Anatomy of a Divisional Round Win: How the Rams can make Aaron Rodgers miserable

This season, Aaron Rodgers experienced a tremendous professional rebirth. It was his second season in head coach Matt LaFleur’s offense, and everything clicked. Freed from the schematically limited Mike McCarthy offense, Rodgers finally got past the need to create big plays randomly, and trusted the structure. He set personal records as a starter with a 70.7% completion rate and 48 touchdown passes, and his passer rating of 121.5 was the second-highest of his career, behind only his 2011 season. He finished first in passing DVOA (Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted per-play metric), and second in passing DYAR (Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted cumulative metric) behind only Patrick Mahomes.

This is the test the Rams’ defense will face when it travels to Lambeau Field to take Rodgers on. Since the franchise moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles, there’s only one game to to on — Week 8 of the 2018 season, in which Rodgers completed 18 of 30 passes for 286 yards, one touchdown, no interceptions, and three sacks. Hardly mind-blowing numbers for Rodgers, but he did have one big-play touchdown to receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling over the head of cornerback Troy Hill, with safety LaMarcus Joyner trying to catch up in Wade Phillips’ dime defense:

Phillips was replaced by Brandon Staley before the 2020 season, and that was a controversial decision. But head coach Sean McVay remembered how Chicago’s defense, with Staley as its outside linebackers coach, made his life miserable in Week 14 of the 2018 season. Chicago popped McVay’s balloon, and McVay was smart enough to keep track of that. After a 15-6 loss in which Jared Goff completed 20 passes in 44 attempts for 180 yards, no touchdowns, and four interceptions, McVay was convinced that even though Phillips is a Hall of Fame coach, he wanted some new blood in the playbook.

So far, so good. The Rams rank fourth overall in Defensive DVOA, fourth against the pass, third against the run, and they’re the best DVOA defense since Week 10. Staley brings more different coverages than Phillips did — everything from quarter-quarter-half to combo to man to zone — there isn’t one particular thing this defense does above anything else, and that makes it tough to prepare for. But if there’s one hallmark of Staley’s defensive philosophy, it’s that all three levels of the defense must be aligned.

“I think pass defense is pass rushing and pass coverage working together,” Staley said on December 23, a few days before he had the challenge of defending Russell Wilson for the second time in Staley’s first season. “I think you hear that sometimes in the NFL. Whether you’re in three-, four-, five-, six-, seven-man rush, whatever type of coverage you play, whether it’s zone, or man, pattern match, it has to fit together against Russell Wilson, because there’s no look that’s going to surprise him. He’s seen it all.

“What you have to deal with in Russell is his legs and his escape ability, which is widely documented. But you also have to deal with the processor in his brain. This guy is as sharp as it gets, and if you make mistakes, he’s going to capitalize. You have to have your front and your coverage working together. Because if there’s a mistake in either of those places, he’s going to find it. It takes a full 11-man operation. You have heard me talk about 22 guys in the game, because you have to chase this guy around for four quarters or overtime. It takes a team effort to get it done.”

Wilson and Rodgers are different quarterbacks, of course, but everything Staley said about Wilson applies to Rodgers to some degree. Rodgers is as good a processor as there is in the NFL, and there is absolutely no argument between his brain and his arm — whatever he sees to capitalize based on the defense, he can then execute. Rodgers is also a nightmare to deal with when he breaks the pocket — he’s not going to run for 100 yards per game, but he will get outside your gaps and wax your defensive backs downfield if you let him. As is the case with any other great quarterback, and as Staley noted, the key is to align your fronts and your coverages.

Staley also, seemingly improbably, believes that you can stop the run with light boxes, and so far, he’s been correct.

So, the idea of fronts tied to coverages, and everything working together, is the right plan. Cody Alexander of MatchQuarters.com wrote a brilliant piece last month about how Staley is able to make this work.

