's not having to plug the A-Gap, which is usually what their Mike linebacker, or what they call the MAC, is meant to do. And I think that position, more than anything else, is going to be kind of the most critical going forward. Because what you can do, anybody can play with the nickel. You can always find a safety that plays really well down and can kind of be a zone man in the slot.

You can find a third corner who can man up on a slot. But it's kind of that linebacker matching the tight-in. You know, it used to be you needed a linebacker to match the running back. Well, as we find, you know, now in the modern NFL, it's basically running back by committee anymore. And so, you know, there's very few running backs that are just going to carry the load. And so you, instead of having a linebacker that can match up with a back, now you need a linebacker who can match up with a tight-in.

And I think the money-backer is what a lot of guys column, that piece right there going forward into the future is going to become even more critical because everybody kind of knows what nickel is. But now this is going one step further and kind of even making your linebacker a hybrid player as well. So what kind of player is that? Is that somebody that traditionally would have been more of a strong safety? Is it just an undersized linebacker?

If you're looking for the prototype in terms of kind of size and skill set, where would you look for that? I always, you know, I'm from Big 12 country. I grew up, I grew up in Kansas City, and then I've always, you know, I've been around Texas my whole life. So the Texas, Oklahoma, you know, you look at a guy like Roy William, who was probably a decade too early. You know, he was a guy that could have basically was a big nickel who really could play the money backer now. That's around 225, 2.30, runs around, you know, runs at 4, 5, 4, 6, is athletic enough to guard, a hybrid tight end, but it's physical and, enough to sit inside the box.

You know, those kind of guys is going forward is kind of the ones, you know, the edge rusher guy has become such a big deal, but it's really not that. It's going to be the guy who's in the box that's going to be stressed when he's in a trip's formation or is going to have to guard these hybrid tight ends that can either put their hand down or line up as a receiver. You know, so it's a guy that is kind of an every-down linebacker. It's not a specialty guy. and it's somebody that can be in there every week,

that, yeah, he has the girth and the size to play inside the box, but he's also technically gifted enough that he can play a little bit in coverage, especially against his bigger tight end. Is there somebody that sticks out to you now that's in the league currently? I'm trying to see. There's a guy for Atlanta. I'm trying to remember what his name is. Dion Jones.

Yes, kind of that. I think he's the one when I was doing research for the hybrid. His name came up over and over and over again. of kind of that guy that can play every, kind of every down. And it doesn't matter if it's third down. They don't have to sub-pack it's that guy. And if he needs to guard the tight-in, you can guard the tight-in.

And he's fast enough to run down, you know, run-down, a running back, or, you know, guard the tight-in. You're not losing side. You know, Cody, you mentioned Big 12 country. One of the defining characteristics of modern football right now is the fact that ideas can trickle up instead of down. And that wasn't the case, maybe even five, ten years ago. I remember reporting last year and guys were saying that, you know, when they came into the league, you know, just a few years ago, you would never look to college for offensive schemes and now they do it all the time. And I feel like defenses are going to start to evolve.

And everyone kind of jokes about Big 12 defense and college defensive coordinators and how often they just play quarters and don't even look at anything. But is there a defensive scheme that really jumps out and impresses you that maybe NFL teams might try to copy from the collegiate game? You have to think about what the NFL is. And so you can't just go from A to Z. You're going to have to evolve. And the thing is about defense, and I've said this before on several different things, but defense is a, it takes time to get good at defense. That's why most of the coordinators in the NFL are older guys.

They're established guys. You know, you can come in easily on offense and be a young guy and be aggressive and things like that. It's kind of, that's how offense works. Stephens is reactionary. It's learned over repetitions. You have to see, even as a D.C., you have to see multiple reps before you start seeing the game in the way that you need to. So defensive coordinators tend to be a little older than their offensive counterparts. And so you have to think about how can these older guys look at kind of the newer things that are going in college and be able to match those pieces in with what they're doing.

