The Year Defense Took Back the NFL

We’re down to the final four teams, and I don’t think anyone saw this coming. Mainstays like the Seahawks and Packers didn’t even sniff the playoffs. Regular contenders like the Steelers and Falcons were eliminated this past weekend. Even high upside teams with star quarterbacks like the Saints and the Panthers fell short. And now we’re left with the Vikings, the Eagles, and the Jaguars.

And of course, the Patriots.

It has been a very strange season from beginning to end, and it is fitting that this is the end result. At the beginning of the season the Vikings and Eagles were each 40-1 to win the Super Bowl, while the Jaguars had odds of 100-1. They all found themselves behind teams like the Packers, Raiders, and Cowboys, teams that looked like sure bets thanks to excellent quarterback play. And Minnesota’s and Philadelphia’s odds would only have been worse if we had known that both would lose their starting quarterbacks, and that they would finish the season with Case Keenum and Nick Foles under center.

Football has always been a game driven by the quarterback, but that has become increasingly true over the past fifteen years. At the turn of the century we saw a run of teams winning with mediocre quarterbacks, a three year stretch of Trent Dilfer, first year starter Tom Brady, and Brad Johnson riding superb defenses to championships.

But since then the common knowledge has been that you can’t compete without a star quarterback. Over the past ten years we have seen two championships by Brady, two from Eli Manning, and one each from Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco, Russell Wilson, and Peyton Manning. And say what you will about Eli and Flacco, both played exceptionally well during their teams’ championship runs, at a level three of the four quarterbacks still alive could never hope to reach.

2017 marks a drastic change in the playoff finalists, and that is just an extension of the regular season. The chart below shows the average points scored per game across the league since 2000, a steady upward climb culminating in a sharp drop this past year. The average team scored 21.7 points per game this season, the lowest average since 2009.

 

When you look closer at the numbers, there is really only one place this change is coming from. Field goals are being made at roughly the same rate as over the past few years. Special teams touchdowns have dipped since they moved the kickoff up to the 35 yardline, but they’re no different this year from 2016. Defensive touchdowns are actually up, and the only category that sees a noticeable drop is offensive touchdowns. All told, the league averaged 2.19 offensive touchdowns per game, nearly a 10% drop from a year ago.

Most people are blaming this dip on injuries, and the extended absences of Aaron Rodgers, David Johnson, and Andrew Luck certainly didn’t help matters. But when we look at the course of the regular season and at the teams remaining alive, it’s hard not to see 2017 as the year that defense took back the NFL. Injuries certainly played some role, but that ignores that we played most of the season without defensive stars like JJ Watt and Richard Sherman, and that just this past weekend we saw the elimination of three mostly healthy offenses that nonetheless underachieved.

Only time will tell the true cause of the 2017 dip, but I think this season may be the first sign that defenses are starting to catch up after years of offensive dominance. Rule changes and schematic innovation have propelled offenses to ridiculous new heights over the past decade, but over the course of NFL history we have seen how cyclical these imbalances are. Defensive schemes adjust, new players enter the league, and the advantages that offenses took advantage of for ten years have started to fade away.

It isn’t a coincidence that the three non-Patriots teams left alive are perfect examples of every recent trend in defensive construction. Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Jacksonville don’t just have three of the best defenses in the NFL. They also have three of the most modern. At every level of the defense the style of player entering the league has changed, and these three teams understand how to utilize these new players to attack the strengths of offenses better than any in the league.

 

The clearest trend has been at the very back of the defense, where teams have spent the past five years doing everything they can think of to try to copy the success of the Seahawks. This primarily takes the form of searching for tall, physical cornerbacks that make up for a lack of lateral quickness with strength to disrupt routes and length to contest throws.

The best example of this sort of player in the entire league is probably Minnesota’s Xavier Rhodes, who was drafted in the first round the year after Seattle’s big breakout. Like Sherman he entered college as a wide receiver, and he translates those ball skills to the cornerback position. Minnesota also spent a first round pick in 2015 on the long and lightning fast Trae Waynes, who has developed this year into an above average starter. And of course, on Jacksonville there is Jalen Ramsey, a top five pick who in his second year has already established himself as one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL.

The adoption of big cornerbacks on the outside is very easy to see, but a subtler change has happened with the cornerback position as well. In 2007 the Patriots swept through the NFL as one of the first teams to fully adopt a spread scheme, powered by a then unheralded slot receiver named Wes Welker. Since then NFL teams have been much more willing to throw three or four receivers onto the field, and they’ve targeted players like Welker whose talents are best suited to work in the slot.

It took some time, but over the past few years defenses have started doing the same. In the past a third cornerback was just that, the third best cover guy on the team usually with the same skills as the players on the depth chart above him. But now that teams have started facing spread offenses on a regular basis, they are developing cornerbacks with the express purpose of lining up in the slot. Since the Vikings drafted Mackenzie Alexander in the second round in 2016 he has played almost exclusively in the slot, and with that experience he has developed drastically different skills than their bigger cornerbacks on the outside.

As players on the outside have gotten bigger, players on the inside have actually gone in the opposite direction. Traditionally an off the ball linebacker was asked to be big, aggressive, and physical, playing downhill to stuff up the run in the middle. But with the advent of the spread, the template for an NFL linebacker has changed, to an explosive athlete capable of working sideline to sideline and tracking tight ends and running backs in the passing game.

