Cover 7| TuesdayA daily NFL destination that provides in-depth analysis of football’s biggest stories. Each Tuesday,Ted Nguyen analyzes the best and worst coaching decisions he saw during the week’s games. Read the latest NFL best and worst coaching decisions column.
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The Buffalo Bills sparked their offense by harkening back to the Jim Kelly era. The Tennessee Titans only asked rookie quarterback Will Levis to do what he does best: chuck it deep. Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo again proves that he’s one of the best game planners in the league, while Washington Commanders defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio proves again that he’s one of the worst. We’ll get into all that and more in the best and worst coaching decisions of Week 8.
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Dorsey revives the K-gun
The Bills offense was out of sync in the three games before Week 8. They hadn’t played up to their usual standard. Offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey made a smart decision to use tempo and go no-huddle against the Buccaneers on Thursday. The result was remarkable efficiency. On no-huddle plays, the Bills had an offensive success rate (gain half of the distance to first on first and second downs or convert on third or fourth downs) of 65 percent. To put that in perspective, last season, the Chiefs were top in the league with a success rate of 52.9 percent.
The Bills only had one explosive play from no-huddle Thursday but the focus was efficiency and getting the ball out of Josh Allen’s hands quickly and getting their playmakers in space. It helped Allen stay engaged but more importantly, forced the normally blitz-happy Buccaneers to stay vanilla. On no-huddle plays, the Buccaneers were only able to blitz Allen on 20 percent of dropbacks. Coming into the game, they were blitzing opposing quarterbacks on 37.2 percent of dropbacks. They went no-huddle for 20 plays, which is significantly more than any game this season. They stopped going no-huddle in the fourth quarter when they were running out the clock.
“What I’m about to say sounds contradictory but sometimes, when you speed up the game in terms of your tempo, it slows it down,” Allen told ESPN’s Kevin Clark.
GO DEEPERHow the Bills offense turned back the clock in Thursday night win over BucsIt was fun watching Allen operate at the line of scrimmage yelling calls like “LeBron James” and “Taylor Swift.” I’m not sure we’ve seen a great no-huddle team with a quarterback as athletic as Allen is in a long time. Chip Kelly did it with Michael Vick and Colin Kaepernick, but those offenses were overly simplistic. Defenses will have their hands full trying to quickly line up, worry about the initial play and then worry about Allen scrambling around.
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Tempo prevented the Bucs defense from doing what they wanted, and maybe it’ll be a spark for the offense. One of the historically great offenses was the Bills’ K-gun led by Jim Kelly. If the Bills continue to use tempo, do we call this version the “A-gun”?
Titans call all the shot plays in the playbook
Will Levis, a projected first-round quarterback who fell to the second round, threw for four touchdowns in his debut. And these weren’t just dink-and-dunk passes, they were the complete opposite. According to Next Gen Stats, three of Levis’ touchdown passes are in the top 10 of the season in air-yard distance. The game plan for the Titans was to let the rookie do what he does best and that’s go bombs away with his big arm.
In his first career start, Will Levis threw 3 of the 10 longest touchdown passes by air distance this season.
🔹 47-yard TD to D. Hopkins: 56.1 yards (4th)
🔹 33-yard TD to N. Westbrook-Ikhine: 55.2 yards (5th)
🔹 61-yard TD to D. Hopkins: 51.7 yards (8th)Powered by @awscloud pic.twitter.com/goNMVDsw9X
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) October 29, 2023
Titans offensive coordinator Tim Kelly didn’t put Levis in a situation where he had to make hard reads and go through his progressions. He was either throwing short or throwing deep. In Week 8, Levis led the league in percentage of passes with over 20 air yards (28.6 percent).
Levis used pump fakes on three out of four of his touchdown passes against an aggressive Falcons defense that has jumped passes all season. On Levis’ third touchdown pass to DeAndre Hopkins, Kelly copied a route concept that C.J. Stroud drew up against the Falcons defense to take advantage of their overaggressiveness.
2:13 remaining in the third quarter, second-and-10
The Texans had tight end Dalton Shultz fake a “basic” (10-12 yard dig) route before going vertical. The Titans had Hopkins run the double move.
The Falcons were in a Cover 2 zone, meaning both safeties have deep halves and can’t let anyone get behind them. Levis pump faked to Hopkins like he was going inside, causing safety Richie Grant to bite.
Hopkins hat trick!
📺: #ATLvsTEN on CBS
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/Quwvdzpx7G pic.twitter.com/oZuDFrFylX— NFL (@NFL) October 29, 2023
I liked the variety of shot plays the Titans had in their game plan. They asked Levis to do what he did best and he thrived. Levis was explosive in his first start but Titans fans should temper their expectations. He wasn’t nearly as good when he was forced to play quarterback. Levis only converted on two out of nine third-down pass attempts. He still has a long way to go and these shot plays won’t be available in most games, but it’s good to see the arm talent translate.
