How DeForest Buckner's pass rush coach fueled Kwity Paye, Dayo Odeyingbo's improvement

INDIANAPOLIS — Kwity Paye spent part of his summer preparing for a moment like this.

The first play of overtime. The Indianapolis defense needed a big play.

Texans tight end Brevin Jordan chipped Paye at the snap. A split-second break in momentum as Paye shed the block.

Paye dipped his hips down, almost imperceptibly, and accelerated into tight end Pharaoh Brown, using his hands to keep Brown on his heels.

“Level changes. I play with good leverage, as far as how low I get when I’m rushing, but we tend to get high in our moves when we get stuck,” Paye said. “It’s good to change levels. Duck down.”

Paye drove Brown back into the pocket, used his right arm to shed the block and crash down on Davis Mills.

A play later, Indianapolis went with a three-man rush in a third-and-long situation. Houston doubled Yannick Ngakoue on the other side, leaving Paye in a 1-on-1 matchup with Tytus Howard.

A tight end chipped Paye at the snap, and as he rushed to the outside, Paye realized two things: a running back was on his way to deliver another chip to Paye’s outside shoulder, and Howard was attacking him aggressively to the outside.

Paye knew exactly how to win. .

He planted his foot to the outside, spun suddenly to the inside and left Howard reaching for air, closing down on Mills for his second sack of overtime.

“That’s really just off a read,” Paye said. “If I see the o-lineman jumping at me, I know that inside’s open.”

Paye, the Colts’ first-round pick in 2021, didn’t have that move as a rookie.

He forged his inside move this summer, built it and polished it for more than a month in 100-degree heat on the practice fields of the University of Oklahoma.

Under the watchful eyes of teammate DeForest Buckner and Mark Hall.

How DeForest Buckner nearly won Super Bowl MVP

Buckner was an anomaly his first few seasons in the NFL.

A superstar defensive lineman without a private pass rush coach. Freakishly athletic for a man with his remarkable length, size and power, Buckner racked up 21 sacks, became a 49ers fan favorite and made a Pro Bowl before he met Hall in the summer before the 2019 season.

Hall worked with Arik Armstead, Buckner’s buddy on the San Francisco defensive line.

Armstead introduced Buckner to Hall that summer, then brought his private pass rush coach to Miami for the entire week before the 49ers took on the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV.

A great pass rusher is always trying to keep a sharp edge on the tools in his bag.

Armstead and Buckner spent that week fine-tuning their skills with Hall in a little yoga room in the San Francisco hotel, preparing to chase Patrick Mahomes.

Buckner tore through Kansas City’s line that Sunday night.

Unblockable for most of the game, Buckner racked up six tackles, 1.5 sacks and three quarterback hits, making a strong case to be Super Bowl MVP if the rest of the 49ers had been able to hold onto the lead they built in the first three quarters.

“When things are working for you, you want to know what you did right, what you did that week,” Buckner said. “He was a big part of that.”

Buckner decided to train with Hall full-time that offseason.

But, instead, he found himself traded to Indianapolis and under lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the nation. Hall is based out of Las Vegas, but he was training a couple of NFL linemen in Miami when the pandemic hit, and he ended up getting stuck in Florida for 18 weeks.

Buckner charted a private jet — his wife was pregnant, and he didn’t want to risk flying commercially — to join Hall in Florida for the entire month of March.

Hall reciprocated by making the trip out to California that summer after the restrictions lifted, helping Buckner get ready for his first season as a Colt, a season that he’d be named an All-Pro for the first time.

A relationship had been cemented. Buckner has trained with Hall in every offseason since, first in the spring and then again in the summer.

“I just feel like for a big guy, everybody likes the flashy cross-chop, swim move, stuff like that,” Buckner said. “But (Hall) really teaches us to play off of our power, off our length and leverage. … He’s definitely been a big part of my process.”

A camp before training camp

Dayo Odeyingbo was watching.

Freakishly athletic for his size, Odeyingbo was a raw, unfinished prospect at Vanderbilt, and he knew it. Odeyingbo spent most of his career at Ranchview High School on the offensive side of the ball as a wide receiver, tight end and offensive lineman; Odeyingbo only played the defensive line for half of his senior year before heading off to Vanderbilt.

Odeyingbo spent a lot of his time as a young lineman looking for a pass rush instructor who knew how to teach players with tall, long-armed, big bodies.

“I was just following trainers and learning drills that I could do myself,” Odeyingbo said. “That’s kind of how I came across Mark’s page, saw Buck training on his page, Arik Armstead training on his page. Guys who are similar body types. Mark’s good with the tall guys.”

Hall learned that body type a long time ago.

