Reading the Defense

  Posted 12/10 by Jene Bramel, Exclusive to Footballguys.com

Best of luck and big IDP production to those still in the hunt for a league title. We'll have the usual analysis of the latest news and timely trends later in the column, but first we'll continue our look ahead at the 2009 offseason with some speculation about potential coaching changes and possible emerging defensive trends around the league. Over the next two weeks, we'll finish with our annual look at what to look for in a college defender's predraft scouting report and a (hopefully) enlightening discussion of what we've learned from the 2008 season.

Coaches on the Hot Seat

Predicting the firing of NFL head coaches is a long time passion for most NFL writers. If you believe everything you read, nearly half the league's teams may have head coaching vacancies this winter. That's likely a stretch, but there will certainly be plenty of turnover this offseason. In no particular order, here are some situations to watch.

Marvin Lewis isn't nearly the lock to be fired that a coach who has one win through 14 weeks would ordinarily be. Cincinnati owner Mike Brown isn't going to fire, then pay Lewis for not coaching his team. There's a small chance that a buyout could be worked out, but it would be surprising. If something does happen, defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer could be a candidate to step in, which could lead to a still more aggressive scheme and plenty of upside for the MLB that eventually replaces Dhani Jones.

Cleveland is expected to clean house this offseason, with Romeo Crennel more likely to be a defensive coach for another team next season than the Browns' head coach. There could be big IDP implications here if the new staff scraps what has been a poor 3-4 scheme in recent seasons.

A similar change in defensive scheme could be in the works in Dallas if Jerry Jones gets impatient and fires Wade Phillips. The Cowboy defensive personnel may be better suited for a 3-4, but it's not unthinkable that a new coach could see Demarcus Ware as an edge rushing defensive end.

Detroit's Rod Marinelli, Kansas City's Herm Edwards and Oakland's Tom Cable are also prime candidates to lose their jobs. The loss of Marinelli and Edwards will mean a lot less Tampa-2 in the league next season and could affect the value of the weak side backers and corners in Detroit and Kansas City.

Other situations that could impact IDPs this offseason include the potential replacement of San Diego defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell (and head coach Norv Turner), San Francisco head coach Mike Singletary, St. Louis head coach Jim Haslett, Green Bay defensive coordinator Bob Sanders, Houston head coach Gary Kubiak, Minnesota head coach Brad Childress, Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin (should he decide to join his son in the college ranks) and Seattle head coach Mike Holmgren. The San Diego, San Francisco and St. Louis situations could have interesting impacts.

A few bright defensive minds in the assistant coaching ranks could get promotions given the glut of potential openings. The Giants' Steve Spagnuolo, Titans' Jim Schwartz, Ravens' Rex Ryan and free agent Bill Cowher could all bring new defensive philosophies to new teams.

Winds of Defensive Change

Expect to see less and less Tampa-2 in the league next season. Late last season, the Buccaneers were starting to move away from their long-favored coverage package in favor of more aggressive nickel packages. The veteran Bucs could lose some of their anchor Tampa-2 players this offseason, as well as coordinator Monte Kiffin as noted above. Chicago's Lovie Smith, a disciple of Tampa-2 developers Tony Dungy and Kiffin, used less Tampa-2 this season, preferring to crowd the line with his backers than drop them in coverage on early downs. The Vikings and Bills were more aggressive this season as well. With Detroit head coach Rod Marinelli likely to be fired, the Colts may be the only team with a definite Tampa-2 slant in 2009.

Last season, with the strong defensive play in San Diego, New England, Pittsburgh and Dallas, it was expected that the 3-4 front may make a comeback across the league. The Dolphins became primarily a 3-4 team this season, but the three man front didn't take hold as a base defensive front elsewhere. However, Denver, St. Louis, San Francisco, Tampa Bay and Arizona all use the 3-4 as a change of pace defensive front. It's not yet clear whether we'll see more 3-4 as a base front, but it's likely that teams will continue to work it into their playbooks as a subpackage.

More likely, however, we won't see an emerging scheme trend next season. Instead, as the league's offenses continue to spread the field and throw the ball on all downs, there are likely to be more situational substitutions and fewer traditional nickel packages. Expect to see more platoon situations along the defensive line, more MLBs that are only two down players and more rotation at the safety positions. Expect to see fewer teams rely on the traditional 4-2-5 nickel look as their primary subpackage as the league drafts defensive end-tackle tweeners, defensive end-linebacker tweeners, bigger corners, and better covering OLB and safeties.

As usual, the offseason promises to be every bit as interesting and exciting as the regular season for fans of defensive football.

