The NFL is so often referred to as a copycat league, it’s nearing cliché territory. But it’s that way for a reason. Regularly something that creates an advantage for a team in one season is picked up, replicated, and adapted by multiple others the next. NFL coaches had the entire offseason to dive into what did and didn’t work across the league and as training camps open up, we’ll start to see what these coaches took away from those lessons. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few strategies from 2018 that could pop up with more frequency in 2019.
Taysom Hill
Hill was one of the biggest phenomenons in the NFL last season. The former BYU quarterback was repurposed as a jack-of-all-trades with the New Orleans Saints last season. He was a kick returner, a punt protector, and played all over the offense. He played 80.1 percent of New Orleans’s special teams snaps and 17.3 percent of the offensive snaps.
The snaps that got the most attention were, of course, when Hill took over at quarterback. Many of those snaps acted as a pseudo-Wildcat. Hill had 37 rushing attempts in 2018 that went for 196 yards and two touchdowns. According to Sports Info Solutions’s Expected Points Added, Hill’s rushing attempts on offense were slightly more efficient on a per play basis than Alvin Kamara’s and significantly more productive than Mark Ingram’s.
| Player | Attempts | EPA/Att | Positive Play % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alvin Kamara | 194 | 0.11 | 51% |
| Mark Ingram | 138 | 0.01 | 49% |
| Taysom Hill | 37 | 0.16 | 59% |
But Hill’s effectiveness on the ground would only go so far if there was no other threat when he came into the game. One of the reasons the Wildcat was phased out so quickly was because there was a hard ceiling on what could be accomplished with the personnel grouping. There was little room for evolution. When a running back came in to take a snap, there was little to no chance a pass would be thrown. Defenses then keyed on the run and even motions or option pitches could only provide so much misdirection. Hill, as a former quarterback, did bring that pass threat and while he only threw seven passes last year, just that possibility of the pass kept defenders from overcommitting to the run.
Some may argue when a team has a quarterback like Drew Brees, it would be unwise to take the ball out of his hands and have someone else throw a pass. But like Hill’s production over the running backs, he did just enough on those passes to not hinder the offense when his number was called, of course over a much smaller sample:
| Player | Attempts | EPA/Att | Positive Play % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drew Brees | 489 | 0.26 | 58.3% |
| Taysom Hill | 7 | 0.78 | 50% |
Hill’s usage impressed enough teams around the league that there was a significant effort to find someone who could potentially fill a similar role in the draft and shortly after with athletic college quarterbacks who could transition to new positions. The Baltimore Ravens selected former Penn State quarterback Trace McSorely in the sixth-round this past April. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald as an undrafted free agent with the expectation of playing multiple roles for the team. (That will be off to a slow start with Fitzgerald starting training camp on the PUP list). Former Syracuse quarterback Eric Dungey signed with the New York Giants and did some work with the quarterbacks and tight ends in minicamp. After injuries slowed him down, Dungey was released on the eve of training camp but is free to sign with another team who could envision a new role for him. Even the New England Patriots will transition last year’s seventh-round pick Danny Etling to wide receiver in training camp. We could also mention Joe Webb, currently of the Houston Texans, who has been in the NFL since 2010 as a quarterback/wide receiver/special teams contributor.
It would be easy to see this trend quickly go off the rails without a mind like Sean Payton at the helm or without an understanding of what actually went into Hill’s success in 2018. But it’s also potentially a better role for a third quarterback on the roster than someone who stands on the sideline or isn’t even active as a way to make the most of both a 53-man or 46-man game day roster. (Remember, Hill wasn’t the backup quarterback in New Orleans last year. That was Teddy Bridgewater.) It’s also something that causes no harm trying out in training camp and we’ll likely see at least one or two more teams try to embrace it during the 2019 regular season.
