It’s official in Detroit. Two Lions coaches, including headman Dan Campbell, have declared the team’s intention to play a base 3-4 defense.
Except it’s not really a 3-4. No, it’s not the dreaded “multiple” scheme that the prior regime tried and miserably failed with, either.
The easiest way to explain the scheme is to change the designations for math purposes. There will be three down linemen, two outside linebackers and two off-ball, “inside” LBs. The two OLBs, which figure to primarily be former ends Trey Flowers and Romeo Okwara, will both almost exclusively rush the quarterback on passing downs. In that sense, it’s more of a 5-2 front with the two edge players standing up instead of having hands in the dirt.
It’s similar to the Green Bay Packers and how they use their OLBs as de facto linemen. Nobody would ever accuse either Preston Smith or Za’Darius Smith, and certainly not Rashan Gary, as actual linebackers in Green Bay. But they are listed at OLB and play standing up on the periphery of the 3-man line. Preston Smith does drop into coverage a fair amount, but that’s more the Packers taking advantage of his surprising ability to operate in coverage than it is by schematic desire.
The Lions new defense is based on the concept of bringing pressure from more angles. Dom Capers, one of the founding fathers of the zone blitz and the 5-man rush as a base concept, is now a senior defensive assistant with the Lions. Think back to Capers’ teams in Carolina in the late 1990s, his Texans teams of the early 2000s and his Packers defenses (as coordinator) featuring Clay Matthews III in Green Bay last decade.
A more recent example would be Capers’ influence in Jacksonville as the Jaguars’ senior defensive assistant in 2019. Built around Calais Campbell’s versatility and excellence as an end in an odd-man front, those Jaguars deployed Yannick Ngakoue and top-10 rookie Josh Allen as outside linebackers in the scheme.
While Ngakoue was labeled a DE, he almost never played in the role fans would expect as a 4-3 end. Per Pro Football Focus, less than 10 percent of Ngakoue’s 774 defensive snaps featured him aligned as what would be considered a true DE, hand-in-the-dirt spot. And at 6-2 and 246 pounds, it would be quite odd to consider Ngakoue a prototype DE.
That’s the new role for Flowers, who did play in that capacity some during his pre-Lions days in New England. Flowers is much heftier (6-2/265), which should be an asset in playing the run as a 5-2 EDGE. The same is true with Romeo Okwara (6-4/258) on the other side of the Lions formation. Jamie Collins and Julian Okwara can also play that role.
Capers moved onto Minnesota in 2020 and the Vikings learned the hard way that Ngakoue couldn’t play that 4-3 DE role in their misguided campaign last year. Ngakoue lasted six underwhelming games before being dealt to Baltimore. He wound up leading the Vikings in sacks anyway, with just five; the Lions finished with more team sacks in 2020 than the Vikings did, to paint a picture of just how bad things were in Minnesota.
Of course, Capers isn’t running the defense. Aaron Glenn is, and a look at the Saints teams where Glenn–and Campbell–came from shows a 5-man rush from the front was the norm. Per Football Outsiders, the Saints were a top-10 team in rushing both five and six defenders in 2019.
New Orleans often deployed three down linemen with two stand-up EDGE players who served in the role Flowers and Okwara will play. The athletic versatility (and greatness) of Cam Jordan to play multiple spots along the front contributed to the looks and the ability to switch fronts and looks, which appears to be the goal of the new-look Lions defense.
Trey Hendrickson was nominally a linebacker for the Saints, but his role in New Orleans was almost exclusively as a stand-up pass rusher; he dropped into coverage just seven times all season in 2020, per PFF. That’s the Okwara role in Detroit under Glenn.
So while the defense will be labeled as a 3-4 base, it’s much more accurate to call it a 5-2. That’s a better mental visualization of what to expect the Lions defense to look like in 2021.