Links to all of this year's Reading the New Defense Articles
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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 Texan Jalen Pitre as the second defensive back nearly by consensus last summer. Scoring 8 fantasy points per game, a 5.5-PPG drop from 2022, Pitre was a liability in IDP gamers’ line-ups throughout 2023.
Meanwhile, T.J. Edwards proved a value, finishing as an LB1 in the tackle-rich middle of Chicago’s zone coverages. Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores plugged Harrison Phillips into the interior defender role in 2023, which propelled Christian Wilkins to 84 combined tackles in 2021.
Clues foreshadowing these revelations exist. This series offers analysis of new defensive coordinators’ past schemes together with roster changes and player contracts. The goal is to read a new defense and inform fantasy expectations for 2024.
The Importance of Scheme and Deployment
2024 is the second season of the series. The first Reading the New Defense of 2023 provides additional background on the importance of changing defensive schemes, including the significance of true-position IDP. The series assumes true-position line-ups – two interior defenders, two edge rushers, two off-ball linebackers, two safeties, two cornerbacks, and a flex – mirroring nickel personnel, the NFL’s most common defensive grouping.
Pro Football Focus’s Jon Macri reports data analysis indicating a correlation between linebackers’ tackle rates and zone coverages. Linebackers who made tackles at a high rate per snap played on teams that more frequently played zone in 2023 and in each of the two preceding seasons.
Macri also reports rates of tackles per snap by alignment for safeties. Known as the last line of defense, safeties are likelier to make tackles when they line up in “the box,” i.e., alongside a linebacker.
Changing Schemes
In Summer 2023, Vic Fangio was the talk of defensive pro football. The long-time coach who began his career with expansion teams of the 1990s returned to the league as Miami’s defensive coordinator. Coaches implementing versions of his scheme proliferated the league.
This summer, the Seattle Seahawks’ new head coach Mike Macdonald has succeeded Fangio as the media-proclaimed defensive genius of the NFL. His former assistants now lead defenses in Baltimore, where Macdonald coordinated for just two years, as well as Miami, Tennessee, and Los Angeles (Chargers).
Macdonald’s defensive system is not unique and bears similarities to Vic Fangio’s. Both use 3-4 bases, 4-man under fronts in nickel subpackages, and frequent pre-snap structures with two high safeties. The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen explains that Macdonald’s strongest traits are his teaching methods and play calling.
Under Macdonald’s guidance, Baltimore led the league in several defensive categories including DVOA. The first edition in the second season of the series Reading the New Defense covered reasons for Macdonald’s success and how they might translate to Seattle, where Macdonald will take over as head coach.
Fangio will coordinate Philadelphia’s defense in 2024 after Miami fired him.
The innovation Vic Fangio advanced that Mike Macdonald employs is to build out coverages first and allocate remaining resources to run defense. This results in the “light box” – a total of six players along the defensive line and behind it at linebacker depth. Frequently, then, both safeties align deep, more than ten yards from the line of scrimmage.
The Rams defense has changed their structure under new DC Brandon Staley this season, aligning in two-high safety shells and lighter boxes.
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) November 25, 2020
Under Wade Phillips (2019)
? Light Box Rate: 62% (11th)
Under Brandon Staley (2020)
? Light Box Rate: 85% (1st)#RamsHouse https://t.co/pfjviSxKpC pic.twitter.com/PMIqGyrbAF
In the previous decade, two deep safeties behind light boxes ran counter to conventional wisdom. Defensive coordinators and head coaches like Dan Quinn built out their defensive fronts first. Quinn deployed one player per gap wherein a gap exists between two blockers. With an in-line tight end, an offense showed seven gaps including the edges of the formation. Quinn’s allocation of personnel required three cover corners opposite receivers in 11-personnel and a single high safety.
Offenses learned flexible blocking assignments to protect against seven-man fronts. X-receivers flexed into the slot opposite athletic tight ends to attack the seams of prevailing Cover-3 pass defenses. Quinn’s Atlanta defense was exposed, and Atlanta fired him four years after a Super Bowl appearance.
After the Dallas Cowboys hired Quinn to coordinate their defense in 2021, observers wondered with great interest how Dan Quinn would revise his scheme. First, Quinn observed and implemented the Falcons’ interim head coach’s immediate adjustment in 2020.
