NFL Defensive Coordinators are bad at their jobs. There’s no way the bulk of the position can be complimented for much of anything, offensive efficiency and production has skyrocketed in just the last seven years due to new schemes, plays, play styles and most importantly, lack of innovation on the defensive end. Why is it in the NFL for the last 36 years >99% of teams have run the same base movements of a 4-3 or 3-4. Logic tells you that both of those defenses and their base alignments mostly fall in the middle of the aggressive vs. non aggressive alignments as well as around equal potential to stop the run and the pass. Though it begs the question, why should defenses stay so moderate in such an offensively radical league?
Offensive playbooks opened up in the early 2010s mostly due to the inclusion of much of the college game. In college, coaches often deal with worse teams and programs and are much more inclined to rely on wacky play calling to create chances. Moreover, recruiting is much easier when you have a specific scheme to build around, i.e Oregon’s dominant spread option offense under Chip Kelly. When quarterbacks emerging from these systems got to the league, plenty of coaches tried keeping them comfortable by introducing a lot of familiarity into their playbooks, take for example the evolution of Washington’s offense under RGIII. It’s crazy to think that even when Griffin got into the league the idea of a starting QB that mobile was seen as taboo. As he would go on to prove this idea was outdated and in a lot of cases purely racially based, why wouldn’t you want your quarterback to be a great athlete.
Defense has never had this revolution. Buddy Ryan’s 1983-85’ 46 Defense is the most radical defensive play-calling the NFL has seen besides other late 70s blitzing experiments and most recently his son’s extremely successful 46 defense stint with the Jets. Everyone is aware of the 46 but mostly due to legend, not a single defensive coordinator uses the 46 as more than a sub package. Time has certainly shown the 46 as viable and interchangeable enough to fit modern day pass happy offenses, yet coordinators still buy into traditionalists that failed them offensively. Yes, the 46 is hyper aggressive and the alignment is run-orientated, though there’s an entire other end of the spectrum also unexplored by base defensive playbooks.
College Football has recently seen the rise of Coordinators primarily using the 4-2-5 and 3-3-5 Nickel orientations to combat pass leaning spread offenses. Traditional coaching points to the Nickel as a good 3rd down sub package due to its ineffectiveness against the run and therefore a poor base defense but how true is this in practice? Any great defensive alignments looks for players who fill in the weak spots. In the Nickel, linebackers with the mobility to stop the run and corners/safeties who can tackle obliterate the notion that the Nickel as a base defense is incompatible with stopping the run downs 1-3. The Seahawks defense is perhaps the best defense of the 2010s and did so thanks to great secondary tackling. I think the defense could have been even better if they played today and lined up in more nickel forms instead of Tampa 2.
Athletes get better every year. Offenses have evolved to scheme these unique players into ideal situations yet defense has changed little in forty seasons. It’s high time for coordinators to run schemes that further emphasize their great players and dictate the game to the opponent.