Tag: Aside

Sleepers and Value Plays: Running Backs

2020 Fantasy Sleepers – Running Backs

A sleeper running back is a player taken as a backup who ends up worthy of being a starter or at least far outplays the draft slot where you selected him.  Average Draft Positions (ADP) are taken from MyFantasyLeague.com  using only recent drafts.

The Average Draft order shows a general picture of how your draft will unfold and where values/sleepers and bad values/busts likely exist. Any green highlight means the player is a good value that could be taken earlier. A red highlight signifies an overvalued player that is a bad value or just too high of a risk for that spot.

Average Draft order – Value plays

Sleepers and over-valued players

Best of the rest

Chris Thompson (JAC) – Worth noting that Jay Gruden is the offensive coordinator and he brought along Thompson with him from the Redskins Football Team where he had as many as 49 catches in a season.

Lynn Bowden Jr. (LV) – One of those “what to do with him” players that played as a quarterback, running back and wide receiver at Kentucky. Listed as a wideout in the NFL draft, the Raiders intend on using him as a running back. But also as a receiver. And maybe a bit of quarterback. All those fantasy points count. Great end-of-draft grab to see what happens.

Carlos Hyde (SEA) – Hyde finally lasted all 16 games in 2019 and turned in 1,070 rushing yards. This is his seventh year and fourth NFL team but Seattle loves to run the ball and Rashard Penny blew his knee last year and starts out on the PUP list. Hyde is a great handcuff pick for the Chris Carson owner and may end up with some stand-alone value.

Adrian Peterson (WAS) – Yes, he is 35 years old. And there are plenty of other backs on the Football Team like Derrius Guice, Antonio Gibson, Peyton Barber, and J.D. McKissic. But two years in Washington and he’s offered over 1,000 total yards both times despite being the guy I always pick up at the end of drafts.

 

Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons opts out of 2020 season

The talented linebacker and likely early first-round pick from Penn State opts-out of the 2020 college football season.

In the past few days two potential first-round players for the 2021 NFL Draft announced they were opting out of the season ahead, Virginia Tech cornerback Caleb Farley and Minnesota wide receiver Rashod Bateman.

A third player joined them, and it is a big one: Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons.

Eric Edholm of Yahoo Sports had the news late on Tuesday night:

Parsons confirmed it on Thursday with this statement:

Parsons is a very big name in draft circles. Viewed by most evaluators as the clear favorite in this class of off-ball linebackers, Parsons is perhaps a top five selection overall. In the most recent Touchdown Wire mock draft, the Penn State defender came off the board sixth overall to the New York Giants.

When you watch Parsons on film, you see plays like this all of the time:

Mike Renner, the lead draft analyst at Pro Football Focus, recently called Parsons the “best college linebacker prospect since Luke Kuechly.” Renner went on to say of the Penn State product:

Over the past decade, only seven off-ball linebackers have been taken with a top-10 pick in the NFL draft. But barring injury or a surprise return to school, there will be another in 2021 — Penn State’s Micah Parsons. And he isn’t just any top-10 pick — he’s the closest thing to a linebacker prototype since Luke Kuechly coming out of Boston College back in 2012.

Parsons has ideal size, athleticism and production for a linebacker prospect, and he was only a sophomore last season. If he could have declared for the 2020 NFL Draft, the chances are he would have been selected before Isaiah Simmons.

That’s the caliber of prospect we’re talking about: What Penei Sewell is to the offensive tackle position, Parsons looks like for linebackers.

Now what awaits instead of another season in front of the Penn State faithful? The NFL.

Sleepers and Value Plays: Quarterbacks

2020 Quarterback Sleepers and Value Plays

A sleeper quarterback is a player taken as a backup who ends up worthy of being a starter or at least far outplays the draft slot where you selected him.  Average Draft Positions (ADP) are taken from MyFantasyLeague.com  using only recent drafts.

The Average Draft order shows a general picture of how your draft will happen and where values/sleepers and bad values/busts likely exist. green highlight means the player is a good value that could be taken earlier. A red highlight signifies a bad value or at least too high of a risk for that spot.

Average Draft order – Value plays

Sleepers and over-valued players

Best of the Rest

Philip Rivers (IND) – Sure, the Colts looked bad without Andrew Luck last year but Rivers was at least the No. 13 fantasy quarterback for years with the Chargers. He’s much closer to Luck than he is to Jacoby Brissett. And Colts have one of the easiest passing schedules too.

Derek Carr (OAK) –  Carr spent his entire career around being the No. 18 fantasy quarterback and “he may finally have receivers” (Part II).

Getting Home, Part 5: Clemson’s Brent Venables is showing NFL defenses how to evolve

Innovations tends to trickle up in football, and who better to steal from than the Tigers?

During his speech for Derrick Thomas’ posthumous Hall of Fame induction, former Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson told a story about a young defensive coordinator named Bill Cowher who thought he had come up with a great new scheme involving his talented pass rusher.

“In the spring of 1990, Bill Cowher came to [Chiefs coach] Marty [Schottenheimer], said ‘Marty, I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t we do this on the defense?’” Peterson recalled. “’We’ll get Derrick lined up in his three-point stance in his normal position, right outside linebacker. Then on the snap of the ball, we’ll drop him into coverage [and] we’ll bring a couple of guys.’”

On paper, it makes some sense to use Derrick Thomas as a decoy. If an offensive line is sliding his way, why not overload the other side of the protection? This was the theory behind the fire zone blitz concept made famous at the NFL level by Dick LaBeau, which was growing in popularity around the league at that time. Cowher recognized the trend and wanted in. Schottenheimer and Peterson had a different take.

“I said, ‘Bill, that’s a very interesting concept. Just answer me one question: Why would we be having our best pass rusher run away from the quarterback?’ Derrick that year had 20 sacks, and I think without question, that’s called great coaching.”

Over the course of this series, I’ve argued that NFL defenses should rush the passer more aggressively and have looked at different ways the more creative defensive play-callers go about doing so. But I want to make one thing clear: Personnel should be the most important factor when making these decisions. If you have a Derrick Thomas or a defensive line like the one the 49ers have built over the past few years, it doesn’t make much sense to run creepers or big blitzes.

Chris Vasseur, an influential high school defensive coordinator and host of the popular Make Defense Great Again podcast, put it best:

“Every once in a while you might drop a great pass rusher [into coverage]. But if you’re dropping Von Miller a lot, you’re an asshole.”

No, you should not be dropping Von Miller or Derrick Thomas or Nick Bosa into coverage very often, but those guys are hard to find and very expensive to keep. If you’re one of the many NFL teams that don’t have one of those studs on the roster, then you better get creative.

The nature of getting creative, though, has changed because offenses are so much more diverse than they once were. It’s no longer enough to just send an old fire zone blitz now that spread offenses allow quarterbacks to utilize the width of the field.

“Playing three-deep, three-under is not great,” Vasseur told me, “when they’re releasing five out into the route, because they can stretch you horizontally.”

Back in the late ’80s and ’90s, those fire zones made more sense. Offenses were playing with multiple bodies in the backfield and weren’t able to exploit the flats or underneath. They eventually adapted and evolved to combat the three-deep, three-under coverages that became the default blitz coverage. The “Greatest Show on Turf” Rams were one of the products of that evolution, says former Vikings coach Mike Tice.

