Great article on Rams and 6-1 defense

[theathletic.com]


The Rams have avoided the dreaded Super Bowl hangover so far this season. They are rolling at 3-0 but they’ve done so on the strength of their much-improved defense. The offense has been good (ranked 16th in offensive DVOA) but not as explosive as they once were (they were ranked 2nd last year). Yes, the Rams have had to replace the interior of their offensive line with less experienced players but they also got back a healthy Cooper Kupp and Todd Gurley, yet still haven’t looked close to the explosive offense that took the league by storm when head coach Sean McVay took over two years ago.

Who’s at fault for that? Blame none other than Broncos head coach Vic Fangio. Last year, Fangio was the defensive coordinator for the Bears and he was the first coach who was able to stop the Rams’ offense, holding them to a mere six points in Week 14. He did it with a 6-1 front with soft zone (either cover 4 or cover 3) behind it.

The principles of the defense were designed to take away exactly what made the Rams’ offense so dangerous. By putting two extra edge players on each side of a four-man line, the defense is already in position to take away plays designed to attack the edge like outside zone, fly sweep, and boots— all three are the Rams’ bread-and-butter.

In Super Bowl LIII, the Patriots took Fangio’s plan, tailored it to their personnel, and completely committed to it against the Rams, holding them to three points. (For more detail on how the 6-1 works, check out my Super Bowl film review). Rams head coach Sean McVay has had all offseason to think about what he would have done differently against that defense and though he’s come up with a few answers, he hasn’t yet solved the conundrum that Fangio’s blueprint presents his offense.

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So far this season, the Saints and Browns also copied Fangio’s blueprint and slowed down the Rams’ offense. In 2017, the Rams averaged 5.69 yards per play on early downs (1st and 2nd down), which ranked sixth in the NFL. In 2018, they averaged 6.53 yards per play on early downs, which ranked second. So far, in 2019, they are averaging 5.09 yards per play on early downs, which ranks 24th in the league.

“In a lot of instances, (the 6-1) is designed to try to discourage (outside zone),” said McVay on his weekly podcast.

The Rams started having some success running the outside zone against the 6-1 this season but in McVay’s words, “It wasn’t the big 20-25 yard runs that we’ve been accustomed to.”

In the the past, the Rams relied on explosive plays with their outsize zone game on early downs but with teams limiting their run game, they’re much less efficient and are forced to drive the length of the field, which they haven’t been able to do on a consistent basis in 2019.

“(The 6-1) had some success in instances and it’s something that we’ve seen show up a handful of times in the first three weeks and it’s something that I think we can expect to see as we move forward and it’s a great challenge,” said McVay. “That’s what you love about it and why you do some work during the week and make sure that you have good plans accordingly.”

This season, McVay has some answers against the 6-1 that he didn’t have in the Super Bowl but the Rams’ offense still hasn’t quite looked like the explosive unit we’ve been accustomed to.


Regular outside zone with a stretch handoff is a slow developing play. The running back attacks the edge but the play will usually cut vertically or back against the grain. Against the 6-1, it’s very tough for offensive linemen to hold their blocks for too long and without a huge threat of the play bouncing outside because of the extra edge players on the line of scrimmage, the interior players don’t have to pursue as hard and risk opening up lanes for the running back.

“(Defenses) are just doing certain things with some different bodies that we are normally accustomed to being off the line of scrimmage,” explained McVay.

The extra bodies on the line of scrimmage also force the offensive line to single block rather than double team like they want to do to create movement off the line.

Toss

To avoid the cluster inside, the Rams have ran more “crack toss” to get the ball to the perimeter quickly. If the play can get past the first level, it’ll usually go for a big play because there is only one off-ball linebacker to chase down the toss from the inside and the rest of the pursuit could get congested.


Here, the Rams cracked the outside linebacker and defensive end with receivers Cooper Kupp and Robert Woods and pulled tight end Gerald Everett and left tackle Andrew Whitworth outside to lead block for running back Malcolm Brown.

