Commanders defense finding success with Tampa-2 simulated pressures

Breaking down the Commanders Tampa-2 sim pressure packages

The Commanders’ defense had their best performance of the season on Sunday against the Browns, but that was in large part due to how poor Browns’ quarterback Deshaun Watson played. Watson was terrible, easily the worst quarterback performance that Washington has faced this season, by far. So while the Commanders deserve some praise for improving from a poor start to the season, it does come with the caveat that the opposing quarterback was legitimately terrible. Despite that, there were some interesting things to take away from the defensive performance. 

One of those interesting things was the increased use of simulated pressures. Head coach Dan Quinn and defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. want to be an aggressive, attacking defense that blitzes a lot and plays man coverage behind it. The problem they have in doing that right now is that they don’t have the reliability at cornerback to play man coverage consistently behind their aggressive blitz schemes. As a result, they’ve been trying out different schemes to try and find something that works for the current personnel. 

In weeks two and three, they stripped things back to pretty basic coverages, playing plenty of zone and just trying to get everyone on the same page. Last week against the Cardinals, they started to try and ramp things up again with some new wrinkles. One of those wrinkles they had success with was simulated pressures. Simulated pressures, or sim pressures, are exactly what they sound like. The defense simulates sending a blitz, making the opposing offense believe there are five or more rushers coming, but actually they are only rushing four. A basic example would be to blitz a linebacker or safety off one side of the line, giving the impression of a five-man rush, but having the defensive end on the other side of the line drop off into coverage. 

What this does is allows the defense to disguise where the four rushers are coming from, allowing them to attack and confuse protection schemes, while still being able to drop seven into coverage and play whatever form of zone coverage they want to. Sim pressures have become extremely popular around the league in recent years and last year, Mike MacDonald used them to such great effect with the Ravens that he was hired as the head coach of the Seahawks.

The Commanders got a sack against the Cardinals last week using a sim pressure. 

This is one of the more basic sim pressures out there. Bobby Wagner blitzes from his linebacker spot off the right side of the line while defensive end Jamin Davis drops off into coverage from the edge on the other side of the line. The Cardinals offensive line slides to the left off the snap, but finds they only have two defensive lineman to block there instead of three. That leaves a clear lane for Wagner to attack without anyone staying in to block him. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the defenders drop back into a simple Tampa-2 scheme. Tampa-2 asks two safeties to work deep and split the deep part of the field into halves. The other five defenders split the underneath part of the field into fifths, with linebacker Frankie Luvu dropping slightly deeper than the rest to play the hole and allow the safeties to split wider. On this play, Luvu drops back to match the runner up the seam while the rest of the defense sits in their zones with eyes on the quarterback, ready to break on any potential throw near them. Quarterback Kyler Murray appears to be surprised by the look again and then panics under pressure from Wagner, resulting in Wagner and Daron Payne combining for the sack. 

Quinn and Whitt clearly saw something they liked from that play as they incorporated Tampa-2 sim pressures as a heavy part of the game plan against the Browns. They ran different variations of Tampa-2 sim pressures throughout the game, all having pretty good success. 

This was the first Tampa-2 sim pressure they ran in the Browns game. It’s effectively the same scheme we saw from the Cardinals game, just with Dante Fowler on the edge dropping into coverage instead of Jamin Davis. Despite it being the same look as the previous game, it’s still a great example of how sim pressures can cause issues for protection schemes. The Browns offensive line are anticipating blocking the four down lineman, Dorance Armstrong, Daron Payne, Jonathan Allen and Dante Fowler, as well as potentially linebacker Frankie Luvu. The line has enough players to handle a four-man rush, but given Luvu’s reputation as a blitzer, they’re anticipating him rushing instead of Wagner. Because of that, the line slides to the side that Luvu initially lines up on, which is the offensive left side. 

The line sliding left is exactly what the Commanders would have wanted here. They slide away from where the fourth rusher is actually coming from. That means when Wagner blitzes off the right side of the line, the right tackle is left in a no-win situation. Either he can fan out and block the Armstong on the edge like he was expecting, leaving Wagner to run free up the middle on a more direct path to the quarterback, or he can squeeze inside and pick up Wagner, leaving Armstrong free on the edge. Most offensive lineman in this situation are taught to squeeze and take away the most direct path, which is what the right tackle does. That results in the Commanders getting Armstrong a free rush off the edge from what is only a four-man rush. When you see results like this, it’s easy to see why sim pressures are becoming hugely popular around the NFL. 

Behind that sim pressure, the Commanders sink into another Tampa-2 coverage. Tampa-2 is a very safe and sound coverage scheme that has been in the NFL for decades. It’s well known and fairly easy to play for most defenses, but modern NFL offenses should be good enough to beat it if they see it coming. This is the added benefit of the sim pressure. Because it looks like a blitz, with Wagner joining the rush from the linebacker spot, the quarterback wouldn’t immediately assume it’s going to be a basic seven-man Tampa-2 zone coverage being played. At first he’s most likely to think it’s a three-deep, three-under fire zone, which the Commanders do like to run and have run plenty of early in the season. So with the quarterback in that frame of mind, the Tampa-2 scheme has some added protection to it coming from a sim pressure instead of just being run from an ordinary look. 

On this specific play, despite Armstrong getting a free rush, he misses the sack as Watson rolls out to his right. Mike Sainristil does a nice job recovering after losing the receiver in the flat during the scramble drill. He closes quickly and gets his hand in at the catch point to ensure the pass couldn’t be completed. 

This was far from the only Tampa-2 sim pressure look the Commanders ran in this game though. They designed multiple ways to get to what is essentially the same scheme.