“One of the guys who was on the forefront of the new era of football was Mike Martz.” Tice told me. “He had ‘hots’ built into his routes and that created explosive gains. The defense was creating a hole in the coverage and Martz did a great job of exploiting those holes. That’s what football has gone to now: Spread the field out, make the defense defend the entire field. But in order to do that, you get fewer blockers.”

You can send that extra rusher and drop a defensive end, but now that 260-pound player has to cover Isaac Bruce on a quick slant or Marshall Faulk out of the backfield. That’s not ideal. The only way to combat that was to be really talented, like Tony Dungy’s Buccaneers were at the time, or creative with your pressures, like Jim Johnson’s Eagles were at the time.

At the college level, it didn’t take long for the spread to, well, spread, and the first inclination for defensive coaches was to attack it. But they were having the same problems NFL defensive coordinators were having with the Rams.

“Now, I don’t have the PFF data to back this up — this is just my gut — but here’s what I think happened,” Vasseur says. “Offenses spread out and defenses were like ‘[Expletive] you. We’re going to bring the house.’ And offenses were able to make them pay. As soon as they were able to make them pay, then everybody backed off. In college, everybody played four-down and played quarters or Cover 2. Recently, there’s been a shift towards getting more creative.”

That creativity has taken many forms at the college level:

But when I think of a scheme that’s on the cutting edge, at least from the NFL perspective, it’s Brent Venables’ Clemson defense. Especially when it comes to pressure.

One of Venables’ pressure concepts aims to take away the “hots” that Martz built into his play designs to beat more traditional blitzes, while not sacrificing numbers in the pass rush. It is fittingly referred to as “hot” coverage, and it was popularized by Mark Dantonio and Pat Narduzzi at Michigan State. Hot coverage is a more aggressive version of the old fire zone blitzes.

Instead of a five-man rush, you have six rushers going after the quarterback, leaving only five zone coverage players in a three-deep, two under distribution.

The seam players — labeled “poach” above — are the key to the coverage. They’ll read the quarterback’s eyes and position themselves based on where he looks. If the quarterback looks to your side, you hold your ground and try to get into any throwing windows. If the quarterback looks away from your side, you squeeze to the middle of the field.

The backside corner gets similar instructions against a two-receiver side. If the quarterback looks to the opposite side, Venables tells his corners to overlap to the inside receiver because it’s hard for the quarterback to get all the way to the backside receiver with a six-man rush bearing down on him. To account for running backs going to the flats, which would overload the “hot” player, defensive ends will “peel” with the back if he goes out for a pass.

Venables uses basketball team names for his different hot pressures — Spurs, Clippers, Mavericks, etc. — and my totally uneducated theory on that choice is how this football version of a 2-3 zone shifts like one you’d see in basketball. Only instead of the position of the ball dictating how the zone shifts in unison, it’s the vision of the quarterback that dictates where players should move.

This may not sound like a viable concept at the NFL level, where quarterbacks are much better, but the Colts actually used these pressures last season and had some success with them. While Venables and Narduzzi will usually run them out of a two-deep shell, Colts defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus called them with various pre-snap looks. Darius Leonard’s pick-6 of Jameis Winston came on a three-deep, two under concept where he lined up over center before snap.

If you read Part 3 of this series, you’ll recognize the concept behind Venables’ “Miami” pressure, a more extreme version of the read blitzes the Patriots bullied Sam Darnold with during the “seeing ghosts” game. Instead of having certain pass rushers read the turn of specific blockers, like the Patriots do, any rusher who is engaged by a blocker will drop into coverage.

From Brent Venables playbook.

That leads to hilarious plays like this one where Clemson gets a sack with a one-man pass rush.

None of the concepts I’ve covered throughout this series are really new. A lot of them date back to the early 2000s and even the 1990s, but they’ve been repackaged and their popularity has grown at the college level. As that continues, it’s only a matter of time before defensive coaches at the NFL take notice. Some of the best ones, who don’t have a Derrick Thomas to run around the edge and sack the quarterback, have already done so.

The rest of the league should work to catch up, though. It took too long for offensive coaches to truly embrace the pass-first spread offense that we know, from looking at hard data, is more effective. And now it’s taking too long for defensive coaches to break from conservative schemes and truly get creative about forcing offenses into mismatches — even though, again, we can look at the numbers and see that creating pressure is essential.

It doesn’t have to be the Ravens’ protection-dictating looks we covered in Part 2 or the Patriots’ Cover 0 blitzes covered in Part 3 or the Titans’ creepers covered in Part 4. There are countless pressure concepts out there that we did not touch on in this series. Just try something. Even “Engage Eight” might be a better option than calling a standard four-man rush and just hoping it gets home.

Getting Home, Part 4: Creepers allowed the Titans to simulate pressure … and ruin the Browns

Most NFL teams don’t have an elite pass rusher. so they have to create pressure other ways.

Our “Getting Home” series takes a deeper look a the strategies behind blitzing in the NFL. This is Part 4, which explains why simulated creeper pressures are gaining popularity. Part 1 explained why pressure is so important. Part 2 covers protection basics and how defenses manipulate them. Part 3 is a look at Bill Belichick’s vaunted “Cover 0 blitzes.” Part 5 examines how NFL blitz packages might evolve.

Around this time last year, the Cleveland Browns were being hyped as possible Super Bowl contenders. It didn’t last long. About three hours into the start of the season the wheels had already fallen off the bandwagon after a 43-13 loss at the hands of the Titans.

It wasn’t so much that the Browns had lost to Tennessee; one loss generally does not kill the sort of hype Cleveland had going into the year. It was how the Browns lost. And how an unheralded Titans defense made Baker Mayfield, who had been billed as the next great young quarterback during the offseason, look so uncomfortable throughout the 30-point drubbing.

In Part 3 of this series, we covered Sam Darnold’s “seeing ghosts” game. We may not have audio of Baker saying he was seeing ghosts, but, at times, it appeared he was dealing with supernatural entities. How else do you explain a quarterback throwing off his back foot in a clean pocket against a three-man rush?

It wasn’t ghosts — or even an onslaught of actual pass rushers, like Darnold faced against the Patriots — that had Mayfield panicking against phantom pressure, though. It was Tennessee’s package of simulated pressures, or “creepers,” that had his head spinning.

I wrote about creeper pressures last offseason, suggesting they could help NFL teams strike the perfect balance between pass rush and coverage, but there was one glaring omission in my coverage: A mention of recently retired Titans defensive coordinator Dean Pees, the NFL’s foremost creeper enthusiast. I swear that’s a compliment.

[lawrence-related id=829780]

No NFL team ran more creepers than the Titans did in 2019. And, more importantly, they worked! Tennessee allowed 0.08 Expected Points per dropback on all plays last season. Against creepers, Titans opponents averaged -0.29 EPA per dropback. Opposing quarterbacks averaged only 3.7 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. For the season, the Titans defensive ANY/A was 6.2. So Tennessee’s pass defense was nearly two times better when it was throwing a creeper pressure at an offense.

Pees’ defense was not unique in that regard. It was true for the league as a whole. Defenses allowed -0.05 EPA per drop back on these simulated pressures. Compare that to the overall league average of 0.06. The Dolphins are probably the best example of how useful creepers can be for a defense that lacks pass-rushing talent. Miami was near the top of the league in usage and finished with an EPA of -0.31 on those plays. On all dropbacks, the Dolphins allowed 0.24 EPA per play, worst in the NFL.

