In this week’s “Xs and Os” with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar, the guys build the perfect defensive line at every gap — from Myles Garrett to Dexter Lawrence.
In this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) get into the traits and attributes of players needed to build the ideal defensive line, from wide-9 to nose tackle.
The requirements for pass rush and run-stopping haven’t changed much since the eras of Lawrence Taylor and Bruce Smith, though front concepts are different to a degree, but the game is different, so how do you build that ideal defensive front for every down?
Some of it is pure athletic talent, but mostly, defensive line is about technique. From Micah Parsons’ speed counter to Nick Bosa’s multi-gap loops to Maxx Crosby’s speed spin to T.J. Watt’s ghost rush to Aaron Donald’s bull/slip to Chris Jones’ counter/club to Dexter Lawrence’s furious bull-rush, the guys get into all of that, and more!
In this week’s Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar, the guys look to build the perfect secondary with ideal traits for every position.
If you were to create the ideal secondary for the modern NFL, most likely that secondary would have at least five pass defenders in its base coverages. Adding that slot defender, whether it’s a cornerback or a safety in “big nickel” (three-safety) packages, is a must against today’s 3×1 receiver sets. You’d also want outside cornerbacks who can play press-man coverage against an opponent’s top receivers, and safeties who don’t live by the old free and strong designations.
In this week’s edition of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) endeavor to build the perfect modern secondary, starting with the ideal traits for every position.
Let’s break that down, from cornerback to slot defender to safety.
Quandre Diggs flew under the radar in Detroit, as many great players seem to do. However, since getting traded to Seattle Diggs has been impossible to ignore. No other safety in the league is a better ball-hawk right now and he’s earned three straight trips to the Pro Bowl for his efforts.
Diggs is more than just an All-Star these days, though. Those in the know see that he’s developed into an elite back-end defender. That includes Doug Farrar at Touchdown Wire, who’s begun his annual NFL positional rankings lists, starting with the safeties. Diggs came in at No. 2 on his list. Only Minkah Fitzpatrick of the Steelers ranked higher.
“Over the last two seasons (1,078 in 2021 and 1,012 in 2022), Quandre Diggs lined up at free/deep safety on 2,090 snaps, by far the most in the NFL… Yes, Diggs’ overall stats were great (10 catches allowed on 21 targets for 135 yards, 62 yards after the catch, two touchdowns, five interceptions, three pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 60.7), but you really have to separate him from everyone else in the NFL at his position as a deep defender.”
For Diggs to recover the way he has (he says he couldn’t even cut six weeks before the 2022 season began) and return to a high level of play only a few months after breaking his leg is mind-blowing stuff. Hats off to No. 6, who’s easily the best free safety this franchise has had not named Earl Thomas.
Aggressive press coverage has been a factor in pro football since the 1960s. Greg Cosell explains why and how it’s still important today.
In the 2022 NFL season, per Sports Info Solutions, there were 4,801 dropbacks in which quarterbacks eventually threw a pass with a zero-step drop, or a one-step drop. Basically, the quickest quick game throws possible. On those dropbacks, quarterbacks completed 3,212 of 4,591 passes (70%) for 23,231 yards (6.15 YPA), 149 touchdowns, 55 interceptions, and a passer rating of 87.3. Last season, six NFL teams – the Buccaneers, Dolphins, Bills, Broncos, 49ers, and Seahawks – had more than 200 dropbacks with those quick-throw snaps, so it’s a staple for a lot of teams.
The point here is that with so much quick game in today’s NFL, you’re not always going to be able to get to the quarterback before he releases the ball, no matter how great your pass rush is. It’s one reason that interior pressure has become so important, but it’s also why you’d better be able to disrupt receivers with press coverage. Not that any team plays off all the time, but if you play off too much, opposing offenses are likely to look at that, smile, and say, “Hey, thanks – we’ll take the easy gains all day long.”
