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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/Sparkee58 on 2024-10-03 15:09:04+00:00.

I. Intro

Warning : this is a long ass post, with some meandering, but I promise you, there is a point to all of this. There’s been a lot of talk in the early part of this year about the down trend in scoring. This isn’t really anything new - this has been the trend ever since 2022. Right now, it doesn’t seem like the next innovation on the offensive side of the ball is coming this year. They’re still getting their asses kicked, and don’t seem to have gotten closer to countering the defensive trends that really kicked off in 2022. With this comes talk of, whose fault is it? Is the QB play bad? Is it cover 2? It’s gotta be the OLs, right? Coaching? I think there’s a pretty undeniable correlation here, and it’s what’s been in the mainstream discussion since 2022. Spoilers : the two deep safety alignment (which often will mistakenly get called cover 2, thanks Chris Collinsworth) has undeniably played a large factor, in my opinion the biggest factor, in the beatdown defenses have been giving to offenses the past three years

But really, I think to explain why this has happened, we have to examine the 2010s to see how we got here. Because really, these defensive trends are just a reaction to the offensive trends that were annihilating NFL defenses and leading to record yardage/scoring throughout the mid/late 2010s… And those trends were a reaction to the defensive trends at the time, so on and so forth, but really, the more I think about the 2010s, the more I stop and think : What the fuck were defensive coaches and Front Offices thinking?!

II. The Seahawks Ruin Defensive Football for the Next Decade

Starting around 2011, we had the beginnings of what became known as the Legion of Boom. They were pretty good, don’t ask me how I know. Primarily built around FS Earl Thomas, CB Richard Sherman, and SS Kam Chancellor (along with some other good players such as CBs Brandon Browner, Walter Thurmond) the Seattle Seahawks dominated the league defensively from 2012-2014, and were able to bring Seattle it’s first SB. Allegedly, I don’t remember a Superbowl being played that year.

… And in doing so, they set defenses back for approximately a decade. The thing about those Seahawks is they were very simple defensively. For their front, they ran a 4-3 hybrid front that combined two gap and one gap concepts - unlike most 4-3 defensive fronts, they utilized a 5 technique DE to the strong side of the formation to two gap and help stop the run. For Seattle, this was Red Bryant, a 6’4” 320 pound mammoth who was the dictionary definition of a run stuffing, 3-4 DE rather than the typical 4-3 DEs who were lighter and expected to rush the passer. This front helped protect their all-pro/pro bowl level ILBs Bobby Wagner and KJ Wright, who were smaller, lighter, and faster than many typical ILBs at the time and excelled in coverage. But as a lot of people probably know, it’s not the front that the LOB was known for schematically - it was their cover 3 defense on the back end. Cover 3 is a pretty good defense. Despite the trend to two high safety pre-snap alignments today, cover 3 is still the most common cover call in the league - every team utilizes it to some degree. Why is this? It’s just overall a very reliable, safe, and balanced call, where there aren’t a lot of calls an offense can make leaving you going “oh shit this is going for 6”. It allows you to have a safety walked up in the box - in Seattle’s case, this was the Eater of Worlds, Destroyer of Run Games Kam Chancellor, who looked a little bit more like a LB than a safety at 6’3” and 230 pounds. The advent and wide spread adoption of pattern matching - which the Seahawks mastered - helps you play fundamentally sound football against some of the traditional weaknesses cover 3 has - unlike what Madden told you, 4 verts doesn’t always beat cover 3.

The simple explanation of pattern matching - which really dates back to Nick Saban with the Browns in the 90s - is essentially, following a list of rules, defenders man up on receivers depending on the offensive play call - this is in contrast to the traditional “spot dropping” many think of when they hear zone - where a player is keeping his eyes on a QB and dropping to a landmark to cover. As I alluded to, this was developed by Nick Saban after his 1994 season with the Browns - where they faced a dilemma. A split safety defense, or two deep safety defense, was strong against the pass and the west coast offenses of the 90s in particular. Single high safety defenses - with that second safety in the box - stopped the run.

