NFL: Column: Browns Future, Fitzmagic and the Packers Plan

Half time in the NFL, and the gait gets rougher. The Buccaneers are trading quarterbacks again – right? Now that Hue Jackson and Todd Haley have been laid off, how should the Browns proceed? What coaching candidates are there at all? Also: The Packers tactics against the Rams, the NFC playoffs and the new Arizona Cardinal offense.

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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are in a difficult situation: Jameis Winston had against the Bengals an absolute meltdown game with four interceptions, including a Pick Six, and once again hair-raising decisions just like bad misreads. Winston had a bad game against Cleveland last week, but the performance against Cincinnati was even worse.

And that’s all the more true when Ryan Fitzpatrick takes over shortly before the end of the third quarter and leads the Bucs promptly back into the game and to the equalizer – possibly even more if Tampas Defense wasn’t still one of the worst units in the league.

If you summarize this, I think you can only come to one conclusion; a conclusion that I would have more or less categorically excluded even a few weeks ago: Dirk Koetter is right with his already announced decision for Ryan Fitzpatrick. At least in the short term, which is currently Koetter’s only possible perspective.

Winston had a good game at three and a half appearances this season, and that was against the desolate Falcons Pass Defense. Fitzpatrick has shown that he’s currently coping better with the scheme and that his strengths in vertical passing – one of Winston’s biggest weaknesses – are the player material in Tampa Bay very well, while Winston simply can’t stop the (hair-raising) turnovers. And they cost games, especially when the defense is so full of holes.

For the franchise itself, Winston is and remains the best option, because from a long-term perspective, of course, you think more long-term. This makes the whole situation a potential debacle from Bucs’ point of view; for Koetter, who is now coaching for his job quite acutely, it’s all about winning as many games as possible in the coming weeks. Fitzpatrick gives him a better chance.

What about Winston’s future? My logical scenario would be that the Bucs would go into the coming season with a new head coach who would be allowed to try his luck with Winston for a year. Winston will then play on his 5th-Year option and get another chance to make a fresh start before he becomes a Free Agent in 2020; and if the Bucs actually want to part with him, that would be the much more sensible way than next year, when it will be difficult to find a better option than Winston, especially considering the available quarterback options in the draft.

Far more than once in recent years the Packers Defense has been a mixture of a light sacrifice for critics and a real problem for a franchise that would compete with Aaron Rodgers for the title every year, or at least try to do so. You don’t even have to rummage around in the Dom Caps past for this, Green Bay collected 31 points in Washington and 30 points at home against C.J. Beathards 49ers over the last four games.

And then now this performance against the Rams, an outstanding offense, next to the Chiefs and the Saints the undoubtedly best offense of the season – and Green Bay forced five punts in a row to the start of the game, L.A. had no drive with more than six plays and it was an unusual sight to see the Rams so offensively wobbly.

Which raises the question, of course: How did the Packers do it? The tape gives some clear clues and the behavior at these first third downs of the rams combined with the path that led there gives a good impression of the plan that Green Bay defensively pursued.

The first forced punt came at 3rd&4. The Packers indicate a 4-men rush, but in the end only three Rushers come. Instead, eight players fall back into coverage, play a net of zone covers around the first down marker, and force Goff to hold the ball until the pass rush finally comes through. A classic coverage bag.

This was striking in this game several times: The packers succeeded again and again in creating coverage bags and coverage pressures. Goff often did not have a clear first read and had to hold the ball even without play action fake longer, even after several seconds in play there was often no receiver open, especially in the first half.

Green Bay put many players in the Underneath Zones to prevent the simple Play-Action-Completions and to force Goff to the second and third Read. This pattern was the one that ran through the game: Green Bay wanted to force Goff to make risky passes or short passes with no chance of yards after the catch, and then unleash the pass rush in long third downs – when the play action threat is comparatively lower.

The Packers Goff flashed a total of 17 times (in 43 dropbacks), allowing only seven completions (one touchdown, three sacks). And with these flashes of lightning, Defensive Coordinator Mike Pettine held nothing back.

An example? The second forced Rams-Punt, this time at 3rd&10. The Packers deliver the line with eight players and suggest among other things a Double-A-Gap-Blitz. Only one of the two supposed A-Gap speed cameras comes in the end, Linebacker Blake Martinez – but he also comes to the bag.

And that’s not all: The rams combine man coverage (marked red) with zone coverage and while on the left side coverage is played, on the right side a defensive back is added as an edge flash.

To send the rams off the field via Punt for the third time in a row, Pettine then let go of hell.

At a 3rd&9, the Packers again indicate an A-Gap flash, but the flash then actually comes through the left side of the defense with two defensive backs, a defensive lineman and clay matthews.

This completely overloads the site, making it a six-player flash. Very aggressive, but the courage is rewarded with a sack.

