Commanders run game struggles against Saints

Breaking down the issues the Commanders had running the ball against the Saints

One of the bigger concerns coming out of the Commanders win over the Saints on Sunday was the run game. The Commanders run game was practically non-existent. Lead running back Brian Robinson had just 65 yards on 21 carries, but that was boosted by a 20 yard “run” on a screen pass that happened to go backwards and count as a lateral and therefore not a pass. Take that out and Robinson had just 45 yards on 20 carries at just 2.25 yards per carry.

This is a worrying issue given the Commanders offense has relied on its run game to keep the offense ahead of the chains and take pressure off rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels. So what went wrong for the Commanders in this game? Let’s take a closer look.

The first issue to look at is the loss of center Tyler Biadasz. I wrote during the bye week about how good Biadasz has been this season and how his athleticism enables him to make blocks other centers can’t and the Commanders have leaned on that to get into some pretty diverse run schemes. Biadasz unfortunately woke up with an illness on Sunday and missed the game, which meant back up center Michael Deiter was forced into a starting role. Deiter has been around the NFL for a while and is a solid back up interior lineman with the flexibility to play both guard spots as well as center. But he’s not Tyler Biadasz and that became clear pretty quickly. Obviously, he was put in a tough spot on Sunday morning with Biadasz suddenly being ruled out, but he really struggled in this game.

Here we see the Commanders call one of their most effective run schemes this season, the GT Counter. Before the snap, you can see Jayden Daniels make an adjustment at the line of scrimmage, talking to his lineman. You can then see the lineman pointing at new targets, suggesting Daniels has either checked into this GT Counter run, or he’s flipped it to be run the other way. Both right guard Sam Cosmi and right tackle Andrew Wylie pull to the left side of the line, which leaves the defensive end and defensive tackle to that side unblocked. Jayden Daniels reads the defensive end, so he can be left unblocked, but the center needs to work across to cut off the defensive tackle and prevent him from blowing up the run before it begins.

Unfortunately, Deiter makes a mental error. Perhaps he didn’t get the call from Daniels to misheard him, but while every other lineman blocks the play correctly, Deiter works the wrong way. He should slide to his right to block the defensive tackle, enabling Cosmi and Wylie to pull to the left side. Instead he works to his left at the snap, joining the combination block from Nick Allegretti and Brandon Coleman on the left side. That leaves the defensive tackle unaccounted for and he bursts into the backfield. Robinson does his best to try and bounce the run to the edge and salvage what he can from the play, but seeing Deiter make that type of mistake early on doesn’t fill anyone with confidence.

Later in the game, the Commanders came back to the GT Counter scheme to see if Deiter could correct his mistake and let them get back into their favorite run scheme.

This time, Deiter does go the right way, but unfortunately he still struggles. Likely eager to make up for his earlier mistake, he charges off the snap to try and get to the defensive tackle and cut him off. However, the defensive tackle sees him coming and stunts inside of him. Deiter gets surprised by the stunt and fails to cut the defender off. The defender penetrates into the backfield and forces Wylie to stop his pull and pick up the block. That leaves the Commanders a blocker short on the front side of the play already, but to add on top of that, Sam Cosmi misses his block as he pulls to kick out the edge defender.

Had just one of those things occurred, then perhaps they could have overcome it. But with multiple errors on the play, running back Jeremy McNichols is left with nowhere to go inside. He does the same thing we saw Robinson do on the first play, bouncing the run to the edge to try and salvage something, but he’s forced out of bounds near the line of scrimmage.

So with the GT Counter struggling without Biadasz, offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury decided to go away from it and try to use some of his other core run schemes. When the Commanders have run the ball successfully this season, they’ve done so on the back of a diverse set of gap scheme runs that can legitimately result in any lineman pulling in any direction, making it hard for the defensive lineman to know who exactly is going to block them on any given play. So while the GT Counter struggled early with Deiter in at center instead of Biadasz, Kingsbury still had some other schemes to go to. One of those schemes was a sweep scheme.