As Alexander points out, “The Rams utilize a mixture of five and four-man fronts with their two-shell looks. The five-man front creates one-on-one matchups with their D-line and EDGE players. Staley uses a mixture of Bear and Under schemes to change the leverage. The use of “flex” players on the edges allows the Rams to keep a two-high shell and ‘steal’ gaps inside.

“An example of this is shown below. The away-side EDGE can fold in and take the Safety’s gap. This is taking four-down Quarters principles and hybridizing them in a three-down alignment.”

If you watch the load to the strong side, you’ll see outside linebacker Samson Ebukam careen in unblocked on the edge while Rob Gronkowski leans inside to help left tackle deal Donovan Smith deal with defensive end Michael Brockers. This is a Bear concept from a gap perspective, and the indicator there is that the ends are playing to the outside shoulders of the guards, creating single-team matchups for the ends. In this case, Donald gets a double-team to his side, but that’s because he’s Aaron Freaking Donald. You’ll also notice that this double-team leaves the rush open for outside linebacker Leonard Floyd if he wants it.

This is a run stop, but the same principles apply to the Rams’ pass rush. Add in Staley’s ability to create pressure on pass plays with wide fronts and inside stunts, and this is a NO BUENO situation for any quarterback.

This sack of Wilson in the wild-card round, one of five Wilson suffered, is schematically evil.

You’ll notice that Staley has his guys lined up on the outside shoulders of both the guards and tackles. As Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril of the Seahawks told me in 2015 when I watched tape with them, the reason for this is to force the guard to act like a tackle and move more to one side than in a phone booth. Back then, the Seahawks liked to put Bennett and Avril on the same side in what I called the “quotation mark” front.

Bennett: “Usually, a guard is responsible for the depth of the pocket, and the tackle is responsible for the width of the pocket. So, when you take a guard and make him have to deal with the width of the pocket, too, it takes away from what he usually wants to do. He wants to keep the depth and keep you on a line, so the quarterback has time to step up and throw the ball. When you make him open up like a tackle, he’s not used to that. It’s too much space for him—it makes him regular. You take an in-the-box guy and make him outside the box, and he can’t handle it.”

Avril: “Yeah, they don’t like space. They don’t like having too much space, and the way Mike lines up, he forces the guard to become a tackle, because he’s so wide. Guards hate having too much time and having space.”

Now, add the stunts to either side in this particular case, and what the hell is an offensive line supposed to do?

This could be a serious problem for the Packers — their offensive line hasn’t been great with protection rules against devious pass-rush concepts this season, and with left tackle David Bakhtiari out with a torn ACL, these issues could be compounded. For proof, let’s look at two defenses that mystified Rodgers and his front five this season — Week 6 against the Buccaneers, and Week 15 against the Panthers.

In a 38-10 Week 6 loss to the Bucs, Rodgers completed 16 of 35 passes for 160 yards, no touchdowns, and two interceptions. Rodgers’ 35.4 quarterback rating was the third-worst of his career, and his Adjusted Yards Per Attempt was the worst he’d ever experienced in any game where he had at least 10 passing attempts.

How did this happen? Well, remember what Staley said about aligning pressure to coverage? Buccaneers defensive coordinator Todd Bowles had that on lock in perhaps the best single-game defensive game plan I saw this season.

Bowles disguised his gap responsibilities pre-snap, throwing off protection rules. This was most evident on Rodgers’ interception to cornerback Jamel Dean — which Dean returned 32 yards for a touchdown.

The first thing you should notice about this play is how the Buccaneers made the Packers wait to decipher which defensive linemen were standing up, and which had their hands on the ground. Bowles did a brilliant job from snap to snap switching this up, which made it very hard for Rodgers and his linemen to agree on protections. Rodgers was sacked five times and suffered 13 quarterback hits in this game, but it wasn’t just the pressure that was the problem — Rodgers was also confounded by dropping defenders and blitzing defenders from difficult angles. This caused Rodgers to doubt his short and intermediate reads as you will rarely see him do.