If you haven’t read my piece from last offseason, you’re probably wondering, OK, what the hell is a creeper? Good question. Here’s how Ron Roberts, Baylor’s new defensive coordinator and college football’s godfather of simulated pressures, defines them:

“It’s bringing somebody that’s not accounted for in the traditional three-down or four-down [front],” Roberts told Chris Vasseur on his Make Defense Great Again podcast. “Bringing somebody else and not sacrificing coverage. Not having to sacrifice and play fire zone or man coverage and still get to the point attack and get the pressure you’re looking for.”

In other words, the defense is sending a standard four-man rush but dropping at least one traditional pass rusher — it can be a defensive lineman or stand-up edge rusher — into coverage and sending a second- or third-level defender, like a linebacker or defensive back, after the quarterback.

Let’s draw one up. Here’s a creeper the Titans used against the Browns in that Week 1 game:

If it seems like there’s a lot going on there, imagine being a quarterback trying to sort it all out in real-time. Tennessee is sending a corner blitz and rotating to a standard Tampa 2 coverage behind it. Here’s how it plays out on the field.

In Part 2 of this series, we looked at how defenses try to overload protections using blitzes. Well, these creepers allow the defense to accomplish the same goal without actually taking a player out of coverage to do it. An added benefit is that the quarterback doesn’t immediately realize what’s going on. He sees traditional pass rushers dropping and second-level defenders rushing — which is generally a tell for the much-used fire zone blitz (more on that in Part 5) — and the “BLITZ!” alarm goes off in his mind, sending him into panic mode — and when he tries to throw quickly, he’s actually throwing into full coverage.

“The guy who is supposed to be the read for the quarterback, all of a sudden I’m firing him and dropping something into that same spot, it can create a lot of problems for the kid pulling the trigger,” says Roberts. “It’s post-snap, my ability to put the ball in the quarterback’s hands and not have to make a call against the offensive coordinator.”

On that balmy Sunday in Cleveland, Mayfield vs. Pees was a total mismatch. The Titans called seven creepers during the game. Mayfield was sacked on three of those plays and threw interceptions on two others. The seven plays (here’s a playlist of them all) resulted in -10.77 Expected Points or -1.54 EPA per play.

It’s hard to fault a second-year quarterback for struggling to figure out what the crafty veteran play-caller was throwing at him. Mayfield’s eyes weren’t necessarily going to the wrong spots based on what he was seeing. For an example, let’s look at the third sack he took during the game.

The Browns are running a four verticals concept with a six-man, half-slide protection. If you read Part 2 of this series, you should have a good idea of what that means. If not, it just means that part of the line is sliding one way and sorting out pass rushers using a zone approach, and the remaining linemen are blocking specific pass rushers with the running back scanning for a sixth rusher.

Using Mike Tice’s “basketball rules,” also covered in Part 2, let’s figure out which players could give the protection trouble if they rush. To the strongside, Tennessee appears to be a man short. That would typically mean that the edge rusher isn’t coming. If he does, there’s nobody to cover the tight end. The Browns should be good on that side and sliding to the opposite side is a safe bet.

The ball is snapped and something funny happens. Only one rusher is coming on that weak side and the Browns are wasting three offensive linemen on one dude. Oops.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the Titans are sending three with only two blockers to pick them up and the running back scrambling to get over there to pick up the extra guy.

Mayfield does the right thing, in theory, and looks to throw hot but …

Crap. His hot receiver is covered (by a linebacker who’d been lined up over the center, showing blitz), and he has no choice but to take a sack.

So, the Titans were able to overload that side of the protection AND get all the receivers. That’s not supposed to happen! I wouldn’t have blamed Mayfield for thinking there were 12 Titans on the field for that play. That’s the beauty of these pressures.

Another benefit is that they force the offense to keep the back in to block, which doesn’t happen a whole lot against a standard four-man rush. Modern offenses want to get all five eligible receivers out into the route because it makes it easier to stretch the defense’s coverages. With no back running out to the flats, second-level zone defenders aren’t in conflict, and the quarterback loses an emergency outlet if the pass rush gets home quickly.

While defenses typically reserve blitzes for obvious passing downs — when offenses are forced to push the ball downfield and therefore don’t take advantage of the vacated areas underneath — Roberts says that creepers are useful in any down and distance. The only thing changing based on down-and-distance, he says, is the coverage behind the pressure pattern. Pees seems to agree, as the Titans’ usage of creepers was fairly evenly split across downs.

Now, I’m not suggesting a defense makes the whole plane out of creepers, but it’s a tool that should be in every team’s toolbox. That’s especially true for the teams that don’t have elite-level pass rushers on the edge, which is a majority of the NFL. If you’re the 49ers and have a billion first-round picks on the line, then, by all means, send a traditional four-man rush every down. If not, it’s time to start earning that paycheck…

“Sometimes if you have an elite pass rusher on the edge, you’re gonna kinda leave him to do what he does,” Pees told Midday 180 shortly after the 2019 season. “You kind of take the scheme out of it and you kind of keep him out of it and maybe scheme with other people. When you don’t have that, you scheme everybody. So it’s kind of fun as a coach to have to do that.

“I’ll refer back to the 2012 Baltimore team. People don’t realize we were without Ray Lewis for 10 games that year. We didn’t have Suggs for eight. And we did a lot of scheming with guys you’ve never heard of and yet it got us to a Super Bowl.”

Pees retired after the Titans’ loss to the Chiefs in the AFC title game, so Tennessee will be relying on … well, some combination of coaches to try to replicate his success. Titans coach Mike Vrabel did not name a defensive coordinator to replace Pees, though veteran coach Jim Haslett did join the staff to coach inside linebackers.

Creepers, or simulated pressures, are by no means a new concept. Roberts says Memphis coach Joe Lee Dunn was running them back in 1990. But they have grown in popularity at the college level over the past few seasons. Last summer I predicted they would migrate more to the pro ranks. And based on the success NFL defenses had with them in 2019, I expect that trend to continue.

In the final part of this series, we’ll look at some other trends that could gain traction in the NFL and what the evolution of pressure could mean for the future of the league.

Getting Home, Part 3: Bill Belichick’s diabolical zero blitz that had Sam Darnold seeing ghosts

There are no good options here.

Bill Belichick made Sam Darnold see ghosts.

While I wouldn’t rule out the Patriots coach summoning spirits to torment a young quarterback, I feel comfortable saying there was no dark magic involved. I would, however, argue that what Belichick conjured up for Darnold on that Monday night was far more evil.

Earlier in the offseason, I covered the foundation of the Patriots defense — its single-high man coverages — but what haunted Darnold that night, and opponents throughout the 2019 season, was New England’s Cover 0 blitzes.

In theory, a 0 blitz is the riskiest call a defensive coordinator can make. It leaves no safety back deep, giving receivers one-on-one matchups across the board. If a player in coverage gets beat or misses a tackle, the offense is scoring. And if the offensive line is able to pick up the pressure and provide the receivers with more time to shake their defenders, a big play is nearly inevitable.

Sending the house is a scary proposition. But, as we covered in Part 1 of this series, defenses have performed better when sending more aggressive blitzes, so maybe the risk isn’t as substantial as one would think. That was certainly true for defenses in 2019. Across 558 snaps of Cover 0, NFL defenses added a total of 42.4 Expected Points, per Sports Info Solutions.

The Patriots have been particularly good when playing Cover 0 over the last two years, leading the NFL in EPA over that time. That success has coincided with a steep increase in usage.

Belichick tormented a lot of quarterbacks with his Cover 0 package in 2019 but Darnold got the worst of it. On eight dropbacks against New England’s zero blitzes, the Jets quarterback threw two interceptions and was sacked once. He was pressured on all but one of those plays.