The origins of aggressive press coverage, where you’re not just mirror-matching receivers through the route, but you’re actively jamming them off their routes, go back a long way. You can start with the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders in the American Football League, transition it through the 1970’s Pittsburgh Steelers, and go from there. One of the most prominent examples of aggressive coverage came in Super Bowl XXXVI, when the underdog New England Patriots upset the St. Louis Rams, 20-17. In that game, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick had a gutsy strategy to defeat Mike Martz’s “Greatest Show on Turf” offense — he was going to beat up the Rams’ receivers, and he was going to specifically target running back Marshall Faulk by taking his edge defenders and going after the epicenter of St. Louis’ offense with all kinds of nastiness.
What became known as the “Bull’s-eye” game plan worked magnificently.
In “The Games that Changed the Game,” the book he co-authored with Ron Jaworski and David Plaut, Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup got specifically into the details of that game plan, and why it worked. We discussed it in detail on this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell,” and then spun it forward to how teams are using “Bull’s-eyes” in today’s NFL to limit all kinds of explosive plays.
One play from last season typified this approach. In their 30-27 Week 11 win over the Los Angeles Chargers, the Kansas City Chiefs were dealing with a situation in which Justin Herbert had the ball at the Kansas City three-yard line with 23 seconds left in the first half. The Chargers were already up, 17-13, and a touchdown here would have created more problems. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s response was to go full Bull’s-eye, to great effect.
Herbert started his read to the front side of his 2×2 formation, made a 3×2 set with running back Austin Ekeler aligned to the right. At the snap, defensive end George Karlaftis bombed through to the backfield, and altered Ekeler’s angle route. This caused Herbert to pause, and it also gave the Chiefs time to pressure him, which might not have happened otherwise. Flushed out to his left, Herbert then tried to hit receiver Keenan Allen to the back side on a switch release, but cornerback L’Jarius Sneed had Allen on lock in press coverage, and the result was a deflection.
“There were a lot of things going on on that play,” Greg said. “First of all, you’re in the low red zone, and in the low red zone, you’re usually not asking your quarterback to take deep drops and scan the field. So, Herbert was reading to his right, which was the three-receiver side, because Ekeler was set to the right in the backfield. They ran kind of a smash concept with the wide receiver [DeAndre Carter] and the tight end [Stone Smartt]. The tight end was kind of open; we don’t know why Herbert didn’t throw it if that was indeed his read. But they had Ekeler on a ‘Texas’ or angle route, and Karlaftis ‘Bull’s-eyed’ him.
“[Herbert’s] not really coming back to the other side in s strict sense because you’re in the low red zone, but the Chiefs did a really good job in a press-man look with the slot and the outside receiver in switching, because it was a switch release off the line of scrimmage by the two receivers.”
Whether it’s quick game or downfield stuff, the ability of defenses to alter route concepts with aggressive physicality can make all the difference. It was true in the 1960s, it was true in Super Bowl XXXVI, and it’s true today.
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After four years with the Vikings, Mattison finally gets a chance to be the guy in the backfield.
Every year, there are players that are key to the success of an NFL team that go unnoticed. Unsung heroes don’t get the national recognition they deserve for their contributions. Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar named one underrated player from each team. For the Minnesota Vikings, that player is Alexander Mattision.
Mattison has gotten a bit more fanfare this off-season than most that made the list heading into the 2023 season. The selection was based on his workload, or lack thereof, going into his fifth season in the league. Mattison has only 404 career carries heading into this season, where he will turn 25 before the season starts. With the release of Cook last week, keeping Mattison fresh may have been the best way to go.
Farrar states that while Mattison is not the explosive runner that Dalvin has been, Mattison “is absolutely the kind of hammerhead back you can go with in critical situations.”
There are a lot of questions surrounding this offense. Will Justin Jefferson keep up this superior level of play? How far can Kirk Cousins take this team? Can Jordan Addison immediately contribute to the passing game? What can we really expect for seventh-round pick DeWayne McBride to become?
With all these questions circling, it is nice to have just one semblance of consistency. That will come from Alexander Mattison. The peace of mind that will come with that fact is underrated indeed.
In this week’s “Xs and Os,” Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar look at how the Chiefs won the Super Bowl with a couple of corn dogs.
