The Ringer NFL Show - “Will NFL Defenses Ever Be Able to Stop Quarterbacks?”

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Kevin is joined by ESPN’s Domonique Foxworth to discuss the origins of the league's offensive boom and how defenses have to game plan against today’s explosive offenses. Then Kevin speaks with Pro Football Focus’s Seth Galina about their favorite defensive coordinator and the different schemes used in today’s NFL.  Host: Kevin Clark  Guests: Domonique Foxworth and Seth Galina Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So you drafted a fantasy football team. Big deal. Ooh, wow, good job. Drafting is only half the battle. A month from now, you're going to wake up, check your team, and see that your three best players are hurt. Now what? You need to play the waivers, make trades,

know who to start, and that's what we're here for. We're coming to you four times a week during the regular season to give you everything you need to win your league and dominate your group chat. Search for the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and subscribe. It is the Ringar NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast. I'm Kevin Clark, amazing show today. We're doing another deep dive, and it's into one big question.

How, if at all, can defenses ever fight back against the wave of new offenses, new quarterbacks, the young quarterbacks, do deep dive not only into what those defenses can do to, I guess, fight back, but also what these young quarterbacks, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, even a little Justin Fields talk, what those guys do to defenses and basically how the game has changed over the past. decade. Really cool analysis, both big picture and specific from Dominic Foxworth, who I think is one of the smartest guys in football.

He's an ESPN analyst. He's a longtime NFL player. He's on Fridays with Bomine Jones on Beaumani's podcast. And then Seth Galena from Pro Football Focus joins us, and we get very, very, very dorky about schemes that work going forward, best DCs in the league, some real heavy scheme talk. I think you're going to enjoy. Let's get to Dominic. All right.

Dominic Foxworth, ESPN analyst. NFL defensive back. Smartest guy I know. You're going to say that nonsense. We both know that it is BS. I mean, I appreciate it. I mean, blowing smoke up my ass feels nice. I like it.

I'm into it. Don't yuck my yum. However, there are smarter people. There are smarter people, but I can't get them on a podcast. Bill Belichick is smarter. Bill Belichick, Andy Reid. I don't know.

I mean, intelligence is weird because we like accept IQ. as like some sort of measure of intelligence when intelligence can be a number of different things. And I don't know. Bill Belichick is a one-trick pony. How socially intelligent do you think Bill Belichick is? Wow. You're just going right at him.

I mean, I'm saying like, we... I will give him football genius. But what else has he done? I mean, is he a renaissance man? I think he knows a lot about like wars, weird wars, I think is this thing. It's one of his things. Okay, that's memory. That's not intelligence.

That's not like, that's not like computational. ability like a five yo can memorize stuff. Like I'm talking about give them some input and then see what they spit out with that input. Now we're talking. All right. So we're going to tackle a very big subject here and it's going to go in a bunch of different directions. And I'm really excited about this. We're basically doing can defenses ever catch up to offenses ever again?

And there's a short answer to this and a long answer to this. The short answer is no. But the long answer is kind of. And I want to start here, Dominique, with the big question because you can, it is actually kind of remarkable to trace when you came into the league in 2005 to now. And part of this, you know, we're in the age of Mahomes, Lamar, Josh Allen, whomever. We're still in the age of Tom Brady. But part of this started when you were playing. You were in the NFL still. You were battling injury in 2011, but that was the year of the scoring boom. And the year everything, I mean,

there are just so many things we're going to get into it that changed. But if you were to pinpoint and just sort of speak broadly on what changed with you, you know, you're going to defenses since you came into the NFL to now, you'd go where? I mean, the expectations change for defense. So, like, everybody's reacting to the other side of the ball. So you see that happening all the time. But it feels like the defense has been forced to be defensive for the last decade plus, where no longer does the offense have to react to defensive innovations.

Because not only are the offenses innovating a little bit, But the rules are also changing, and no rules change to make things easier for the defense. The defense is competing against both of those things, which is not totally bad for defenders. Like it makes it harder to do the job, but then it also makes the people who are capable of doing the job harder to find and also more valuable. So I don't know. I'm not what was me about defense, but I think we need to take into account the fact that everything, which I think we do, that everything is kind of stacked up against the defenders to perform, specifically defensive backs.

Like it's never been more difficult. I'm certainly not going to, never going to be one of these old guys that like went back in my day. Because I watch the game now, and I'm like, I mean, I guess maybe I could play in the league, but it's so much harder now than it was back then, just with the volume of passes and the complexity of the passing game. Okay. So when I go around the league and you've had this.

conversations too and he lived it quite frankly and I say what happened with the scoring boom what happened where it just started and never stopped and some of that is scheme some of that's just coaches knowing to use play action emotion and RPO's I mean if you look at it's never been easier to play quarterback and I wrote this a couple of years ago but essentially like the RPO turned very mediocre quarterbacks into having the same numbers as Steve Young right and then you have illegal contact and the emphasis on that and just the past interference of how much they can do it you opening up the middle of the field. Eliminating those hits.

I remember reading a book called Paper Line years ago, and they talked about how in the 50s, if you went in over the middle of the field, they called it the pit, you never went in again. You went over once, you got hit and you never went in. And now quarterbacks can make a living off of it.

And then you add in, even like the internet is so important. Kevin Spancy was talking about this couple of weeks ago with me. The internet's so important where if you want to steal a play, you just can now. And you just have to go and clinic for two weeks. with a team to install some of the stuff.

And now you can just kind of Google it for an hour. And you haven't even touched on the fact that quarterbacks aren't scared anymore. Like, we can't hit quarterbacks. So like the James Winston penalty was outrageous. Like, you can't even touch them. Yes. So if you were to pinpoint some of those things I just said and said, okay, this is the main reason.