Is an 87.5% pressure rate good? I think it’s good.

And it wasn’t just any old pressure. The Patriots were getting free runners at the quarterback almost every time they sent a zero blitz. I mean, look at this…

Darnold didn’t stand a chance.

Now, your first instinct might be to blame the offensive line, but like Darnold, those players probably felt like they were seeing ghosts. Or, more accurately, trying to block ghosts. That was by design. The Patriots were using “read” blitzes that make the protection wrong no matter what. The concept behind these read blitzes is essentially the same as the concept behind the zone read: One player can’t be in two places at once.

Here’s how the concept works: The defense puts seven defenders on the line of scrimmage and all of them are potential rushers. But the only players who are locked into rush assignments are the two lined up in the A gaps and the two edge rushers.

The remaining players can either rush or drop back into coverage. That’s dictated by a simple read: Are they being blocked or not? If a blocker turns toward them, they drop back into the short areas a team might attack when trying to quickly beat a blitz; if not, they rush and are typically left with a free path to the quarterback.

The left guard is in a no-win position. He blocks Jamie Collins, leaving nobody to block Devin McCourty. If he blocks McCourty instead, Collins runs free. Now play that same game with every lineman in the photo above and you start to realize that the entire offensive line is in a no-win position.

In Part 2 of this series, we broke down the major families of pass protection: Man protection, half-slide protection and full slide protection. None of them solve the problem the Jets offensive line is facing against this pressure concept.

  • In man protection, the weak-side tackle is put in the two-on-one while the right guard and tackle are left blocking no one. 

  • In a half-slide protection away from the tight end, it’s the other tackle caught in the two-on-one while the left guard is wasted. 

  • In a half-slide protection to the tight end, it works out like it does in man protection.

  • In a full slide protection, it’s the tight end who doesn’t stand a chance and the left guard and right tackle are left blocking nobody. 

The Jets weren’t the only team that had trouble blocking these blitzes, either.

Now, all of the examples we’ve looked at thus far have come against empty formations — this was one of New England’s go-to empty checks in 2019 — but the Patriots have an option when teams put another blocker in the backfield. In that case, New England will use a “trailer” technique, which just adds another player onto the rush if the back stays in to protect. Here’s an explanation from a Romeo Crennel playbook:

The Patriots used the trailer technique on Stephon Gilmore’s game-clinching interception at the end of Super Bowl 53. When Todd Gurley stays into block Devin McCourty (32) it allows Duron Harmon (21) to add on to the rush and gives him an unblocked path to the QB.

There really aren’t any schematic answers to these blitzes. The one viable option is for the offensive line to take more vertical sets — pushing off into a more upright position when the ball is snapped — which gives them more time to adjust when the guy they thought they were blocking drops into coverage and they have to adjust to block another rusher. But that creates its own problem: Those more vertical sets leave lineman vulnerable to bullrushes because they aren’t as low to the ground. That’s even more of a problem against the Patriots and their massive defensive linemen. The line might get everyone blocked, but it’s getting pushed back into the quarterback’s lap in the process.

It’s a nasty scheme but not one that any team can run. The Patriots just so happen to have the NFL’s deepest and most talented stable of cornerbacks. Belichick should have more confidence in his guy to hold up in one-on-one coverage than the average coach.

But what if you could put similar stress on a protection without leaving your cornerbacks on an island? In Part 4, we’ll look at how some NFL defenses got the best of both worlds during the 2019 season.

Getting Home: Understanding pass protection — and how the Ravens manipulate it

How Baltimore’s defensive coordinator gets and the exploits the looks he wants.

I wouldn’t blame Don “Wink” Martindale if he was a little envious of the attention the Ravens offense received during the 2019 season. Sure, it was well deserved, what with Lamar Jackson leading a uniquely dominant attack that just looked different from anything we saw out of the other 31 teams. Though it didn’t receive nearly the same amount of attention, the same could have been said of Martinale’s defense. It, too, stood out from the rest of the league in one area in particular: Blitzing the quarterback.

The Ravens led the NFL with a blitz rate of 54.9%, per Pro Football Reference. No other team blitzed more than 50% of the time. Hell, no other team blitzed over 45% of the time, with the Buccaneers finishing second behind Baltimore with a 43.4% blitz rate. Martindale’s defense was truly in a league of its own.

The veteran play-caller wasn’t just blindly sending pressure, though. No, the Ravens’ pressure package was intricately choreographed and routinely updated. No two pressure plans were the same. Martindale based his weekly pressure calls on the tendencies of the opponent.

“Our goal is to try to put as much stress on protection rules that teams have,” Martindale said during the 2019 season. “And the end-all goal is to have a free runner to the quarterback. But what you’re seeing is anybody that comes off the bus can blitz for us, and they know that. We talk about that every day. Sometimes they run into a wall, but they do it 100 miles per hour, and they can beat somebody, too.”

Without an elite pass-rushing talent on the roster, the onus was on Martindale to create pressure through scheme. Based solely on sack numbers, the Ravens had a mediocre pass rush, finishing 21st in total sacks and 19th in sack rate. Those numbers sell the unit short, though. Baltimore led the league in QB knockdowns, finished fourth in QB hits and third in pressure rate (we explained in Part I of this series why those numbers matter so much). The Ravens got after the quarterback, and it would not have been possible without Martindale’s advanced understanding of how offenses protect their quarterbacks — or at least try to.

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Pass protections are a rather nebulous concept for most fans and even a significant number of analysts. Before doing the research for this series I did not have a firm grasp on how they worked. But in order to understand and appreciate how defensive coaches like Martindale attacked offense, I needed to have a general understanding of how they work. So I did what anyone should do if they’re interested in learning about football: I talked to coaches.

I chatted with former Vikings coach Mike Tice, who also served as an offensive line coach in Chicago, Atlanta and Oakland. And to get a defensive coach’s perspective, I talked to Brian Vaughn, who coached defense at the Division II level (until Florida Tech eliminated its program earlier this year amid the pandemic) and runs the popular Blitzology blog, which has become an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the topic of pressure. I’ll try to pass on their wisdom as best I can.

Let’s start with the basics. At the very least, a protection call should allow the offense to do two things:

  1. Prevent free rushers from running through the A or B gaps
  2. Avoid unfavorable matchups of strength and/or athleticism

The protection call that allows the offense to accomplish those goals largely depends on the pre-snap look the defense shows. And the calls available to the offense entirely depend on the number of eligible receivers involved in the pattern. For instance, if the play call puts all five eligible receivers to use, there are only five players left over to block. So that’s where defensive coaches start when scouting an opponent.

“When it comes to breaking down protection,” Vaughn says, “two of the first things I’m looking for are: How many people are in it? Literally, how many people are blocking? And then … those extra people that are not offensive linemen, what are they doing? How are they involved?”

There are only so many options. You have five-man protections, which involve only the offensive line. You can add a back or tight end for a six-man protection. Or a combination of two backs or tight ends for a seven-man protection. Or, when you want to take a shot downfield and need time for the routes to develop, you can keep a third back or tight end in for an eight-man, max protection.

You don’t really see a lot of seven- and eight-man protection in today’s game. With offenses spreading things out and putting more receivers on the field, there are fewer players left over for protection. The reigning champions at both top levels of football — the Chiefs and LSU — were big proponents of getting all five eligibles into the pattern.