And I think at least in the big 12, I think what you're seeing out of Texas with Orlando. Now, Orlando learned his defense from Miranda. So you get a lot of what's going on at LSU, a lot of what's going on at Texas. I think what I think what Kirby Smart is doing at Georgia and his modifications to the saving system. I think those are some places that I would look to to start seeing some things emulate. Now, do I think that you're going to see the odds stack in the NFL, maybe on a third and long when they're trying to bring some pressure, three safety look? But I think with what you're seeing with the air rate infusion into the NFL is that you're right,

you're going to start seeing some things, but it's not going to be a night and day difference like offense. It's going to be a kind of a slower burn of how can we slowly modify to catch up? Because defense, like I said, they're older established guys. They're probably a little bit more close-minded. And so those three in particular are probably guys that I would look to. A couple schematic specifics from those guys that you think are applicable to the NFL. What would those be? I think primarily the mint front versus, and the mint front is nothing more than

basically two D-ends that are clogging the B-Gap. You have your traditional three-four nose, which is zeroed up on the center, and he's basically a two-out player depending on game plan. But what it allows you to do is it keeps you, the MET front is really a four-down front in the window dressing of a three-down front. You still are going to have that fourth rusher,

and he's going to be, and that gives you, every NFL team has an edge rusher. They've got their pass rush specialist, that hybrid outside linebacker that you can say has been there since the days of LT. So I think that front in particular, because what it does is if you watch, if you watch guys like Georgia or Texas or LSU, the Irrando Orlando Smart, they can, that easily allows them to get into kind of their four down and their three down. and it gives them kind of that multiplicity that you would not necessarily have if you were to really rigid and you said, no, we're a four down

or no, we're a two-gapping three-four. Hey, Cody, when you look at defenses in the NFL, I think everyone talks about Belichick or the Pete Carroll system, a couple other guys there. Is there anyone you think whose schemes are really, really good that who's underrated and maybe not talked about as much just because maybe they don't have the dominant defense? I mean, everyone sits here and talks about Wade Phillips

and sort of the established names. But is there a guy who you say, wow, this guy actually has the right idea, but we just don't talk about him as an elite DC? I do like what Zimmer has done being a guy, anybody that is willing to change what they're doing, to match what they're seeing, and has been, and over the past couple years,

Minnesota's had really good defense. They've been able to keep most of our players. And I think now the game has changed instead of working front to back, you have to work back to front, meaning that the secondary is probably the most important. part of your defense as you work forward. Obviously, running the ball is always going to be something that

really any coach is going to say we've got to be able to run the ball. But I think that because we're in such a quarterback-led league and really an era, and it's so past-centric, you have to start with secondary work front. I think Zimmer has shown with the secondary that he has as being able to adapt his scheme to the modern game and kind of have some success. I like what the new head coach for for the Broncos did with the Bears and two, it intrigues me

he's going to get upset now. I know, it's going to make me so sad. The Bears fan in me, it just makes me die a little bit inside every single time I remember that he's gone. Well, and see, and that's why he knows how to deal with elite ed rushers. He worked with, he worked under Nagy, who is, I think, you know, he's considered

one of the better offensive coordinators. You watch, he's got a young quarterback, what he did with his office scheme, he defends that. He worked with him every single day. And now he's going into a system or a conference with Kansas City

that runs kind of a similar type scheme that you're seeing that new kind of NFL offense. And I think he's somebody that I would look, I would look forward to seeing next year. And I think a lot of people looked at just kind of the coverages they ran and how complex they were and just how many

combo coverages and the pattern match stuff and everything else. When it comes to coverages and when it comes to just how you're going to use your defensive backs against more of these air raid type systems, are there a couple just kind of old, liables, establish things that you can go to over and over again, that you feel like it should kind of be the basis of what teams do on the back end? Yeah, there's a concept called one cross, and it depends on who you talk to,

but really what it is, you're basically creating layers. in the defense, even though you're in man coverage, but you're going to have a safety basically cut the crosser because you're going to be, because that's what the air raid and kind of this modern passing game has done is they're trying to poke holes in the middle of the field. So it's no different than in the early 2000s with the Tampa 2. Everybody's trying to run that post rounds to the middle of the field, beat the mic back or deep. Kind of the cover three stuff, everybody's trying to hit the scene.