What are you circling? I think honestly, I would say none of the above. I think the main. reason is is coaches being less stupid. You know? I think I think that was the big one is them accepting or them moving away from like the hyper masculine, we're going to outtuck you pound the rock and moving more in a direction of efficiency. And I think it's interesting because the way that I kind of view the NFL and comparing it to college really helps you clear this up or it really helps to bring to crystallize

the dynamics that have developed in the league. It's like the NFL, if you think of it like an ecosystem, it's a closed ecosystem. It's a, it's a cartel, you know? And so they are in competition, but it's really a co-opetition, where they're cooperating in their in competition. So like in the open market and a true capitalist system,

and you as a follower of European football, can understand this also with the relegation as a dynamic, is in America, all companies have to compete to survive. And because of that, you get innovation and you see it in college. So college is like, all right, if we don't win, we're not going to be able to recruit. We can't raise money. We can't raise money. We can't win.

It's a cycle that exists. And so we go out on the field and we are outmatched. They have better players than us. Man, we better try something crazy. We're going to try, 50 teams are going to try something crazy. and 48 of them, it's not going to work. For two of them, it's going to work. And then that's evolution.

If you think about like giraffes, the first giraffes had shorter necks, and then the ones survived because their necks were a little bit longer. Like most of the giraffes died off because they couldn't reach food. Then those ones are able to reproduce. And then you get more and more. And that's how innovation works. And in the NFL, what is the punishment for stinking? You make hundreds of millions of dollars.

in the value of your franchise triples. That's the punishment for stinking. Like the Browns, you can look at them. You can look at Jacksonville. You can look at a bunch of teams, the Raiders. Over long stretches were terrible, and they was getting kicked up. They weren't getting relegated. Their business, they weren't going out of business.

They were, frankly, getting rewarded for it. Like, you get the number one draft pick if you stink. And so, like, that creates a dynamic that does not push you to try innovative things. And that's why we see innovations trickling up from college and not trickling down. down from the league. So I think that speaks to why we finally have finally embraced the most obvious thing. Quarterbacks with athleticism are better than quarterbacks without athleticism. And it's something weird that instinctively makes sense. But because of what exists and because of whatever other biases there are out there, we've ended up in a situation where

somehow we convinced ourselves. And I mean, I'm saying we, but obviously not. smart people like me and you, but lots of people convince themselves that like, oh, being able to do more stuff, that's bad. We don't want to do that. You know, like being more dynamic, more versatile, that's bad. And now I think coaches and teams have accepted the reality that, frankly, they would have been forced to accept a long time ago if they were in college, because you saw a college team figured out. Like, there aren't enough people that can sit in the pocket and pass. and we can't beat teams, like the lower rank or the less talented teams, I guess. Like, we can't beat those guys if we try to be like them.

So we try something different. So I think that that's the most important thing. And then they learn like, hey, you know the best down to throw the ball? First down. And they started to figure that out. And when I was coming up watching football and even part of the time when I was in the league, like those philosophies, like we got to establish the run. We got to win on first down.

with a running play. Oh, we can't have a quarterback who can run. That's going to hurt us. Like, those things are going extinct, and it's taken a while, and it's not because of the like natural selection dynamics that I think exist in other professional settings. So it's funny you mentioned the trickling up. And it's something that we've obviously talked about a lot. I've written about it. I remember doing a story a couple of years ago on the 10th anniversary of the Dolphins Wildcat, and they had to show Arkansas film, obviously, because they stole that from Arkansas. And I remember there are a couple of the guys were just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't watch college film here at the NFL level. And now it seems like, you know, once a month

or some play being directly stolen from it and then catches on and all that stuff. You talked about coaches becoming less stupid. Take me through the process of when you think that started to happen. And when was the sea change where that all became accepted? I mean, I think the internet has a lot to do with it. I think there's a, there's always a good cop out. Whenever anybody asks you why something changed, you can point to social media. Like, you can point to it like anything in our society now that it's different now than it was 15, 20 years ago.

Yeah. You're like, hey, Facebook did it. Twitter did it. The advent of social media. But I think that's part of it is that there are more voices and diversity matters. And this is not, I'm not turning it into some other conversation about black quarterbacks or anything else, but like not even diversity of like nationality or ethnic background. Obviously, that matters, but diversity of opinion and experience.

And in the past, there were pre-social media. There were a couple of networks, maybe 25 total people who had the platform to talk about football. And then there were all the coaches on other teams. And so then the teams would go out there and they would do the same old traditional, stupid stuff. and the broadcasters and the commentators would come out there and echo those talking points. And then we all sit at home and be like, yeah, that's football. That's the way it works. And then there were a couple of other voices out there who were looking at this like, hey, you know, this is stupid.

But nobody would listen to them. And now we've moved to a world where the people who are like, hey, that's stupid, are listened to. And then we're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. That's stupid. like the three-point thing. And basketball is the most obvious analogy because it's so stark how stupid that was. You know, like, we grew up playing basketball.

You got to get it in the post, establish the big man. Like, that is equivalent to establishing the run type of thing. And then somebody looked up and said, you know what, if you shoot threes at this percentage and you get more points, like, it's actually more valuable. And that's the same thing in football. It just took a little while.

Football is a more complex game. It's not necessarily complicated, but it's more complex in the fact that there are frankly 22 games going on at the same time. You know, like basketball, soccer, lacrosse, all the other sports that we watch, even baseball. It's like everybody does everything. And football, only one dude can play quarterback. And you're never asking him to do the same things that you ask your defensive tackle to do. You know, so like the complexity of the game, I think, less. lends it to interesting developments because I'm sorry, I'm rambling a lot, but you set a high bar

for me to be smart, so I'm going to try to meet that bar. But I think that you also think about the dynamics that go into making a specific playwork. And you understand in basketball, like you look at basketball, you look at baseball, you look at how analytics have impacted then. It's made by and large, everyone kind of play the same. But the cool thing about football is that the complexity that exists, it allows you to find market inefficiencies at so many different places. So what we've ended up with now is probably a more diverse league as far as styles of play than we've ever had, you know, and the way that analytics have impacted football have been positive. The way that analytics have impacted basketball and baseball,

I mean, home runs or strikeouts, what you're going to see in every game. And in basketball, you're going to see fast breaks, people run into the corners. Like, it's made kind of a more homogenous type of game, which is a cool thing about football. So it's interesting. There's so many entry points now.

