Kingsbury's run game thrives as Commanders beat Panthers

Breaking down the Commanders rushing attack from their win over the Panthers

The Washington Commanders cruised to a convincing 40-7 victory over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, despite losing starting quarterback Jayden Daniels to injury after the opening drive. Back up quarterback Marcus Mariota came in and ultimately played well, but the success of the offense came largely down to the run game. The Commanders amassed 214 rushing yards and a touchdown on 37 total carries. Brian Robinson was the leading rusher, picking up 71 yards and a touchdown on his 12 carries, an average of 5.9 per carry, but everyone chipped in. Daniels had three rushes before getting hurt, picking up 50 yards. Jeremy McNichols had seven carries for 42 yards. Mariota had 34 yards on the ground too, though some of his came on scrambles rather than designed runs. 

The Panthers have one of the worst run defenses in the league. Coming into the game, they gave up an average of 153.5 yards on the ground per game, ranking 30th in the NFL. So this was always going to be a matchup the Commanders liked, given they’ve had one of the best rushing attacks in the NFL. But they put the Panthers to the sword early and never let up. Offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury and his staff put together a fantastic game plan with a great variety of run schemes and Kingsbury did a terrific job sequencing them to keep the Panthers unsure of what was coming throughout the game. It started from the opening play. 

This was the Commanders first offensive snap, backed up near their own end zone. They work out of 21 personnel with two running backs, one tight end and two wide receivers. Running back Jeremy McNichols lines up next to Jayden Daniels in the shotgun, while fellow running back Austin Ekeler begins aligned in a bunch set to the left of the formation. Before the snap, Ekeler motions across the formation and then loops around behind McNichols and Daniels before finally stopping in a conventional running back position next to Daniels, opposite McNichols. That pre-snap alignment and motion might seem trivial at this point, but it’s important to remember going forward. 

From this new alignment, the Commanders snap the ball and run a GT Counter scheme. GT Counter is a counter run scheme that asks both the guard and the tackle to pull from the same side of the line. In this case, it’s right guard Sam Cosmi pulling to the left to kick out the edge defender while right tackle Andrew Wylie follows behind him to wrap around for the first linebacker. The offense leaves the defensive end on the back side completely unblocked for Jayden Daniels to read. Daniels has the option to either hand the ball off to McNichols on the GT Counter scheme inside, or pull the ball himself and run to the edge, where Ekeler arcs around the unblocked defender to lead the way for him. On this occasion, Daniels reads the defender crashing inside and pulls the ball, running to the edge himself. He gets to the open field untouched and picks up 46 yards before being brought down. 

This is the play that Daniels appears to have injured himself on, falling awkwardly from being tackled from behind, but I’m not going to speculate on the injury until we know more and besides, this post is about the run scheme, not Daniels. It was a really well designed play. Kingsbury is known to love the GT Counter scheme, running it plenty already this season and using it frequently during his time with the Cardinals too. But the window dressing of using two running backs and having Ekeler motion the way he did was a nice touch. 

The GT Counter scheme was clearly a huge part of Kingsbury’s game plan this week. He got through multiple variations of the GT Counter scheme, showing just how many layers he has in that package of plays. 

This time, Kingsbury gets extra creative. The Commanders work out of an unbalanced line, with right tackle Andrew Wylie lining up as a tight end outside of left tackle Brandon Coleman, while tight end John Bates replaces Wylie at right tackle. This is all just more window dressing to hide the fact Kingsbury wants to run that GT Counter scheme some more. Some might say this is technically a guard and tight end counter, because Bates is the one pulling instead of Wylie, but Bates is technically the right tackle here, so I’m calling it the same thing. 

Regardless of the semantics, the idea is the same, with Cosmi pulling to the left to kick out the edge while Bates follows him and wraps around for a linebacker. Daniels again reads the unblocked defender and hands the ball off inside for Robinson. He gets some nice blocks with Wylie and Coleman collapsing the defense inside while Cosmi and Bates seal the edge, allowing Robinson to pick up a strong 11 yards on the carry. 

The Commanders went back to this look later in the game for Brian Robinson’s touchdown run.