How Phil Snow turned the Panthers’ defense into the NFL’s new nightmare
It finally happened, folks. The Carolina Panthers, a franchise that started playing football in 1995 and has been to two Super Bowls, rank first in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metrics for the first time in team history after their 26-7 Week 2 beatdown of the New Orleans Saints, who were fresh off Jameis Winston’s five-touchdown performance in Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers. Things did not go well at all for Winston in Week 2 — he completed just 11 passes in 22 attempts for 111 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, four sacks, and a passer rating of 26.9.
The Panthers rank 15th in Offensive DVOA and 31st in Special Teams DVOA after two weeks, so it’s pretty easy to discern where the explosions originate — from a defense that started to look pretty special at the end of the 2020 season, and has taken that momentum to an entirely different level in the new season. The architect is second-year defensive coordinator Phil Snow, who has been with second-year head coach Matt Rhule through Rhule’s tenures at Temple and Baylor, and now Charlotte.
Why does this defense work so well, and why are things even better in 2021? You could say that in 2020, Snow’s defense was a petri dish of fronts and concepts that didn’t quite have the personnel to match it. But with offseason acquisitions in free agency (edge defender Haason Reddick, defensive lineman Morgan Fox, linebacker Frankie Luvu, cornerback Rashaan Melvin), additions in the 2021 draft (cornerbacks Jaycee Horn and Keith Taylor, and defensive tackle Daviyon Nixon), and the development of a 2020 draft class that consisted of nothing but defensive players (with defensive tackle Derrick Brown, edge defender Yetur Gross-Matos, do-it-all safety Jeremy Chinn as the impact players), Snow now has the horses to run the stuff he likes. Factor in previously established stars Brian Burns and Shaq Thompson, and you have a defense that is suddenly the envy (and the headache) of the NFL.
Nobody’s had a bigger headache than Winston so far. Last Sunday, he was pressured on an astonishing 60.7% of his dropbacks — 17 of 28 — and when pressured, he completed four of 13 passes for 50 yards, 3.8 yards per attempt, and a passer rating of 4.2. The Saints’ generally stout offensive line had no answer for what Snow and his players were bringing.
“I think the number one area was in protection,” Saints head coach Sean Payton said after the game. “Offensively, our communication and being able to handle some of the pressure looks we received from Carolina. There were just a number of things that we need to clean up. That would be the one thing that stood out.”
When asked whether his receivers’ ability to gain separation from Carolina’s defensive backs was a primary issue, Payton brought it back to the front.
“I don’t know that the separation was more of a problem than having a chance to set and be protected. There were too many times [there was a] free rusher, too many times when our communication wasn’t on point. So I wouldn’t look at that as the first thing.”
Payton isn’t the first great football mind to look at Snow’s defense and take a step back, wondering exactly what the heck he’s dealing with.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (12) runs for a gain against the Carolina Panthers during their football game Saturday, December 19, 2020, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis. (Dan Powers-Imagn Content Services, LLC)
Aaron Rodgers faced the Panthers in Week 15 of the 2020 season, and though the Packers won that game, 24-16, Rodgers had quite a bit to say about concepts he’s not used to. He wound up with 20 completions in 29 attempts for 143 yards and a touchdown. Rodgers’ yards per attempt of 4.93 was the fifth-lowest of his career in games with at least 20 passing attempts, and the Panthers added to Rodgers’ issues with five sacks and a ton of pressures.
“It’s a lot of principles you see at the college level — the 3-3-5 stuff, very strange alignments,” Rodgers said, per Joe Person of The Athletic. “They played very soft in the secondary with a lot of two-high and even some, I don’t even know what you call it, but it’s like five guys are high. The pressure package, I felt like we picked up pretty good. It was more of the four-man rush when we didn’t have guys open that gave us problems.”
Rhule, who knows more about Snow than anybody else in the NFL, knew exactly why his team was able to dominate a Saints team that beat the Panthers twice in 2020. Pressure, pressure, and more pressure.
Sep 27, 2020; Inglewood, California, USA; Carolina Panthers defensive coordinator Phil Snow watches from the sidelines in the fourth quarter against the Los Angeles Chargers at SoFi Stadium. The Panthers defeated the Chargers 21-16. (Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)
“It changes things, and I think there are two parts to that,” Rhule said. “I think it’s stopping the run because then on second-and-7 you are not sitting here playing a run defense now and you know what, we trusted the players. We played a lot of bear [front] — five up guys and played man to man defense today. Keith Taylor was out there. Rashaan Melvin was out there. Those guys stepped up. You know, Juston Burris went down and played the nickel. It was a tale of a lot of guys.
