- This topic has 5 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Wade Phillips’ 3-4 scheme might not be a big adjustment for Rams
By Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — Wade Phillips wore his Super Bowl ring as he made the rounds in Houston last week. As he did interviews, Phillips explained that the Denver Broncos, his former team, were defending champions right up until the end of Super Bowl LI. And though their one-year reign ended with the Patriots, who beat the Falcons by orchestrating the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history, Phillips is bringing a championship pedigree with him to the West Coast, as the Los Angeles Rams’ new defensive coordinator.
Phillips, 69, was the first hire made by 31-year-old rookie head coach Sean McVay. Phillips has nine seasons as a full-time head coach and was a defensive coordinator for 25 other seasons. Since joining the NFL in 1976, Phillips has been part of 20 top-10 defenses and coached 30 Pro Bowlers, five of whom are in the Hall of Fame. And in each of his last six stops as a defensive coordinator, Phillips has overseen drastic improvement. When he took over the Broncos the first time, they went from 27th to fourth in DVOA in one season. The Bills went 19th to 10th; the Falcons: 26th to 12th; Chargers, 30th to 13th; and Texans: 31st to sixth.
In his second stint with the Broncos, they went from fourth to first.
Phillips’ Broncos were the NFL’s best defense each of the last two seasons, one of which ended in that Super Bowl 50 title. Though perhaps not as dynamic and deep, Phillips inherits another solid defense with the Rams, led by arguably the game’s best interior lineman in Aaron Donald. Phillips will convert the unit from a 4-3 to a 3-4, but it might not be all that different.
We’ll isolate three key traits from Phillips’ defense in Denver in 2015 to ’16. You can find the same for McVay’s offense with the Washington Redskins in this post.
A 3-4 that acts like a 4-3
A lot has been made about the Rams going from four down linemen to three under Phillips, but Phillips himself has stressed that “those who can rush are going to rush.”
Under Phillips these last two years, the Broncos used three pass-rushers on only 41 offensive snaps, lower than all but four teams during that time. ESPN Stats & Info has the Broncos ranking fourth in the amount of times they utilized five pass-rushers during that stretch, slightly more than Gregg Williams’ defense with the Rams. But ESPN Broncos reporter Jeff Legwold, who charts every defensive play, will tell you that Phillips used four pass-rushers the vast majority of the time, continually varying which linebacker he used to get to the quarterback.
For the Rams, it seems like that extra rusher will mainly be Robert Quinn, a two-time Pro Bowler who will probably transition from defensive end to outside linebacker. In all likelihood, Quinn will still spend most of his time trying to get around the edge to get to the quarterback. And nothing will change for Donald; he will remain a three-technique, which means he will continue to line up on the outside shoulder of the opposing guard.
Below are a couple of looks at how Phillips lined his defense up early in Week 4 against the Buccaneers this past season. The first is a first-down situation early in the game, where you’ll notice a three-technique down lineman and two outside linebackers at the line of scrimmage ready to rush (or, because it eventually became a run to the outside, contain the outside).
It’s pretty easy to picture the four to the left being Quinn, Donald, Michael Brockers and William Hayes, respectively. On the very next play, 2nd-and-9, Bucs quarterback Jameis Winston lined up in the shotgun and Phillips used one of his linebackers in coverage. He still had a rushing linebacker, a three-technique and two other down linemen, essentially serving the purpose of a 4-3.
Lots of man coverage
The main reason Phillips was able to be so aggressive and unpredictable with his pass-rush was because he had the defensive backs who could play man coverage and at times be left on an island. Phillips would be inclined to mix in zone concepts at various places on the field if he didn’t have the cover corners, but most of the time — with Aqib Talib and Chris Harris Jr. on the outside — he did.
The Broncos were one of only three teams — along with the Texans and Vikings — to allow just one regular-season game of 300 or more passing yards over the last two seasons. They ranked first in DVOA against the pass in each of those seasons. The Rams, who mainly used five defensive backs, slipped to 20th in 2016. Their top three cornerbacks outside of Trumaine Johnson, a pending free agent, are no taller than 5-foot-10.
Phillips might have to play a lot more zone in L.A.
Adjusting to the opponent
The Broncos won it all last year largely because of the way Phillips adjusted. It’s evident in the way he navigated the last two games, the AFC Championship against the Patriots and the Super Bowl against the Panthers.
