DETROIT’S DOOMSDAY DEFENSE

The Lions boast one of the best Defensive Lines in the league, with 6 of their Defensive Linemen being clear starters on any NFL team in the league. Their linebacking corp shows promise but are young and unheralded with a chip on their shoulder. Their biggest weakness is their secondary, where Darius Slay is by far their best defensive back. This is a blue collar defense built from the front back. The big question is, how does this defense line up against the Cardinals, and what can we expect from Matt Patricia in terms of strategies.

Matt Patricia has shown over his career is the ability to adjust to an opponent and take away what they want to do best. Often times they achieve this by running man coverage with outside linebackers near the line of scrimmage who are manned up on a running back or tight end who are given the freedom to rush the passer OR play man coverage based on reading their man assignment and the play OR dropping into a free roaming coverage OR dropping into a QB Spy. The players are given the power to diagnose the best course of action on the fly. If they can get a free release because of a blocking mistake they will crash down fast. If the TE stays in to block, giving the offense 6 blockers, these linebackers match that immediately and add one to the pass rush. Versus mobile QBs they may play contain or QB spy as well if their assignment blocks. Versus elite passers or great offensive lines they may have this player roam the field freely without an assignment covering wherever they feel the defense needs tighter coverage.

This freedom leads to unpredictability for the offensive line to block and account for all of the defenders in the box. But they aren’t married to this concept or man coverage. They will run zone and zone blitz for a similar effect when they need to. They will run a 3-4 when they need to or run a 4-3 or a 6 DB set or whatever they feel is the best way to attack the opposition. They do like bringing their best pass rusher on the side of the QBs throwing hand. When Chandler Jones was in New England, Patricia loved putting him on a right handed QBs right side, Trey Flowers will likely work in this role in Detroit this season. One thing they rarely to never do however is a man blitz, one of the riskier coverages defences can run in the NFL as it has no coverage over the top just in case.

So how can the Cardinals overcome this elite defensive line and these free wheeling LBs who will do everything they can to trick and bait Kyler Murray into sacks, interceptions, and contain his rushing abilities?

BEING JUDGED BY LAST YEAR

What many critics of the Cardinals seem to be confused about is who exactly is on this Cardinals Offensive Line and how effective they expect them to be.



Yet most writeups on the Cardinals O-Line refer to stats from last year’s o line. An O Line that was wrecked by injuries and starting guys who were backups or not even on their week 1 roster. With no offensive line consistency, Justin Pugh playing out of position, it wasn’t a great year. I won’t mince words, the 2018 offensive unit altogether was atrocious. There are a total of 9 players on this years offensive depth chart that were on the Cardinals Pre-Season 2018 roster: David Johnson, Chase Edmonds, DJ Foster, Justin Pugh, DJ Humphries, Mason Cole, Larry Fitgerals, Christian Kirk, and Trent Sherfield. With so much turn over, nothing about this year’s team should be inferred by last years squad.

While the Cardinals O-Line crew does have a history of injuries, they are far from a bad offensive line, if anything they all have been average to above average. Marcus Gilbert being the exception, being an exceptionally good pass blocking RT who is getting up there in age and not at his prime but still an above average RT. If we drop back and wait 5 seconds to versus the Lions, it will be a rough night. Their D-Line isn’t above average, its elite. However, the Cardinals offense is well equipped to take on the Lions.

K-RAID: EVENING THE PLAYING FIELD

The Air Raid offense for over 3 decades has grown in popularity at the varsity and collegiate levels of the sport because it is an underdog offense. Traditional football is far less about “the X’s and the O’s” than “the Jimmy’s and the Joe’s”. Before the Air Raid, the team with the better athletes would win 90+% of the time. What the Air Raid has offered from the beginning was a way for smaller schools with less traditional athletes to compete and even dominate. Kingsbury at Texas Tech could recruit QBs, but recruiting much talent beyond that was a chore, yet his offenses were putting up loads of points. Why? Is it smoke and mirrors? Is it trickery? Or is it simply being clever? What exactly are the core elements of Kliff Kingsbury’s offense?

ELEMENT #1: RUN-PASS-OPTIONS (RPOs)

When Dana Holgorsen started utilizing RPOs with his offence at the University of Houston, Kliff Kingsbury was his understudy and heir apparent and Case Keenum was his Quarterback. Lincoln Riley who also was a disciple of Holgorsen, started using them at East Carolina shortly thereafter. Since then its become a full part of all 3 coaches repertoire.

How they change the game is they allow the quarterback to get the ball out of his hands in under 2 seconds consistently, too fast for even an Elite Defensive Line to get a consistent pass rush going against an average NFL line like the Cardinals have.