Raheem Morris did not flood the line of scrimmage with potential pass rushers as Quinn had. Instead, he would blitz from depth, utilizing his players’ athleticism. His success earned him the Rams’ defensive coordinator job in 2021.
While Morris adopted a conservative approach to defense in Los Angeles, frequently with two high safeties, Quinn became more aggressive in Dallas. Quinn’s units relied less on his Cover-3 zones and more on man coverage. He frequently played with three safeties and deployed them unpredictably. His simulated pressures were better disguised.
The results were a defense among the league’s top 7 for three straight years in points allowed and top 3 in creating turnovers according to Pro-Football-Reference.com. These results earned Quinn the Washington Commanders’ head coaching job. Quinn brought with him Joe Whitt, who coordinated Dallas’s passing defense. While Whitt will call defensive plays, his scheme will substantially resemble Quinn’s.
Erecting Defensive Fronts
While the coaches who rely on two-high structures ponder building a wall or getting upfield, Dan Quinn firmly believes in defending the run on the way to the quarterback. He will use a situational nose tackle in short yardage; however, the best duo of defensive tackles in the league will enjoy penetrating and making plays.
Commanders Defensive Tackles
The Commanders allowed more points than any team in the league in 2023. The futility surprised many in light of their personnel. Daron Payne, who will start for Quinn at 1-technique, was less effective than in years past. The 3-technique Jonathan Allen struggled for the first time since his injury-riddled rookie year.
The Commanders’ new regime demonstrated the importance of interior disruptors in their defense by using a second-round pick on Jer'Zhan Newton in the 2024 draft. Newton will develop behind Payne and Allen in 2024 and could replace Allen in 2025. Allen’s contract will make him a cap casualty unless he regains his Pro Bowl form of 2021 and 2022.
Commanders Edge Rushers
The Commanders traded away both of their starting defensive ends last season for Day-2 picks in this year’s draft. The position group for 2024 includes two rotational rushers Quinn coached in Dallas and former first-round bust Clelin Ferrell. Whitt will likely rotate five players, including linebacker Frankie Luvu, through the edges of his defense in situational roles.
Building Out Coverages
Commanders Cornerbacks
Under Dan Quinn and Joe Whitt, Cowboys cornerbacks made headlines picking off passes. Their total body of work was boom/bust, partly a result of high-risk, high-reward man coverage.
The Commanders’ top three cornerbacks lack the talent of their counterparts in Dallas. Washington’s top addition at the position is former Chargers’ undrafted free agent Mike Davis. Signed to a 1-year $3.2 million contract, the 6’2 Davis joins 6’3 Benjamin St-Juste to form a duo that looks the part for Dan Quinn’s man coverage. Their on-field performances have been more down than up.
The Commanders’ 2023 first-round pick, Emmanuel Forbes Jr., rounds out the trio. Forbes, a ballhawk in college, weighed into the NFL Scouting Combine at 166 pounds. The concerns about his weight that the previous regime ignored loomed large. Forbes has yet to prove he can play through the body of NFL receivers required to deny the football in tight coverage.
The slot defender in this single-high defense is a coverage-first player. The Commanders will deploy rookie Mike Sainristil, their current second-round pick in this role.
Commanders Safeties
Darrick Forrest and Percy Butler each started games at safety for the 2023 Commanders. They will give way to 2023 second-round pick Quan Martin and unrestricted free agent Jeremy Chinn. Martin could not get on the field as a rookie slot defender for the regime that drafted him; nevertheless, he is in the lead to play Quinn’s deep safety role.
Jeremy Chinn started his career strong as a hybrid safety/linebacker in an aggressive one-high defense. Then-Carolina coordinator Phil Snow eventually sought to modernize his defense and show more two-high structures. Chinn struggled with the transition. Snow’s successor, Ejiro Evero, reduced Chinn to a small role and turned to unrestricted free agents to start at safety in 2023.
In Washington, Chinn returns to a role in which he once thrived. The odds that he plays full-time, however, could be low. No safety has played full-time for Dan Quinn since 2021, when Jayron Kearse occupied the same hybrid linebacker role that Chinn inherits in 2024.
Forrest, the Commanders’ 2021 fifth-round pick, played effectively in 2022 before the wheels fell off of Jack Del Rio’s Washington defense. Forrest should see the field as the third safety and could cut into Chinn’s workload in clear passing situations.
