How the Commanders built a protection plan to handle Myles Garrett
Breaking down what the Commanders did to prevent star pass rusher Myles Garrett from beating them on Sunday.
One of the biggest challenges facing the Commanders on Sunday was Browns star defensive end Myles Garrett. Garrett was the first overall pick back in 2017 and has been one of the best pass rushers in the league ever since. He has been dealing with an injury this season but had two sacks against the Raiders in Week 4 going into the game. He has the talent to single-handedly shut down much of the Commanders offense, or any offense for that matter, with his game-wrecking ability off the edge. That was especially the case against a left tackle rotation between a third round rookie and a veteran back up swing tackle.
However, the Commanders managed to prevent him from registering a single stat. He had no sacks, no tackles and no hits on Jayden Daniels, despite playing 52 snaps in the game. That’s almost more impressive than the win itself. So how did the Commanders manage to keep Garrett in check? Kliff Kingsbury and his offensive coaching staff put together a great plan with a diverse protection plan to help negate Garrett specifically. The most obvious way to deal with Garrett is to chip him. The Commanders used chips as their most frequent form of help against Garrett, but they varied the way in which they provided chip help.
Here we can see three different examples of running backs chipping Garrett to help out the left tackle. Each back got their opportunity. First we see Austin Ekeler line up as almost a tight end outside left tackle Cornelius Lucas. He stays in to help chip Garrett on the edge, giving Lucas time to get back into a good set and take on Garrett after Ekeler delayed his rush. On the second play of the clip, Brian Robinson takes up a similar position to Ekeler. This time the Commanders are in an empty set, but Robinson does the same thing that Ekeler did in the first play. He hits Garrett with his inside shoulder, delaying his rush and preventing him from speeding around the corner in a dangerous situation backed up on the goal line. On the third play, Jeremy McNichols has his turn. This time he lines up in the backfield as a traditional running back, but stays in to protect. Instead of looking to block a linebacker or secondary blitzer though, McNichols focuses purely on Garrett, helping Lucas after Garrett worked around him to the edge.
The chips from the running backs proved effective, but they weren’t the only method the Commanders used to help slow down Garrett. The varied the positions that were responsible for chipping Garrett throughout the game, including using a lot of wide receiver chips.
This clip shows five different wide receiver chips. The first two come from Olamide Zaccheaus and the final three come from rookie Luke McCaffrey. On the first play, Zaccheaus aligns as part of a bunch set to the left, outside of Garrett. This is different from the alignments we saw from the running backs. Ekeler and Robinson both lined up as more of a tight end, next to the left tackle. Here there’s a clear gap. It might seem like a small difference, but it is an important detail. From that alignment, Garrett might not necessarily expect a smaller receiver like Zaccheaus to try and chip him. It also changes where the chip comes from. With Ekeler and Robinson, the chip was right in front of him, but here Zaccheaus attacks him from a different angle, throwing his weight at him to shove him inside towards left tackle Brandon Coleman, effectively pinching him between the two blockers.
On the second play of the clip, Zaccheaus starts the play lined up all the way outside to the left, but motions in tight before the snap. This is to enable him to chip Garrett once again. He maintains that same angle of attack, which means Garrett can’t just fire up the field and try to win with speed because the chip is coming from outside and forcing him inside. The final three clips all come from Luke McCaffrey, who is a bigger body at receiver, but performs largely the same role as Zaccheaus. All three of his chips take away that path to the edge for Garrett, allowing Coleman to not have to fear any speed rush to the edge and set up to take away any conversion to power inside. As a result, while Garrett still shows good effort and ends up getting around the tackle on a lot of these plays, it’s only after the ball has come out or Jayden Daniels has already taken off running.
We’ve seen running backs and now wide receivers have a turn chipping Garrett. The Commanders did also use some tight ends to chip Garrett too, but not as frequently as the backs and receivers.
This time, tight end Zach Ertz is the assigned chipper, taking a similar position just outside the tackle as Zaccheaus and McCaffrey did. The chip from Ertz is minimal as Garrett saw it coming, so he dipped under it and dodged it, but it still was effective because it prevented Garrett from bursting to the edge and forced him to engage in a block with the left tackle early. The other thing that the Commanders do on this play is slide the line towards Garrett. That was another common tactic throughout this game. You can see how center Tyler Biadasz slides to his left off the snap. This is so he can help take control of the defensive tackle inside, freeing up left guard Nick Allegretti to fan outside and help the left tackle with Garrett.
The Commanders used this line slide consistently and Allegretti had one rep in particular where he got a strong hit on Garrett because of it.
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