RPOs work by having the QB reading a key player like a LB or a box safety, if the defender crashes down on the run, the QB pulls the ball and throws it immediately to a slant, screen, or other quick route on the backside. Putting LBs and Safeties into binds where they can’t possibly be 2 places at once. In order to negate this the defense can rotate players to the near the line of scrimmage to cover both the play side and the back side, they can play tight man coverage, or they can assign that free roaming LB to go wherever the RB goes and eat up the run, and assign another LB to cover anything backside, but at that point no one is SPYing Murray and you can’t do all of this without dropping a safety down low so you have a 1 deep safety look which the air raid passing game will pick apart. Instead of the defense being able to play any form of coverage with any sort of leverage and being able to attack how they feel fit, they now have them with limited options and no play that can stop both the hand off, the backside quick pass, and the QB keeper, an element made more frightening given Kyler’s quickness and elusiveness as a runner.

ELEMENT #2: HURRY-UP-NO-HUDDLE (HUNH) TEMPO

Make no mistake about it, the 2019 Cardinals are going to play fast. With a goal of 90 offensive snaps per game they will play at a good clip, but the one running the show will be Kyler Murray. He will call plays at the line, get guys lined up, call out protections, and hike the ball often in under 20 seconds. He also can get there and survey the field and adjust as he sees fit and of course he will have Kliff and passing coordinator Tom Clements in his ear the whole time helping him along. Playing fast like this will force the defense to avoid substitutions until there is a dead ball or other clock stoppage, wearing out the players on the field. For attacking physical positions like defensive linemen, this can be punishing. And for speedy reaction based positions like coverage linebackers and defensive backs it can lead to mistakes and poor coverage. It also tends to force defenses to play more “vanilla” standard coverages and less exotic blitz looks.

ELEMENT #3: STITT SWEEPS

Bob Stitt spent 14 years as the head coach at the “Colorado School of Mines” a division II program without much history of success. He left the school with a 108-62 overall record and set numerous records, a lot of it off of his innovation on the old fly/jet sweep play. In his version of the play, the WR goes into full speed motion prior to the snap. The ball is snapped to the QB in the shotgun or pistol formation and immediately hot potato’d to the WR who takes the ball at full speed and attacks the perimeter of the defense. This has numerous advantages. For one the WR doesn’t have to slow down to receive a handoff at full speed. Secondly, handoffs with speedy WRs can go sideways resulting in fumbles, if the hot potato action fails, its ruled an incomplete forward pass. Thirdly, it is such a fast play with a player moving so fast to the perimeter that play action off of it or a fake then hand off to the running back can be deadly. Seeing if the WR has the ball or not is a lot more difficult than a typical fake handoff. Dana Holgorsen, Kingsbury’s coaching mentor, started borrowing from Bob Stitt at West Virginia in 2012. His Mountaineers clobbered the Clemson Tigers in the Orange Bowl and put up 70 points on the Tigers that night. Tavon Austin would go on to be his favorite WR to receive the Stitt Sweeps. The Cardinals will be using Stitt Sweeps with both Christian Kirk, Andy Isabella, and possibly Larry Fitzgerald this season. What is the Lion’s free LB supposed to do? QB spy? Blitz? Free roam? Whatever he chooses he will be wrong and Murray will maintain control over the whole show.

ELEMENT #4: SPREAD SETS

Kliff will definitely do some things with bunched wrs some, but the bulk of our offense will be spread out with X (Fitzgerald) and Z(Crabtree) wide receivers split out wide, H WR (Kirk) in the slot, a RB in the backfield (Johnson), and Y, the move TE who will line up in the slot, the backfield, or on the line of scrimmage. H and Y will be the guys who move around the field to create the majority of our formations. Spread 2x2 with 2 slots, or maybe with the TE next to the QB almost like a RB2 are all possible looks, but we won’t be running 3 TE sets or I form with 2 TEs or other compressed formations. Rather look for us to spread it out forcing the defense to either give our players a leverage advantage out wide, in the box, or on the back end of the defense.

Think about it this way. If we have a Spread 2x2 look with the TE in the slot, if the defense has 4 down linemen and 4 DBs / LBs lined up over each WR and TE, that leaves 3 players behind the D Line. Either 2 deep safeties and 1 LB in the box, making it a 5 man box, easy to run on, or a 1 deep safety with 2 LBs in the box making it an easier coverage to throw down the field on. If they keep 2 deep and 2 LB in the box, then one of those slots is not being covered tightly and a quick hitch or bubble screen will be wide open. Either way they line up, Kyler can call the right play to wreck it.