The Broncos couldn’t have faced two more different offenses.
The Patriots focused mostly on Tom Brady getting rid of the football quickly, using an assortment of short to intermediate routes that gained chunk yardage. The Panthers featured a dynamic running game — with running back Jonathan Stewart and quarterback Cam Newton — and also liked to throw the ball downfield, often using max protection to give Newton enough time in the pocket.
Against the Patriots, Phillips disguised pass rushes without being so aggressive that his defensive backs were too often in space. On Cover-2 looks, his safeties were aggressive attacking short throws, which allowed them to sustain the Patriots’ assortment of pick plays, as pointed out by Cian Fahey in this Football Outsiders post. Below is an example of a second-down stop on a short route that eventually led to a punt, with the safety’s pursuit highlighted …
In the Super Bowl, Phillips got aggressive. Newton is probably the NFL’s most athletic quarterback, but Phillips noticed that he would rather sit in the pocket than scramble, as noted by Andy Benoit of MMQB.com. His biggest decision was what to do with his extra defender, who would be on either a tight end or a fullback who would be used frequently to help an inadequate offensive line. Phillips decided to blitz that extra defender, putting constant pressure on Newton and allowing some of his best pass rushers — Von Miller, for example — to go up against man-to-man coverage.
The Broncos hit Newton 13 times in that game, and below is a look at just how many pass-rushers they used at times …
WHY RAMS’ SCHEME CHANGE WON’T AFFECT AARON DONALD
With Wade Phillips in as the Rams’ new defensive coordinator, Sam Monson explores the impact of a defensive scheme change.https://www.profootballfocus.com/pro-why-rams-scheme-change-wont-affect-aaron-donald/
Nothing causes hysteria and concern among a fanbase like a new coaching hire that brings with it the prospect of a change in defensive scheme up front.
This offseason, Wade Phillips was let go as defensive coordinator in Denver following the head-coaching change there, and was quickly snatched up by the Los Angeles Rams, replacing the departing Greg Williams in the same role. That means a switch in scheme for Los Angeles between 4-3 and 3-4 defensive fronts, which immediately raises questions about whether the Rams have the personnel for that change, and what it means for star defensive tackle, Aaron Donald, a player that has ranked first and second in PFF’s Top 101 player list over the past two years, respectively.
The answer to that last question: almost nothing.
In reality, there isn’t much distinction between 3-4 and 4-3 schemes today the way there once was.
When the 3-4 was first in vogue back in the 1990s, it was a two-gap system, where giant behemoths on the D-line played head-up over their blockers, defending the gap to either side of them and occupying space for the linebackers behind them to make plays uncontested. 4-3 defenses were typically one-gap schemes with smaller bodies up front that attacked gaps and won with penetration, while the 3-4 was a system where the linebackers, not the defensive linemen, were the stars, and the big bodies up front controlled multiple gaps without overcommitting to either one.
Today’s 3-4 defenses are very different animals, and predominantly one-gap systems, just like the 4-3. The NFL is generally a one-gap league these days, and there is very little two-gapping deployed as the league has trended towards smaller, quicker players across the board. Gargantuan nose tackles of the past like Ted Washington, Gilbert Brown and Grady Jackson have been eased out in favor of more athletic players that can move down the line, rush the passer, and not just occupy space. Sub 300-pound defensive tackles are not uncommon, and you will even find 3-4 nose tackles that barely tip the scales at over 300 pounds.
The real driving force behind the adjustments in scheme is the passing game. The NFL is a passing league and now lives in nickel defense, not base. Most teams run with three wide receivers on offense instead of a fullback or second tight end, so defenses have countered with an extra defensive back. Last season, base 4-3 and 3-4 defenses combined (with just four defensive backs on the field) accounted for only 27 percent of defensive snaps, while nickel defense (five defensive backs) was at 55 percent, and dime (six defensive backs) another 10.
What used to be your every-down defense is now being used on average only a quarter of the time. Even if two teams have dramatically different base defensive alignments, they are in sub packages far more often, and those sub packages are much more uniform in structure. Base defenses can see significant differences in alignment, but while the 55 percent of snaps the league spends in nickel defense breaks down into a few different personnel groupings, most of them are essentially different ways of achieving the same alignment.