As always, there’s a trade-off. With fewer players involved in the protection, the more simplified they become. If you’re blocking with only five, there are only so many ways you can deploy those five blockers. Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown says that has allowed him to get more creative with his pressure packages.

“I think the advent of [offenses using more 5- and 6-man protections],” Brown told coach Chris Vasseur on his Make Defense Great Again podcast, “has allowed us to do much more package-wise in terms of the different groups we’re going to throw at you — with different patterns — knowing that there’s a limited amount of repetitions we’re going to have to get in practice in terms of the protections.

“When they’re doing less, you can do more … it’s nice when you can say, Hey, when they’re in 11 [personnel], and it’s 3-by-1 or 2-by-2 [formation], here’s what you’re going to get. Now you can go ahead and set your gameplan against the 11 personnel.”

It’s not nearly as simple for pro coaches, but defensive coaches aren’t seeing nearly as many varied protections calls as they were even 10 years ago. Vaughn says there are really only three types of dropback protections (not including play-action and movement passes) you’ll see across the NFL:

  1. Half slide: “Half of the offensive line is sliding in a zone protection concept. The other half  is manned up.”
  2. Man: “You’ve declared somebody and the offensive line is working to that guy and then there are man responsibilities.”
  3. Full slide: “The whole line is sliding one way and a back or tight end is blocking the edge player away from the slide.”

Tice put it in different terms but the concepts are essentially the same:

“You have a five-man protection or ‘scat protection,’ which is a man protection. It could be a five-plus-one protection, too. So the offensive line is picking up the five most dangerous players, which would be four down linemen types plus a linebacker who poses a threat. You have a six-man protection, which you can call a ‘slide protection.’ And then you have a ‘full turn’ protection, where the entire line turns and either a tight end or back is on the end of the line of scrimmage picking up the first thing outside of that tackle.”

There are, of course, variations within each of those categories — and team-by-team, you’ll see variances in how/how often backs and tight ends are used —  but if you can differentiate those three from one another, you’re on your way to adding another Infinity Stone to your Football Guy Gauntlet. Let’s break down each of them and look at some of the variations within the categories. Once we have those concepts down, we can take a look at how Martindale and the Ravens strategically attack pass-blocking units.

Half Slide Protection

We’re starting with half slide because it’s the most common protection call you’ll see on Sundays and one you’ll find in every playbook. The terminology may change based on the system — West Coast guys will call it “Jet” protection while Air Coryell guys might refer to it as “Ace” — but the rules are generally the same.

Half of the protection will slide to a particular linebacker, usually the Will. The other half of the line make up the “dual side.” In the example below, it’s the right guard and right tackle. Those two typically end up on the defensive tackle and end, but they also have to be mindful of any other players presenting immediate threats inside.

If there is a sixth protector, typically a running back, he’ll read the Mike and Sam linebackers, picking up whichever one comes. If both come, it’s on the quarterback to throw to his “hot” receiver. If neither comes, the back will help out an offensive lineman or go out for a pass.

In short, the offensive line is responsible for the four down lineman and the Will linebacker. The running back is reading the Mike and Sam. The quarterback is responsible for anyone else who adds to the rush.

Against a three-man line, the offensive line is responsible for the three down linemen and the two widest linebacker types to the weak side. This usually results in a four-man slide with the strongside guard joining in.

We use the term “linebacker types” because against a nickel defense, you’re not going to see three linebackers on the field. You could have a Mike, a Sam and a “Nickel” Will. Or a Mike, Will and “Nickel” Sam.

Protections are set by identifying the three linebacker types. The player in the middle of those three will be identified as the Mike. This tells the offensive line which linebacker(s) it is responsible for in the protection. The Will is the linebacker type to the weakside of the formation (that’s the side of the offensive formation that has the least blockers.) The Sam is aligned to the passing strength (the side with more receivers or, in a balanced formation, the side with the tight end).

Slide protections are vulnerable to overload blitzes and especially so if the defense can get an overload to the side opposite of the slide.

If the offense thinks the defense is trying to create an overload, the quarterback or center can redirect the protection to pick it up. How can the offense sniff out a potential overload? Tice says they can use what he calls “basketball rules”:

“If you have three potential receivers, including the tight end and back, to a side and they have three defenders, the numbers add up, then nothing will probably happen. I always say, ‘They gotta cover the tight end.’ If there aren’t enough bodies over there to cover the tight end, then the pressure’s not coming from that side. That’s the basis of what I teach centers. If you count and they have one more guy playing pickup basketball than you got, you’ve got a problem and you gotta change your point.”

Here’s Tom Brady doing that after he catches the Jaguars trying to send the nickel corner on a blitz.

If you listen closely, you can hear Brady say “Rita.” He’s telling his line to slide to the right. He’d make a “Linda” call if he wanted the line to slide left. Football coaches love alliteration.

How did Brady know to make that change? It wasn’t premonition that only the smartest quarterbacks can tap into. It was simple math, or Tice’s “basketball rules.” Look at the weak side of the formation. There are two receivers out there and only two defenders to account for them. If the Will blitzes, the Pats would have a receiver left uncovered, telling Brady that the Will is not a threat to the protection and there is no need to slide to him.

Now, look at the strong side. The Mike linebacker is in position to cover for the slot corner if he comes and take away Brady’s “hot” receiver. Now, there’s a potential problem there if the Patriots are sliding to the opposite side, leaving two blockers for three potential rushers.

The “Rita” call solves that issue, and now the Pats have all of the potential rushers accounted for in the protection. And that on-the-fly adaptability is why half-slide protections are so common. The offense can solve problems with a simple call or adjustment.

Defenses want to attack the man side of the protection, but figuring out which side that’s going to be is a challenge.

“Finding where the protection is is not as easy as one might think,” Vaughn said. “It gets more and more complicated the more protection elements that they have. If all they do is block to the side of the back, it’s relatively easy. But now they also have a protection where the back is going to work across to the other side of the formation. Now it’s a binary choice: it’s A or B. And then they probably have a full slide element in there as well. And now that’s a choice C. When it becomes A, B, C, D, E and F as the possibilities, things get much more complicated.”

Film study helps, but the defense is still playing a guessing game (or an educated guessing game, at least) which creates the potential for disaster. If the offense picks up the pressure, the chance of a big play increases exponentially. So how do you avoid having to play that guessing game? By deploying fronts that dictate the protection.

That brings us back to Baltimore. Sure, the Ravens will send their fair share of pressures from traditional fronts that can be picked up with a half-slide protection, but Martindale has become a master of using non-traditional looks that force offenses into “man” and “full slide” protections, which are far easier to exploit. So let’s break those down and look at how the Ravens draw and then attack each concept.

Man Protection

Once you have half slide protections down, man protections are a lot easier to figure out. It’s essentially the same concept, numbers-wise. The offensive line is still responsible for the defensive line but they are working to the Mike linebacker by default and the running back is scanning coast-to-coast for a potential sixth rusher.

Typically, the center will have the Mike, the guards will be responsible for the two interior defensive linemen and the tackles will take the two edge rushers. The quarterback has to throw hot if a seventh rusher comes and overwhelms the protection. If none of the linebackers blitz, the center and running back can help out on the other pass rushers.

This is a protection you’ll typically see against defensive fronts that put a player directly over the center, whether it’s a nose tackle or stand-up linebacker. Because the pass blockers are initially locked onto a specific rusher, the defense will call line stunts against man protections in an effort to create confusion for the offensive line and set picks for looping pass rushers. Here, the Mike picks off for the defensive tackle…

Teamwork is key. The offensive line has to work together to pass off stunting lineman or else you’re going to see a lot of free rushers.