ELEMENT #5: AIR RAID PASSING CONCEPTS

A mixture of studying old BYU passing plays from the 80s that Steve Young used to run with a page from Bill Walsh on gameplanning led to two men, Hal Mumme and Mike Leach creating the Air Raid offence in the late 80s/early 90s. At the core of it they took the best passing plays from the most prolific passing attacks of the time, and fine tuned them, tweaked them, made them better, then put them into a spread formation and played like it was a 2 minute drill all game. They taught the offense to everyone that wanted to learn and many of their former players seemed to become good football coaches. One of their associates at the University of Kentucky, Tony Franklin put his own spin on it and sold it as “The System” to any high school program that was interested, throwing in his personal phone number for coaches with questions or needing help.

20 years later and there isn't a successful football program in the state of texas not running some version of it. The Patriots have absorbed several of the passing concepts and ideas into their playbook. Andy Reid, who started out as an offensive assistant at BYU, has integrated the 21st century Air Raid versions of those old BYU staples he learned in his 20s with the chiefs. Kirk Cousins has said that the way Lincoln Riley runs “Y-Cross” back when he was at East Carolina was more “advanced” than how Kirk Cousins ran it in the NFL. They fact is, they are some of the best passing concepts that are effective against man and zone coverage and put WRs in the best position to get the ball in space. And these are the concepts Kyler ran all throughout high school and college.

ELEMENT #6: A UNICORN AT QUARTERBACK

Many Cardinals critics seem to think restricting Murray from running is the number one thing the Lions need to do, as if they don’t realize that Murray is a deadly accurate QB with a cannon for an arm who can throw the ball accurately on the run or in the pocket. If you play close to the line of scrimmage with only 1 high safety or if you play a lot of press man coverage, he will devour you in the pocket, throwing quick accurate passes.

We’ve seen special QBs before who could pass accurately or were athletic or had their head screwed on straight or who were in the perfect situation and offense for their skillsets to be optimized… but we’ve never seen a QB who checks every box off as a rookie (I’d argue that Randall Cunningham in 1998, Michael Vick in 2010, Warren Moon in the early 1990s, Dante Culpepper in 2000, Steve Young in 1994, and Patrick Mahomes in 2018 all fit the bill, but none were rookies). Kyler Murray looks really special. So special people keep thinking he is just another Lamar Jackson or a guy like Watson who is a one read QB. He is so much more.

As long as Murray threatens to run a few times a game with designed QB Draws, scrambles vs tight man coverage, and a few keepers off of RPOs, then the Lions will have to keep one LB on a spy. This defense is now stressed to the extreme, and to make it worse, the Cardinals are not going to be in tight sets, but spread out, forcing each DB to be too far away to help in the run game and make the defensive backs alignments tip their hand as far as coverages and leverages you can expect on the upcoming play.

CONCLUSION

If you haven’t pieced this together yet, none of these elements are necessarily new in the NFL.

RPOs? Matt Patricia was defeated by an RPO attack in the Superbowl a couple of years ago.

Hurry Up No Huddle tempo? The early 10s Patriots, Chip Kelly Eagles, the 90s Bills, and the 80s Bengals all used Hurry Up No Huddle elements to great effect.

Stitt Sweeps? The Rams have been using Jet Sweeps to open up run and play action plays for a couple of years now.

Spread sets? The old Run and Shoot was a spread 4 wide only offense without even a TE and Warren Moon put up video game numbers in the 90s when the NFL rules made it difficult to pass the ball. The Patriots and the Giants in recent years ran spread offences to Superbowls. Most notably both teams in 2007 when the Patriots became the first team to go 16-0

Air raid passing concepts? The Chiefs last year showed what Air Raid dropback concepts can do on a team with a no-talent defense and a mediocre O-Line.

A Unicorn at QB? We’ve seen similar but no QB quite like him. He checks every box except NFL experience and he’s not 6’3”. But we’ve seen in recent years, height doesn’t matter in the modern game the way it did in the 80s. His lack of NFL experience is the only thing holding him back and the easiest problem to remedy as Patrick Mahomes showed last year.

Every element of the Cardinals attack in 2019 is battle-tested in the NFL. But for Cardinals critics, I guess they have to see it to believe it. When Kliff’s offense runs more than 75 plays Week 1, and scores more than 30 points, the league and NFL pundits will be put on notice, just like they were put on notice last year when the chiefs put up 38 on the Chargers week 1 last year. Because there’s one statistic I haven’t mentioned yet. Last year’s Cardinals averaged 14 points per game. Kliff Kingsbury has never averaged less than 30, and a few seasons he averaged 40+. This team will put up some points.

My predictions for Sunday Afternoon? Cardinals 38 - Lions 24