I would say that one thing that gets overlooked, probably because it was a little bit before NFL Twitter and that those two things might be related, is the availability of the All-22 film for everybody. Because, Dominic, when you were playing, I remember in 2011, my colleague at the journal wrote a story about how people were really upset that media members could not get all 22. Now everybody has that. And I don't think you actually can overstate how important that was to the football conversation and driving conversations forward.

You know, like outside, as much as coaches like to pretend that they don't look at stuff, anything, literally anything outside the building, they do. I mean, a good example of this is our now colleague Warren Sharp, a couple of years ago wrote a thing about the first. ability in the Colts play calling. I don't know if you remember that. And I remember everybody in the league was texting me about that, everybody, including within the Colts own building. And I don't think that would have happened 15 years ago. Things just changed. You're right. And it doesn't even matter whether they read it or not. One thing that I've had to get a grip on and understand is we have influence and we have power

in the media. You know, so like whether they watch it or not doesn't matter. It changes the climate around their organization. And it changes the way that they are viewed. And whether team owners or general managers want to be honest about this or not, the way that your fans and the way that the league views the decisions you're making is going to impact the decisions that you're making. So even if you accept that a coach doesn't know anything that's happening, oh well, it don't matter. If we have decided that you are a trash coach and everyone, all the nerds on internet, Twitter, have gotten together and decided you are a trash coach,

you better win or you're losing your job. Yep. Yep. And then also job security then plays into so many different things. I think fourth down aggressiveness is a byproduct in large part of just guys who don't want to lose a job or are totally comfortable. That's why Belichick can make some decisions he makes

not just fourth down, but roster-wise, whatever, Belichick can do whatever he wants. And it's flipped now. It's flip now. Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's flipped now because there was like a hesitance on fourth-down aggressiveness. Right. based on your job security.

Now it feels like, if you don't go more it on manageable fourth downs, then your job security is potentially in trouble. So that is something that, I mean, I feel like I haven't looked at the numbers, but over the last three to five years, I feel like the expectations have changed and the likelihood that people would do that. Like the idea that the Browns would go for it on their first touchdown, I would go for two on their first touchdown of the season.

Like, would no one have batted a eye at that? Can you imagine five years ago if people were going for it on, and that was post-Twitter. But I still think we would have been up in arms, obviously not us, but in general, the general public, what's this guy doing? All right. So we're kind of in the mega quarterback era.

And we're in an era where, as we talked about, it's easier to play than ever, but also these guys are as talented as any crop of young quarterbacks ever. Obviously, that means Patrick Mahomes. That means Lamar Jackson and at their best Josh Allen, at their best, Baker Mayfield. What do those guys do

to put stress on defenses and what kind of adjustments do defenses make? So before Lamar Jackson was drafted, I wrote a piece Meena at times and I worked together on a piece about Lamar Jackson. And I think that put that was the best distillation of what a dual-threat quarterback could do to the defense.

The point of football is to, I mean, that's why they call it chess is because you have to react to your players or you have to react to your opponent. You have to make them wrong, essentially. And when you have a player who has the ability to run, there is no right answer if he also has the ability to pass accurately. So if you watch the Monday night game, they talked about a lot how the, the Raiders played cover three, like 80% of the time.

They don't have a choice. You have to play a zone in order to keep Lamar Jackson in front of you and keep your eyes on a player like that. If you play man, you open yourself up to getting destroyed because everyone's back is to the ball and then they can run. If you blitz, you better take them down because as you see on running plays to running backs, if you miss a tackle into blitz, we're looking at a touchdown because there is no second line at the So it makes you hesitant to blitz. If you're an edge rusher, you saw this a couple of times in that game. If you rush a little too hard and your front, your inside tackles are not pushing the pocket back,

then you have opened up the lane. So you're slowing down the edge rushes. And if you are doing, and if you force them to play zone, then zone, the RPO is designed to kill zone. Because there's no right answer in that, especially since the refs aren't calling a legal man downfield. like they stopped calling that a couple years ago. So there is no answer to it. So that's what I mean. And if you think back to like Peyton Manning,

maybe, or not maybe, he's one of the best quarterbacks of all time. But you saw him struggle in the playoffs and struggle in certain situations if you could get pressure on him, if you didn't have the blitz to slow him down. Because there is no answer to that. Like if you force Peyton Manning to run, you've won. If you force him to tuck it, you've won.

So that, I think that is the, challenging part is there is no, when there is no answer, like you kind of have to hope that they beat themselves. And that's kind of what we saw happen with Amar is he refused to take the checkdowns. Because the checkdowns were there, four or five yards every down. He could have took them. Or he could throw those outside comebacks because cover three, you can't stop a double vertical with a comeback on outside or try to eat up the seam if they're carrying the scene player. So like there is, when you have a player like that, there's an answer to every problem without calling the right play is the thing.

It's like you don't have to call the right play because they are so versatile. They make your offense. You saw Kyler on Sunday and people were making fun of, yeah, people were like, just jokingly being like, great play designed by Cliff and it was just Kyler taking the snap, getting under pressure, running around for 20

seconds and then finding a seam. And that was, that was amazing. And it bails out. Obviously Cliff knows what he's doing on the offensive side of the ball, in spurts at least, but he can get bailed out by Kyla Murray. And I think that's important. And I think that's important.