Stats, Metrics and Trends

The NFL has given us a new statistic to play with this season - tackles for loss. Though it's likely considered one of the league's unofficial defensive statistics, it's not an arbitrary stat subject to the judgment of each stadium's statistician crew. Either a tackle was made behind the line of scrimmage or it wasn't. We're looking forward to the NFL releasing easy to manipulate TFL data for individual defensive players this offseason, but I thought it'd be interesting to see how each effective each team's defense is at making tackles behind the line of scrimmage.

To do that, I subtracted each team's sack count from its TFL total, then adjusted the non-sack TFL total for rush attempts faced. Not every TFL occurs on a rushing play, but it's not an entirely unreasonable leap of logic for our purposes. I expected that data manipulation to highlight the most aggressive defenses and/or those with the most talent along the defensive front seven. For the most part, that's exactly what the data shows. The outliers, however, are interesting.

First, the not-so-surprising findings.

The top five defenses, ranked by non-sack TFL per rush attempt, are in fact a who's who of aggressive, talented defenses - Chicago, Minnesota, Baltimore, the New York Giants and Tennessee. All make a tackle behind the line of scrimmage an average of once every eight rushing attempts or less. While the accolades often go to the Vikings, Ravens or Titans, it's the Bears with a league best TFL every 6.07 rush attempts. The bottom five includes San Francisco, Oakland and Cleveland, all of whom average a TFL well over ten rush attempts.

Some of the other findings were less expected.

The St. Louis Rams, a unit that ranks in the bottom five of nearly every major defensive category, finished third in total non-sack TFL, but dropped only to eighth after adjusting for rush attempts faced. It'll be very interesting to see who leads the Rams in non-sack TFLs, but it may be that an offense that can't stay on the field is masking an underrated defensive line that executes the aggressive philosophy of defensive coordinator turned head coach Jim Haslett well. That could bode well for a solid MLB talent if the Ram can correct their problems on offense with Haslett remaining as coach next season.

It was also surprising to find the Steelers 14th on this list. Pittsburgh has multiple talented defenders among the front seven, not including dynamic safety Troy Polamalu, and sports the league's best average yards per carry allowed. Why aren't the Steelers higher on the list? Perhaps it's related to the 3-4 front, though the Raven defense ranks highly by this stat. It could also be an error in how the Steelers are perceived. A team with as successful a pass rush as the Steelers have is often believed to be a very aggressive unit. In reality, Dick LeBeau's fire zone scheme is designed to maximize pressure and coverage at the same time, and the Steelers don't crash the line as often as many believe.

At the other end of the rank list, at first glance it might seem surprising to find the Chargers and Packers tied for the fewest non-sack TFL per rush attempt. However, the injuries among the front seven and lack of aggressiveness from coordinator Ted Cottrell underline what has been an uphill battle for a once-feared defense turned that's become average this season. The Packer struggles along the defensive line and lack of a stud linebacker to crash gaps are clearly hurting a unit that was very solid in 2007.

This will be the last installment of Stats, Metrics and Trends for this season, though we'll likely be mixing in some stats and metrics into our Week 17 post-mortem. If you enjoyed this section of the column, make sure you visit our IDP Forum regularly this offseason, where I'm again hoping to do a Fun With Defensive Stats series of threads that go well beyond the usual fare of solo tackles and sacks.

Week 14 MVPs - Most Vexing Players

To keep some of these guys from getting lost in the Stunts section below, we're going to adapt the "Interesting Boxscores" segment of our weekly all-IDP podcast into a new RTD feature where we'll take a closer look at the most surprising breakout and disappointing box scores each week.

Baraka Atkins (5 solos, 2 sacks) - Atkins seemingly remained an afterthought even after Patrick Kerney's shoulder injury. In reality, the late round 2007 draft pick was seeing increasing amounts of time in rotation against tough pass rushing matchups. Against one of the league's better pass rushing matchups last week (New England), Atkins broke out. That trend could continue against the still struggling Rams this week.

Chris Crocker (1 assist) - Crocker, while nothing special in coverage, was moved out of the box last week and into a more traditional free safety role last week as Kyries Hebert took the bulk of the strong safety snaps in Cincinnati. Even if Chinedum Ndukwe returns from injury this week, that alignment is likely to continue. Crocker should do better against the Redskins this week, but remains a very risky start.

Stunts

Clint Session, rather than new MLB Buster Davis, got the call in the majority of the Colt subpackages last week. Davis was all but invisible in the box score, while Session managed only three solos. Both Session and Keiaho sat out the fourth quarter after the game got out of hand, which bodes well for Session's potential in future weeks and makes Keiaho's seven solos even more impressive. Expect plenty of nickel packages again this week against Detroit, making Keiaho the best option and again leaving Davis the odd man out.