Well, what are higher completion throws? there are throws that are coming back into the inside. It allows the quarterback to see it earlier and throw it to the guy open. I worked under Art Biles at Baylor, and I was a defensive GA under Phil Bennett. And so one of the things, they didn't have a route tree. It was this kind of, this is where you need to end up, but if you're open, run to the open space. And I think that's where you're seeing more of the modern passing game is just trying to run open space. So one cross is basically taking a safety, and he's dropping down into the intermediate zone,

which is kind of that zone right above the linebackers, and he's going to collect anything running across the field. And I think that concept more often than not, you're going to start seeing instead of those safeties like you saw kind of in the early thousands when everybody got big on those Tampa teams in the 90s, when everybody kind of got bigger and my power, you start getting that box safety. You're going to start seeing two true safeties, but you don't know which one's going to drop down

at that intermediate zone to collect us crosser. So if that's the answer for the defense, then what is the answer for the offense? It seems like teams would be kind of susceptible to getting beat down the field if you're going to play like that. Is that am I wrong there? Well, yeah, so really what it is you, the defense has to mix up the looks between two high and one high.

So you don't always know. I think you're going to see more post-nap stimming. You know, you talk to quarterback coaches or off of the coordinators. They want a clean picture. pre-snap. They don't and they, you know, they don't like it when it moves post-snap. So I think for offenses is trying to, you know, you

play that guessing game of where is the space and who's the uncapped defender? Just a cap is a term used by offensive guys to say, you have somebody over the top of your cap. So if we run a vertical into this zone, they've got a guy sitting there. So if you

think about true quarters coverage, you've got four guys going deep. If you're just talking about country zones, which is basically spot drop old school. You learned it back when you first started playing football. Then you look at cover two. Well, you can only cap two receivers because you've got two guys running deep. So in single high, everybody's kind of man,

but it's who are those guys that are deep. And it's finding those areas of space in the intermediate where guys aren't capped or running guys underneath of these zones. Because if you watch the NFL, I mean, those guys are 25, 30 yards deep in coverage. those safeties, but they can be because they're so fast. And two, the receivers are fast, and they have to, they have to protect the vertical. So I think you need, as I think what you're going to see is guys slowly start working back towards, towards the line of scrimmage and that kind of, finding who's uncapped

and attacking those open spaces. You know, one of the things I've talked about with NFL types and some of the college guys in the past is in an, you know, basically a decade of unlimited passing, what lower levels start to do changes. And my question is, are the athletes getting different? Are they changing at the back end because they know they, because you guys know the defensive backs are just tasked with so much now. I mean, I think so much of what we're seeing now in the NFL is because seven-on-sevens,

you know, 15 years ago kind of exploded. That really benefited the accuracy of the quarterback, the sort of one-on-one matchups with the wide receivers. I think they benefited, but the defensive backs didn't really benefit. or anything going on at the lower levels, whether that's the athletes, where that's the techniques you guys are using, that in five,

six, seven years is going to show up at the NFL level, Cody? Well, I think, too, like, you equated to the often the coordinator's kind of being these young guys.

Well, what did they grow up playing football? They grew up playing spread offense. Yeah. Early 2000s, heyday of the 10 personnel spread. They see a four wide receivers, you're just,

you're hucking and chucking, right? The true air raid stuff. So what are all these guys, kind of my generation of guys, that are coming up in it. What all do we learn running? And it's going to be zone coverage.

And it's going to be kind of that zone match coverage of not country coverage where we're spot dropping and all our eyes are on a quarterback, but kind of that hybrid man and zone kind of pattern matching that you're seeing. And I think as guys come up in it, you're going to start seeing the kind of the trickle up of zone. Because in the NFL, it's a much, it's a space league now. It's a space sport. You're trying to get guys in space so that they can make a move

and basically my athlete's better than your athlete. It's no different in the NBA. It's no different if you're watching soccer. Guys are trying to get wide width or they're trying to compact and then they're trying to beat you to space, either outside or inside, wherever that space is. And I think with kind of learning quarters

and even the kind of the stuff that, ironically, that was created by Bill Belichick, and Nick Saban in the mid-90s of pattern-matching zones that you can have these structures, but you're not necessarily playing man. You know, it's not cat coverage where my cat's better than your cat. So I think that's what you're going to see.