If the defense puts five potential rushers on the line of scrimmage, you’ll often hear the quarterback or center make a “5-0” call. It’s an adjustment that tells the offensive line they are responsible for those five men on the line of scrimmage. The back is looking for the next most dangerous man. Here’s Peyton Manning explaining the “5-0” call from an episode of ESPN’s Detail.

There just aren’t many answers for these looks and Martindale knows it.

“You don’t really have a lot of great options as an offensive line in protection when everyone is covered,” says Vaughn. “When everyone’s covered, you can’t zone the protection. You can’t slide. You’re not going to slide a guard away from a guy walked up on him to go help the center.”

Martindale knows who’s blocking who when he puts five men on the line of scrimmage.

And if you know who’s blocking who, it becomes a lot easier to attack the weak link. Like, say, a running back who is forced to take on a player with a head of steam right in front of his quarterback…

Or a running back who has to scan for a player going from one side of the formation to the other…

Or a running back who has to block on the move…

Are you sensing a theme? Running backs must hate playing the Ravens. Centers aren’t going to be thrilled about the prospect either with Calais Campbell now in Baltimore. Imagine what it must be like for a center, who is typically undersized compared to the rest of the line, with the massive Campbell lining up directly over you and having to block him without any help.

If the offense isn’t comfortable asking its pass protectors to hold up in one-on-one battles, there is another option…

Full Slide Protection

A full slide (Tice calls it a “turn” protection) is exactly what it sounds like: The entire offensive line is sliding either left or right away from a sixth protector who is sealing the opposite edge. This protection is used sparingly, usually reserved for quick passing concepts because a lot of the time, a back or tight end is being asked to block an edge rusher.

“The problem with turn protection, after the initial contact, it starts to get a little edgy,” Tice says. “It starts to get a little leaky. It’s not a protection that can really hold up for a long time. It’s used for quick game or something rhythmic, something involving a timing route. Sitting there thinking it’s going to hold for a deep crossing route, it’s not. Unless it’s a turn protection with a play fake.” 

Full slide protections are a common tactic against bear fronts and double A-gap looks. This helps to plug up the interior gaps with big o-line bodies. Sure, you’re giving up a mismatch on the edge but, as we established earlier, the offense is protecting from the inside-out. And if the ball is coming out quickly, the back won’t have to hold up for too long.

You’ll see more full slide at the college level — mostly because it’s easier to teach, says Tice — but it becomes useful at the NFL level when defenses implement fronts that make it harder to identify who’s playing which role.

“Everybody wants to do the walk-around stuff, the amoeba stuff,” Tice said. “You really can’t define where guys are. They’re walking around. You got guys standing up. It’s a number count thing. That’s where you see a lot of teams go to that full turn protection, because it’s hard to sort out. And that gives those athletes who are ‘tweener players and designated pass rusher, it gives those players a chance to get a crease or get a mismatch on the edge.”

The Ravens, who played more dime than any other team in 2019, which allowed them to get into those ‘walk-around fronts,’ saw a lot of full slide protections in 2019 — maybe the most in the league — and the biggest beneficiary was Matthew Judon, who feasted on tight ends and backs on his way to a 9.5-sack season.

The interior players also benefited thanks to Martindale calling perfectly-timed stunts working away from the sliding offensive line, which created natural picks for Baltimore’s pass rushers.

Before the 2019 season, the lack of an elite pass-rushing talent on the edge was seen as a major concern for Baltimore. It didn’t turn out to be an issue, as the numbers show. Another offseason has passed and it doesn’t appear that Baltimore is any more interested in adding to its group of edge rushers. They didn’t extend Judon after his breakout season. opting to hit him with the franchise tag instead, and they didn’t sign an edge rusher in free agency or draft one either.

The Ravens know they don’t need a star edge rusher to put pressure on the quarterback. They have Martindale, a human skeleton key that can unlock any pass protection.

All right, it’s pop quiz time. That’s right, I’m springing quizzes on you without warning. Let’s see if you’ve been paying attention.

First, let’s try to identify the Mike. I’ve given you a hint by highlighting the three linebacker types. Which one of those players would we consider the Mike?

If you picked No. 57 … you’re wrong and should feel great shame. Not really, but, remember: The Mike is the middle of those three linebacker types. In this case, it’s No. 54.

If 54 is the Mike, the linebacker to the weakside of the formation would be the Will. That’s No. 57. And that would make No. 24 the Sam:

Question No. 2: Let’s say the running back is going out for a pass and we have a five-man protection involving only the offensive line. If the line is working to the Will, is our protection sound? In other words, do we have everyone accounted for in the protection?

If not, which potential blitzer (not including the defensive line) could present a problem? Hint: It’s not the Will. With the running back running out to the flat, No. 57 is the only defender in position to cover him.

But look at the Mike linebacker and then notice the safety lined up just behind him. If the Mike comes, that safety is in position to pick up the inside slot receiver. With the left tackle and left guard already occupied by two defensive linemen, we have nobody to account for him if he blitzes and the safety can pick up the furthest inside receiver. 

So the offensive line can disregard the Will linebacker and work to the Mike instead. Now we have the center, guard and tackle to take care of the two defensive linemen and the linebacker if he rushes. 

If the 49ers send both the Mike and the Nickel Sam, they’ll leave themselves with a two-on-three to that side.

Now we have everyone accounted for in the protection. The offensive line has the four down linemen and the Mike (red). The Will can’t come or the running back will be open (gold). The corner to the top of the screen needs to cover the tight end (black). And the three defensive backs to the bottom of the screen have three receivers to cover (silver).

All that thinking, which teams have to do before EVERY play, for just a four-yard gain…

If you’re still a bit confused, here’s a video breaking all of that down…

Now that you have a grasp on how pass protections work and how NFL teams pick up pressures, it’s soul-crushin’ time. What if none of that matters? What if the defense can win no matter what protection an offense throws at it? That would be pretty evil, right? Well, that guy up in New England has a concept that allows him to do just that. We’ll take a look at that in Part 3.

Getting Home: You can’t win in the NFL if you don’t pressure the QB

Yes, the easiest way to shake a QB is to hit or sack him. But how?

If you’ve played a Madden video game, you’ve been to that dark place. Nothing you seem to do on defense is effective. You can’t stop the run. You can’t stop the pass. You wonder why you even play this stupid game that hasn’t been good in a decade. The frustration slowly turns into rage.

You could just quit the game. That would be the healthy way to handle the situation. But you’re a football fan. The entire concept of fandom is built around an unhealthy obsession with something you can’t control. Besides, you still have that “Break Glass in Case of Emergency” option. The one defensive play call every Madden player goes to when nothing else seems to work.

I’m talking, of course, about “Engage Eight.”

If you play Madden, you’re very familiar with “Engage Eight.” If not, the concept behind the play is simple: Send the whole damn house and just hope for the best.

Most play designs in Madden are based on a real-life concept. But not “Engage Eight.” It’s a caricature of a play call, exaggerating the most notable features with little regard for reality. And the fact that we were all just like “Yeah, sure,” I think, shows that most football fans see blitzing as this all-or-nothing proposition. There may have been a time, early in the sport’s evolution, when that was true. But it certainly isn’t the case today.