And one of the things, speaking of Kyler, one of the things we haven't even hit on yet is how pro-ready these quarterbacks are. And part of that is because offensive coaches changed what pro means and big quotation marks. But these guys are coming in and they're ready to rock. And, you know, it was funny a couple of years ago, I remember Andy Reid saying this, that the thing that nobody understands about the kind of spread debate about whether or not guys are pro style or whatever is like, NFL guys were begging for these quarterbacks to be throwing at the thing. college level 15 years ago, 20 years but oh, they're not throwing enough. And then it

became, oh, they're throwing too much. And so, not like that, not like that. Don't throw it like that. And it's like, wait a second, you were begging us to throw more. So, you know, I think there were probably five years there where it was, it was a lot of square pegs and round holes because NFL teams just did not know how to approach the spread. That has

changed, Andy Reid changed that. And part Chip Kelly changed that. There's a lot of guys. Josh Daniels changed that. That's a whole different podcast. But what do you see from young modern quarterbacks that kind of stacks the deck against defenses and what I guess just generally what what it looks like when these guys are are 21 and already brilliant. Yeah, I mean, I think this all just speaks to the being in the information age.

Yep. These guys are getting so much better, so much sooner. Getting so much smarter, so much sooner. Like I think Matt Jones, he's going to be really good because I watch him play and he sees the game in a way that it takes you four or five years and some quarterbacks never see it that way. So, like, he comes to the line of scrimmage without as much on his mind as other quarterbacks

because he's already thought through it. And I think that comes from being around the game, being around smart people in the game. I don't know how his high school situation was. I suspect he probably had a smart coach who was innovative and understood these things. But if he didn't, it didn't matter because any good quarterback at that point

was going to a bunch of camps, going a bunch of different places. was seeing these things, was watching, was on Twitter, could see people talk about quarterbacks in their development. So that's the impressive thing about Mac Jones to me is the first time I watched him play in the NFL, obviously, college, he doesn't have to do much processing. They're better than everybody. In NFL, I noticed that he was processing really quickly.

And then I started to think about it and realized that it wasn't that he was processing quickly, it was that he was processing early. He was coming to the line of scrimmage with less on his mind because he had already checked a couple boxes than most rookie quarterbacks or most young quarterbacks. Young quarterback's like, hey, I got to worry about the protection, got to worry about the bliss going to get here,

got to worry about what coverage we're going in, then worry about where the receiver's going to be and who's the number one read at this point. Like, there's a lot going on in their mind. To me, it seems like, and it's probably part credit to Josh McDaniels, is he walks up to the line, a lot like Peyton Manning.

And I know we get a lot of comparisons of Mac Jones to Tom Brady, so I'm going to continue to overhype Mac Jones. He goes to the line. He goes to the line. And it seems to me like he has already figured out, like, the one if-than question that he has to answer. If he's not thinking about six questions. He's like, all right, if this guy does this, then I'm going to do that. And he makes it so quick, and it looks like a lot more work than it actually is.

But I think that's a result of him just having, being smart, obviously, and being around the game, enough, being around smart people in the game long enough to understand that. So, yeah, and he's not the only one who's doing that, but I wasn't high on him before the draft. And I apologized and changed and changed course before the preseason was over, just so I can puff my chest out when he's balling late. I cannot speak to what the James Jones, Ryan Shazier, Jason Goff podcast will look like because that's going to run in between the Sunday show and this one. but at least the floor right now is two of the last three podcasts have compared Mac Jones to Tom Brady, and that's important to remember. Speaking of all these young quarterbacks.

Oh, the floor is Tom Brady. I like that. So you're making a hot take. No, no, I'm saying the floor. Nope, no, came back off. The floor is Tom Brady. Okay. Okay, we got it.

I'm listening. Oh, no. My quote was taken out of context. My quote was taken out of context. I'm going to have my team release a statement. You would do what with Justin Fields? Oh, I play Justin Fields as soon as possible. I mean, all the stuff that we were talking about

and how quickly quarterbacks develop, how much easier it is for quarterbacks to play sooner. And also, I think that he is, just generally, I like to play the young quarterback so that I don't think you get better by not playing. Like, you're not getting practice reps by not playing. You're not getting game reps by not playing. You cannot fake the intensity, like, of,

preparing for a game week. You know, like, you can't go to practice and prepare like you're going to play. I know people say that, but you ain't going to play. You know how it is when you're on deadline. All of a sudden, staring at the screen and hoping words to show up, that don't work no more. And all of a sudden, words appear. There's a pressure that you can't fake. And while we're on the psychological part of this, I think that's what's really hurting them.

That's what could really hurt this team is the decision to not play Justin Fields. to me feels like something that is deleterious to the culture of the organization. And I think people throw around the word culture like it's just like a general term. And I need to be more specific because I think the culture of an organization is like the processes and practices that are accepted there. Like certain things are okay to do here. And that's the culture of the organization. And I think that in football, so basketball, you can clean house. You can get rid of all 15 guys and get in 15 new guys and rebuild a culture on a fly.

So tanking and basketball is a little different. Football, you can't do that. Like you build an organizational culture because there's 90 guys, like between coaches and players, there's 90 guys who kind of establish or who perpetuate the culture that you establish. And so I say all that to say, culture is not the words you say. Whenever you hire a new coach, you're like, we're going to change your culture. Saying it ain't doing nothing. You don't walk into a building and say, this is the new culture.

You know, like, you have to change the culture by what is accepted. And I think back to Bruce Ariens last year, being publicly critical of Tom Brady. And a lot of people in media were flipping out. Like, what is he doing? Why would you do that? And it made perfect sense to me. It's like, he's trying to make it clear that the culture is anybody can get it. And also, Tom Brady is not a god.

He's one of you. He's part of the team. And that's a culture that he's trying to establish there. You think back to, you remember when Ben Rosssburger got hurt a couple years ago. And people are like, oh, perfect. They're going to stink. He got hurt early in the season. They're going to stink.

And now they can use their first round pick to draft somebody. You know what they did? Mason, Rudolph, Duck Hodges, all those guys. They traded away their first round pick to get Minka Fitzpatrick. And I at the time was like, ooh, that ain't too smart. But then I thought about it was like, that is establishing culture. We are not a team that gives an end. We are not a team that is comfortable with losing.

We are not a team that's playing for their future. We're playing for right now. That's what we always do. And I think about that because when I was in Baltimore, we would have DB meetings every Friday at my house. And before that, before I got there, it was at someone else's house. That's the culture that makes teams good.