The last example of the Packers Defense shows another situation where Green Bay was able to force the punt after the Rams had just had a fake punt success. And it shows that Green Bay by no means just flashed blindly.

Again, it is the dense zone coverage at the first down marker to prevent a pass or to at least quickly tackle a potential receiver. Green Bay suggests five Pass-Rusher, of which only three actually attack the Line of Scrimmage. Goff finds only Gurley Underneath, who drops the pass – but even in case of a catches he wouldn’t have had a chance for the first down.

All five Third Downs, where the Packers stopped the rams in the first half, came at medium to long distance and brought Jared Goff into the shotgun, Green Bay was not afraid to get aggressive in these situations and was rewarded for it – at least in the first half.

What did the rams do better after that? Gurley had some very good moments in the passing game because L.A. managed better to bring his running back into the open field. At the big play just before the half-time break, which finally paved the way to the touchdown, Gurley was set up as an outside receiver, then got a rub effect from the tight end next to him, and laid down a spectacular catch.

The long catch-and-run to the touchdown in the third quarter showed another way how McVay gets Gurley in Space: Again Gurley is set up as an outside receiver, again it is a stack formation with another receiver. The receiver pushes the coverage with an initially vertical route down the field and allows Gurley a free release – his opponent doesn’t follow anymore, possibly also due to a communication error.

This is, in a sense, the first part of the concept, followed by the second: two opposing crossing routes form, among other things, a mesh concept over the middle, which makes it even more difficult for a defender to follow Gurley over the middle. Ultimately it’s completely uncovered, the ball lands right in its path and it’s a simple touchdown run afterwards.

The Rams also got the tight ends more involved in the passing game in the second half, so Green Bay’s linebackers, who were still very active speed cameras in the first half, were caught several times. The protection was also better adjusted to the lightning, so Goff had a little more time. And if the Packers couldn’t put Goff under pressure, he was deadly (14/19, 244 YDS, 2 TD).

For Green Bay’s Defense it was still a very encouraging game, but now the Packers have to slowly win a few games in a row.

It couldn’t go on like this in Cleveland. Hue Jackson hasn’t got this team any further for two and a half years, he hasn’t been able to form a successful team from the unquestionably existing talent, he hasn’t been able to manage the franchise internally and he hasn’t shown in any way yet that he can develop young players.

Combine that with the fact that the Browns in Baker Mayfield have legitimate hopes of finding their franchise quarterback, and then add the obvious internal dysfunctions – and you get a picture in which Jackson had to leave as soon as possible. That’s the kind of rip cord the Browns finally pulled on Monday night.

Of course, it would have made much more sense to start Baker Mayfield’s NFL career with a new regime than to replace the head coach in the middle of his first professional season and then presumably again after Mayfield’s first professional season. But there are very persistent reports from Cleveland that the dynamics between Jackson and Todd Haley were about to explode.

Team owner Jimmy Haslam didn’t want Mayfield to get further into this situation and between the fronts – hence the decision now and therefore the clear cut with Haley’s dismissal right after. As suboptimal as the situation is for Mayfield now, it could be a case of “better an end with horror than an end without horror”.

And so of course there’s the exciting question that fans of other teams may already be asking themselves: Now what? Which candidates are serious options for the Head Coaching Carousel next January?

For the Brown’s, a candidate almost jumps at you: Lincoln Riley, head coach in college at Oklahoma, for several reasons. The obvious aspects? Riley was Baker Mayfield’s coach in college, he is one of the most creative and modern offensive coaches in college football and has experience leading a program. There are many voices in the NFL who currently see Riley as the best possible NFL coach option from college and many NFL coaches have already studied his offense last summer.

The less obvious aspect is that the head coaching options for the coming year are not considered too tempting in NFL circles. Minnesota’s offensive coordinator John DeFilippo is mentioned again and again, but DeFilippo also has rumours that he made a bad impression in some head coach interviews last year.

Patriots LB coach Brian Flores was already on the shortlist in Arizona last year and is likely to be back in the game, with Sean McVay’s team sooner or later becoming a head coach. Possibly QB coach Zac Taylor, or Matt LaFleur, who this year took over as Titans Offensive Coordinator. However, all these candidates tend to be options for 2020 or 2021.

And if you also see how the game is changing, then it should increasingly be a veritable option to look around the college and benefit from the fact that a head coach is already familiar with the general tasks of a head coach. After Riley, Iowa State Coach Matt Campbell is treated as another candidate. One thing is clear: The Browns now have the longest window of all teams to find their ideal candidate and then focus fully on him.

Page 1: QB question in Tampa, the new Browns coach – and the Packers plan against L.A.

Page 2: NFC Playoffs, Newton, Jaguars, Cardinals – your questions