So just walk me through a couple more of the finer points of pattern matching because I feel like that is definitely kind of the buzzword when it comes to how defenses are playing on the back end. So what would you say are kind of the basic tenets of playing that type of defense? that kind of mix between man and zone, but what are kind of the finer things that some

teams that aren't coached by Bill Belichick and Nick Saban maybe don't get right all the time? So the NFL is a middle of the field league, meaning that everything is set in the middle of the field. If you were to walk on to a high school, most people have gone to a high school game, most people have gone to a college game, and they've gone to an NFL game.

So you understand that the hash is in the NFL are directly in the middle of the field. So you're basically playing in the middle of the field all the time. Then you add on to kind of the old school, offense where you are running a route tree, that these routes are going to landmarks on the field and they are breaking at certain spot. So you then have defenses that are designed zone-wise, which are pure zones, meaning that the eyes are on the quarterback and we're dropping to a spot.

This is what's called a country coverage. So if I'm keeping my eyes on the quarterback and I'm dropping to a spot, I kind of have an idea by personnel and formation where different routes are going to break. break. So I'm working to that spot. Because remember, in the NFL, everything is from the middle of the field. So you have an idea. That's what a country coverage is. It's just old school. I'm dropping to an area. The curl I know is going to be here. The hook is going to be here. If I get a dig, I know it's going to run right over here. And so everything is kind of built on a spot. Like you said, with the advent of seven-off seven, quarterbacks are better. They're more accurate. If you're running country

coverages, the receivers are now taught to just sit in the window and the quarterbacks know right where these spots are. So they're able to just kind of laser beam you to death, which, as we know, we have most quarterbacks in the NFL can throw into a window. So where does zone matching come in? Well, zone matching is I'm working to a man. I'm matching and I'm carrying that man until somebody does something else. and so what it does is it doesn't totally put you into man-to-man coverage,

meaning that I don't have to take this guy everywhere, and maybe I'm not as great of an athlete as him, so he's going to beat me more times than not. What this does is it protects you from the different route combinations. As they cross each other, we will now switch, and now I will assume control of him when he's in my zone, and I will carry and deliver him to the next man. So what the challenges of that?

What would you say are the things that people have the hardest time picking up? Because that, I mean, it just seems like it would take so much continuity, communication, reliability, time. I mean, that feels like a really difficult thing to get right quickly. Right. So, and two, don't forget there are different variations of these zones. So you have orders, which is basically, you know, really orders anymore in his own pattern. and zone matching is going to be man. That's essentially what it's a safe man.

Cover two, which most people know is the corner stays on the flat, the linebacker stays in the coral, and then the safety takes a deep path. Well, if you run like a read cover two, you know, there's different rules for different things. So most people, when, and coaches, when they, if they don't run quarters or they don't run zone matching or pattern matching is that they, it's front-loaded pedagogy-wise.

If I'm going to teach it, it's going to take more up front. But once you teach the basic schematics, then you can start taking interchangeable parts. Whereas in a country coverage, it is very rigid. You are going to drop here no matter what. You are going to drop here, no matter what. Whereas in pattern mapping, you know that there's rules. And so it's almost like if one does this, then I do this. If one does this, I do this.

And so it takes longer to teach up front. But once you've taught it, it can be much more adaptive than the rigid spot dropping country coverage. Cody, the defining characteristic of probably the McVeigh offense, the Shanahan offense, and all the things that have seemed to take over the NFL is to play action pass. There was a little bit of buzz about some of the defenses. Bill Belichick certainly did it. Even Matt Patricia did it. they had some success against those teams last year.

And maybe one of those things was just ignoring the play action in general. But when you think about stopping the play action pass, and by the way, it seems like there's no stop in the play action pass when you look at the numbers, is there anything schematically that NFL teams can learn about how to just even begin approaching stopping play action? Well, I think if you look at what Bill Belichick did against the Rams in the Super Bowl, is he created nothing, but there was one way that that running back could go. And it was through the Agat to the Mike Linebacker. And if you talk to a lot of defensive guys, most of them will tell you,

there's really not a lot of place in the Agat. There's not unless you're an offense that is just truly trying to hit right smack dab in the middle of the formation. Most guys are trying to attack the edges of the box. and so if you know that, then you can kind of set your box up to where I've got guys for every gap and then everybody else is going to take the receivers.

