In a recent film room episode, I mentioned that the Eagles should look for ways to get Jalen Carter more one-on-one opportunities. He is getting double teamed a good amount, especially when he’s rushing along side either Milton Williams or Jordan Davis. Let’s look to see how some other teams are getting their superstar interior defensive linemen singled up.
FIVE DOWN FRONTS
One of the most common ways we see teams manufacture one-on-one looks for interior pass rushers is with the use of fronts where there are five defenders on the line of scrimmage. By putting five defenders on the line of scrimmage, offenses typically go into a man protection blocking scheme where they block the defenders directly in front of them, as opposed to line slides you usually see from four down fronts. This can make it easy to line up a star pass rusher along any spot on the line and get him the best match up.
The offense doesn’t know who is rushing, so they must be prepared for the defense to rush all five, or potentially more, defenders. The defense can rush all five defenders or drop one out in coverage on one side of the line while still being able to maintain the desired solo match up they want. Defenses will get a little more creative and rush defenders from the second level while dropping multiple defenders into coverage to dictate a match up as well.
Let’s look at some examples.
Notice in the video who was lined up on the front. In the first clip, it was two linebackers as the edge defenders. In the second clip, it was a defensive end on the left, with a linebacker on the right side. This is where the creativity can flow, it doesn’t matter who you line up on the edge, it could even be a safety or nickel, it just matters that you have five defenders on the line to manipulate the protection calls for the offensive line.
Here’s another example, this time with Aaron Donald.
FOUR DOWN FRONTS
When in four down fronts, the obvious move is to line up the DT wide, either as a three technique over the outside shoulder of the guard or wider, while still keeping an edge defender out side of them. This makes it more difficult for the center to slide over to help the guard, but that doesn’t mean the center can’t or won’t get there if they really want to. It does leave the other offensive linemen vulnerable on the other side and the quarterback needs to be aware of any “hot” pressure that he’s responsible for.
In addition to that, when a guard knows that the line is sliding to their side, they can be more aggressive getting width in their pass set as they know they have help inside in case they get beat with an inside counter. In the clip below we see Jalen Carter swim back inside thinking the guard has over set, but the center is ready to help.
Sometimes you just have to try to beat the guard outside even against the slide. That’s something we don’t see Carter do much, but Aaron Donald gives us a good example here. He knows the line is going to slide to him but he explodes off the line and powers through the guard with a chop-rip move anyway. Only special guys can do that consistently. Carter is a guy with the size, strength and quickness to win any way he wants.
What the Rams really like to do on passing downs when in a standard four down front, is use interior stunts with the AD and the nose guard. They like having the nose guard penetrate while AD loops away from the slide, getting him one-on-one with the opposite guard.
STUNTING
The current leader in sacks among interior pass rushers is the Raven’s Justin Madubuike. If you’ve never heard of him that’s okay, he wasn’t really a household name before this season. He had a career high 5.5 sacks last season, but he’s up to 12 this year already.
A lot of his sacks and pressures are coming from either high effort plays or from stunts. The don’t have a pass rusher you would consider as elite, but still, they’re first in the NFL in sacks. They utilize a lot of stunts, and simulated/creeper pressures, and generally rely on a lot of confusion. I want to look at one play from Madubuike to show how stunts can free up a pass rusher.
The problem with the Eagles implementing more stunts is they’re not very polished when they run them. That is a topic for a different article, but the Ravens commit to stunts much more often than the Eagles do and you can tell with the way they run them. Part of that is experience for the Eagles, as they have many young players, but part of that is on coaching and philosophy. Still, this offseason the Eagles should be committing to building their rush plan more around Jalen Carter and utilizing stunts is going to be part of that plan.
