The Games That Changed the Game

by Ron Jaworski

  That’s why I categorically state that having a quarterback who is able to make throws from the pocket is the most important asset an NFL team can have. Everything else stems from this. Although the Vince Youngs and Michael Vicks of the world pull off amazing plays with their feet, it’s harder for them to win consistently, because they don’t make enough accurate throws from the pocket. They’ve proven they can win NFL games here and there, but over the course of a full schedule, it’s hard for them to execute enough big plays in the passing game to reach a championship level. You see the problem of relying on these types of quarterbacks when you’ve got to throw on third down or if you’re behind. When you’re in a situation where you have to throw, those bootlegs aren’t going to be worth much.

  Bill Belichick’s great teams of the past decade are a testament to this belief. “The running game is very important,” he said. “But the score can take you out of it. And we’ve seen that numerous times where a team falls behind and a great back isn’t getting those carries anymore. When you’re stuck in that situation, you’d better be able to throw it—or you’re going to lose. There are exceptions. If you can control the game with your defense and not turn the ball over, like the Ravens did back in 2000, then you might be okay. But overall, if you can’t throw from the pocket in this league, you can’t win.”

  Pocket passers can’t make throws of any kind if they’re on their backs, so they must have the ability to neutralize the sophisticated blitz packages prevalent in today’s NFL. One way to slow down those nasty guys is through play-action, and I believe you’re going to see even more of it in the future. “In the past few years, I’ve seen a huge increase in the amount of play-fakes,” said Dick Vermeil. “You never saw that much play-action in the seventies and early eighties. Are teams using it more because they run it more effectively, or do they use it for pass protection? I think it’s for protection.”

  Play-action demands great field vision and understanding from the quarterback. Before the ball is snapped, it’s essential that he gets a good look at the defense’s formation. After the snap, he must briefly turn his back on the rush to make the play-fake. For a moment, there’s a blind spot: a second where he’s not seeing the defense. He must possess the ability to turn his head around, readjust, then find receivers quickly. That’s why there’s a premium on play-action quarterbacks, because they’re asked to make instant reads, refocus, reset, and then throw accurately. I think you see more play-action now for two reasons: First, it affords you great protection, because you usually have more blockers available for protection. Second, it disorients defenders, confuses them, and messes up their assignments. In tape study, I see so many defensive mistakes out of play-action, and I think coaches are recognizing the success that teams are having with it. Ultimately, it’s a deception play. You are asking defenders to react to something that isn’t really happening. Executed properly, it can be extremely effective.

  onfusing defenses is just one tactic available to offenses. Another is tiring them out. There’s no better way to achieve both of those aims than with the No-Huddle offense, and I believe you’ll be seeing an increase in No-Huddle attacks. According to Brian Billick, “If you can manipulate the other team at the line of scrimmage and take the coaching out of it, the No-Huddle can work. It also simplifies the offense for the quarterback. It will stretch the defenses, while also limiting their packages and substitutions.”

  In this era of specialization and rotating personnel packages, defenses are in trouble if they can’t get the right people onto the field to combat what the offense is doing. “Late in my career, it became more of a hassle matching up your personnel with the opponent’s,” recalled Joe Collier. “It got to be so that you had a coach up in the booth whose sole job was to spot their substitutions, then relay them back to us on the bench, so we could put people in to get a more advantageous matchup. The changes were so wholesale that it became a rat race on the sidelines. Today you need a lot more good defensive backs to compete with all the wide receivers on the field, and finding good secondary help is tough. They’re a rare breed. With spread formations, it’s a different game.”

  Because of the increase in three-and four-wide packages, slot receivers are taking on even greater importance. The single most important asset for a player in the slot is intelligence. He has to be able to read and understand coverages, almost like a quarterback. He is working in a high-traffic area, with defensive linemen dropping, safeties coming in. The slot man has got to be able to navigate and read on the run. Speed isn’t as vital as quickness—being able to move adroitly in small areas, and then being able to get open, even with defenders all around him. New England’s Wes Welker led the NFL in receptions in 2009 and right now is the league’s best slot receiver. Other good ones include the Ravens’ Anquan Boldin and the Vikings’ Percy Harvin, who should really improve with experience. The Saints’ Marques Colston isn’t that fast, but he’s very strong and has a big body that’s ideal for slot play. Finally, there’s Pittsburgh’s Hines Ward, who may be the best slot receiver we’ve ever had in the NFL.

  Slot men aren’t always big and muscular, but size does help in those high-traffic areas. As players grow bigger, there are some who worry there might not be a place for little guys in pro football’s future, but I’m not among them. Speed and quickness in open space are skills that you must have in today’s offensive-oriented NFL. Smaller backs and receivers with separation skills will continue to play a major role in offensive game plans. With the emphasis on spread formations, you’re seeing coaches calling plays to get the better athletes in space. There they can use their athleticism better than in confined areas, and that’s more entertaining for fans. Having someone like San Diego’s Darren Sproles with the ball in the open field is a lot more exciting than watching a big fullback diving into the line. People want to see big plays.

