Playoff Preview: Buccaneers run game

Previewing the Bucs run game ahead of the Commanders playoff matchup against Tampa Bay

The Commanders have their first playoff game in four years this weekend, so I thought I’d spend the week previewing their wildcard matchup against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this coming Sunday. The Bucs have a lot to offer on both sides of the ball, but I thought I would first focus on their offense. They boast one of the best offenses in the NFL. They ranked fourth overall in rushing, averaging 149.2 rushing yards per game. They went one better in the passing game, ranking third overall with an average of 250.4 yards per game and all that offense wasn’t hollow as they finished fourth in points per game with 29.5 on average.

Clearly then, the Bucs have a formidable offense and the Commanders saw that first hand back in Week 1. With so much offense to talk about, I thought I would split their offense into two parts, the run game and passing game. I will preview their passing game later this week but today I thought I’d focus first and foremost on the run game.

The Bucs run game is very diverse and you’ll see throughout this post that they like to get into a lot of different schemes, but their bread and butter is the zone scheme, which makes sense given offensive coordinator Liam Coen came from Sean McVay’s system with the Rams. They mix in plenty of outside and inside zone schemes, but some of their most effective runs this year have been inside zone runs.

This cut up shows a couple of examples of the Bucs inside zone scheme this season. The inside zone scheme is a nice balance scheme to the wide zone. The idea of the wide zone is to stretch the defense horizontally to create vertical cutback lanes for the running back to make one cut and go. Inside zone schemes look very similarly but are run much tighter. The idea is to make the defense over-pursue to the edge like they would on an outside zone scheme and open up a different lane for the running back to cut into on the back side of the run.

The plays in this clip will often be referred to as split zone schemes. You’ll notice that on all four plays, the Bucs have a player going in motion against the flow of the run either as a jet sweep option or as a sifting blocker to kick out the back side edge defender. By having this player flow against the rest of the line, the offense is trying to get most of the defense to work to the front side of the run and kick out the back side, splitting a lane between the two sides of the defense for the back to cut into. The Bucs hit these inside zone schemes pretty effectively throughout the season and they build off of those schemes into so much more; play-action, bootlegs with sifts to the flat, jet sweeps, screens. So if the Commanders can’t stop the zone run schemes, they will be in trouble all game.

So how exactly do the Commanders stop it? Well, their method against zone schemes this year has typically been to use run stunts. Zone schemes are set by the offensive lineman all blocking in the same direction and being in unison with who is blocking the defensive lineman and who is climbing up to the second level. If the defense plays the run scheme straight as it lines up, it’s very easy for those offensive lineman to make their blocks and climb up to the second level. One of the best ways to disrupt that is to use stunts, which mix up blocking assignments and make things a lot harder to pick up for the offense. We saw this back in the opening game.

Here, the Bucs attempt a wide zone run to their right. Dante Fowler is the edge defender on that side of the defense, so he’s the one tasked with stunting inside his blocker on the edge. Meanwhile linebacker Mykal Walker replaces Fowler on the edge, scraping outside at the snap to ensure Fowler is covered if his stunt doesn’t work out. The Commanders get a little bit of good fortune here as the running back and quarterback trip over each other, but you can see how both Fowler and Walker were in great positions to stop the run anyway thanks to the stunt. The stunt messes with the blocking scheme assignment and the right tackle tries to prevent Fowler breaking through, which leaves Walker unblocked on the edge. In the end, both are there to make the play.

So expect the Commanders to use run stunts to try and disrupt the Bucs zone run schemes, but run stunts can be very hit and miss. The good ones can create a huge negative play, set up second and long and enable the defense to go into attack mode and finish a drive really quick. That’s why Dan Quinn and Joe Whitt persist with them. But they can just as easily hit incorrectly and create a big lane for the running back to work into. We saw that just this past weekend against the Cowboys.

On this play, the Cowboys run a wide zone scheme to their right. The Commanders use a commonly used run stunt against zone schemes known as a pirate stunt. Both the defensive end and defensive tackle to the play side stunt inside while the linebacker scrapes to the edge to fill the vacated gap. The stunt almost works as intended at the snap, with the right side of the line all bunched up and not creating much movement, forcing the back to cut back inside sooner than he would have ideally wanted to. But the issue is that Johnny Newton on the back side of the run also stunts and vacates the A gap. With Bobby Wagner scraping to the edge on the front side and Frankie Luvu doing the same on the back side, there is nobody left in the middle of the defense to fill the lane created by Newton’s stunt. So despite the stunt on the front side working well, the Cowboys are able to hit a nice run cutting inside of it.

And we saw that same thing against the Bucs back in Week 1. The Commanders were still new to this system at that point, so not every stunt was executed perfectly. If a stunt is messed up or not everyone is on the same page and fully committed to it, then it will more than likely create a big play for the offense.