Chargers’ Base Dime
One of the biggest stories of the first round of the NFL Playoffs was how the Los Angeles Chargers suffocated the Baltimore Ravens by matching the speed of Lamar Jackson and the rest of the Baltimore offense with extra defensive backs instead of linebackers. Then the Chargers went into the next round, faced the Patriots with the same defensive game plan, and got run all over from heavier personnel packages. The dream of a new era of defense, realized just a week earlier, was dead.
But while the Chargers’ defensive back-heavy packages were brought to more attention during those two playoff games, it was something Los Angeles had done throughout the regular season to a fair amount of success. While the nickel package (five defensive backs) has become the base defense for NFL teams, the Chargers mostly skipped that and went straight to dime (six defensive backs) or more. Per Football Outsiders, the Chargers used Dime+ personnel on 64 percent of their defensive snaps last season, a rate that easily led the league. The Green Bay Packers had the next highest rate at 41 percent, followed by the Pittsburgh Steelers at 36 percent. Only nine teams in total used dime or more on at least 20 percent of their defensive snaps.
This strategy for the Chargers came somewhat out of necessity due to injuries at linebacker, but in a league that’s still getting increasingly pass-heavy, defenses looking to combat that could do better in coverage with a fifth or sixth defensive back over a second or third linebacker.
The weakness, as exploited by the Patriots, is the run defense but the Chargers were fine there for most of the regular season. The team ranked 10th in run defense DVOA and allowed 0.9 EPA on 199 rushing attempts with six defensive backs on the field (0.00 EPA per attempt). That’s just below the minus-0.03 EPA per attempt rate for all rushing plays league-wide last season, per SIS. Meanwhile, the Chargers allowed minus-0.04 EPA per attempt on passing plays with six defensive backs on the field. Leaguewide, offenses averaged 0.00 EPA per attempt against dime defenses and 0.05 EPA per attempt on all passing plays. Were the Chargers comfortable with giving up just a bit in run defense in order to be superior against the pass? It would be a good bet to say they were and it’s a tradeoff that worked for most of the season. With versatile pieces like Derwin James and Desmond King alongside an upgrade at linebacker in free agent signing Thomas Davis, the Chargers could be an even bigger threat in dime this season.
We could see a team like Green Bay increase its use of dime from last season. LA’s playoff victim, the Baltimore Ravens, could also be an option (26 percent of snaps in Dime+ last season) after the loss of linebacker C.J. Mosely in free agency, a ton of money invested in multiple cornerbacks, and a safety group that features Earl Thomas, Tony Jefferson, and Anthony Levine. A young defense like the New York Giants (12 percent in Dime+ during 2018) could also follow this path with a number of versatile defensive backs and a clear weakness at linebacker.
Rams’ Jet Motion
There are a number of things teams around the league could steal from Sean McVay and the Los Angeles Rams, but the most likely is their use of jet motion. The Rams used jet motion on 17 percent of their offensive plays in 2018, per SIS. It’s a motion that serves multiple purposes for the offense from identifying the coverage, to opening the box in the run game, to creating mismatches in the passing game. McVay and the Rams use it in a variety of ways to open up the offense. On the play below, the Rams used the jet motion with Robert Woods to the left on top of play action with the run faked the opposite way. Watch the conflict both the jet motion and play action put on linebacker K.J Wright (especially from the end zone angle), and the opening it gives for a 17-yard pass to Brandin Cooks.
Like the Taysom Hill scenario, the motion only reaches max effectiveness if there is something done from it. If the motion was just window dressing on every play, defenses wouldn’t have to worry as much. But the Rams know this and involve the motion into the play more than any team in the league. Last season, the Rams used 11 jet sweep passes and 25 jet sweep rushing attempts, both of which led the league. 11 of those rushing attempts went to Woods, who averaged nine yards per carry on those plays. Woods also had the third-most targets and second-most receptions on plays when he was in motion, behind only Julian Edelman and George Kittle in targets and Edelman in receptions.
We saw smart offensive coaches like Andy Reid in Kansas City and Matt Nagy in Chicago embrace this motion a bit in 2018, but we could be in for an explosion of jet motion across the NFL in 2019.