“I just think we played really well up front and I think Phil called an amazing game. He was bringing pressures and showing pressure and coming the other side. I think it was a great job by the defensive staff but also our players. At the end of the day, they owned it. They delivered on it. I think Shaq continues to be a tremendous field general out there. I was proud of that part of the game.”
How has Snow created this defense? It starts back in college, and the inevitability of a sea change in how NFL defensive coaches will have to take from the NCAA to succeed.
Front multiplicity to bust protections.
(Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports)
What Aaron Rodgers said about the collegiate aspects of Snow's defense, as well as the 3-3-5 stuff, was precisely on the money. Snow got a lot of what he does now during his time at both Temple and Baylor, and in 2020, per Sports Indo Solutions, the Panthers played more 3-3-5 packages than anything else -- they did so on 263 plays, 26% of the overall. There was also a lot of 4-2-5, and Snow wasn't afraid to get exotic. No team played more 4-1-6 than the Panthers at 18%, only the Dolphins played more 3-2-6 than Carolina's 15%, and the Panthers played 67 snaps of 2-3-6. So, part of the problem in facing Snow's defense is that you never really know what you're going to get. And within those multiple fronts, there are multiple iterations of coverage and pressure. Against Rodgers, the third Panthers sack, which came with 9:58 left in the third quarter, was an excellent example of how the Panthers were able to blow Green Bay’s protection rules with front movement. Pre-snap, the Panthers had what could be an nine-man box, with a four-man front and defensive back Myles Hartsfield (No. 38), linebacker Shaq Thompson (No. 54), cornerback Juston Burris (No. 31), safety Jeremy Chinn (No. 21), and safety Tre Boston (No. 33) near the line to confuse everything. Cornerback Rasul Douglas was the only obvious defender outside the paint, which should have give Rodgers an indicator that at least one safety is going to spin out. Pre-snap, Burris was already doing just that, flying back to cover the deep third. At the snap, Boston and Hartsfield dropped into curl/flat responsibility, Thompson and Chinn moved to hook/curl, and Douglas and Burris rolled deep. Rodgers didn't have time to diagnose it, because the protection was an absolute mess, and the Panthers went into Shark Week mode.
Fast-forward to the Saints' second offensive play last Sunday. Pre-snap, the Panthers present a wide bear front look -- nose tackle head over the center, the ends to the outside shoulders of the guards, and the linebackers playing wide outside the tackles. Bear fronts create protection problems because when you put your ends outside the guards, and the nose tackle head over the center, you are forcing one-on-one matchups in the interior, and when you have an extra blitzer as the Panthers do here in safety Juston Burris (No. 31), you are going to mess up protections similarly to the ways in which Buddy Ryan did with the Bears of the mid-1980s. Bear fronts have made a comeback in the NFL over the last few years, and the ability to create immediate pressure against quick-game offenses is one reasons why.
Snow knew he was probably going to get quick pressure here, and that the quarterback was going to look for his hot reads as a result. The Panthers played man coverage. Cornerback Jaycee Horn (No. 8) and linebacker Shaq Thompson (No. 7) took the hots away with movement to tight end Adam Trautman (No. 82) and running back Alvin Kamara (No. 41). The Panthers could play man across on the back end, confident that Winston had no chance of staying upright long enough to see anything which would take that long to develop. The Saints tried to respond to this by running boot, with the line sliding away from Winston's roll to the right. But linebacker Brian Burns (No. 53) got past left tackle Terron Armstead (No. 72) and Kamara, and linebacker Haason Reddick (No. 43) comes through unblocked to the other side, because Trautman couldn't get back over to that side quickly enough to stop him. The result? Burns and Reddick met at the quarterback. When Payton talked about the Panthers creating communication issues and free rushers, this is what he meant. And then, just when the Saints were trying to counter different pressure concepts on every snap, there was this three-play sequence at the end of the first half. https://twitter.com/The_Coach_A/status/1440485567704158208 Boom, boom, boom. Winston's final three passes of the first half were incompletions to receiver Marquez Callaway and tight end Juwan Johnson, and then a heaved helium ball under pressure, which Burris was quite happy to pick off. Which segues perfectly into the next problem Snow creates.
Tying coverage and pressure together.
(Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports)
The pressure concept on Burris' interception was an exchange, with safety Sean Chandler (No. 34) screaming up from coverage to add pressure, and Thompson dropping into coverage to take receiver Chris Hogan (No. 80) on the intermediate crosser. Reddick took Taysom Hill (No. 7) on the crosser underneath -- so, again, Winston's reads were obscured. There was a 4-on-3 overload blitz to Winston's front side with Chandler, Burns, defensive tackle Derrick Brown (No. 95) and safety Jeremy Chinn (No. 21) working through.