  But at the other end of the weight scale, I also think we could soon be seeing four-hundred-pound linemen, a practical possibility because of training and nutritional advances. You could also have three-hundred-pound linebackers for special personnel packages. Used correctly, guys this size would pose real matchup problems for offenses attempting to block massive blitzers with just a running back. Ultimately, the size of a team’s line depends on its coach. He’ll make that choice based on the style of play he prefers. There are offensive lines like those of the Cowboys or Eagles: big, mauling, heavy guys who come off the ball in force and are hard for pass rushers to get around, and then there is the running game of the Houston Texans. Their linemen are smaller and lighter, utilizing blocking schemes similar to those we saw with Mike Shanahan’s offensive lines back when he coached the Denver Broncos. Undoubtedly, Mike will bring this style with him to Washington now that he’s coaching the Redskins.

  Teams are pressuring more with faster second-and third-level players, so it’s possible that some offensive linemen of the future might be lighter than road graders like the Cowboys’ 375-pound Leonard Davis. Presently, you have defenders lining up in the A-gap who are faster. Are big, fat guys going to be able to handle these speed blitzers? It’s a real debate. On tape, I’ve seen some of these 350-pound tackles get just an arm on a blitzing corner and knock him right to the turf. But more and more, you’re seeing agile guys like Denver’s Ryan Clady, Cleveland’s Joe Thomas, and Jake Long on the Dolphins. They aren’t 360-pound guys, like Flozell Adams was in Dallas. These kids are playing at weights in the low 300s, and even at that size, they’re amazingly quick and athletic.

  League executives like high scores and big pass plays. So do the fans. The result: NFL defenses today are at a real disadvantage. The rules overwhelmingly favor the offense. Increased penalties for hits that used to be legal are taking away some of the defense’s aggressiveness. But bless their hearts, they keep trying to come up with ways to at least slow down, if not completely stop, the wide-open attacks of the modern NFL. “Defenses today want you to have to block more people so they can have more defenders
covering fewer receivers,” noted Al Saunders. “Most zones now are matchup zones: man coverage in a zone scheme. If you’ve got more guys protecting, then defenders have the guys who are out in the pattern almost always double covered. That’s where you get the quarterback holding the ball. He’s looking around with nowhere to throw it, because the few receivers he has aren’t really open. Defensive coaches can scrutinize protections based on formations, personnel, and down and distance. Technology has really helped in this area.”

  What defensive coaches see in game tape will determine how they respond to each offensive challenge. “Defenses of the future will go where offenses take them,” predicted Bill Parcells. “The more offenses spread out, the more defenses will try to exploit the opportunities to knock the quarterback down or pressure him into bad throws. The chess match today is the offense trying to appear that it’s going to be spread out but then motioning guys back to get max protection so they can throw downfield. It’s between pressure and stretch. Passing is too efficient now, and defenses have to find ways to disrupt it. Overloading one side is one way they’re trying to do it.”

  That’s exactly what we’re now seeing in New York with Rex Ryan’s defense. The Jets are savaging offenses with overload schemes, bringing four pass rushers from one side, yet always getting at least one of them in clean. The beauty of these overloads is that they’re still safe blitzes, because Rex keeps seven defenders in coverage. This might be the first time I’ve ever seen four on one side—a lineman, two linebackers, and a safety or corner—all crashing in from one area.

  Jon Gruden told me that blitzes like that can’t really be picked up. Nothing is tipped off from the pre-snap read. And if you’re the left tackle, and your guy drops off, you have no one to block. There’s no offensive tackle on the planet fast enough to get to the other side in time to help fight off the overload. Assistants can’t even coach the proper technique to deal with this blitz. The team with the ball just has to hope that blocker is an athlete who can react quickly enough to help in some way.

  Rex has a high volume of these kinds of pressure plays, much more than other teams. He will take some risks, however, and is sometimes willing to be fundamentally unsound in his coverages. Most coaches would do anything to avoid that. You’ve got to be a little bit crazy to do this, and Rex is just like his dad that way. But Ryan’s approach seems to be working. In 2009 he became the first rookie head coach in NFL history to have his defense lead the league in both fewest yards and points allowed in a season, rankings that got his team all the way to the AFC championship game. I watch what the Jets are running, and I wonder how some of it’s even possible. They’re doing things I’ve never even seen in coverage before. Rex is simply responding to the multiple looks he’s getting from offenses, but being aggressive in doing so.

  Ryan isn’t alone when it comes to blitz package innovation. The Packers’ Dom Capers is a bit more cautious, but he remains among the most creative NFL defensive minds. Philadelphia’s Sean McDermott learned well from the late Jim Johnson and is a young guy to watch. In New Orleans, Gregg Williams has stayed very aggressive, using zero-coverage and other varied looks. You saw how his blitz schemes and rotating fronts battered both Kurt Warner and Brett Favre in the 2009 playoffs, then shackled the Colts’ offense at key moments in Super Bowl XLIV. Just days before that historic upset over Indy, Williams told reporters, “My job is about effecting change. If you don’t effect change, you’re out of the league as a coach, as a player.”