And that's the reason why certain organizations are good all the time because that is the expectation that you're going to go the extra mile. You're going to watch film on your own. When I was in Denver, we would have team dinners every Friday. Or excuse me, we'd have defensive-wide dinners every Friday. And that wasn't necessarily watching film or whatever, but it was like establishing a culture that was there. And so now when you take it to Chicago and Justin Fields,

what is the message that you're sending? You're saying, hey, we're going to try to win every game. We're going to do the best that we can. I expect you to be here early and stay. late. But the behavior that you're showing, the culture that you're establishing or perpetuating is like, hey, we got to play for the future. Because nobody in their right mind is like, oh, Andy Dalton gives them the best chance to win. Everybody knows who gives them the best chance to win is Justin Field. And they are sending a message to everyone in their organization.

Eh, don't worry about it. So when you are, you have some free time, you're done with work, you're done with all your meetings, you're done with lifting, you're done with practice. You have a decision to make. Am I going to go home? Or am I going to going to stay and watch a little more film? Am I going to invite everybody over to watch some film? Am I going to do the extra room? Am I going to do the stretching that's required to help limit injuries? Am I going to do all this other stuff?

Or am I going to go have fun and be happy? And then whether it's conscious or subconscious, you're like, hey, I mean, they don't really care about this year. I don't really care about this year. I don't think anyone's explicitly saying that. I don't think it was explicitly saying that, but that's what's happening. Like imagine anyone who's listening. Imagine when you were a part of a company or an organization or a team or even your family where the leadership made it clear to you that this is not, what's happening right now is not important to you.

And then think about the time when you were at an organization where everybody was bought in. Like it's, it's human nature. Whether you want to believe it or not, you can go ahead and say, it don't matter what's happening around me. I'm going to get my best effort all the time. That's bullshit. We're all susceptible to it. Like, we're all susceptible to it. And I mean, I know it to be the case.

Like, I'm coming on this podcast, and I know that you're going to put in time and prepare. So I came in putting in my preparation to make sure I was ready for this. I'm going on another podcast that's not as good. I'm showing up and spitballing it because I don't think they deserve it. Wow. It's interesting you mentioned, first of all, that was amazing. Second of all, it's interesting we even talked about the whole sitting thing.

I wanted to put this to bed a couple of weeks ago. And so I asked somebody with the chiefs, So I was like, okay, we got to stop this. What would Patrick Mahomes have looked like if he started as a rookie? And the guy said to me, he would, it would have been totally obvious he was the man. Totally obvious. The difference is he would have made some mistakes, some rookie mistakes, a little more. But it's not like he would have looked like, he would have looked like Josh Rosen out there.

Okay. Like this narrative now, which I think that what they did was amazing, assigning. Mahomes, Mike Kafka, letting Alex Smith work with the enemy and Andy Reid, all that stuff. Great. They let him test the limits of his skill and practice, all that stuff. I've written stories about it. I love it. But stop pretending like that's the reason Patrick Mahomes is good.

This is insanity. It is insanity. It is absolutely insanity. I remember before the draft, we were having this conversation when, you know, when it's the slow times, we talk about anything. And I remember hearing someone tell me that same point is like, like, but Patrick. Mahomes. A, we should never use Patrick Mahomes as a comp for anybody in any way. And B, the argument, I forgot who I was on set with, but they were like, Patrick Mahomes told me himself that he just, that he didn't even know how to, how to identify the mic when he came in the league.

And my response was, could he count to three? Like, that's all you have to do to be able to identify the mic. You have to identify the strength of the formation and then be able to count. and so like it doesn't take that long to learn those things and whatever you're doing over the course of the year I don't think it makes a difference you learn by playing you learn out there on the field and we're pulling guys from college and running college schemes mostly why are we going to act like there's some I think that also just speaks a hubris like no this is a different level

this is different which it is but it's the same damn game it's the same damn game Brett Farve I think when most of his career not only what a nickel defense was if not mistaken I think he's talked about that like We're good. We're good. He was fine. I'm going to get you out of here on two quick, big questions. We're going to have Seth Gawain on after this for a short interview about just the future of defense.

When you're going against Mahomes, if you're a D.C. And you're given an average defense, you do what with him, Dominique? Prey. That's the first thing you do. That's the first move. I mean, I think it's difficult when you say just an average defense because I think from a defensive standpoint, what you want is a stud or two. Somebody that can handle more than one man. man's job, essentially. You can put pressure on that guy to take pressure off of other guys.

But generally, as a general philosophy, my plan against them is keep them in front of you, try to play deep enough that you sucker them into running, try to strip the ball if you get opportunities to shift coverages, to unexpectedly shift coverages so you can sit on routes and try to jump and create interceptions. But I would tell my guys, 20 through 20, it's okay. Like don't get demoralized. We're going to practice red zone defense all week long. Because that is the only place where you can think of that the defense potentially has an advantage in the modern NFL.

It condenses the field. And Patrick Mahomes is special. He makes all these things work. But it's so much easier for defenses to operate down there. So my plan would be we can't give up 40-yard touchdown. We can't give up 30-yard touchdowns. We can't give up 50-yard touchdowns. Maybe we can force them.

to fumble or maybe we can force them to run the ball and cause a fumble. Maybe we can unexpectedly shift safety to one side, sit on a route and steal it. Something like that throughout the course of the, in the middle section of the field. But the most important thing is stop them in the red zone, force them to operate in the red zone where you might have an advantage and try to hold them to a field. And I mean, that's the best I can do. Wow. Last question. You said you were going to have a lot of takes, a lot of smart takes. A lot of them have been unleashed on the world and I'm appreciative of it. Give me the best take you prepared for that didn't tee you up on. I don't have. You got them? I got them all.

I mean, see, now I feel like I'm challenged. I don't know. That red zone was a good one. That was a smart take right there. I can't see. I feel like I need to top to other. I mean, see, I feel like I need to have done. We got the, we had the culture take. That was a great take. That was an unbelievable take. You had the cartel. And we had the ecosystem, yeah, the cartel ecosystem take. Wow. What is, what a tour of takes?

