If you follow the NFL, it’s likely you’ve heard (or seen with your own eyes) how defenses have caught up to offenses.
It wasn’t always this way. Just a short time ago, anywhere from five to seven years or so, offenses dominated the league. They morphed and shifted, and defenses were often (though not always) helpless to stop them.
That has changed. The reasons why vary and what’s always been interesting is how few people have fully, and easily (that’s the key), publicly explained why.
Until now.
Behold former Los Angeles Rams and current Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Cooper Kupp. He was part of the Rams offense, led by Sean McVay, when in 2021 he won a rare NFL receiving triple crown, leading the league in receptions, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns.
What Kupp does on the ‘Bump & Stacy’ show is give one of the best breakdowns of recent defensive evolution you will ever hear. It’s remarkable stuff. His explanation starts by taking us back in time to almost a decade ago.
“So, in 2017 and 2018, Sean McVay’s offense is ahead of the game,” Kupp said. “There were times we were running plays and (defenses) have no idea what was going on.
“And we were just manipulating them (defenses), moving them … manipulating them to where we wanted to go … it was just, it was stupid.”
It’s difficult to overstate how advanced McVay’s schemes were. McVay’s rep as an offensive genius started with those years. And Kupp is right. It was stupid. Defenses had an incredibly hard time stopping them. McVay was named coach of the year in 2017.
Then, as Kupp notes, ever so slowly, defensive coaches, who don’t like to be on the other end of stupid, began to adapt. It took some time, years actually, but it happened.
“2019, defenses start catching on, and there’s a little bit of a Vic Fangio thing that comes on.”
Fangio started using more Cover 4 or “quarters” where four defenders split up the field into fourths and focus on deep coverage. This didn’t stop offenses’ explosive deep games, but it slowed them. Fangio mixed in other coverages as well.
Then something else happened.
“2020 comes. Brandon Staley gets hired to LA. Brandon Staley was with Fangio. Staley in one year puts together the No. 1 defense in the league,” Kupp said.
Staley transformed the Rams’ defense overnight to where they were first in almost every major statistical category.
“Now Staley’s thing is all about concept recognition, concept match,” explained Kupp. “Being able to cancel routes and move in to new things.”
This is a sophisticated way of saying Staley taught how to quickly recognize what the offense was doing and get it, before it got you.
“So now you have defenses not just dropping to spots, but now they’re playing the offenses,” he said.
See the education you’re getting here?
Kupp is explaining some high level, and historical things, in easy-to-understand bites. He sounds like a really good college professor explaining how aluminum tariffs work. But doing it with pizazz and energy.
All of these defensive techniques and philosophies from the past eight years or so are now in modern defenses, which feature a mash of concepts, aggression and trickery. They have officially caught up to the offenses that just a short time ago used to overwhelm them.
“Now more and more of this has shifted and molded into defenses now that are holding these shells and being able to say, ‘You’re not going to see what we’re doing pre-snap. We’re going to show you late. We’re going to bring pressures from all different directions,’” Kupp said.
One of the interviewers then says to Kupp: “You should be an analyst.”
Oh, he will be. If he wants to.
But he’s not done on the field just yet.
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