  Most pressure packages, no matter what their design, are initially triggered by the big guys up front. The current drafting trend is for bigger and heavier interior linemen. Nose tackles are pluggers and space eaters—your least athletic linemen. But more and more, you’ll see defensive ends like Justin Tuck and Trent Cole, who are lightning fast. These aren’t linemen, they’re linebackers playing defensive end. They might weigh as little as 230 or 240. Defensive ends in 4-3 formations are becoming leaner, faster, and quicker as the defensive tackles grow heftier and stronger.

  “You’re going to see more Dwight Freeney types on the defensive line, because you won’t need bulk on the line against the spread,” observed Dave McGinnis. “Big ends aren’t as important; the NFL powerrun game isn’t there any longer.” Because of new pressure schemes, we’re witnessing a paradigm shift to size and skills at virtually every defensive position. “With the advent of spreads in the pros, that means your linebackers will have to be smaller and quicker,” McGinnis maintained. “Safeties are going to have to become cover guys. The era of in-the-box safeties is gone. Your slot defenders become more valuable, so you’ll need hybrids with the skills of both safeties and linebackers.”

  Finding smaller, quicker pass-rushing ends on draft day is a constant goal for personnel directors. Another specialized position that’s vital today, but wasn’t even considered a priority in my era, is the nickel cornerback. The nickel corner now plays, on average, around 60 percent of the snaps because of the passing game’s predominance. This guy can no longer simply be a spare part—as, until recently, many thought him to be. Traditional corners have the benefit of playing near the sideline, which acts like an extra defender, but when you’re a nickel back or a slot defender, you have to defend both sides of the field. He doesn’t have to be as good in coverage as the regular corners, because he’ll usually get help from the linebacker and the safety. But the nickel corner has to be a good run defender, because even teams that line up in three-wide as their base offense will often run out of those formations. This transforms the nickel corner into a strong-side linebacker playing over the slot. So he’s got to be big and tough enough to play the run—he can’t be five foot seven and 170 pounds. The nickel corner also has to be able to blitz. Twenty years ago, these skills simply weren’t required of a nickel back.

  Some of the best nickel corners at work today include Tampa Bay’s Ronde Barber, Antoine Winfield with the Vikings, and Green Bay’s Charles Woodson. I never thought I’d see the day a nickel corner would be named NFL Defensive Player of the Year, but Charles earned that honor in 2009. He’s able to make more plays as a nickel than he ever could as a conventional corner, because he can blitz more easily and cause more fumbles. There’s nobody in the history of the NFL who strips the ball better than Charles Woodson.

  All these twenty-first century defenders are doing what they can to limit explosive plays, but the truth is that it’s harder than ever to do so, given the way the game is currently played. The funny thing is that you would think the wide formations used by the spread generate coast-to-coast plays, but I’ve found that isn’t necessarily the case. True, such formations create more seams, but when that happens, the ball becomes almost like a magnet, and defenders flow to it. The runner or receiver might pick up 10 to 12 yards this way, but he’s probably not going any farther.

  By contrast, if you gash the defense in tighter formations, you’ve got safeties closer to the line of scrimmage and fewer additional defenders out in space. If someone breaks past the line, there aren’t enough people at the third level to stop him. I think most big plays—the 40-and 50-yarders you see on highlight shows—come from the tight formations. Ron Rivera told me that the vast majority of big plays result from gap breakdowns by the defense: mental errors that balloon into physical errors. One guy goes the wrong way, a gap opens, and that’s it. This might sound mean spirited, but it’s true: Big plays come from guys screwing up their assignments and going where they’re not supposed to go. “Players must understand they are but one of eleven parts, and their role fits into those eleven pieces,” said Dick LeBeau. “You’re only as strong as your weakest link. You can’t go flying off all over the damn field. If I tell them to go left, and they go right, they darn well better get to the ball.”

  If defenses can avoid mental breakdowns as they apply more varied and unfamiliar pressure schemes, they might be able to close the gap between themselves and today’s offenses. “I think you’re going to see a lot more of the mixe
d bag packages,” predicted Tony Dungy. “Some teams are using those highly skilled two-hundred-fifty-pound guys, mixing them up and bringing different blitz packages to put pressure on quarterbacks. If you’re playing against a great quarterback and can’t pressure him some way, you’re probably going to lose the game.”

  And more of those games are coming. I believe the NFL will eventually go to an eighteen-game schedule, and coaches are going to have to respond with both strategic and personnel modifications. Players want to play; that’s how they’re trained. It’s also how they’re paid: There are incentive bonuses in their contracts. Beyond that, it affects the mind-set of a guy when he’s asked to sit out a game or two that’s deemed unimportant. And an extended season only increases the potential for more games at the end of the year that don’t mean much. Coaches will be trying to protect their players, but to me that’s the antithesis of how you should play the game. You take away some of the competitive edge, and that part bothers me. There’s also the obvious wear and tear on the athlete. This is a violent, physical, demanding sport, and adding more games is going to be tough on the health of the players. The body can take only so much abuse, and players need time to rest and heal.