Commanders’ defense exploited by bunch formations
Breaking down the Commanders’ issues defending bunch formations after Lions’ receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown exploited them
The Washington Commanders fell to a Detroit Lions team on Sunday that appeared to have their number, especially on defense. The Lions racked up 191 rushing yards on just 24 carries on the ground while also being able to expose a few coverage issues on the Commanders end in key situations. I’ll likely take a look at the run defense later this week, but I wanted to first look at one of the recurring problems for the Commanders’ pass coverage.
Lions’ receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown caught nine passes for 116 yards and two touchdowns in the game. He got off to a hot start on the Lions second drive, running wide open over the middle on third and three, picking up 49 yards on the play which sparked the Lions’ offense into life. Afterwards, he explained how the Lions knew they could hit a few big plays from certain looks.
"They just had a busted coverage.” St. Brown said. "All week, we kind of (knew) ... they didn't handle bunches really well. And we knew that going into the week.. I kind of was surprised. I mean, no one was there, busted coverage. I think that it was a great play.”
Those quotes come courtesy of The Athletic’s Ben Standig, who wrote a good piece on this after the game. You can check that out here.
It’s a damning statement when an opposing player comes out and says that the team knew that the Commanders “didn’t handle bunches really well”. So how did the Lions know that? Well, let’s first go back to last week against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
This play comes from an early third down in the Jaguars game last week. The Jaguars align with three receivers to the right, two in a stack inside and one isolated outside. Before the snap, the outside receiver motions inside to join the other two receivers and create a bunch set. As soon as his motion is completed, the Jaguars snap the ball and the receivers all take different releases. The outside receiver runs a shallow cross, the inside receiver runs a deep over and the middle receiver runs straight up the seam.
The Commanders have a miscommunication here between slot defender Benjamin St-Juste and safety Bobby McCain. Teams can handle bunch sets in a few different ways defensively if they’re in a man coverage call. They can simply assign one defender to one receiver and play pure man coverage or they can try and pass off routes to match up leverage better for the defenders. You may have heard of a Banjo call, where two defenders make a signal to each other and they both read the releases of the receivers, with the inside defender matching the first route that breaks inside and the outside defender matching the first receiver releasing outside. On this play, it appears as though St-Juste thinks they’re in pure man coverage while McCain believes they’re passing off the receivers. This results in both attaching to the deep over while the seam route runs completely free.
Fortunately for the Commanders on that play, the quarterback didn’t see the coverage bust and threw the ball elsewhere. The Jaguars still picked up a first down, but could have had an even bigger gain on the play. Unfortunately for the Commanders, this theme continued throughout the game.
Once again, the Jaguars face a third down and motion into a bunch formation, but to the left this time. On the previous play, both St-Juste and McCain took the inside release, but this time they appear to both try and make up for the mistake, with both of them working the outside release to the flat. This leaves a spot up route by the first down marker wide open, but the coverage is bailed out by the pass rush, which gets home and sacks the quarterback before he can make the throw.
Clearly, the Lions did their homework last week and immediately looked to test if the Commanders had sorted out their communication issues on bunch sets.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Bullock's Film Room to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.