Even the most aggressive defensive coordinators aren’t out here calling eight-man blitzes. It’s simple math: You send eight guys after the passer, and we have five eligible receivers. We’re going to get it to one of those receivers before the rush gets home.

That math does not stop us Madden players from calling “Engage Eight,” though. We don’t stand a chance if the quarterback has all day to throw, so we need that pressure. While the means may not be rooted in reality, the ends we seek are not all that different from our real-life counterparts, who also don’t stand a chance if the quarterback is provided with a clean pocket. NFL play-callers just have to go about it with a bit more caution and a lot more ingenuity.

****

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’re not an NFL defensive coordinator. Even still, you probably have a good idea of how to stop Tom Brady. You’ve probably heard this cliched analysis a thousand times over the past decade: You have to get pressure — preferably interior pressure — and move him off his spot.

It’s a useless bit of analysis. Not because it’s wrong. It’s not. But you can say the same about every quarterback who has ever stepped foot on an NFL field. No quarterback performs consistently well under pressure. Not even the league’s slipperiest quarterback Russell Wilson, who averaged -0.24 Expected Points Added per play when under pressure in 2019, per Pro Football Focus. That was actually much better than the league average of -0.42 but nearly half-point below the league-average output on clean dropbacks (0.25). Pressure turns any quarterback into a much worse — and more erratic — version of himself. And a clean pocket has the opposite effect. Last season, Mason Rudolph, who lost his job to a dude named Duck, averaged 0.21 EPA per clean dropback, according to PFF. Without pressure, Rudolph essentially turned into Drew Brees. If EPA isn’t your thing, how about yards? According to PFF, NFL teams averaged 7.6 yards on dropbacks without pressure. The number dropped a full four yards to 3.6 on pressured dropbacks.

Those are a lot of numbers telling you something you probably already knew: Pressure is good for the defense and decidedly not good for the offense. I spent a significant portion of my summer trying to figure out what that actually means, and why some teams are better at it than others. This series, which we’re calling “Getting Home,” is the result. We’ve broken it into five parts:

  • An overview of the current state of blitzing in the NFL
  • Pass protection basics — and how the Ravens manipulate them
  • Bill Belichick’s vaunted “Cover 0 blitzes”
  • Revisiting “Creepers”
  • Blitzing innovations likely to hit the NFL soon

Some pressure is better than others

All pressures are not created equal and it’s not enough to simply bother a quarterback. FiveThitryEight’s Josh Hermsmeyer found that pressure plays were worth 0.41 EPA for defenses in 2019, but they weren’t necessarily drive-killers. Hermsmeyer writes…

“Over the past three seasons NFL teams forced the opposing offense to punt 5.7 percentage points more often when they pressured the QB at least once on a drive.”

That punt rate spiked 18.2 percentage points when a defense actually sacked the quarterback, and those sacks were worth 1.47 EPA per play. PFF analysts Timo Riske and Sam Monson came to a similar conclusion about the importance of converting pressures into a sacks:

“On all passing plays, teams manage a first down on a series 60% of the time. But that number plummets to just 20% on plays with a sack. Again, repeating the findings at 538, sacks moved the needle hugely while other types of pressure were not nearly as devastating to the offense, with one notable exception: hits in the throwing motion.”

According to the PFF study, NFL offenses were able to convert a series of downs into a first down 57.5% of the time when a defense hurried the passer on at least one play. The first-down rate dropped to 52.6% when the defense hit the quarterback after a pass was thrown. So at the play level, pressure matters but not necessarily in the big picture view of things. To really derail an offense, the defense has to make contact before a quarterback gets rid of the football.

From Pro Football Focus:

“The first big swing we find is on plays where a quarterback was hit while throwing. This reduced the chance of a first down on the series to 33.5%, moving it closer to plays with a sack. These plays almost always fall incomplete, but they can also put the ball in harm’s way and cause turnovers.”

When defenses were able to get the quarterback down for a sack, the first-down rate plummeted to 20%. So, maybe analysts have had it wrong about Brady this whole time. It’s not quite enough to just move him off his spot. If you want to truly stop Tom Brady, or any NFL quarterback for that matter, you have to hit him. And it’s far easier to hit a quarterback in the pocket when he has no way to escape.

One way to block all escape routes would be to send more pass rushers, but most NFL defensive coordinators are reluctant to send the house because it leaves the secondary vulnerable, and giving up big plays is an easy way for a coach to lose his job. That may be the reason why defenses have grown more cautious as offenses have grown more pass-happy over the last decade. While the rate at which defenses send a standard four-man rush has remained fairly steady over the last decade, the rate for five- and six-man rushes has declined while the rate for three-man rushes has increased since 2010, according to Football Outsiders.

It makes some sense, theoretically. NFL quarterbacks are throwing shorter passes and getting rid of the ball quicker than ever, leaving little time for the pass rush to get home. If the pass rush isn’t going to get home, it’s only logical to drop more defenders into coverage and flood those underneath zones. It’s a passive approach, sure, but modern defense is all about avoiding explosive plays.

As is typically the case for NFL offenses, the data suggests NFL defenses could stand to take a more aggressive approach. Numbers from Sports Info Solutions’ indispensable Data Hub show that defensive performance steadily improves as the number of pass rushers increases.

This makes sense. The more blocking matchups there are on a given play, the more likely the offense will lose one of them, leading to pressure on the quarterback. As we have covered, that’s bad for the offense.

Interestingly, the number of players the offense keeps in to block doesn’t seem to make a difference for the efficacy of a pass rush until you get to a six-man rush. That’s when a numbers advantage for the pass rush really seems to make a difference.

And, counterintuitively, defensive performance against the pass improves as the numbers advantage in coverage decreases, another suggestion that an aggressive pass rush is superior to a passive one.

So maybe the Madden devs were onto something with “Engage Eight.” But it’s foolish to look at those numbers and make any grand declarations about the sport. We are, after all, painting with a broad brush here and football is far too complex a sport to analyze from the 10,000-foot view. All six-man rushes are not the same, and all six-man protections are not the same. And, the efficacy of bigger blitzes could very well be based on their novelty. If offenses start to account for more aggressive pass rushers, the numbers might swing back the other way. There are just too many variables, including personnel, to confidently say that defenses should be blitzing more often.

The goal, as always, should be to create a numbers advantage without creating an exploitable disadvantage elsewhere. Any strategic aspect of the sport is based on that balancing act. Finding that balance is the key to producing effective pressure. The question defensive coaches should be asking, then, is: How can we overwhelm the protection without leaving ourselves vulnerable in coverage? It’s an ongoing chess match between offenses and defense. Between the pass rush and the pass protection.

****

The purpose of this series is to examine that chess match and to figure out how the NFL’s best defensive minds put pressure on opposing quarterbacks. But you can’t have a good understanding of how to beat offensive lines without first learning how they protect the pocket. So, in Part 2, we’ll cover the basics of pass protections at the NFL level and take a look at how the Ravens’ Don “Wink” Martindale, the league’s most blitz-happy defensive coordinator, manipulates them to give his pass rushers the best chance to get to the quarterback.

In Part 3, we’ll look at Bill Belichick’s “0 blitzes” and how they’re designed to help the Patriots pass rush win no matter what protection the offense has called.

In Part 4, I’ll revisit a piece I wrote last offseason that covered “Creepers” and “Simulated Pressures.” I look at how teams used them during the 2019 seasons and the numbers that suggest they give defenses the best of both worlds between pressure and coverage.

Finally, in Part 5, we look at some trends percolating at the lower levels that could soon make their way to the NFL.