So your eyes are going to be on the receivers. This is where kind of the man matching principles come in. So there's like you have zone matching, which is what I talked about, the pattern matching. We're still going to, we're going to zone off at a certain point or we're not going to carry a route if it's underneath a certain point. Or you're going to get these man matching where I'm, really looking at my guy. If my guy does this, then I know I've got to take this guy,

and then once I've got that guy, I take them all the way. And so I think it's kind of building your defense where you have guys that are in the box and guys that are out of the box. And those guys that are out of the box, they are 100% on the past, and they will rally to the football if it is a run. And I think separating and creating a defense where I have guys out and I have guys in, and everybody knows that they're in or out, those are the guys and those are the defenses that are going to be able to kind of counter that play action. So, though, I mean, obviously, that's an antidote to the Shanahan-McVeigh side of things, which a lot of teams are doing.

But if we're looking at kind of the best offense in the NFL last year and the MVP of the league, if you're looking at what the Chiefs did last season, if you were building a game plan to stop Patrick Mahomes right now, where would you start? I mean, you have to start first with containing them in the box because he makes, He makes so many plays on his feet, and he's able to kind of, you know, throw any direction. He's one of the few, you know, I'm a big, I'm a big Denver Bronco guy. So, I mean, I remember watching Elway roll all the way the opposite. I would feel him to throw it completely on the opposite side.

And he's got that kind of armstring. And so for me, it's just trying to find ways to contain him and confuse him with pressure. I think, you know, being able to get him to move in a direction, maybe he doesn't want to. And, you know, as you saw, he's kind of almost ambidextrous in the way that he throws. So the basic system of trying to attack a guy like that is take away what he wants to do the most. So who's the guy he relies on? Who's his security blanket and take that away from him? Try to make him left-handed.

I think what you saw with like golf in the Super Bowl was the Patriots would just wait until the last second and then they would adjust into their defense so that McVeigh couldn't talk. to couldn't talk to golf during the play. And I think you kind of have to do that a little bit with a guy who you want to sit and make, give the illusion that you're in something and then completely change it post-knap. Hey, Cody. When you study defense and if you're, if, you know, to the listener who wants to get smarter about defense, obviously they can read your book, what other things helped you in

your development just as far as learning about it? What other books should people learn? because I think what's happening now is that there's so much talk about offensive evolution. Mays and I are probably part of the cause of that, just because we write so much about offenses.

There's almost no talk where I'm actually going to tackle a project this training camp about defense, and I'll probably be calling you, quite frankly. But if people want to get more information about just schematics, where would you recommend they start? Start with a scheme. Start with a, do...

what you want to do. And then there's plenty of information out there on almost anything. I think if you look at where are we today, I think anything that you can read about Bill Arnsparter and what he did with really the flex front or the 53 defense, that's kind of the structure of modern football. I think Bill Belichick and Nick Saban gave us modern coverage, but he really set the tone.

Arnzparter really set the tone for what a modern defense is going to be. I think if you want to look at what, like, I want to learn more about Bill Belichick's defense. Obviously, you can watch, try and learn as much as you can about Nick Saven. Now, they're not exactly the same. They both do different things, but they're running a very similar style of defense. So you kind of have a big picture of that.

And there's plenty of resources on multiple different websites. There's not just one that you can choose. And really, I always tell people, if you really want to learn something, you need to, especially football, is you need to watch the game. And don't watch the ball. Watch what everybody's doing up front. It's going to take you, you know, watch every level. First watch what the line's doing, then watch what the linebackers doing,

then watch what the field and the boundaries. So you almost have to watch it five, six times a play, and then you move on. And it's kind of a, I think that's what people talk about when they're trying to learn football. it takes a lot to learn it first because there's so many different moving parts, but the best way to learn it is really to kind of start drawing things up and watching it and kind of breaking it down on your own. If you really, really want to become a nerd about defense, is pick a defense that you want to learn about or somebody that you want to learn about

and really start watching their games and rewinding and watching, what are they trying to do against this formation and kind of drawing it up or kind of going through it in your head. So looking at the lower levels of football and kind of what you guys are having to tackle now, what's happening in college, as we look forward to this NFL season, what kind of concept or difficult to defend thing do you feel like might trickle up into the NFL this year that you guys have had to deal with in the past? I think what Lincoln Riley is doing at at OU is kind of the future of offense. I think with what 12 personnel has become, I think at the college level, having a fullback and committing an entire scholarship to that kid

is just not, you're not going to get the equity in the end. It's not efficient unless that is the offense you are going to run. It's kind of like kickers. Most kickers don't get a scholarship when they walk on campus. They have to earn that scholarship. Most kickers are walk-ons for the first year. that they kick actually, unless you're just ungodly or you're from Australia and they want you to punt.