With 12:08 left in Super Bowl LVII, the Kansas City Chiefs were trying to overcome a 27-20 deficit to the Philadelphia Eagles. They had the ball on the Philadelphia five-yard line with third-and-3, and the call was to have receiver Kadarius Toney use return motion to fool an Eagles defense that was going to jump on any pre-snap motion that had the receiver crossing the formation.
The play was called “Corn Dog,” and it was the first of two times the Chiefs zapped the Eagles on a similar concept for touchdowns. Here, Andy Reid explains it all to NBC Sports’ Peter King.
In this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) chose to discuss pre-snap motion as one of the concepts that has taken over the modern NFL, and which better plays to discuss than the two that turned out to be the difference for the Chiefs?
“I loved the touchdown to Kadarius Toney — that was the first one,” Greg said. “Because Toney was split to the right — he was No. 1 to the right. And he started to go in motion as if he would go across the formation. And what made this play fun to watch was that the Eagles clearly had a plan for it. Darius Slay was lined up over Toney, and on this particular play, it was oow red zone, meaning that it was inside the 10-yard line. On this play, C.J. Gardner-Johnson was the post safety, What they wanted to do as soon as Toney went in motion… they anticipated it being across the formation, because the Chiefs do that a lot in the low red zone, is Slay and Gardner-Johnson were going to switch responsibilities. And you can see Slay communicate with Gardner-Johnson — what he’s saying is, ‘Hey, he’s going across the formation now. You run with him from your post safety position, and I’ll replace you as the post safety.'”
“They [the Eagles] had practiced this. This wasn’t done on a whim. So what happened was, Slay assumed that Toney was going across the formation, he took his eyes off Toney and assumed that he was just going to the deep safety position. Toney immediately went in return motion, meaning that he went right back to where he started, and Slay, because he took his eyes off of him, did not see him. So Patrick Mahomes had an easy pitch-and-catch, and Toney walked into the end zone.”
The Eagles went three-and-out on their next drive. Now, with the Chiefs up 28-27, it was time to expand the lead with a similar concept to the other side of the field. The Chiefs did so on this four-yard touchdown pass to Skyy Moore with 9:16 left in the game. This time, the return motion went to the left. Different reaction, same basic result.
“That one was just a case where Avonte Maddox, the slot cornerback… he just assumed that Skyy Moore would run across the formation, and he started to run across the formation, and took his eyes off Moore totally. Moore, of course, went in return motion, back where he came from. That was on the left side, and again, another easy touchdown.
“But the first [touchdown] to Toney was the really interesting one to me, because the Eagles clearly had a plan that they practiced, and the Chiefs countered it really nicely.”
In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys pick one play to detail how the 49ers dominate with the motion run game.
With 8:02 left in the wild-card playoff game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Seattle Seahawks, the 49ers already had a 3-0 lead, and they were looking to gain more momentum at the start of their second drive. They started from their own 15-yard line, but they didn’t stay there very long. The first play of the drive was a 68-yard Christian McCaffrey run that took the ball to the Seattle 17-yard line, set up San Francisco’s first touchdown, and helped to facilitate a 41-23 win.
If you’re familiar with the 49ers’ run game and head coach Kyle Shanahan’s offensive tendencies, the most unsurprising part of this particular play was that it had dimensional aspects of pre-snap movement.
In this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) talked about how pre-snap motion has become one of the NFL’s dominant concepts. We talk mostly about how it works in the passing game, but certain teams and coaches have devised ways to put defenses out of sorts in the run game as well, and nobody does it better than Shanahan — especially after the trade last October that brought McCaffrey to the Bay Area.
Per Sports Info Solutions, from Week 7 (his first with the 49ers) through San Francisco’s NFC Championship loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, McCaffrey had 146 rushing attempts with pre-snap motion, gaining 732 yards, 399 yards after contact, five touchdowns, 5.4 yards per carry, and an EPA of 11.40 — the highest such number for any back with at least 120 carries featuring pre-snap motion.
This play in the Seahawks game had both a pre-snap shift and a pre-snap motion. First, fullback Kyle Juszczyk shifted from right to left, and then, tight end George Kittle motioned from right to left before the ball was snapped. Both movements were designed to set up a perfectly-designed run play.
