It’s a passing league. You hear that phrase more and more these days. Seldom is it true that establishing a ground game is the key to an offense. In the past decade, the NFL has gone all-in on making the game easier for high flying passing attacks.
It’s become commonplace that NFL defenses will line up in nickel for about 60 percent of their plays. The assumption with that statistic is that most of the other 40 percent of the time they would be in their base defense. Well, that may have been the case at one time, but according to Sports Info Solutions, it’s certainly not the case anymore.
You know the whole "Nickel is the new base" thing? Very true, as nickel made up 59% of all dropbacks. But this surprised me — in 2019, defenses played more dime (20.9%) than base (18%). Which means that defenses are putting six DBs on the field more than they're putting four.
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 9, 2020
This means that teams are putting at *least* five defensive backs on the field more than 80 percent of the time. That’s crazy.
Base defense are most often either a 4-3 or a 3-4. Which means four defensive linemen and three linebackers or the other way around, with the two outside linebackers typically the pass rushers.
This offseason, the Raiders overhauled the linebacking corps. They made Cory Littleton and Nick Kwiatkoski their priority in free agency. They replace Tahir Whitehead and Will Compton. Being that they run a 4-3 base, that would suggest they need a third linebacker to compete with Nicholas Morrow. But the above stat would suggest three linebackers on the field would be an extreme rarity. So, the rest of the linebackers would be pretty much backups.
What the Raiders did was stock up on defensive backs. They already had safeties Johnathan Abram and Erik Harris returning. Then they added safeties Jeff Heath and Damarious Randall, giving them four safeties with starting experience.
At cornerback, they signed Prince Amukamara in free agency and drafted Damon Arnette and Amik Robertson, which is exactly what they did last year when they signed Nevin Lawson and drafted Trayvon Mullen and Isaiah Johnson. They got a find in undrafted free agent Keisean Nixon, giving them plenty of corners to choose from.
Raiders fans can take comfort that in a quickly changing league, they’re changing with it.
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