As I explored the data around new Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator Jonathan’s Gannon’s Cardinals defense, it appeared to me that 2024 was their most consistent year. Largely because they relied more on early down zone coverage for the entire year, unlike 2023. And if 2023 was about how much zone the Cardinals could run, 2024 was about how well they could sustain it. The defense pushed its early down zone rate to a three-year high of 43.36%, but the real story isn’t the number itself — it’s
how little it moved.
Early down coverage for Gannon’s Cardinals changed very little from the first half of the season to the second half of the season. In other words, whatever the Cardinals were doing in terms of early down coverage in the first half of the season, they basically continued to do in the second half of the season. This is in stark contrast to 2023 when the staff basically overhauled the coverage shell from the first half of the season to the second half of the season.
The Early Down Identity: Zone-First, Refined
The defense was in zone coverage on 43.36% of early down plays (379 plays) in 2024. Man coverage was used on just 9.61% of early down plays (84 plays) in 2024. Thus, the 2024 Cardinals were in zone coverage on 4.5 times as many early down plays as they were in man coverage. This makes the 2024 Cardinals the most zone-tilted defense in the three years of data in the sample.
Again, referencing the Early Down sections above, it is noted that within coverage shells the Cardinals used most early down plays in Cover 3 (20.71% or +9.7% over 2023 levels of 18.87% or 166 plays of early down coverage).
Next for the Cardinals in terms of early down zone coverage were plays in which they employed a Cover 4 look (13.16% or 115 plays of early down zone coverage in 2024 that were classified as Cover 4, +0% over 2023 levels of 13.08% or 116 plays of early down coverage in 2018 that were classified as Cover 4).
Finally, as noted above in the Man Coverage section, early down Man Coverage for the Cardinals in 2024 consisted of plays in which the team employed a Cover 1 look (7.21% or 63 plays of early down Man Coverage in 2024, down from 8.09% or 72 plays in 2023 of early down coverage in which the Cardinals used a Cover 1 look for Man Coverage). Overall, the Cardinals used less Man Coverage in 2024 than in 2023.
Here’s a look at how the 3-safety disguise pre-snap turns into cover-3 post snap for each of those coverages.
Within their zone coverage package, Gannon found creative ways to sustain their trends. The use of a 3-high safety defense pre-snap allowed them to rotate to other zone coverages in non-traditional ways, coverages like cover-3, Tampa-2, and cover-6.
The usage of Cover 6 increased to 5.95% (52 plays) of the total early down plays in 2024. This was an increase from the 4.96% (46 plays) of early down plays in 2023. This increase shows that the coaching staff was trying out a variety of different split field packages to see if any of them would work.
Cover 2 Man was used only once the entire season at 0.11%. This would indicate that the staff saw little to no value in using this package, and thus used it very sparingly as a novelty package.
First Half to Second Half: Remarkable Stability
As opposed to 2023 where the early down identity of the Cardinals’ defense went through drastic in-season changes (e.g. shifting from a Cover 3-based identity to a Cover 4-based identity), 2024 saw the early down identity of the Cardinals’ defense remain relatively stable from start to finish. Instead of seeing dramatic fluctuations in early down coverage, early down zone-coverage rates remained relatively stable, decreasing by only 1.3% throughout the season.
This level of stability within the core coverage shells, when translated into scheme-level usage, shows how the staff found increased success with a variety of live and creative packages, including a remarkable late season uptick in early down blitzing with Cover 0 (which rose 34.6% from 2.05% to 2.76% for the season). Similarly, the split-field package of Cover 6 saw increased usage, up 9.5% from 5.68% to 6.22% for the season.
Third Down: Peak Aggression, Balanced Approach
On third down the Cardinals ran the most zone coverage of any season in the sample, and at the same time saw the highest rate of man coverage on third down of the last three years. The 20.22% early down blitz rate on third down looked to match the team’s 20.91% early down blitz rate from 2023 on early downs. This would suggest that the team is able to bring a number of different live answers to third down situations.
