In the last article, we covered the six defensive sacks in the Packers 27-23 week seven win over the Cardinals. While the sacks were impressive in their own way and helped the defense achieve the end result,
a few of the sacks simply didn’t matter because of explosive pass plays given up on the same drive that led to Cardinals touchdowns.
The issue of explosive pass plays given up is a concerning trend that deserved monitoring to see how it would play out since the tie in Dallas. A bye week didn’t help clear up the issues as the Packers gave up several more explosive pass plays to the Bengals.
The same would hold true for the third week in a row where the defense gave up four more explosive pass plays that led to two touchdowns. And those two touchdowns were the direct result of coverage busts at the worst times.
The first coverage bust occurred after a 2nd down sack by Quay Walker that forced the Cardinals into a third and long situation. This should have been a relatively easy ask for the defense to get the Cardinals offense off the field but it wasn’t. The opposite happened when Jacoby Brissett hit a 43-yard pass down the right sideline.
The Cardinals are running a 3-verticals concept called “989” against the Packers Tampa-2 zone coverage. Tampa-2 is cover-2 with a defender dropping to the deep middle zone between the half safeties.
Safety Evan Williams is the deep half safety to the bottom of the screen. He never really widens to the half and instead backpedals initially down the hash. He should have been widening while gaining depth because the middle vertical was not a threat with coverage underneath. If he had widened sooner, he would have been in a better position to make a play on the pass. As a result, it just missed his outstretched hand.
On the same drive, the Cardinals worked their way down to the red zone where Brissett found Trey McBride for a touchdown after the defense busted their quarters coverage assignments.
The Cardinals are running a double post/double corner concept with the slot receivers running corner routes and the outside receivers running post routes. It’s essentially a scissors concept on both sides.
The defense is in red zone quarters so it’s key here that the safeties and corners are reading the releases and stems of the receivers in a 2×2. If either receiver goes vertical and then cuts inside or outside, the defenders should pass them off to the next defender inside or outside. A good example of this is at the top of the screen where the corner and safety pass off the routes.
Keisean Nixon carries the vertical and chases the post stem inside for a couple of steps before passing him when he sees McBride breaking to the corner. It’s too late. Nixon can’t recover and McBride catches the pass uncontested at the front corner pylon for a touchdown.
Later in the 3rd quarter, after the Kingsley Enagbare/Quay Walker split sack where Brissett took a 7-yard loss, Brissett picked on corner Nate Hobbs (more on that later) for a 35-yard gain.
Hobbs was singled up on an island against Marvin Harrison Jr in cover-3 buzz as the boundary corner to the top of the screen. Marvin Harrison runs the go route and Brissett throws the route because the down safety isn’t over the top.
Harrison and Hobbs are locked at the top end of the route and Harrison just sheds the contact when Hobbs looks for the ball. This slowed him down as the pass arrived and Harrison plucked it out of the air over the top of him.
Hobbs struggled a bit in this one, something Acme Packing Company’s Justis Mosqueda covered at length earlier this week.
This led to another coverage bust in the red zone where the Cardinals were able to score again when Brissett took advantage of a wide open McBride again.
The Cardinals are running “all go special” where the offense sends three verticals from one side downfield and sends the backside single receiver, in this case the tight end, on a specific route tag that could include an out route, a crossing route, a hitch, etc.
Here, the Cardinals send McBride across on a short crossing route. The Packers are playing what’s generally referred to as “cover-7 cone,” a bracket coverage that assigns two defenders specific rules to play if the backside receiver takes an inside or outside release. Basically anything to the inside should be played by the safety to that side, anything outside should be covered by the corner.
This should have Xavier McKinney on McBride if he releases inside. Edgerrin Cooper was to stay in coverage with the running back. McBride releases inside and McKinney never comes down to cover him so McBride gets a free release and free access to the middle of the field where Brissett finds him.
Based on Nixon’s reaction while looking in McKinney’s direction, we can assume this is more than likely a bust on McKinney. We obviously can’t know for sure but it’s a safe bet when one player expresses frustration with another player about who is responsible for the bust.
There were two other explosive passes given up in this game by Nate Hobbs. His time at cornerback has not been all that impressive and the Packers might best be served from moving him back to nickel.
Here he was matched up against Harrison again on the outside. The Cardinals are running a play action deep out concept with Harrison running a “blaze out” route, which is a deep speed cut out with an inside move before breaking out. The inside cut puts Hobbs in a spin cycle and generates a ton of separation for Harrison. Brissett hit him in the chest.
Late in the game on the last drive, Zay Jones created separation on Hobbs with a deep dig route.
Jones stemmed his route directly at Hobbs and kept him directly in front. This allowed Jones to cut inside and put Hobbs behind him. Hobbs lost his leverage the second he let Jones win on the top end of the stem. To make it worse, Hobbs missed the tackle as Jones caught it. The play didn’t end up mattering but set up Arizona on the Packers side of the 50 at the time.
Final Thoughts
The explosive passes by themselves aren’t the issue. That issue, combined with the coverage busts on the same drive that led to touchdowns, are becoming a concern and the defense has to find a way to limit the impact from those plays. We’ll see how they respond versus Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers offense, fresh off a loss that saw Rodgers hit on a number of explosive passes to his tight ends. Will the Packers underneath defenders be up for the challenge?
