I’ve never been a guy who looked too much at run defense. Like the vast majority of football fans, I’ve always been drawn to the passing game, specifically passing game concepts. With the rise of Brandon Staley in 2020 and the Packers’ hiring of Joe Barry to run the defense, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about defensive structure as it relates to the modern game.
Vic Fangio has been running a predominantly two-high defense for years, and has been extremely effective doing it. After seeing what Staley did with the Rams last year with that system, it feels like we’re going to see a shift to more pre-snap, two-high alignments with defenses across the league.
Why two-high? While no defense is perfect, a two-high safety alignment can do a better job at limiting big plays than a single-high look. It forces the offense to be patient. With the defense showing light boxes up front and two-high safeties, they’re inviting the run and short completions as opposed to picking up chunks of yardage down the field. It can be frustrating to watch a defense give up a bunch of 5-7 yard gains, but it forces the offense to be perfect for an entire drive, and it forces them to be patient. As Rams’ Secondary Coach/Pass Game Coordinator Ejiro Evero said on a recent episode of The Athletic Football Show, “The offense has to be perfect for 14 plays. The defense just needs to make 1 play.”
I want to put something out there up front: just because a defense plays in a two-high structure doesn’t mean they always play that way. In fact, this defense can often move from a two-high pre-snap look to a single-high snap immediately post-snap. We can say that one of the safeties “spins” down. In an age where there is a higher emphasis than ever on play action passing, spinning that safety post-snap can catch the quarterback with his back turned to the defense while carrying out the fake. The quarterback snaps the ball with a two-high look, but by the time he turns back to throw, the entire defensive picture has shifted.
Today, I just want to look at a single play from the Packers first preseason game. On its face, it doesn’t look like much: a 1 yard gain on 1st & 10 with 11:05 remaining in the 1st quarter of a scoreless preseason game. I know. Hardly screams PARTY. But it illustrates a couple points I wanted to touch on. We’ll look at the end zone view first.
The Packers have 4 men on the line and 2 linebackers behind, showing a 6 man box. With two-high safeties and a light box, the Packers are inviting the Texans to run, and the Texans oblige.
Jonathan Garvin [53] pushes and holds the edge, cutting off a run to the outside. TJ Slaton [93] pushes out towards the end. A Texans lineman looks to block Krys Barnes [51], but Barnes is easily able to slide under the block to take away a gap.
With the outside and the cutback taken away, the running back hits the only hole left available to him. However, that gap is filled by Vernon Scott [36], who started as a pre-snap safety in a two-high alignment.
This other angle shows exactly how that works. He’s one of the two-high safeties in a pinched look, showing a potential Quarters shell. At the snap, Scott spins down and Henry Black [41] rotates back. But it’s how Scott spins down that is the most interesting thing to me.
He’s never in a hurry. He’s jogging down, not overreacting to the action of the quarterback or the line. There are some good reasons for that. For starters, if it’s a play fake, Scott hasn’t run himself out of the play by overreacting to the run. He’s sinking to the line and reading. If it’s a play fake, Scott is able to drop into his passing assignment. It also allows him to stay out of the scrum of the line. With the edge held and the defensive line slanting, all Scott needs to go is come down and clean up. If he’s too aggressive, he could potentially overrun the play or get caught too close to the line and get washed out in a block.
By spinning post-snap and not overreacting to the handoff, Scott has himself in a good position to play the pass in the event of a pass, but he also has himself in a good position to make the tackle on the running back.