However, the problem with relying on the toss is that if opponents start expecting it, it’s extremely tough to consistently outrun NFL defenses even if the pursuit is hindered by alignment. Additionally, once the ball is tossed, the entire defense is going to pursuit the ball aggressively because there is not much of a threat of play action because defenders can very clearly see the ball being tossed to the running back.

The Rams did not have as much success with the crack toss against the Browns.


Here, the Rams initially got a blocker on every defender to the play side. The outside receiver Brandin Cooks blocked the safety rather than the corner by design because in most cases, safeties are better tacklers than cornerbacks. However, the corner came down from the secondary hard and did a great job of taking down Gurley while maintaining outside leverage.

Though the crack toss is a good play against the 6-1, it shouldn’t be relied upon too often. The Rams can get a big gain here and there but it’s tough to get consistent yardage on toss plays in the NFL.

Taking advantage of soft coverage

One of the reasons defenses play soft zone coverage behind the 6-1 front is because the Rams use so many condensed formations. Defenses are more worried about getting beat deep vertically than they are about horizontal space. Receivers are closer to the middle of the field where all the defenders are packed in so the defense isn’t threatened horizontally in the pass game.

“We want to activate certain things based on how that front structure is accompanied with coverage-wise,” said McVay.

Concepts that McVay seems to want to “activate” are route combinations that take advantage of underneath space. Against the Rams and Saints, they’ve had some success with a play action concept that we’ll call P14, X- out, slot- find. It attacks the flat area with an out from the X receiver and attacks the one inside linebacker with an option route in the middle of the field from the slot.


Here, the inside linebacker wasn’t affected by the play fake but chased the flat for some reason. Kupp simply replaced the linebacker and settled in the hole in zone.

Goff’s first read on the play is the “find” route. If it’s covered, he’ll progress to the “out”. On most variations of this play, he also has check downs in the flats.


On this play, against the Browns, the safety initially rotated towards Cooks but moved towards Kupp, so Goff went to his next read and looked to Cooks on the out. The play action held the flat defender so there was plenty of space for Cooks to work back to. With Cooks’ ability to threaten corners with his vertical speed and ability to stop on a dime, this is a very hard route for any cornerback to cover in off-coverage.

However, just like the toss, if you go to the well too many times, NFL defenders are going to start anticipating it coming.


Here, cornerback T.J. Carrie anticipated the out route was coming and jumped it. Goff also threw the ball a little late, which gave Carrie time to break on the ball. Because of the depth of the route, it’ll take time for the pass to get to Goff’s intended target. Elite cornerbacks will start jumping this route and it’s difficult to complement the play with a double move when the break point is so far downfield.

A good complementary play that the Rams ran against the Browns is a deep dig route or curl route. By running in-breaking routes with deep stems, the Rams could still take advantage of the underneath space, while keeping cornerbacks on their toes.


This play is essentially a deeper version of a basic curl/shoot combination with a play action fake. The fake held the inside backer and rotating strong safety while the shoot route pulled the flat defender away from Robert Woods, who ran the curl. Goff made a good read and fired a bullet to Woods.

Other solutions

The solutions that McVay has shown so far have worked, but they haven’t discouraged teams from getting out of the front. Though the Rams can theoretically stay in their base offense if they execute better, the numbers have shown with a growing sample size that the Rams are struggling to score against this front. Another solution is to use more spread out formations and find ways to run their base concepts from those formations. The Rams did spread out on early downs in a few instances in the last couple of weeks but not nearly enough in my opinion. They could even start in a condensed formation and quickly shift out of it to force defenses to communicate and adjust quickly.

I’m sure McVay has more tricks up his sleeve to counter the 6-1 that he hasn’t unveiled yet and there is also the question of whether the Rams are just struggling because they had to replace key interior offensive linemen like guard Rodger Saffold or because they’ve faced some tough defenses. But at the end of they day, the numbers demonstrate that they haven’t been nearly as explosive or efficient as they were since Week 14 last season in Chicago when Fangio first unveiled the 6-1. Right now, the narrative is that the blue print is out on how to limit the Rams offense and it’ll be up to McVay to change it.

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~ max ~
“The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity.” - Alexander Hamilton



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/25/2019 12:05PM by max.