“We were able to get after Aaron,” head coach Bruce Arians said. “Once we got the running game shut down it was just a matter of getting after him, and Todd did a great job with multiple looks and coverages.”

On the interception in question, Dean said after the game that when receiver Davante Adams motioned from bunch right to stack left, he understood where Rodgers was likely to throw the ball — to his favorite receiver.

“When I saw the formation and then how everything started to develop, I’m like, ‘I have to make this play because I know what’s coming.’” Dean concluded. “Then, once I saw him throw it, I was like yeah, it’s mine.”

The Buccaneers had five defenders at the line of scrimmage pre-snap with what appeared to be Cover-0 behind — aggressive blitz coverage with no safety help to the deep third. It was a blitz, but not the one Rodgers expected. Safety Antoine Winfield Jr. and linebacker Lavonte David dropped into coverage from the line, and cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting blitzed from the defensive left side. Meanwhile, safeties Mike Edwards and Jordan Whitehead dropped from that alleged pre-snap Cover-0 look to two deep out of Bowles’ big nickel package, and Dean was more than ready to jump Adams’ route.

Fast-forward to that Panthers game, which the Packers did win by a 24-16 score, but Rodgers was anything but spectacular, completing 20 of 26 passes for 143 yards, one touchdown, no interceptions, and five sacks. His yards per attempt average of 4.93 was the eighth-lowest of his career in games where he attempts at least 20 passes. Factor in the 47 yards lost to sacks, and Rodgers’ net yards per attempt cratered to 3.69. The Rams’ passing game isnt’ exactly dynamic these days, but if Staley is able to create a clone of what the Panthers did, this could be a fairly major upset.

Like the Buccaneers, the Panthers showed three-lineman base looks and dropped into coverage with different converging defenders, and it had the same effect. Phil Snow, Carolina’s first-year defensive coordinator, was quite aware of the need to dial up what Rodgers called a “strange” defense.

“It’s a lot of principles you see at the college level — the 3-3-5 stuff, very strange alignments,” Rodgers said, per Joe Person of The Athletic. “They played very soft in the secondary with a lot of two-high and even some, I don’t even know what you call it, but it’s like five guys are high. The pressure package, I felt like we picked up pretty good. It was more of the four-man rush when we didn’t have guys open that gave us problems.”

Makes sense, as Snow came from Baylor, along with first-year head coach Matt Rhule. And how often do you see Rodgers refer to a defense as “strange” at this point in his career?

Rodgers’ sacks started when the Packers were already up, 21-3, and that started a series of five straight drives in which Green Bay punted, including two three-and-outs, after opening the game with three straight touchdown drives. Not unlike the ways in which the Buccaneers opened up a can on Rodgers when they were already down, 10-0. The third Panthers sack, which came with 9:58 left in the third quarter, was an excellent example of how the Panthers were able to blow Green Bay’s protection rules with front movement.

Pre-snap, the Panthers have what could be an nine-man box, with a four-man front and defensive back Myles Hartsfield (No. 38), linebacker Shaq Thompson (No. 54), cornerback Juston Burris (No. 31), safety Jeremy Chinn (No. 21), and safety Tre Boston (No. 33) near the line to confuse everything. Cornerback Rasul Douglas is the only obvious defender outside the paint, which should give Rodgers an indicator that at least one safety is going to spin out. Pre-snap, Burris is already doing just that, flying back to cover the deep third.

At the snap, Boston and Hartsfield drop into curl/flat responsibility, Thompson and Chinn move to hook/curl, and Douglas and Burris roll deep. Rodgers doesn’t have time to diagnose it, because the protection is an absolute mess, and the Panthers go into Shark Week mode.

If you can get pressure with your base down linemen and confuse an offensive line with who’s rushing and who’s covering, every week is Shark Week. Now, Aaron Rodgers has to deal with the NFL’s best aligner of fronts and coverages, and there’s proof enough on tape — even in his most remarkable season — that this is the one way to upend him.