What went wrong for the Commanders defense against the Ravens

Breaking down the issues the Commanders defense in the loss to the Ravens

While rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels and the Commanders offense has been flying high to start the season, the defensive side of the ball has been struggling to find any form of consistency. Head coach Dan Quinn and defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. would ideally like to play in a very aggressive manner on defense, committing extra bodies to the pass rush and playing plenty of man coverage behind those aggressive blitzes. They tried to do that in the opening game against the Buccaneers and while the pressure rate was fantastic, the cornerbacks failed to hold up playing that much man coverage, conceding nearly 300 yards passing and four passing touchdowns. 

So over the past few weeks, the Commanders have been forced to try and find different ways to play in order to hide their deficiencies at corner. They’ve focused on protecting the corners by playing lots of two deep safety looks, which has helped keep defenders over the top and limit explosive plays somewhat, but that in turn has created a different problem. With an extra safety deep, the Commanders are consistently light in the box against the run and while the occasional stunt works to help blow up a run or steal a gap back, they’ve been unable to shut down running games.

That left the Commanders with quite the predicament going into the game against the Ravens this past Sunday. The Ravens have the top rushing attack in the NFL, but they also have an MVP at quarterback very much capable of beating them with his arm too. So should Quinn and Whitt try to persist with protecting the corners and potentially being shredded up front in the run game by Derrick Henry and Lamar Jackson, or commit to stopping the run and potentially having Jackson throw all over them?

They opted for the latter, choosing to not let Henry beat them early by committing extra defenders in the box to stop the run. Early in the game, it actually worked quite effectively. 

This was the opening play of the game from the Ravens. They call a sweep play to the right, with two tight ends cracking down on the edge to allow both the right guard and center to pull and lead the way for Henry. The Commanders have struggled mightily with these types of runs all season because they’ve lacked numbers in the box. Here you can see that safety Percy Butler lines up in the box alongside Bobby Wagner at the second level of the defense, while cornerback Benjamin St-Juste is in position to fit the run too. The Commanders stunt their front, which the Ravens handle well due to the sweep scheme. However, linebacker Frankie Luvu does manage to get in the way of the center pulling to the edge, leaving just the right guard to block for Henry outside. 

The guard pulls to the edge and meets Percy Butler, who takes him on aggressively. St-Juste also fills well on the outside while Wagner scrapes over from the back side of the run efficiently. Wagner prevents the cut back inside while St-Juste secures the edge. Henry takes the run outside and Wagner works around Butler’s block to help St-Juste secure the tackle for a minimal gain. 

That set the tone for what the Commanders wanted to do defensively, and for the early portion of the game, it worked. 

Here’s another nice run stop by the Commanders defense early in the game. This time, free safety Quan Martin rotates down into the box as the extra defender. The Ravens run a duo scheme inside, but with enough defenders in the box to account for every gap, Henry is forced to try and bounce his run out to the right. Martin reads the run well and quickly works up to the line of scrimmage to make a good tackle for no gain. 

Even when the Ravens went run-heavy personnel and ran right at them, the Commanders looked pretty stout against the run early on. 

This time, the Ravens work out of 13 personnel with three tight ends on the field. They run a GT counter scheme, with the left guard and left tackle pulling to the right side of the line on a counter run. The guard kicks out the edge defender while the tackle wraps around for the first linebacker. But again, because the Commanders are committing to stopping the run, they have enough defenders in the box to match up well. Defensive end Dante Fowler doesn’t give up much ground on the kick out, while linebackers Frankie Luvu and Bobby Wagner diagnose the play quickly and fit the run accordingly. Luvu takes on the pulling tackle, forcing the run back inside to Wagner who makes a strong one-on-one tackle against Henry in the hole. 

The Commanders game plan going into this game was clearly based around shutting down the run game, hopefully getting into some third and long situations and then mixing up the coverages to both try and confuse Lamar Jackson while also protecting the corners in coverage. They had some success early doing this. Mike Sainristil got a somewhat fortuitous interception on the opening drive. The Ravens then got a field goal on the second drive before the Commanders made them go three-and-out on their third drive. That three-and-out was exactly what the Commanders game planned for. They stopped the run early and set up a third and nine, where they could change up the coverage and try to get after Jackson.