You're all take. Oh, here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go. Here we go, here we go. I got a new take. So we're talking about offensive efficiency, and we talk some about how there's a diversity of offensive styles in the NFL. The cool thing about the complexity of the NFL game is, their market inefficiencies everywhere,

or you can find them everywhere. And that's one of the exciting things about how the Patriots and the Ravens are attacking his season. You look at their quarterbacks, they're vastly different. But it's clear to me that both of those teams have looked around the league, and they notice everyone's defense is adjusting to the modern NFL. Now, guys, like Darius Leonard, he's a safety 15 years ago. He's 220 pounds.

You know what I mean? Like I did a piece on him and he told me in that piece like he finished his rookie year at like 219. And like we're looking at this where all these guys are getting small and they're getting faster

and more athletic. And then you look at the way that the Patriots play and you look at the way the Ravens play. You're like, all right, when we see that you're doing this, you don't prepare for this.

You're not built to stop us pounding you in the face. And that's the way that they're approaching it. Like we're going to run through you and play action behind you, which is awesome. And I go back to the other sports and I'm like even the teams where it's like a little bit unique, I think, no, it's just a

variation of the same thing. But you can't find, there's very few teams that are doing what either of those teams are doing in this league, which is so fun because they're trying to zig while others are zagging. And you see it with them and using tight ends and everyone is, other teams that started to catch on. But for a long stretch, everyone was out there doing the gays. We're in zebra, 11 personnel, whatever you call it. we're in this all the time. And they're like, you know what?

We're going to go the other way. Let's put three tight ends on the field and see how you deal with it. So I think that was the worst of the takes, but it was a strong take. I'm glad we got the take out there. Want to rank the takes? No, no, no. We can have the listener rank by takes. What if we had like a ring around NFL show after a show where it was just like three people

and they were just ranking the different takes? I was talking about this with Jeff Saturday earlier today. And it's something that all athletes who like former athletes, recognize that when they enter different walks of life is that interpersonal dynamics are different. And no one is as direct as in the rest of the world as they are in football or in sports. And I was saying that I would love to have a job where we had an end of day meeting. That's what we do at football is we have a meeting at the end of every day. You sit there with all your coworkers and they point out where you messed up.

And they circle it and you sit there. We should just do that. Every day. Everybody's job. We'll spend the last 30 minutes together and we'll highlight and circle all the mistakes that people made. I'm sure you've had this in your career.

Anybody who's an NFL player who wasn't a huge star at some point had it. Like Dan Campbell said that Bill Parcells would say to him, if you don't get better at this specific thing, I'm going to, like tomorrow, I'm going to cut you. And we don't have that in media. We don't have the meetings where we say, hey, man, if you do not come up

with a better Shane Waldron take, we're going to make them. I like that dynamic. So, I mean, I don't think anyone ever told me anything that specific. Like, you don't get better at this, but they were probably thinking it. But it was just more direct, like, going to meeting, like, again, stay in front of them in press coverage. No, you can't play off all the time. No jumping routes right there.

And then you're sitting in the meeting room, and I played with a bunch of Hall of Famers. I'm sitting in a meeting room between Ray Lewis and Ed Reed or, or no. next to Champ Bailey in Denver, and the coach has the red beam circling me getting run by. It's like, uh, that'll send you to the lab. That's the type of pressure that'll make you work on your game. Dominic Foxworth.

Thank you for joining us. Thank you for the takes. Thank you for everything. No problem. All your other guests, tell them to watch this film if they want to get their game up. If they want to get better, you watch this. Every, everybody watches the Saints offense.

We're all watching Dominique on the Run, NFL show. Thanks, buddy. Everything's a competition. See, but. All right. Seth Galena from Pro Football Focus is one of my favorite people in the industry. He's a guy who was, I'm starting to Chris Collinsworth here. Here's a guy.

Here's a guy who was writing about Brandon Staley last October before anybody else. Got him on my radar, quite frankly. I knew he was, obviously. But as far as scheme nuanced on that stuff, Seth Gleana was the first guy on that scene on that corner. he does college, he does pro for NFF, excuse me, he does college and pro for

for full of focus. I really enjoy it. Seth, what's going on, buddy? You know, I might be your favorite person in the industry,

but you're just my favorite person, period. Well, yeah, I know. It's good. It's good to have, it's good to have some proletes like that. But yeah,

you're not my favorite person in the world. I am married, but you are one of my favorite people in the industry. So it's good. Okay, so we're doing a future of defense podcast here.

and just diving into what that means. And I'm curious, Seth, when you look at right now, whether that's 2021, 2021, 2020, 2019, whatever it is, last couple of years, is there anything defenses have been doing schematically that has been effective in, I guess you could say,

fighting back against the era of mega offenses? Yeah, I think we always have to, like, go back far. We'll try not go back too far, but we have to go back to at least like the 2000s, like the aughts. Right. We have to look at what defense. as we're doing there.

And that was kind of like the Tampa 2 defensive revolution in like the when I was growing up in the 2000s. And you had, you know, Brian Erlacker playing Mike and you had the guy who was name I always forget in Tampa Bay who was a really good linebacker. But he was playing. Dar Brooks? Yeah, Derek Brooks, right? And like, so like you have these guys who in this with these heavy personnel groupings,

full backs and tight ends, you could play this Tampa 2 system where the middle linebacker the Mike linebacker had to both stop the run like a normal Mike linebacker, but also had to like get deep if there was a pass. Well, it's like, yeah, that's, you could do that when there's these burly tight ends and fullbacks on the field. But as the spread revolution, you know, happened, you know, let's say first in college football and then the NFL, well, if the slot receiver is like, you know, a buck 50 running a 4-4 and you're a and you're not Brian Erlacker. Yeah. You got a problem there.