All three teams boast multiple linebackers that fill this role. Brothers Mychal (Philadelphia) and Eric (Minnesota) Kendricks are almost perfect templates for the modern linebacker, and both came into the league perceived as severely undersized. Mychal weighed in at 240 pounds, in the 46^th percentile of off the ball linebackers. Eric was only 232 pounds, in the 16^th percentile. At 218 pounds Jacksonville’s Telvin Smith is one of the smallest linebackers in NFL history, but that hasn’t stopped him from being a consistently disruptive force in the modern NFL. (Anthony Barr and Myles Jack have good size for any era, but they are probably categorized as pure freaks of nature).

In the past these linebackers would have been blasted off the ball by guards or fullbacks racing downhill. But as the game has spread out (and as offensive line talent has declined across the league), running schemes have developed massive gaps for athletic linebackers to shoot through. These players may not be able to stack up a lead blocker in the hole, but they can shoot past them to make plays in the backfield. This same sort of template has made it possible for a player like Harrison Smith to spend half his time playing linebacker in the box, allowing one of the most disruptive athletes in the league to be consistently around the ball.

The trend on the second and third level has been towards specialization, but the opposite has happened on the defensive line. With the vulnerabilities opened in the running game by the undersized linebackers, it has become essential to have defensive linemen who can dominate in multiple ways up front. All three of these teams boast extremely deep and versatile defensive lines, with the best athletes on the field often coming off the edge or up the middle to disrupt both running and passing plays.

No two defensive linemen in the league better represent the shift in style than Calais Campbell and Fletcher Cox. As two defensive tackles weighing less than 300 pounds, both would have been considered severely undersized in the past. They would have likely been forced to bulk up to hold the point of attack better against the run, limiting their explosiveness in attacking the passing game.

That is certainly no longer the case. Defensive tackle hardly describes the position these two play anymore, as they consistently rotate through all positions along the line. They can bust through the middle, or they can collapse a play from the edge, with the speed and strength to dominate any blocker they come up against. Campbell is the perfect example of how the league is still catching up to the proper way to use such a rare athlete. In Arizona he was a very good player, but it wasn’t until he moved to Jacksonville this year that his potential was truly unlocked, as a versatile player who regularly bounced outside and stacked up a career high 14.5 sacks.

These three teams are still alive because of their defenses, specifically their very modern defenses. Minnesota, Philadelphia, and Jacksonville boast three of the most athletic and aggressive defenses in the league, with multiple players that seem almost designed to attack the spread out offenses that have become popular in the NFL. This has allowed them to consistently overwhelm the opposition, and to cover up the holes in their own offenses.

And yet the question remains. Is it enough to beat the Patriots?

On paper these defenses seem ideally constructed to cause problems for New England’s offense. Jacksonville and Minnesota have the physical presence on the outside to disrupt the timing throws to New England’s merely average group of receivers, and all three teams have the athleticism and skill at linebacker to keep up with their running backs and tight ends in the passing game. Philadelphia and Jacksonville have the depth to generate consistent pressure up front, and while Minnesota’s sack producers have gone quiet in recent months, Mike Zimmer boasts a variety of blitz packages that have historically caused Brady problems.

These teams have the ability to slow New England down, but I’m still not sure it will be enough. The question we still have to answer is, just how vital is a quarterback to playoff success? And despite everything we’ve seen this year, I’m still not convinced that Case Keenum, Nick Foles, or Blake Bortles have what it takes to win a hotly contested playoff game against Brady.

The reason I’ve always believed that a top notch quarterback is essential is because the margin for error shrinks in the playoffs. Most studies have shown that close games are decided largely by a matter of random chance, and that’s borne out in the combined 10-7 regular season record in games decided by seven or fewer points by the Vikings, Eagles, and Jaguars which, when accounting for survivorship bias, is not particularly impressive.

The one exception to this rule is that there is some evidence (though not strong enough to be conclusive) that teams can win excessive close games when they have a dominant quarterback or coach. This makes sense when you think of end of game situations, when you place the burden on your quarterback’s shoulders to either generate points or run out the clock. When the defense knows you are going to pass, can you still count on your quarterback to find an open receiver and fit the ball into a tight window?

The other three teams are still alive, but there was a lot of luck involved in last weekend’s victories. If the Steelers hadn’t elected to go for the onside kick, would Jacksonville have trusted Bortles to try to pick up a first down? Or would they have run it three times and punted back to the Steelers only up a single score? The Falcons had a chance to win the game inside the 10 yardline, and even before the miracle pass, the Vikings gave the ball back to the Saints with more than a minute left after they had to settle for a 53 yard field goal rather than picking up more yards and running down the clock. 

I don’t trust any of these quarterbacks in close games, and I’m not sure these teams can put up enough points to run away from New England even if their defense keeps the Patriots in check. Can Keenum and the Vikings put the Patriots away after failing to do the same to the Saints? Can the Jaguars score points against a team that doesn’t turn the ball over? Can the Eagles generate any sort of down the field passing game with Foles under center?

The NFL has undergone a massive shift this year, and many of the top teams failed to adjust. But the Patriots are still alive, as they always are, and they are the last test for these modern defenses and mediocre quarterbacks. The next few weeks will tell if this change has reversed the common knowledge of the past ten years, or if we will once again watch Tom Brady lift the Lombardi Trophy over his head.