Desmond Bishop again had a very productive day in an every-down role, this time replacing injured WLB Brandon Chillar. With Bishop not assured to start until late last week, the Packers elected to leave Bishop and A.J. Hawk in the roles in which they'd been practicing all week. There are rumblings that may not be the case this week. With Chillar again unlikely to play, the Packers will have plenty of time to consider moving Bishop and Hawk back to more familiar positions. It's also noteworthy that Bishop, not Hawk, was the linebacker in the Green Bay dime package. The Jaguar matchup isn't likely to force many dime looks, but it's something to file away and monitor this offseason in case there's more to the alignment than the groin injury that has reportedly continued to hamper Hawk.

David Harris wasted no time in proving that an extra couple of weeks' recovery could mean fresh legs rather poor healing with a monster effort in San Francisco. Some of Harris' big production should be attributed to the big tackle opportunity the Jet defense faced, but there seems little question that he's back in an every-down role. Eric Barton's numbers will suffer as a result.

The Patriots continue to lose starters from a scrappy defensive unit. Last week, Tedy Bruschi and Vince Wilfork went out with injury and neither look likely to play this week. New England is reportedly considering putting Bruschi on IR, which could mean big things for rookie Gary Guyton. If the Pats elect to keep recent veteran signee Junior Seau in a reserve role, Guyton would likely move into an every-down role and could assume LB3 value over the final month of the season.

Fellow staffer Larry Thomas has teased out another interesting alignment situation. After being the first to break the news that Chad Greenway had been moved to the strong side this summer, Larry noted that Houston OLB Xavier Adibi was seeing a lot of snaps in what many would term a SLB-like role last week. Whether it was a one week glitch in the gameplan or a sign that the Texans may want some game tape on Adibi on the strong side to review during the offseason with Zac Diles still firmly in the mix for 2009, it's something that could negatively affect Adibi's numbers over the last three games. Given Adibi's inability to shed blocks once engaged, the strong side seems like a poor fit for him. Stay tuned on this one.

If your leaguemates have left Brandon Meriweather on the free agent list, there should no longer be any hesitation about picking him up after yet another solid game against a so-so matchup. Meriweather was an early draft pick last season and there was a valid argument that, though slightly undersized, he was enough of an all-around talent to assume Rodney Harrison's role in Belichick's complicated scheme. When the Pats considered moving him to corner before the 2008 season, much of the shine wore off. It would certainly appear that Meriweather is up to the task, making him an under-the-radar dynasty acquisition if Harrison struggles to recover from yet another devastating injury.

Nate Webster wasn't nearly as productive in his return to the lineup as David Harris. Webster sat frequently as the Broncos used plenty of nickel against the Chiefs and rotated with Mario Haggan in the middle until an injury knocked Haggan out of the lineup. Webster isn't likely to be in rotation much this week with Haggan dinged and questionable and faces a Carolina team that's been running over very good defenses. He makes for a better start this week, but still a risky one.

Brandon Harrison was forced into action at safety in Houston last week and again had a productive day. Harrison is a lot like Keith Lewis was in San Francisco during the second half of the 2006 season - a marginally talented player that the coaches would prefer in a reserve role who makes enough tackles to have above-average IDP value when he plays. Consider him if you're desperate this week and Nick Ferguson again can't go for the Texans.

Owners of Tennessee DE Kyle Vanden Bosch should seriously be considering other options this week after Vanden Bosch left the lineup again with an aggravation of the groin injury that has plagued him for months. Vanden Bosch hadn't played much in the past two weeks anyway with the Titans out to huge leads early against Detroit and Cleveland, which makes this an even more concerning development.

IDP Returner Threats

Week 14 Returner Table

Last Three Weeks Returner Table (Per Game Averages)

Every week, with a huge helping hand from our IDP Forum's own kerpow (who will be providing the stat tables for this section), we'll be tracking the notable return yardage trends and defensive usage of the league's dual IDP-returner threats.

Josh Wilson, Ellis Hobbs and Leodis McKelvin remain consistent dual threat values. Chris Carr and Danieal Manning increased their production as expected this week after assuming larger roles in the nickel packages, and, in Carr's case, regaining a primary returner role. Manning makes an especially good play against the Saints this week, who have been providing big opportunity for nickel corners. Will Blackmon also had an above-average game, but is a risky play against Jacksonville this week. There aren't likely to be any surprises this week. No major injury happenings to report and Quinton Demps and Adam Jones remain too risky to trust in most leagues. Keep an eye on kerpow's weekly IDP returner thread and Mike Herman's midweek ReturnerGuys column for the latest news and analysis.

Remember to check out our weekly all-IDP podcast on the Audible every Wednesday and be sure to stop by the IDP Forum every Sunday morning for all the latest and most accurate IDP news, analysis and inactive players. Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to bramel@footballguys.com.

Best of luck in Week 15.