Like, you got a big problem. So defense is like, okay, well, that's clearly phased out. And we went into kind of like the Seahawks era of defense, a Legion of Boom era of defense, where it was like, okay, well, we can, we don't have to stress our linebackers as much. We can roll a safety down in the Seahawks case that would be Camp Chancellor. And now we have all these underneath defenders. Everyone can divide their responsibilities up in zone or in man like a lot easier.

and oh, it just so happens that we have like Earl Thomas as the lone safety now instead of having two safeties. We have Earl Thomas in the middle of field. On one side, we have Richard Shervin. So, like, oh, also we have Bobby Wagner and Kijer right. But like, like, so like it works and how scheme spreads is like, hey, you have a really good defense and then the coaches are poached and they go throughout the league like we saw in Seattle.

And then you have teams just watching the film and saying, oh look at them stopping all these past concepts and then it's like you bring it to your own and then Gus Bradley tries to run it in Jacksonville with worst players and we see what happens yeah and Dan Quinn does it and all these people do it and it's not it's like not pretty yeah so like so like you you you get to that this point where it's like okay two things have happened a people just seen this cover one cover three middle of the field what we call middle of the field closed um you know one high safety defense just for so long that it just it's just it's a like it's time.

Like it's just time already. And then the other thing was you have the, the offenses that are coming back into the league, which is the Shanahan. Yep. I mean, we can even say like Mike Shanahan's offense when he was in Denver in the late 90s. The Shanahan family.

The Shanahan family. And for some reason, and maybe it was because of the style of defense, like this never caught on as much in the 2000s, even though they won two Super Bowls. You have the Falcons doing it a bit with Vic you have and Shob and you have, you know, Kubiak in Houston doing it a bit, but didn't really catch on.

Now it's like, okay, well, now everyone's running this offense because against these one high defenses, you can, yes, now there's more linebackers or more underneath players, but they can all get sucked into the run game. And we're seeing this boom and play action because you have all these underneath players with eyes on the run game getting horizontally stretched. And when you get horizontally stretched, you get a crossing round. right back across your face. And that's, I mean, we're seeing it all the time with, again,

McVeigh, Shanahan, Safansky and Arthur Smith and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, it works so well against this one high style defense that it's like, all right, now this is done. Like, we can't do this anymore and not give up all these explosive plays down the field. We can stop the run, but it's not about really stopping the run. it's about stopping the run plus the run action that becomes play action. That's really the issue here.

And you just can't do it from one high. So you end up in this world where it's like people like Brandon Staley, Vic Fangio, where he came from. And even Dennis Allen does a lot of this stuff. And some of the guys are just like, hey, we're done with this. We're going to get into two high safeties. We're not going to play as much cover, straight cover two, because again, we have to protect our Mike linebacker

because we can't have him running down the field with a speedy slot receiver or whatever or even just these new tight ends that are unbelievable athletes. So we're going to play more cover four, play more cordage, quarters. So the safety is a little closer together. They can keep their eyes on the middle of the field,

keep their eyes on the mic, Mike doesn't have to carry as much. And you get into this is the new style of quarters defense that we are going to see honestly like we're going to it's everywhere now it's absolutely everyone who isn't who wasn't staley or fanjio or whoever is going to start running it too okay so one of the things i like is that you study the college game you you host a college football podcast for pro football focus i really enjoy it um so many of the scheme wars that are happening now

already played out in college and so many of the adjustments already played out um athletes are different. You know, it's funny. I think oftentimes teams learn the wrong lessons from certain things where it's like, I remember a couple years ago, it was like, oh, you got to have a Shaq Thompson type. And it's like, well, okay, first of all, like there's not that many Shaq Thompson's. B, like, that's not really

that's not really it. It doesn't unlock as many things as you think. So I guess if you're looking at the college game kind of going forward, is there anything that defenses did at that level that can kind of inform what

teams should be doing with the Mahomes, with the Lamar Jackson, with the Josh Allen, with the Baker Mayfield. Well, I think one of the main things is we still haven't yet, have yet seen like the RPO boom in the NFL. I literally just finished watching the Dolphins tape. So yes, you have, that's a team that's going to run a lot of RPOs, but like, you don't see, you know, you see the Kansas City, don't see a ton of teams running those downfield slant RPOs. Green Bay runs RPAs, but they're really just screens to DeVante Adam, so that doesn't really count. what happened in college is

teams, look, if you can man up, this is the thing that we always, I always have to say, if you could just play straight man, like, you know, the Patriots did a couple years ago in that unbelievable season, if you can just play straight man, then whatever, like, it's all good. Like, you don't have to do anything else and play man.

And that kind of defeats RPO's too. But if you can't just line up against the team in front of you and play cover one or whatever, then you got problems. So what the too high stuff has done is it kind of, one of the issues, of playing one high is that it's a, I argue it's like a complete defense,

like sidelines to sideline. Like everyone is kind of has, they're on like the, they're on a rope with each other. They're tied to the rope with each other. Where in this too high defense, a split safety defense, you can detach the two sides of the field.

And when you can really do is take out what we call run past conflict from linebackers and safeties and say, you're not both, You're not like, you know, what I'm talking about with this play action stuff. You're not both have to stop the run. And then you got to, you know, stop and turn around and do the Michael Parsons thing that we saw everyone go crazy about this so-called robot technique.

Robotic. Yeah. Like, you don't have to do that. You are a past first player. And we're going to live in a world where maybe we don't have as many people that we'd like to stop the run. But you're a past first player because we know the explosive plays happened in the past game. And you have to do some stuff. You're talking about the college game. Georgia does a really good job of playing.

Like it's a relatively regular four down, you know, and nose tackle and front. But the nose, the two interior guys now, they have to have Jordan Davis who's like, it's pretty good. But, you know, besides that, what they do is they'll play what people call a heavy technique or a tight technique. And they'll get really snug with the offensive linemen in front of them. Instead of like being in the gap,

which I think is what the NFL was. was for the past, well, almost probably forever, we're past 20 years, but instead of like being in the gap, they're like really tight to the offensive alignment. So now they can kind of play the gap on both sides of them. And so now even though we have, and you can do it with ends, you can do with a whole bunch of different players. But like I know Georgia does it with their two interior players.

