Reading the New Defense: Carolina Panthers

Photo: USA Today Sports

Footballguy Sigmund Bloom often opines that there is no longer an information advantage in fantasy football. Increased media coverage of the NFL scouting combine, breaking news on social media, and advanced analytics are all equalizers in fantasy football competition.

Coverage of skill-position players is a daily exercise. NFL defenses, however, do not enjoy the same limelight. Offense is to the big city what defense is to the small town.

News of defenders travels more slowly and is less sensationalized. Complex data for analysis are harder to come by. IDP fantasy gamers find themselves unaware of important changes to player values hiding in plain sight.

Fantasy gamers drafted perennial DB1 Jordan Poyer with confidence last summer, only to be disappointed. He played deep too often to compile tackles. A year ago, Josey Jewell, Jordan Hicks, and Frankie Luvu were afterthoughts at best. Each finished among fantasy football’s top 24 linebackers.

Clues foreshadowing these revelations exist. This series interprets changes in rosters, player contracts, personnel groupings at organized team activities (OTAs), and insights new coordinators will offer into defensive philosophy. The goal is to read a new defense and anticipate fluctuations in IDP fantasy values.

Related: See a similar look at the IDPs in Philadelphia >>>

Changing Schemes

Bloom also speaks of talent, situation, and opportunity as the three legs of a tripod that supports fantasy value. Defensive scheme changes can be so impactful to fantasy value that they constitute a fourth leg. Each season, roughly a quarter of the NFL’s teams hire new defensive coordinators.

This article is the second in a series examining the potential effects on defenders’ fantasy values imposed by new defensive schemes. The first, covering Sean Desai and the Philadelphia Eagles, noted strong similarities between the Eagles’ 2022 defense and the defense Desai coordinated in Chicago in 2021. The piece further contemplated personnel moves and comments about them from the coaching staff and front office.

Reading the New Defense: Philadelphia Eagles addressed the change in nomenclature from 4-3 to 3-4. Some fantasy football leagues operate on sites that rely on team depth charts for position designations. Such leagues experience drastic shifts in player values based on team nomenclature while the duties of affected players change subtly, if at all. Footballguy Gary Davenport investigates position redesignation in his piece, The Effect of True Position on IDP.

The Carolina Panthers have hired former Denver Broncos coordinator Ejiro Evero to coordinate their defense in 2023. This article contemplates the schematic changes and personnel deployment Evero might install.

Defensive Fronts

Ejiro Evero bears numerous similarities to Sean Desai. Both coaches have only coordinated an NFL defense for one year. Both are former assistants and protégés of current Dolphins defensive coordinator Vic Fangio despite never working together themselves. Both men inherit defenses built on 4-3 architecture and are installing 3-4 defenses in 2023.

The two coaches deployed personnel packages at strikingly similar rates. Tom Kislingbury of Dynasty League Football reports in his annual Defensive Handbook (2021 and 2022 editions, respectively) that each coach used 3 interior defensive linemen 19% of the time, base personnel in the secondary (2 cornerbacks and 2 safeties) 24% of the time, and nickel personnel (3 cornerbacks and 2 safeties) 48% of the time.

Evero differs from Desai, notably in his use of penny personnel. In this package, Evero substitutes a defensive back for an inside linebacker, leaving base personnel on the defensive line. Kislingbury makes note of it here. Evero’s assistant, defensive line coach Todd Wash discusses how the interior defensive linemen will be deployed.

Panthers Interior Defenders

Former first-round pick Derrick Brown and incoming unrestricted free agent Shy Tuttle are the starting defensive ends. Both players will rotate through the nose tackle position and play all of their snaps between the opposing offensive tackles. Both players will retain designations as tackles in true-position formats. Elsewhere, they will be labeled DE.

Similar to the Eagles’ new defense, both players will often play square to the line of scrimmage. Neither has a history as a productive pass rusher. That shouldn’t change in 2023.

Edge Defenders

Many forget that the Panthers selected Brian Burns in the first round of the 2019 draft to play outside linebacker in Ron Rivera’s new 3-4 defense. Rivera was fired in the middle of that season, and the interim coach who replaced him reinstituted the 4-3. Burns suffered a dislocated shoulder shortly before then and struggled to find playing time because he couldn’t set the edge.

The new defense in Carolina could free up Burns for his best season yet. His size and speed suggest a player best suited to playing in space. Fantasy gamers playing in leagues with conventional position designations could lose him to a linebacker designation.

Burns has no clear bookend in the outside linebacker room with him. The options make available a broad set of intriguing personnel groupings to Ejiro Evero. Marquis Haynes Sr. is an undersized rotational pass rusher who will see more opportunities in this defense. Former second-rounder Yetur Gross-Matos has played both inside and outside. He fits as an edge setter in four-man fronts who can kick inside for five-man fronts.

A wild card Evero has at his disposal is Frankie Luvu. The former rotational pass rusher broke out in a full-time role, primarily as an off-ball linebacker, in 2022. The coaching staff explains here that they’ll make use of Luvu’s versatility at both inside and outside linebacker. The defense could adjust from snap to snap from a 4-2 front to a 5-1 without substituting by moving Luvu to the edge while Gross-Matos reduces down to align inside the offensive tackle. Luvu was deployed similarly at times last year, contributing to his 7.0 sacks of quarterbacks.

Frankie Luvu and Brian Burns with good edge penetration, Luvu quick over top of TE block#DENvsCAR #KeepPounding #BroncosCountry pic.twitter.com/Z5fyCmeD0B

— á‘­á–‡O á–´OOTᗷᗩᒪᒪ ᒍOᑌᖇᑎᗩᒪ 🏈 (@NFL_Journal) November 27, 2022

Building Out Coverages

The 2022 Broncos heavily used zone coverage and frequently blitzed under Ejiro Evero. Both tendencies diverge from the 2021 team led by head coach Vic Fangio, Evero’s mentor. Zone coverages prevailed despite blitzes affording fewer defenders to coverage and the presence of Patrick Surtain II, one of the league’s best cornerbacks in man-to-man coverage.

#Panthers defensive play-caller: DC Ejiro Evero pic.twitter.com/en2i68VSkl

— Sam Hoppen (@SamHoppen) June 8, 2023

The 2023 Panthers’ cornerback room resembles that of the 2022 Broncos. It features Jaycee Horn - the player drafted eighth overall and immediately ahead of Surtain in 2021 - and a bunch of question marks. Moreover, no clear candidate to play slot cornerback exists on the roster.