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 á’Oᑌᖇᑎᗩᒪ 🈠(@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.
Panthers Linebackers
Evero will likely use zone coverages frequently in 2023. That will boost tackle rates for the team’s inside linebackers. Veteran Shaq Thompson will lead the group and likely relay signals from the sidelines. He’s the player getting teammates lined up at OTAs.
Frankie Luvu will play alongside Thompson in base defense and vanilla nickel sub-packages. A second linebacker played anywhere from 41% to 100% of defensive snaps from game to game for the 2022 Broncos. Luvu’s experience and ability to play on the edge should keep his playing time toward the higher end of this range.
Safeties
The Panthers have signed unrestricted free agents to man its safety posts in consecutive years. Xavier Woods (2022) and Vonn Bell (2023) will play deep in typical nickel and dime sub-packages.
Evero aligned two safeties deep before the snap at one of the highest rates in the league in 2022. He then used post-snap rotation at the highest rate in the NFL, resulting in an above-average rate of single-high coverages, typically Cover-3.
Highest % of snaps where safeties rotate post-snap: Broncos, Rams, Bills
— Arjun Menon (@arjunmenon100) November 30, 2022
Lowest % of snaps where safeties rotate post-snap: Giants, Seahawks, Panthers pic.twitter.com/xXc2SXGDGi
The two safeties operate roughly interchangeably and alternate playing deep. As a result, neither is a preferred box safety who will pile up tackles closer to the line of scrimmage.
Nickelback
Veteran safety Jeremy Chinn acknowledges that nickelback will be central to his role in Evero’s defense. The nickelback will typically line up in the first two levels of the defense and can move in almost any direction post-snap.
In their "Xs and Os" podcast, Doug Farrar and Greg Cosell discuss the vulnerability of a five-man front in penny personnel to cutback runs. Chinn’s size (6’-3" and 220-pounds) and elite burst and speed in support of penny personnel will be valuable in run defense as well as pass rush. Evero frequently brings pressure from the second level to the interior offensive line.
Something we saw in LA & Evero definitely brought w/ him to Denver is the affinity to blitz the Ni
— Cody Alexander (@The_Coach_A) September 26, 2022
Here are two looks...
#1: This is from the #Broncos' Penny package (5-1)
Have seen this used in every game#ArtofX x #NFL | #BroncosCountry (1/2) pic.twitter.com/4h4jsZNQ90
Panthers 2023 Outlook
The 2022 Panthers’ defense was a middling unit by points allowed but ranked near the bottom in takeaways (17, tied for 27th in the league) and sacks (35, tied for 25th in the league), according to Pro Football Reference. The defense became slightly more conservative year over year, blitzing less and showing more two-high looks in keeping with league-wide trends.
Their recent experience should aid in the transition to Ejiro Evero’s scheme. The Panthers return most of their 2022 starters and key reserves, replacing Matt Ioannidis with Shy Tuttle and filling Myles Hartsfield’s roster spot with Vonn Bell. Evero will need a platoon to manufacture pressure opposite Brian Burns and cornerback C.J. Henderson, a former top-ten pick of the Jaguars, to turn his career around to make this a top-tier defense.
At the end of this press conference, likely defensive captain Shaq Thompson lists the defenders that the Panthers "need to keep on the field." The same players are potential assets for fantasy gamers in addition to Thompson.
Shaq Thompson comments on new defense Thompson spoke about how Ejiro Evero's defense allows him to be more "visual, fast, and free." Edge defender Brian Burns collected 63 tackles, including 17 for loss and 12.5 sacks, en route to a DL1 finish in some formats. He’s a solid bet to repeat that production in Evero’s defense.
Frankie Luvu was arguably the biggest surprise in fantasy football in 2022. The career rotational edge defender played mostly off-ball linebacker and collected 111 tackles in 940 snaps across 15 games. He added 7.0 sacks in just 146 pass rushes, per Pro Football Focus.
The career highs in tackles, sacks, and snaps will be difficult to improve upon. Luvu’s productivity as both a tackler and a rusher evokes Devin White’s 2021 season and his subsequent regression to the means of efficiency in those statistics.
Blood ran cold through the veins of fantasy gamers late last summer when they learned Jeremy Chinn would be redeployed as a deep safety in Phil Snow’s defense. Snow was fired midseason, and interim head coach Steve Wilks revised Chinn’s role again. Playing closer to the line of scrimmage, Chinn resumed higher tackle rates (averaging 1 per 9 snaps from Week 11 on) that characterized his first two years in the league. His opportunities to rush the passer will resume in 2023 as well.
Shaq Thompson collected a career-high 135 tackles in 2022. Early draft results suggest that gamers believe he’ll struggle to clear 100 in 2023. His average draft position as the 41st linebacker in The IDP Show best-ball leagues screams value.
In his press conference, Thompson identifies Xavier Woods and Vonn Bell as the primary safeties in Evero’s defense. As interchangeable pieces, both are considerations only in deep fantasy leagues.
Defensive tackle Derrick Brown is a volume-based DT2. Cornerback Jaycee Horn is likely just a weekly streamer. Any additional fantasy options emerging from this defense would represent a major step forward in player development and a surprise overshadowed only by Frankie Luvu’s remarkable 2022.
Analysis at Footballguys aims to equip fantasy gamers with the confidence to acquire players for their rosters and deploy them on Sundays. Readers are welcome to contact and follow this writer @DynastyTripp on Twitter.