Whether you are a 3-4 or 4-3 base defense, moving to a nickel personnel grouping takes somebody out of the front-seven and adds a player to the secondary. When that happens, most teams deploy the remaining six players up front in more or less the same way because it is the most efficient way of accounting for every gap along the line.
The first guy to get sacrificed is the big nose tackle for 3-4 teams. Linemen that weigh 320-plus pounds may still be great run defenders, but they tend to offer little as pass-rushing threats. 4-3 teams typically lose one of their three linebackers, leaving both schemes with two edge defenders, two interior defenders and two off-the-ball linebackers to go along with their five defensive backs. The only difference is exactly how those edge defenders stand when they line up. Whether you’re a 3-4 or 4-3 base team, the alignment of the front four in nickel and dime defense tends to wind up the same, but is still differentiated by anachronistic position designations that no longer make sense as descriptive tools.
This image shows Denver’s defense under Wade Phillips and the Rams’ defense under Greg Williams from last year, superimposed into one image.
The teams were both facing near enough the same offensive formation, and they deployed their front four in identical gap alignments. The only difference between the two was that the player furthest to the right side playing on the edge was an outside linebacker for the Broncos (DeMarcus Ware) who rushed from a two-point stance, but for the Rams, that player was a defensive end that had his hand in the dirt (Eugene Sims).
Those players are listed at different positions on the roster, but have identical roles from the exact same alignment on the play in this situation. The distinction between linebacker and defensive end is far less meaningful in the world of nickel defense than that between edge defender, interior defender and off-the-ball linebacker, which is why the Pro-Bowl ballot will remain broken until it adopts that shift in player designation.
The difference in the stance of the edge defender between two-point and hand in the dirt may not even be a team-prescribed technique. There are teams in the league (the Patriots, being one) that allow their edge defenders to choose which they feel more comfortable with on any given play, effectively leaving the designation of that defensive front to one player’s whim each snap (if all you care about is how many players have their hand in the ground). As long as he is lined up in the right spot, those teams don’t care if he is in a two- or three-point stance, so the label of linebacker or defensive end is entirely meaningless and arbitrary for that player on that play.
The same thing is true for interior defenders, too. Aaron Donald is known as a 3-technique defensive tackle, or “under-tackle” in a 4-man defensive-line scheme. 3-technique is simply the name of the defensive-line technique that sees a player lined up over the outside shoulder of the guard, ready to attack the gap to his outside. Most pass-rushing defensive tackles primarily play in that specific technique, but so do most pass-rushing 3-4 defensive ends. Calais Campbell, in Arizona’s 3-4 scheme, plays more 3-technique than any other technique—and more than many defensive tackles—but is listed as a defensive end on the roster. Donald’s alignment distribution in 2016 almost exactly matches that of Denver’s defensive ends, Derek Wolfe and Jared Crick.
The defense that Wade Phillips runs does have some eccentricities compared to other systems in the league—they tend to stay in base defense longer than most teams and then leap straight to six defensive backs, bypassing the nickel packages of five DBs altogether. Even in base defense, though, it is very much like a 4-3 scheme from an alignment standpoint.
When looking at the alignment distribution of Wolfe against Donald last year, the only difference between the two is a small spike for Wolfe in the 4-technique spot, the technique that plays head up over the tackle (the original 3-4 two-gap style alignment we mentioned earlier). There will be plays where we see Donald lined up in this spot, but Wolfe played there less than half as often as he played in the 3-technique spot that Donald usually occupied, and even in that alignment, he is going to be tasked with shooting a gap and defeating that tackle with quickness and hand speed rather than trying to eat up space and two-gap either side of him. In Phillips’ scheme, it is more of a disguise measure than it is a statement of two-gapping intent.
We are going to see Aaron Donald and the rest of the Rams’ defense lining up in a new defensive front under Wade Phillips in 2017, but if you can look beyond how many players have their hand in the ground, operating from a three-point stance, you’ll see that the alignment of those players has changed little despite the shift from 4-3 to 3-4. That once was a seismic shift that required a complete retooling of your defensive personnel to make it work, but in today’s NFL, it’s just a different way to shuffle the same cards. Aaron Donald may now be labelled as a 3-4 defensive end, but he will be the same destructive force as an interior defender as he has been over the past couple of seasons.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