The Cardinals used slightly more everything on third down in 2024 than in 2023. For one, the defense used more zone on third down in 2024 than in 2023. The Cardinals used zone on 48.69% of third downs in 2024, up from 44.44% in 2023. The Cardinals used more man coverage on third down in 2024 than in 2023, but not as much as the increase in zone. Finally, the Cardinals used more blitzes on third down in 2024 than in 2023.
Third Down Stability
Third Down is very similar from the first half to the second half of the season. Man coverage is down 5.8% from 20.45% to 19.26%, while Zone coverage is up 0.8% from 48.48% to 48.89%. The defense’s Blitz rate on third down is down 9.2% from 21.21% to 19.26%.
2023 to 2024: What Actually Changed
The changes in usage between 2023 and 2024 for each of the different schemes can be seen in the graph above. The largest increases in usage for the biggest schemes of coverage were for Cover 3, which increased by the largest margin (+9.7%), and for Cover 6, which increased to a large degree (+20.0%).
There were moderate increases in usage for Cover 0 and for Cover 2. The largest decreases in usage for the biggest schemes of coverage were for Cover 4, which decreased by -4.4%, and for Cover 1, which decreased by -10.9%. This would indicate that the Cardinals’ staff trimmed the secondary zone looks and the team’s primary man coverage in order to add to the other looks.
It’s hard to know for sure why the 2024 Cardinals are better than the 2023 version of the team. The team has clearly solved their personnel problems. Whether that’s through free agency, the draft or just having a full off-season to get a scheme to work for them rather than trying to tweak things on the fly like they did in 2023 is impossible to know for sure.
Key Takeaways
Most Zone-Tilted Season in Sample. The 2024 defense was the most zone-tilted of the three-year sample. The early down identity featured a 4.5-to-1 ratio of early down plays in zone coverage (43.36% of 874 plays; 379 plays total) to early down plays in man coverage (9.61% of 874 plays; 84 plays total). As noted above, the most played coverage shell was Cover 3, the Cardinals’ base zone package.
Cover 3 was the most played coverage shell in the sample for the 2024 defense. Specifically, the base zone package was played on 20.71% of the total early down plays in the sample for 2024 (or 181 of 874 total early down plays in the sample for 2024).
This total for Cover 3 represented a large increase from 2023, where the base Cover 3 package was played on 18.87% of the early down plays in the sample for 2023 (or 164 of 868 early down plays in the sample for 2023; 18.87% – 9.7% = 9.17%).
The team’s other primary early down zone package, Cover 4, was played on 13.16% of the early down plays in the sample for 2024 (or 115 of the 874 early down plays in the sample for 2024).
Stability instead of Change. In the section Early Down Identity: Zone-First, Refined for the section The Early Down Identity: Zone-First, Refined on page 6 of the Cardinals 2024 Season Review, Early Down Coverage by First Half and Season was graphed.
The graph for the first half of season and for the whole season for each of the three coverage shells was almost identical. In other words, the Cardinals did not change their early down coverage as much as they changed it in the second half of the 2023 season. In fact, the usage of Cover 3 even was up a little.
There are two live wrinkles to note within the rest of a very stable defense. First, the Cardinals are using Cover 0 more and more as the season wears on. In the first half of the season, the defense used Cover 0 2.05% of the time. In the second half, that number increased to 2.76% or a 34.6% increase.
Second, and in direct contrast, the defense is using Cover 1 less and less as the season wears on. In the first half of the season, Cover 1 was used 7.95% of the time. In the second half of the season, that number decreased to 6.45% or a 18.9% decrease.
Third down situations saw the Cardinals at their most flexible in terms of using zone or man coverage, with the team operating at the highest percentage of zone (48.69%) and man (19.85%) coverage situations on third down situations over the last three years. The team also blitzed at near equal rates to the 2023 season (20.22% vs. 20.91%).
While they continued to build upon their late 2023 second-half ‘3-packs’ (covering 3/4 of their third down snaps), in 2024 they went in a completely different direction, trimming back the amount of ‘4-packs’ (down to 12.7% from 13.64%) and ‘1-packs’ (down to 6.45% from 7.95%) that they employed in 2023.
