![]() ![]() The quarterback’s gotta throw the ball outside. “It’s absolutely the best coverage in ball. “I think is the best coverage in ball,” Saban told a group of high school coaches at a clinic way back in the early 1990s. And the best ways to defend the middle of the field, according to Saban, is playing Cover 1. Nick Saban, who coached with Belichick in Cleveland, is one of those coaches. This is hardly a new finding and it won’t come as a surprise to defensive coaches, many of whom have built their defense with the idea of defending the middle of the field first and foremost. ![]() It was the most fertile area of the field by a decent margin, according to play-by-play data from nflscrapR.Īt any depth, attacking the middle of the field was the most productive strategy, an intuitive result with those throws being shorter and, in theory, easier to make than throws to the outside. On throws between the hashes that traveled 11-to-20 yards downfield, teams added 0.74 Expected Points per attempt on average. Particularly in the intermediate area of the middle of the field. NFL teams have the most success when they attack the middle of the field. ![]() The answer, as is often the case when you’re dealing with Belichick, is that the Patriots were both 1) well coached and 2) well coached in a specific way meant to stymie the way offenses have evolved recently. But considering just how dominant this defense was despite having one All-Pro (corner Stephon Gilmore) and then a bunch of good-but-not-transcendent talent at other spots, it’s worth digging deeper to try to figure out why, exactly, the Patriots were so good at a time when offensive creativity appears to be winning out. It’s easy enough to just say, “Bill Belichick, still a genius” and move on. New England’s pass defense wasn’t quite as dominant over the second half of the season (against a far tougher schedule) but finished 2019 leading the NFL in just about every efficiency metric out there, including Expected Points allowed and DVOA, as well as more traditional (or dumb) stats like passer rating and yards allowed. There were a lot of absurd stats put up during the 2019 NFL season, but none of them could match the absurdity of the Patriots defense allowing only two passing touchdowns and recording 19 interceptions over the first half of the season. ![]()
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