And what that does is say, hey, we don't have as many guys in the box anymore because we're playing with two high safeties. However, we can get the remaining people we have in the box to play more than one gap. A lot of people are calling it gap in a half now. So that's kind of what we're seeing in college. And we're going to see it in the NFL,

Brandon Staley. The only thing I'll say about Brandon Staley is like, he's a wild boy. Like he's doing stuff that like the Packers game last year is like the most insane defensive game plan you can ever see. And it didn't work quote unquote. You know, they gave him some yards, gave him some points.

So obviously on the other end, Jared Goff wasn't really doing anything on the offense, but like, like, Staley is on a planet when it comes to this stuff. And I hope everyone gets to that level, but it's, it's, it takes, it takes, um, takes a lot of like mental fortitude to like put that in the game plan and then have your weak side safety, like fit the A gap like a Mike linebacker. Like, you got to have, you got to be really, uh, you got to be really nuts to do that stuff. All right. All right. Quick hitters. Best defensive coordinator right now for the modern game. Is it Staley? Is it Fangio? Is it somebody else?

I mean, it's probably staley, though the only thing I'll say with that is, like, it helps having Jaila Ramsey and Aradonna. But he does, he's doing wild stuff. He's doing absolutely wild stuff. Coordinator, we don't talk enough about. DA, baby. DA, Dennis Allen. He's been doing it for so long.

He's been doing it for so long. Is he going to get another head coaching job? Well, I'm a Saints fan, so I hope not. Well, I just revealed myself why I just said Dennis Allen. But, like, I hope not because I'm a Saints fan. And like, he's always had these really interesting defenses. I love his third down pressure packets. He didn't really have to use it against the Packers.

They barely blitz against the Packers. It was all just, it was just fun to watch, honestly. But like, so DA, DA is the guy, man. He's doing stuff. They're playing a lot of the interesting, all the kind of new third down quarters, coverage stuff they're doing. So DA is the guy. Quickly, what did the Saints do to the Packers?

aside from let them implode. You know what? The game script didn't help them. You're down early. You can't go into a game being like, if you're the Saints or in any offense, being like, hey, we're just going to hold the ball. I've been in so many, I said this on my podcast.

I've been in so many game plan meetings in my life at the college football level. And it's like every time you hear, oh, we're, you know, we're going to run the ball, we're going to control the clock. You know what happens? You go three and out. You're down seven. and then the whole game plan is in the book. So, yes, the Saints had two 15 play drives.

One took eight minutes, one took 10 minutes. Like that's not something that's sustainable, but it happened in this game, and it put the Packers in a pretty bad hole. They only had three possessions in the first half. And then after that, you know, they got to the quarterback with four-man rushes. They were able to stop the run when the Packers still did try to run the ball a bit,

even though they were down, by really saying, like, hey, we're going to let you run the ball, and we're going to play the bootleg. And that's kind of going back to what we're saying about these new style of defenses. We are going to let you run the ball. But the play action, when you boot your quarterback and he's what we call naked, like he has no protectors, we're coming after you with the defensive end. And our linebacker is not going to bite inside.

He's going to play that little cheeky flat route that every offense wants for four yards that goes for a first down every time. So that's what they were doing. And they're playing a lot of quarters coverage, playing on a weak safety rotation poached stuff with PJ Williams. my guy, PJ Williams, is back. Like, it's a good day to be a Saints fan. I'll tell you that much. Last thing.

I don't think NFL team should watch tape of Florida State's last play against Jacksonville State. I don't think anyone should. That was the worst defensive. There was the worst defense. I don't understand. So it was a bad defensive call. So Mike Movel said there was, obviously,

there was six seconds left. They said that they were worried because Jack State still had a time. out. But then the actual execution of the play, there's a kid in the middle who just didn't do anything. He looked like he was the second safety, but again, all

of this is open for interpretation because he didn't do anything on the play. Well, so like Mike Darvell said they played two man. And there was some miscommunication thing, two man. So two deep safeties, plus everyone is mad to man underneath. That's

not what they did. I mean, he said that for whatever reason he said that. I'm not saying. whatever, but like, that's not what the tape showed. The tape showed they called, and everybody on that field played cover one robber. Except there were like three guys who did not know they were a part of a football play that was happening. That was part of the confusion there. But if they look at the all 22, you're just like, what am I? What are these guys doing?

There was no, there was one kid on there. I'm not going to say his name. I, because I looked the number and I looked it up, but the all 22 was kind of grainy. so I don't want to blast a kid. There was no functional difference between that kid playing and you and I being placed in that uniform at that very moment.

I think we should go to Mike Norval and tell them we're ready to suit up. But that's the case. I think, I'll play Mike. You'll play Will and we'll get if you gave me a thousand opportunities, there would be a couple of them where I could look like I belonged

on a field more than the kid in question. Who I think, by the way, is from Orlando, which is a tough look. That's what, yeah. So I see your bias is showing, okay, Kevin. Yeah. Again, the number, I couldn't make out the number 100%, but I'm 90% sure the kids from.

But I think the point is that if they, if they even, like there's all sorts of prevent, like super prevent defenses that we see every week that they could have played. Even if they had actually played cover two men, they would have been okay. But in fact, they played cover one and they got exposed. Florida State, baby. Seth Galena,

thank you for joining us. He hosts a podcast called Too High. The Too High podcast. Deontalee. And I love it. I love all of their college coverage. I love all their NFL coverage. It is a wonderful, wonderful website. Thanks, Seth.

No problem. All right. Thank you to Dominique and Seth for joining us. We will be back on Sunday with the regular show. Nora and Mao will join you on Thursday on this feed. Friday. Kaelin Jones Ben So Wack. and Stephen Ruiz. See you later.

He's been the Ringar Fellows Show and the Ringer Podcast Network. Thank you to production to Stefan Anderson and additional supervision by Artuna Ramqqbal. He's been the Ringanfell show on the Ringer Podcast Network.