When he was an assistant defensive line coach at Grambling State, Hall coached former Cowboys defensive end Jason Hatcher (6-6, 284 pounds) and former NFL pass rusher Kenneth Pettway, who stood 6-3 but had remarkably long arms at 35⅟₄ inches.

“They can use their length more, their leverage,” Hall said. “They can extend from a guy, and he can’t even get his hands on them.”

Odeyingbo always wanted to work with Hall.

He finally got his chance this summer. Buckner invited Odeyingbo, along with Paye, down to Norman, Okla. for Hall’s month of summer pass rush work. Fourth-year Colts defensive end Ben Banogu had already begun training with Buckner and Hall the year before, and he knew what to expect.

A camp before training camp.

'You don’t want to rest before camp'

More than a dozen defensive linemen descended on Norman, Okla. this summer.

Buckner, Paye, Banogu and later Odeyingbo joined a group that included Armstead, Packers nose tackle Kenny Clark, among others, and a Clemson contingent that included Dolphins tackle Christian Watkins, Giants nose tackle Dexter Lawrence and Raiders defensive end Clelin Ferrell, a trio coached at Clemson by new Sooners head coach Brent Venables.

“Buckner was like the general over the whole group,” Hall said.

Venables opened the doors. Hall put the big guys to work.

He’s intentionally built his summer defensive line camp to feel like training camp.

“You don’t really want to rest before camp, because if you come in out of shape, you’re not really making the best of the opportunity,” Paye said. “I didn’t want to do any adjustment period. I wanted to come out (to Grand Park) and start balling.”

Hall’s linemen began their day at 9 a.m. First breakfast, then stretching, then defensive line drills, beginning with technique, then full pass rush, then conditioning in the stadium. Get lunch, lift weights, sometimes put in more work on the field, then go to the film room to break it all down.

By the end of the work, the defensive linemen are in full pads.

“He teaches stuff that translates to the actual games,” Banogu said. “Other guys will go through pass rush circuits, stuff like that, but with Mark, I just know we do more hands, more work on bags, we try to do pass rush moves and techniques that fit our style of play.”

Hall also likes to use players to push each other.

Because of his reputation for working with bigger, longer players, Hall hasn’t always had players with the speedier, more compact builds of Paye and Banogu.

Hall sometimes puts the smaller guys in the lead for a specific purpose.

“Their movement is so much twitchier, so much more agile that I like those guys to almost lead the drills, so they can set the pace for the bigger guys. Now you’ve got Arik and Buckner and Dexter Lawrence moving way faster than they want to,” Hall said. “And then vice versa, the bigger guys showing guys how to use their length, their power, how to extend, the leverage, keeping their eyes around the corner. One person might have something the other guys need.”

Paye is not known for his length, but on his first sack against the Texans on Sunday, he drove Brown back while keeping his arms extended, allowing Paye to easily disengage and drop on Mills trying to step up into the pocket.

The move of a taller player, put to good use by the remarkable strength of the 6-4 Paye.

Full circle

Hall’s work is not over when training camp begins.

Buckner talks to Hall two to three times a week. From time to time during the season, the big defensive tackle sends Hall film of one-on-one rushes in practice, full team work in practice, film of Buckner’s Sunday rushes.

“I try to keep them sharp,” Hall said. “Buck loves that swim move. Man, he loves that swim move, and I’m trying to get him to set that up differently. He tries to send me as much 1-on-1 stuff as he can so I can make sure he’s staying true to what we worked on in the offseason.”

Every once in a while, Hall makes the trip to Indianapolis.

A trip that is getting busier with each passing year.

First it was Buckner, then Banogu, and now Paye and Odeyingbo.

The Colts coaching staff can see a difference in Paye, a difference that showed up in overtime on Sunday.

“When you talk to him, he said in the offseason he kind of went back and looked at his play, recommitted to some of the things he felt like he needed to work on, but he’s in a good space right now,” defensive coordinator Gus Bradley said of Paye. “He’s playing with a lot of confidence, works his tail off.”

Buckner’s the same way.

And a player like Odeyingbo, essentially a first-year player after getting so little time as a rookie, is watching that, learning firsthand how to work like the All-Pro in front of him.

“Being able to work with him, and then seeing other guys in the league, being able to work with them, too, that was just a blessing,” Odeyingbo said. “It’s crazy how things come full circle, from watching them and thinking, ‘Oh, if I could just get an opportunity to really train with them,' then to be a teammate and prove ourselves together.”

Work that goes on throughout the year, from the Colts team facility to the fiery heat of Oklahoma and back again.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How DeForest Buckner fueled Kwity Paye, Dayo Odeyingbo's improvement