“What they did was, they started off in a 3×1 set,” Greg recalled. “Juszczyk shifted across and made it a 2×2 set. And then, all they did was to run one of their basic zone runs. But they brought Kittle in motion before the snap of the ball, and he became a lead blocker. It was simply a zone lead run, which is in everybody’s playbook, but they got to it a bit differently, and Kittle became the lead blocker. Often, you’ll see a zone lead run in the I-formation; that’s how a lot of teams run it. You’re in the straight I, and you have a fullback in front of the tailback, and the quarterback is under center, and it’s a zone lead. The 49ers got to it differently.
“Now, it turned out that Kittle didn’t need to make a great block, because he was going to get the cornerback [Tariq Woolen,] and the cornerback was going to stay outside. But it set up beautiful blocking angles, because on that particular play, the Seahawks were in a two-deep shell, and the safety [Ryan Neal] stayed deep, and [receiver[ Brandon Aiyuk didn’t have to make a difficult block.
“This was a great example of the 49ers using motion in the run game, which they do exceptionally well.”
In this week’s “Xs and Os,” Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar take a deep dive into why NFL quarterbacks are struggling so much against two-deep coverage.
It’s Scheme Month at Touchdown Wire, and who better to talk about with such things than the great Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup? On this week’s edition of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg and Doug (the editor of Touchdown Wire) get into two of the most dominant schematic systems in the NFL today — split-safety coverage, and the run-pass option. Let’s get into split-safety coverage to start.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a decisive change of the single-high coverages of the Legion of Boom days. Per Ben Fennell of CBS Sports and The NFL Network, 2022 marked the first season in the Next Gen Stats era in which there was more two-high than single-high coverage.
First time in the @NextGenStats era – 2022 season had more Split Safety shells than Single high. On the rise steadily each of the last 5 years
There are absolutely reasons for this. Per Sports Info Solutions, quarterbacks are faring far worse against two-high coverage.
NFL quarterbacks against two-high coverage in 2022 (Cover-2, 2-Man, Cover-4, Cover-6):
4,443 completions on 6,838 attempts (65.0%) for 49,446 yards (7.23 YPA), 179 TD (2.62%), 198 INT (2.90%), and a passer rating of 83.02. pic.twitter.com/Vi8njIfKTZ
In this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg and Doug look at NFL defenses that will be very different in 2023.
There are times when, if you want to be truly competitive in the NFL, you have to make major, wholesale changes throughout your defense. From coaches to players, there are five NFL teams who made huge alterations to their defenses in the offseason.
In the newest episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) discuss how the Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings, Cleveland Browns, Atlanta Falcons, and Buffalo Bills will put entirely new defenses on the field in 2023.
You can watch this week’s edition of “The Xs and Os” right here:
How will the Baltimore Ravens’ offense be radically different with new offensive coordinator Todd Monken? Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar have the details.
In the newest episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup), and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) get into the details of the Baltimore Ravens’ offense under new offensive coordinator Todd Monken. Gone will be the compressed formations of the Greg Roman era — Monken, who spent the last three seasons as Georgia’s offensive coordinator after a long stint in the NFL, talked at his introductory press conference in February about what he learned from creating high-level collegiate offenses.
“I think the game has changed,” Monken said. “The game has become more of a space game; using all 53-and-a-third yards and using the width and depth of the field, using space players and your skill players. I think that’s changed. Years ago, maybe it was inside-zone and run duo downhill. Now, it’s utilizing athletic quarterbacks. The game has changed; it’s changing. At one time, it was taller pocket passers, and now you’re seeing more shorter, athletic players. The game has changed in terms of using their athleticism, using players’ athleticisms, what they bring to the table because the game is about space. It’s about being explosive. Well, how do you create explosives? Well, part of it is creating space.
“So, that’s probably the biggest thing is, ‘How do you find a way to incorporate that into your offense?’ I think also being no-huddle, some tempo [and] what that provides because [in the college game] we were all no-huddle. It’s a little bit different then because of the dynamics of a signal system, and then the [radio communication] green dot to the quarterback. So, you have to work through some of that. That will take some working through, but it’s a speed bump, not a hurdle.”
Here, Greg and Doug discuss how Monken will jump those hurdles.