So what a lot, you know, I kind of equate the fullback to that. So what does that mean for the fullback? Well, it's now shifted to two different types of tight ends. And it's funny, and I wrote this in hybrids about how football cyclical. Well, back when LT hit, everybody started shifting more towards a 12 personnel. set. You had a blocking tight in and a receiving tight in, and your blocking tight in was called the H or the

U, and he would move back and forth, and he would just move to wherever the hybrid D-end was. Well, and your in-line tight-in, or the guy with the hand down, he was your pass-catching tight-in. He would go down the field or he could use a block. Well, if you watch what Lincoln Riley does, is he's got basically 12 personnel, and he's got a

blocking tight-in, and he's got a receiving tight-in. And that receiving tight-in is almost, he's almost like a receiver. He's just a big receiver that if he does come close to the line or he does put his hand down, he can at least block with some help. And I think the difficulty with that is that now it's kind of like what Gronk has done forever.

He's just going to go line up there and then what are you going to do? You're going to go put a five-nine corner on him? And then what's he going to do? He's just going to play basketball. And so I think that's kind of the evolution. I think you're going to see more of, and I think what you're going to see is more of that trickle up. I think in the NFL, they can easily find a fullback.

I think if you watch, you know, Shanahan uses a fullback. The Patriots obviously went 21 personnel, but I think it's indicative of what the league's doing. More and more people are running nickel packages, which means everybody is lighter. So what do you do is you put a guy in there? What Shanahan has is a guy like, is it tied in that can catch the ball? And he can run like he's a receiver.

And same thing with Gronk and the Patriots. He can line up a receiver. And so that puts a lot more pressure on, the defense. So the ability to run, because you have a blocking back in there, but then the ability to have matchup issues with a basically a massive wide receiver, I think that's kind of where you can get. And then the ability to run zone and to run gap plays, which is your power and your counter with alignment pulling. I think that is kind of where the future and the trickle up is going to be. that is offensive are going to come much more multiple. And so I wish you think you say that because one of the guys I liked most in the draft

was Trevon Wesco, the tight end from West Virginia, who's just like a blocking monster, but you can also put him at fullback. I mean, so it's just, that's one of my favorite positions right now. It's just that guy who can do a little bit of both. It's your fullback and your hback that you just move around. And trust me, no one in the world wants to hear there should be more 12 personnel than this guy.

So hearing you say that makes me very, very happy. Yeah, I really think that you're right. I mean, if you go and you look at what it done, in early 2000s, you had just, you had almost too much spread. It was all 10 personnel, and people were realizing, well, we can't run the ball. If you don't run the ball, you're basically a three-point shooting team, meaning that if you're not, if you don't have a bunch of good three-point shooters, like, look what happened to, look what happened to us.

Two dudes, they couldn't shoot anymore, they lost. And I think it comes down to that is that more and more teams. And I'll never forget this. At Baylor, when we went to 11 personnel and we put that blocking tight, in, basically a glorified offensive tackle in the backfield, it changed the offense completely. It was even more explosive because now you have to honor that an extra guy in the box. And I think that's why 12 personnel with now you can find these hybrid tight ends that can play a receiver. I think that's really where it's going to be because now you can run the ball,

but now you also have a guy that's a matchup monster for defenses and they have to figure out what they're going to do. Awesome. Again, this was fantastic. I can tell you I learned a significant amount as Kevin said, we talk a lot about offense on this show. So it's nice to actually pivot a little bit once in a while. To be clear, to be clear, offenses will resume next week. We will just keep you back to offense next week. We will just continue to talk about offense, but it's nice to have a little variety. Absolutely.

Cody, thank you so much for the time, man. Really appreciate it. Yeah, anytime, guys. Awesome. Thanks, Cody. All right, guys. As always, thank you so much for listening to the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. We will be back next week with our next big picture show. We'll talk to you.

Thank you.