In Part 1, I focused solely on simulated pressures with 2 deep coverage. Part 2 will focus on 3 deep sim pressures. As in Part 1, the Tennessee Titans and their brilliant defensive coordinator Dean Pees will be featured in this post. the other two teams will be the Houston Texans, who have ran a 2 deep and 3 deep sim pressures successfully for years.
What makes a sim pressure effective is when you are able to fool the offense twice. First, you show them a coverage they think you’re in but play a completely different coverage. This will force the quarterback to hold the ball or even force an interception. The other way is to break the offense’s protection scheme. What makes a sim pressure a sim pressure is when you show defenders blitzing on one side, then drop them into coverage and blitz a defender(s) from the other side. The offensive line must account for those potential blitzes, so when they don’t blitz that usually leaves offensive linemen blocking no one.
The first clip is from a Week 3 matchup this past season between the Texans and the Los Angeles Chargers. Sim pressures usually show up only on 3rd down, although some teams will run them on 1st or 2nd down. This situation happens to be 3rd down and 9. The Texans will overload the right side of the offensive line with 4 potential blitzers. They do this to get the Chargers to slide their protection that way, so they can walk up safety Jahleel Addae (#37) and blitz him through the B gap. The Texans draw this up so that Addae has a free run at the quarterback. They expect the running back to pick up #41. Unfortunately for the Texans, Chargers QB Phillip Rivers is a genius and knows exactly what’s coming. He sends the running back to pick up Addae. Rivers makes the correct read but the play results in an incomplete pass. while the teams got the result they wanted, they still were outsmarted by Rivers, who has made a career out of that.
The second clip is from the Week 8 matchup between the Titans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Titans are playing a 1 high safety look against the Bucs’ 3×1 formation. The Titans look like they are playing zone because there is no defender over the #3 receiver. On the tight angle, the titans walk up #24 and #55 into the A gaps. Usually when facing this look, the offense will designate the Center to block one of them and the running back to take the other.
Post-snap the Titans drop the middle of the field safety down to play the seam flat. They rotate the opposite safety from 5 yards off the line of scrimmage all the way to the deep middle. They blitz the nickel corner, Logan Ryan, to the field, who initially lined up over the #2 receiver.
The genius in that is there was no way the Bucs would account for him in protection because they assume he has to cover the #2 receiver. Also, he is 6 yards off the line of scrimmage. Due to the double A gap mug, the Bucs have nobody to block Ryan coming hot off the edge. The result is a sack and forced fumble.
The final clip is from the regular season matchup between the Titans and Kansas City Chiefs from Week 10. The Titans show a 2 high look at the snap, and like the last clip, they walk up multiple defenders to the line of scrimmage to make the Chiefs slide their protection. On this play, they want the Chiefs to slide their protection to the 2 walked up defenders, so they can blitz Ryan and get a free rush at the open side B gap. The Titans will once again rotate their coverage to the strong side. The boundary safety will spin to the middle of the field and the field safety will drop down like he did in the last clip, playing 3 deep 3 under fire zone coverage.
The Chiefs slide their protection from the right guard over to the left. The Running Backs job is to pick up #24 mugged over the right guard. The running back does a good job here because after Safety Kenny Vaccaro (#24) rushes inside, he turns his attention to Ryan blitzing late into the B gap. The other part to the rush is that #24 stunted inside with the defensive tackle to create another element to the blitz. The stunt worked, as Vaccaro caught the center off guard and got by him with speed. Unfortunately for him, Mahomes is the best QB in the NFL. He is able to fire a laser off of his back foot to complete the pass to receiver Tyreek Hill for a 1st down.
The Titans had a great design, but the Chiefs were one step ahead because of the awareness of their running back, Darrell Williams. Mahomes was able to do what he does so often, which is make a play when the play already breaks down. As you can see from this 2 part study, simulated pressures are effective and it is easy to see why defenses at all levels are using them. It is the best way to stop modern offense because you don’t have to blitz to get a free rusher and you also can keep 6 or 7 guys in coverage, which is a necessity in today’s game to combat the spread passing attack and RPO’s.
Talkin Ball 