Nick Saban, DC for the Cleveland Browns under Bill Belichick, felt the Browns didn’t have the talent to run a cover 1 defensive scheme, so cover 3 was their solution to stop the run. The Browns defense was best in the league that year - a league low 204 points allowed. They finished 11-5. If I remember correctly, it was one of the best in league history at that point in time. They lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers three times that year, by a combined score of 26-63.

The problem the Browns ran into is that they had to go to a single high safety defense to stop the Steelers run game, which meant cover 3, but in doing so, the Steelers would run 4 verts and torch them. Simple concept – 4 players running deep, 3 deep defenders in zone coverage = your toast. Play cover 3 and get killed in the air - or play a split safety defense and get gashed by the run, they had no answer. The result was cover 3 rip/liz, what I’m pretty sure is the earliest concept of pattern matching we know of. Here’s how it works vs. a 2x2 offense running 4 verts:

  1. Flat defender covers #2 man to man (slot or TE) if he goes vertical
  2. CB has #1 man to man if he goes vertical
  3. Hook defender covers #3 if #1 and #2 go vertical (in a 2x2 alignment this typically means a LB covering a RB in the flats)

This has you manned up on 4 vertical threats, and lets the FS choose where he needs to help. This is just the beginning of pattern matching, which is used all throughout the league today out of different coverages with many different rules to combat dozens of different passing concepts, like cover 3 mable to defend 4 verts from a 3x1 by splitting the field into cover 3 on one side and man on the other, but I’ve already gotten side tracked on this topic too much.

All of this is to say, the Seattle Seahawks were able to play a scheme that was well balanced vs. the run and pass and could play fundamentally sound football vs. the passing concepts of the time. They didn’t really disguise much - outside of the fact that cover 1 and cover 3 looks the same pre-snap (more on this later, maybe) - they just lined up and said “we’re better than you, you know what we’re going to do, and we’re going to beat you”. And it worked. You couldn’t run the ball - not with guys like Red Bryant, KJ Wright, Bobby Wagner and Kam Chancellor in the box. You’re not beating them deep - not when you have the fastest, rangiest FS in the league in Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman who could play the cover 3 man match to perfection - not to mention an elite pass rush featuring Cliff Avril and Michael Bennet - they dared you to throw underneath, and trusted the speed and sure tackling to prevent any YAC. Forcing you to take these slow, methodical marches down the field amplified any mistakes you made – taking a sack, offensive holding, turning the ball over were back breakers – and the Seahawks were a great ball hawking defense.

Something else to mention as a key part of their success - and this is probably relevant later to offensive production exploding - the Seahawks basically realized that you could pretty much hold on every play, and refs wouldn’t call it, not wanting to throw a flag every play. This was very smart gamesmanship IMO, and I don’t mean to say it to discredit them at all - but after 2013 the league passed the LOB rule, which didn’t really change anything in the rulebook, but made it a bigger point of emphasis. The result was a significant increase in defensive holding calls - from 181 in 2013 to 235 in 2014 - this number didn’t fall back to under 200 again until 2020 (which also had a record year in DPI). Defensive holding has also trended down in recent years, to 186 last season.

As we all know, the league is a copy cat league, and the race was on. Everyone wanted to be the next LOB, and single high safety defenses became the de-facto in the league - after two high safety defenses such as the Tampa 2 had been used all throughout the 2000s to combat the resurging west cost offensive concepts and quick game passing QBs like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady excelled at. Beyond that, teams wanted the next Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and it heavily influenced defensive drafting as a result. Whereas 6’3” used to be seen as a detriment for a corner, it was now sought after. Safeties who could play in the box and cover man to man were desired. Everyone wanted a highly athletic, elite cover FS with range to be their deep man.

This was further cemented when the 2015 Broncos, AKA No Fly Zone, AKA the greatest defense to ever live dominated the 15-1 Panthers and MVP Cam Netwon in SB50, the best Superbowl ever. The 2015 Broncos were fundamentally a pretty similar defense…

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