According to Saleh, the Rams called 21 boot-action plays against his defense last Saturday, which Saleh called “unheard of.” Throwing boot concepts at a defense with a fast, aggressive defensive front forces defensive linemen to make second reactions when they’d rather not. It forces linebackers to sail betwixt and between run fits and coverage adjustments. The routes receivers run in boot concepts, which can be improvisational in nature at times, force cornerbacks and safeties to recover from their original concepts to what they’re actually facing.
Sports Info Solutions charted Goff with 18 boot-action attempts, completing 11 for 131 yards, 61 air yards, and that touchdown pass. In Week 16, Ryan Tannehill of the Titans ranked second in the NFL with five boot-action attempts. So, yes, it was highly unusual. And yes, Saleh should expect the Seahawks to run heavy boot until and unless his defense can stop it. In Week 10, Wilson attempted seven passes on boot-action, completing six for 50 yards, 23 air yards, and this touchdown pass to tight end Jacob Hollister.
“I always look at how teams call games against us,” Saleh said on Thursday. “If a coordinator is deliberately changing the way he’s called games versus other opponents versus us, then I feel like, heck yeah, it’s affecting them because they’ve had to actually change their game plan and change the way they approach us. Last week would be a perfect example. To call 21 boots is unheard of, not unheard of, obviously, but I think we’ve had 25 or so boots all year and to get it 21 times in a game tells me our rush is still very effective, teams are still worried about it. And for us, we’ve just got to continue to be cognizant of it and be able to go with the flow of the game and the way the coordinator’s calling plays and make adjustments as quickly as we can.”
Saleh’s defense was able to compress Goff’s half-field reads off boot-action in the second half, but Wilson presents another type of challenge entirely with his own ability to roll out, improvise, and combine velocity and accuracy to unravel the defenses he faces. And if Wilson attempts somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15 boot throws, don’t be at all surprised. It’s also one sure way for Wilson to offset the effects of his own leaky and injured offensive line against San Francisco’s furious pass rush, such as it’s been of late.
“I still think teams are going to do whatever they can to protect their quarterback, which was very evident on Saturday night,” Saleh said. “They’ll still be rolling out, boots, sprint pass, whatever they can, quick game, get the ball out of the quarterback’s hand. We’ve just got to be quick to make the adjustments that we need or get the calls that we need. If they want to continue running them then keep running them. Even when you go back and watch them, we get so many boots from our office during training camp and OTAs. When you actually watch the structure of how it was being defensed, we were very clean. For the most part, guys were covered. The quarterback just kept leaking for another four or five yards or whatever, but I wouldn’t put it past teams to continue trying it.”
Okay — so what’s the counter to that?