Chinn ran right past center Cesar Ruiz (No.51) and forced Winston off his spot to his left, and edge defender Yetur Gross-Matos recovered after falling down against Armstead. Chinn and Gross-Matos had Winston considering two uninspiring options: Take the sack, or throw a balloon off-base. Winston chose Option B into triple converging coverage, and that was that. "Credit to those guys for disguising coverage, variation, and personnel," Armstead said after the fact. "They have got a lot of guys that are doing multiple things. Whether they are rushing or dropping. So, it becomes a little more difficult to diagnose who we want to include in that protection. It's a variation of things. But on our behalf, what we can control is our communication." Winston's second interception came with 2:49 left in the game. On the previous play, the Panthers showed a seven-man blitz look pre-snap, and then dropped all but four into coverage. This allowed the Saints to win with their protections, and Winston found Juwan Johnson for a 23-yard gain in Carolina's zone defense. The next play had a straight four-man rush, and Winston had receiver Ty Montgomery deep if he could have stayed alive for it. However, defensive lineman Morgan Fox (No. 91), who made this week's Secret Superstars team, ended that threat when he curled all the way through the pocket to pressure Winston, forcing yet another errant throw. https://twitter.com/1PantherPlace/status/1440499667813371907
Snow could be the NFL's leader of a new revolution.
(AP Photo/Jerry Larson, File)
Cody Alexander, who gave us the three-blitz GIF on Twitter, is a Texas high school coach who also runs the brilliant MatchQuarters.com website, and knows quite a bit about how philosophies are trickling up from high school to college to the pros. That’s been happening on offense for years; when I spoke with Alexander for the “Match Game” series in 2018, he told me how homogenous NFL defenses tended to be, and what would have to happen sooner than later -- that same spread of ideas on the defensive side of the ball. “I think [then-Texas and now USC defensive coordinator] Todd Orlando does a great job,” Alexander said. “[Georgia head coach] Kirby Smart and Nick Saban do great jobs. People think Nick Saban runs, like, man and Cover-1 and Cover-3, but he really doesn’t. The more he sees spread offenses, the more Alabama’s in two-high. But I think in the NFL, defense is so much more an old man’s game. Offense is more of a young man’s game. “Look at all these young coaches who are getting head coaching jobs because they’re offensive guys. Defense is a weird thing — it takes longer to work through everything and decide what you want to do. But I do think the NFL is going to have to get some of these younger guys—from my generation or the ‘tweener’ generation that grew up before me — the guys who grew up coaching against the spread. They defended it in college. Now, they’re seeing it in the NFL.” When I asked Alexander about Snow’s defense in Carolina, he brought up a comparison to the Georgia defense that is currently terrorizing the SEC with speed, fluidity, and multiplicity. "They do a bunch of different things with different personnel packages.” Alexander said. "They play ‘Peso’ [a four-man front with a fifth defensive back subbed in, two down tackles, and two standup rushers] like everybody else. Good amount of four-down [linemen]. Very multiple." Well, where did Snow develop his defensive philosophies? He's been a defensive coach since 1976, and outside of a four-year stint with the Lions as a defensive assistant and linebackers coach, he's been in college the whole time. Rhule was a graduate assistant for Snow in 2001, when Snow was the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach there. As Snow said in 2020 after Rhule got hired and gave Snow the defense, Snow's transition from static to elastic from a philosophical standpoint happened at Baylor when he was forced to deal with Big-12 offenses. In 2019, his third season with the Bears, Baylor led the conference in takeaways, points allowed, and sacks. They also ranked eighth in Football Outsiders' F+ defensive efficiency metrics after finishing 89th the year before. The difference was the same 3-3-5 stack defense base with multiple wrinkles that Aaron Rodgers found "strange," and Sean Payton did not enjoy at all. "Normally, I’ve gone to places and turned them around in one to two years, we actually did it in the third year," Snow said, via Alaina Getzenberg of the Charlotte Observer. “The reason [is], we started with 20 freshman and they had to grow up a little bit. We’ve had good success if we can coach players in two to three years and they normally end up playing pretty well. It’s a developmental issue and we got them to a point where they understand football while playing it the way it’s supposed to be played." It's entirely possible that the primary reason Carolina's defense is ready to set fire to the NFL is that, outside of the fact that Snow now has the personnel to run everything he wants, a college-minded defensive coach who learned to defend modern offenses at an elevated level now has the same thing on lock in the pros. It was bound to happen eventually, and right now, nobody in the league seems to know what to do against it.
1
1
