NFL: Third and Long: Rams-Defense and Packers-Offense decrypted

Week 12 is history, SPOX editor Adrian Franke’s weekly NFL column provides clarity: Why did the Los Angeles Rams’ defense against the Saints look so good? Why can fans of the Green Bay Packers look to the future with optimism despite the defeat? What danger threatens the Dallas Cowboys, what becomes of Kirk Cousins and what is going on with the Kansas City Chiefs’ offense? All this and more in this week’s issue of Third and Long.

The success of the Rams over New Orleans wasn’t just a statement, there’s L. A. also an extremely important victory within the conference, if you look at the playoffs. It was foreseeable that the Rams would score points again after the tough game in Minnesota – the Saints had to play without their two starting-cornerbacks and above all rookie-corner Marshon Lattimore is an X-factor, which gives this defense a completely different face and completely different scheme freedoms.

It was not to be expected that the Defense on the other side of New Orleans’ last great offense would dominate so much. So how did the Rams proceed? In a nutshell: L. A. trusted that his defensive line would win the duel with the strong offense line of the Saints – and was rewarded for it.

Several conspicuous features in the tape reflect this:

The fact that New Orleans ended up with 20 points in the end was due first and foremost to Kamara. The rookie wore the offense several times in the truest sense of the word on his own, was a drive saver with spectacular individual plays and simply beat real defensive calls through his class. Brees, on the other hand, had at least twice as much interception luck. In other words, the tape was decidedly more one-sided in favour of the Rams-defense than the boxing score suggests.

The playoff-train is out of action with the bankruptcy against Pittsburgh, in the high-calibre NFC a wildcard will presumably need eleven victories and the division is gone because of the strong Vikings. And yet Packers fans should still get hope from the past two games – and lots of it. Not because Brett Hundley has made significant progress and is the next big quarterback. No, the hope should be directed to your own head coach.

Mike McCarthy has often been criticised in recent years, and quite rightly so. Instead of building a creative offensive scheme around Aaron Rodgers and using the incredible quality of the best quarterback in the league, McCarthy had a static system of isolation routes and sometimes seemingly almost conceptless layouts. Exactly this was to be seen also in the beginning with Hundley, the higher McCarthy has to take into account his adaptations in the past weeks.

A brief review (for a detailed analysis of the progress within the Packers-Offense see here): Green Bay’s Tape already revealed clear progress against Baltimore in the previous week.

These included contiguous routes, switch routes to facilitate the release, deep pathways that opened rooms for Underneath receivers, and so on. The play designs were there, but Hundley couldn’t use them. The game against the Steelers on Sunday confirmed the positive impression of McCarthy’s changes. It even extended it.

After last week’s changes in the play-designs were noticeable, one could see on Sunday evening also adjustments in the game plan. In plain language: Significantly better use of the screen pass, more play action with rollouts, misdirection, pre-snap motion and run pass options to make life difficult for the defenders. At the same time, Green Bay thus punished the aggressiveness of the Steelers-Defense.

The route combinations could also be seen again, for example in Randall Cobb’s long touchdown. In addition, there were new formations with several players in the backfield, screen passes from Play Action and the like. If Hundley has to pass “conservatively”, i. e. without any help, he still holds the ball too long, his accuracy is still extremely shaky. But the progress McCarthy is making must simply give Packers fans courage for the future.

Over the past few days, many people have probably read the statistics: since Ezekiel Elliott’s absence, the Cowboys have scored less than ten points each in three consecutive games; seven against Atlanta, nine against Philly and six against the Chargers on Thanksgiving. This quickly led to two conclusions in the general public – Prescott was questioned and the significance of Elliott for the offense was classified at undreamt-of heights.

However, the problems go much deeper and Dallas would do well, as far as self-evaluation is concerned, not to neglect or even underestimate the real problem areas:

The cowboys, as I have said, would do well not to close their eyes to the real problems.

Seventeen points against Dallas, nine against the Giants, now ten against Buffalo – the Chiefs are a matter of serious concern. The defense was shaky in the weeks before, but the offense could overtake much of it. An offensive based on extremely many misdirection elements and deception manoeuvres, Alex Smith provoked an unusual aggressiveness from Alex Smith; over the first few weeks of the season, KC was the NFL’s big play team, Alex Smith an MVP and Kareem Hunt a rookie-of-the-year candidate.

Statistically speaking: In weeks one to five, Kansas City achieved a touchdown of 32.7 percent of its own drives. Since then? At 11.8 percent. An unbelievable drop-off, which brings with it a need for explanation after the home defeat against the Bills on Sunday at the latest. A look at the tape reveals some things.

First of all: You can fix some, but not everything to quarterback Alex Smith. The pass protection is still bad, but in the meantime the run-block has been infected and has also been removed. There are also drops of receivers.

Otherwise? Kansas City still tries his pre-snap movies, fakes and moving the pocket. The problem is that teams have adapted to this. It started with the Steelers and has continued ever since, especially teams like Buffalo who play Zone Coverage, fall for fakes and the like much less often. In Zone Coverage, the eyes of the defenders are much more focused on the ball than in Man Coverage, which significantly reduces the susceptibility to misdirection, fake passes and pass-byes.

More than once, Buffalo seemed to know exactly where the ball was going, despite some distractions. Smith, however, appears to be much more hesitant in his pocket. His accuracy has become shaky, against the Bills he had exactly one deep-ball completion (25 yards). He is too short in Third Down and doesn’t seem to trust his arm anymore. The downfield element of this offense is currently completely gone.

The offense of the Chiefs is not basically broken, straight play action still works. What we are currently seeing, however, is that the misdirection, distractions and various fakes no longer work as they did at the start of the season. And now we realize that Smith can’t easily carry the offense if that’s the case. This is a serious problem. Andy Reid has to unpack new play designs to catch Defenses on the wrong foot again.

If this fails, the calls for Patrick Mahomes will become louder. I don’t think Mahomes is ready for NFL defenses when we talk about complex reads. Teams currently have far too easy a game to play when defending KC with Cover-2, destroying all the underneath and misdirection elements. And at least you have to keep this in mind: Mahomes could attack Cover-2 deeply, Smith can’t do that at the moment. This is an elementary component of the open problem.

Page 1: Rams-Defense and Packers-Offense decrypted, including Cowboys and Chiefs

Page 2: Turnarounds, Cousins, Bridgewater, what could have been – your questions