A city’s shared mission for ending digital inequality

Bringing connectivity to all residents, regardless of economic status. Joshua Edmonds, director of digital inclusion for the city of Detroit and Cindy Eggleton, co-founder and CEO of Brilliant Detroit discuss bridging the digital divide, in …

Bringing connectivity to all residents, regardless of economic status.

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Joshua Edmonds, director of digital inclusion for the city of Detroit and Cindy Eggleton, co-founder and CEO of Brilliant Detroit discuss bridging the digital divide, in partnership with Rocket Mortgage. Credit: GET Creative

One-third of Detroit households don’t have access to broadband—this event will help change that.

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Jason Langwell, executive director of the Rocket Mortgage Classic and Trina Scott, chief diversity officer of Rocket Mortgage share how this year’s event will help change the course of digital inequity in Detroit. Credit: GET Creative

Never broken: How Jerome Rivera defeated adversity’s best attempts to derail his DWCS opportunity

“As if dealing with that first loss of my career wasn’t hard enough, a week later I’m sitting inside a jail cell.”

At times, [autotag]Jerome Rivera[/autotag] has bent – but he’s never broken.

Rivera (9-2 MMA) has encountered high highs and low lows. But it’s led him to where he is today – on the UFC’s doorstep. There have been close calls, but every time Rivera has sniffed a UFC deal, he’s come up short – not in effort, but in the outcome.

Growing up, Rivera’s upbringing wasn’t bad. While other New Mexico neighborhoods battled severe crime, Rivera largely avoided encountering such lifestyles. Instead, his area inspired him – especially because of its MMA culture and fighters like Diego Sanchez.

After a youth wrestling career, Rivera began training MMA. A skinny kid, Rivera proved it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but rather the size of the fight in the dog. Rivera’s scrappy attitude translated perfectly to mixed martial arts.

Rattling off victories, Rivera started off his career at 5-0. Things were going well. Unofficially one fight away from a UFC deal, Rivera’s luck took a turn for the worse outside the cage.

On the UFC’s doorstep, Rivera anticipated his highest-profile fight offer to date. Before the fight took place, however, adversity reared its head.

Rivera, 21, was arrested for DWI.

“It was terrible,” Rivera told MMA Junkie. “I felt stupid. I felt dumb. I hit a dark place. I sprained my ankle right before that DWI. I was in jail coming off a pretty bad ankle sprain.”

Shortly after spending nearly two days locked up, Rivera received the offer he anticipated – the chance to fight Roberto Sanchez for the vacant flyweight title at LFA 14. It was a huge opportunity.

Fast forward.

In mid-2017, Rivera sat in a jail cell, fresh off a defeat to Sanchez, which for the time being, derailed his UFC dream. Shortly after his third-round armbar submission loss, Rivera was arrested for not having an interlock license.

Rivera had reached a new low. In an instant, Rivera went from an undefeated fighter destined for the highest level of MMA, to some guy who was banged up, sitting in a jail cell.

Life came fast – too fast, Rivera admits. Soul-searching was necessary.

“At that point, I was at a time where I knew I needed to change my life around or I was going to go into a dark place and probably would turn out to be a person I didn’t feel good about being,” Rivera said.

“… As if dealing with that first loss of my career wasn’t hard enough, a week later I’m sitting inside a jail cell. I’m just sitting there like, ‘(Expletive), this is rock bottom. You’re supposed to be getting ready for a UFC fight and doing all these things and making all this money. Now, you’re sitting here in a jail cell because you’re a dumbass. You should have gotten your interlock license and done all this stuff sooner.'”

To make matters worse, Rivera started to hear his doubters’ voices. Even some people close to him were counting him out and writing him off.

“Mentally, I was a little bit defeated,” Rivera said. “But the same thing: I just kept that chip on my shoulder like everybody was doubting me. Nobody believes in me and they think I’m going to stop.”

It was at that point Rivera received a kickstart, but not from a family member or a friend. It was from the person he trusted most – himself. Thinking of his fiancee, and his first baby on the way, Rivera picked himself up by his bootstraps and reentered competition.

Matched up with Brandon Royval, Rivera had a chance at redemption. After months of mental and physical rebuild, he was back – attempting to change his life for the better.

The fight lasted only 40 seconds. In an early exchange, Royval caught a kick and pushed Rivera backward. Rivera extended his arm to catch his balance. The two fighters crashed into the fence.

Pop!

Rivera circled out to reset, but something wasn’t right.

“I swear I felt like I had an out-of-body experience,” Rivera said. “I could see myself get ran back into the fence. Then, I just remembered right when my hand touched that fence. Immediately, I heard a loud pop, ‘Boom.’ I could not feel my arm, instantly. I felt like I was screaming in my head like, ‘Dude, your arm is broken. Your arm is broken.’

“I took that step off and I wanted to try to hit him with it – like, a spinning back elbow or something. I just felt my arm slow motion swing. I looked down and saw my pinky where my thumb is supposed to be. I was just like, ‘Holy (expletive).’ That’s when I went and kind of told the ref to get me out of there.”

Image via LFA

On national television, Rivera’s arm flopped around in one of the most grotesque injuries in mainstream MMA history. After everything he went through, another layer of adversity revealed itself. Rivera instantly went viral.

“I was expecting to go to the UFC,” Rivera said. “I had my daughter on the way. It was just crushing for me mentally from ‘About to get signed to the UFC again’ to ‘All of a sudden, you have to go back home and get surgery – and you can’t work for eight weeks and you have your daughter on the way and all this stuff.'”

Image via Jerome Rivera

Rivera came face-to-face with his demons but fought back. Tommy John surgery was in the cards for him, yet he persevered through it and its recovery. His injury and its gruesomeness only catalyzed his doubters, which in turn catalyzed Rivera.

“I realized the hard way that the world doesn’t stop turning for anybody,” Rivera said. “If I were to sit there and stay depressed and quit and give up on everything, the world wasn’t going to stop turning for me. Eventually, I was going to fall into a really bad place. I knew I just had to pick back up and set an example for everybody around me – to show my fiancee and everybody that wasn’t going to break me.

“I just used that chip on my shoulder. I just said in my head that everybody was doubting me. Everybody thought that was the end of my career and that I was never going to come back. To them, it was silly at this point to continue. A lot of people – everybody I asked – thought I was done for. … I was just super motivated to prove everybody wrong.”

In his next two fights, Rivera went 2-0. Fueled by an offered rematch against Brandon Royval that was offered twice but never came to fruition, Rivera was extra motivated to improve his game.

The wins punched his ticket to official “one-fight-away” status. Earlier this year, Rivera was offered a slot on Dana White’s Contender Series. After a pandemic delay, Rivera will finally carry out the opportunity against Luis Rodriguez (11-1 MMA) on Tuesday.

With an impressive performance, Rivera could earn a UFC contract – and in the process, prove that sometimes the ends justify the means.

“It would just be a dream come true,” Rivera said. “It would just really feel like all this hard work, all those hours spent in the gym, all the hours away from my family and friends, it would just give me that sense of accomplishment. Like, ‘OK, this was all for a good reason.’ Even if I don’t get to the UFC, I told everybody, like, if this is my last fight on (Tuesday), I’m just very thankful for this.

“… I’ve learned so many lessons through this sport. Win, lose, or draw. Those lessons have made me the man I am today. I believe I’m a very strong person because of this martial arts journey. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

DWCS 27 takes place Tuesday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. The event streams on ESPN+.

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