Commanders Linebackers
Bobby Wagner has been named first- or second-team All-Pro in eleven of his twelve years in the NFL. The Seahawks allowed Wagner to part Seattle with the regime he played for throughout most of his career. Wagner was Quinn’s defensive captain in 2013 and 2014, when Quinn coordinated the Seahawks’ defense.
Wagner has led the league in combined tackles three times, including 2023. He’ll be hard-pressed to repeat the feat in Dan Quinn’s frequent man coverages. Seattle played more zone than anyone last season. Quinn’s appetite for situational packages might induce him to take the 34-year-old Wagner off the field rather than have him turn and run with tight ends in man coverage.
Unrestricted free agent Frankie Luvu will join Wagner in base and nickel sets. A former undrafted free agent, Luvu played sparingly the first three years of his career as a situational pass rusher for the Jets. The Panthers converted him to an off-ball linebacker, where he thrived.
Luvu is believed by observers to be destined for Micah Parsons’s role in Dan Quinn’s defense. If so, it’s Parsons’s role from his rookie season. Parsons was an inside linebacker in 2021 who would periodically rush the passer. He proved so effective that he eventually played on the edge nearly full-time.
Luvu will split pass defense snaps between rushing and coverage. Like Parsons, Luvu should stay on the field between 80 and 85 percent of the defensive snaps.
2024 Commanders Outlook
Fantasy Fades
Bobby Wagner has been a fantasy LB1 for so long that early drafters can hardly imagine a different outcome. He is the eleventh linebacker off the board by average draft position, according to data collected by The IDP Show for its draft kit.
Jon Macri’s data show a substantial drop in efficiency of tackles per snap in man coverage versus zone. Wagner’s year-over-year tackle total could fall by as many as 40 even if he plays full-time. The team’s free-agent signings and recent draft picks provide too many mouths to feed with tackles and snaps for any to be a safe pick as a first option in a fantasy line-up.
Frankie Luvu finished 20th among fantasy linebackers by Footballguys scoring in 2023, 17 spots behind Wagner. Luvu’s ADP of 15 is an absolute ceiling case fueled by a high sack total. He played nearly full-time last year. Unless Dan Quinn abandons the three-safety sets that fueled his scheme’s rejuvenation, Luvu will experience a decline in usage.
Fantasy gamers in leagues that do not use true-position designations may be tempted to draft a Washington defensive end. Such is the nature of leagues in which half of all edge rushers are grouped with linebackers. An in-season waiver claim should prove a better use of the roster spot than the likes of Dorance Armstrong, Dante Fowler Jr, or Clelin Ferrell.
Fantasy Holds
At first blush, an ADP of 9 among safeties for a player who finished outside the top 100 at the position last year looks ridiculous. Jeremy Chinn’s past success – finishing third at the position in 2021 – in a similar role makes him an interesting gamble in 2024. The position has become so flat and replacement-level production so easy to come by that a pure upside bet like Chinn makes sense once the handful of All-Pro-caliber safeties are off the board.
Fantasy Values
Jonathan Allen and Daron Payne sport consecutive ADPs at their position – 12 and 13. They must merely meet career averages to provide returns on these investments. Each offers upside in Dan Quinn’s penetrating defense.
As the three-technique, Allen might have the higher ceiling; however, he could be scaled back in favor of the rookie Jer'Zhan Newton as the team looks to 2025 in December.
The cornerback who leads his position group in snaps is a compelling fantasy option. Michae| Davis, whom the new regime sought out, is the best bet.
In his best season (2022), Davis broke up 15 passes in a part-time role (76% of defensive snaps). In 4,808 career snaps, he has broken up 69 passes, good for 22nd among active players. Dan Quinn’s defense should position the 29-year-old to meet or exceed his pace in the statistic.
Davis has no ADP in The IDP Show’s 2024 Draft Kit. He is a potential CB2 available to fantasy gamers for free.
Summer Plans
Reading the New Defense will drop each week throughout the summer with a fresh look at expectations for defenses under the tutelage of a new defensive coordinator. Analysis at Footballguys aims to equip fantasy gamers with the knowledge and confidence to draft players for their rosters for deployment on Sundays this coming fall. Readers are welcome to contact and follow this writer @DynastyTripp on the app formerly known as Twitter.
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