GO DEEPERRexrode: Will Levis crushes Titans debut, and the legend of Billy Jeans is born- Follow live coverage of today’s NFL trade deadline
Anarumo takes away the 49ers’ run game
Coming into Week 8, the Bengals were giving up five yards per carry (third-worst in the league). Lou Anarumo has a knack for frustrating opponents by game-planning ways to take away an opponent’s strengths. Going against Christian McCaffrey and the 49ers, Anarumo knew taking away the run and passes in the middle of the field would be a priority. The Bengals used a bear front and consistently kept an extra defender in the box to take away the run, limiting the 49ers’ running backs to only 56 yards on 17 carries (3.3 yards per carry). Also, Brock Purdy had his second-worst game of the season throwing in between the numbers in terms of EPA per dropback.
9:21 remaining in the third quarter, first-and-10
Here, the Bengals lined up in their eight-man bear front with three defensive tackles inside, defensive ends on the edge, and a strong safety in the box.
The 49ers tried to pass against the Bengals’ loaded box but Cincinnati dropped eight into coverage and only rushed three. They played some funky coverage with two defenders on McCaffrey, man coverage outside, and safety Dax Hill playing either man or match on George Kittle with a hole defender inside to take away in-breaking routes. Purdy was forced to throw outside to Brandon Aiyuk but the pass was well-defended.
Anarumo mixed up run blitzes, coverages and fronts to keep the 49ers off-balance. Purdy was able to scramble for 57 yards and he made some nice throws outside to Aiyuk and deep down the middle to Kittle but overall, the Bengals made it difficult to get to their bread-and-butter plays.
GO DEEPER49ers minutia minute: Kyle Shanahan says team looked ‘slow and tired’ vs. BengalsDislikes
49ers playing Purdy after concussion symptoms
I get it. Purdy cleared concussion protocols after feeling symptoms following the 49ers’ Monday night game against the Vikings. It has been rare this season for players to clear protocol the week following a concussion, so it seemed unlikely that Purdy would be able to do so on a short week. After what happened to Tua Tagovailoa last season, who was suspected of suffering two concussions in a span of less than a week despite clearing concussion protocol, I would rather have coaches err on the side of caution with concussions.
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The 49ers signed Sam Darnold to bolster their quarterback depth and they believe he’s a more than capable backup. Purdy has been playing at a high level and he gives them the best chance to win, but on a short week before a bye, I thought the best thing to do for Purdy was to give him ample time to heal. Near the end of the game against the Bengals, Purdy was hit and his head bounced off the turf. He got up holding his head with both hands. He wasn’t checked for a concussion and maybe it was nothing, but it was a reminder of the risk of coming back from a concussion too soon.
Against the Vikings, Purdy took a big hit to the head on a quarterback sneak which might have led to his concussion. The 49ers didn’t run any sneaks with him in the Bengals game despite the play being effective for them throughout the season. They should have taken it a step further and kept him out of the game for a week.
Commanders’ plan vs. A.J. Brown: Hope and pray
There are a lot of theories and techniques that defenses use to limit the impact of a No. 1 receiver. I don’t know if the Commanders have one in their playbook besides playing Cover 2 or 2-man, which aren’t true double teams.
| Player | Catches | Yards | TD |
|---|---|---|---|
3 | 28 | ||
5 | 66 | ||
8 | 111 | ||
9 | 175 | 2 | |
D.J. Moore | 8 | 230 | 3 |
Drake London | 9 | 125 | |
7 | 98 | 1 | |
8 | 139 | 2 |
Aside from the first two weeks against below-average quarterbacks, every No. 1 who has played the Commanders has killed them. In Week 8, they didn’t bracket A.J. Brown once and they paid for it. The closest they got to doubling him was playing 2-man for a snap.
4:51 remaining in the third quarter, third-and-7
On third-and-7 with the ball on the Commanders’ 25-yard line, Washington played 2-man, which is man-to-man coverage with defenders playing trail technique with two deep safeties. This is a difficult coverage to throw deep against but there aren’t any true double teams.
The safety to Brown’s side had to protect the seam because of tight end Dallas Goedert’s route, which meant Brown essentially had a one-on-one to the outside with cornerback Emmanuel Forbes, whom Brown outweighs by close to 50 pounds.
AJ BROWN AGAIN. @1kalwaysopen_
📺: #PHIvsWAS on FOX
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/Quwvdzpx7G pic.twitter.com/c5T1L3hRww— NFL (@NFL) October 29, 2023
Predictably, Brown out-muscled Forbes and the safety couldn’t get there in time to make a play.
If you play fantasy football, you should be rejoicing if your best receiver is playing against the Commanders.
Daboll not going for it on fourth-and-1
The Giants were up three points and had the ball on the Jets’ 17-yard line with 28 seconds left in the game. On fourth-and-1, they could have gone for it to end the game but they elected to attempt a 35-yard field goal in bad weather. Kicker Graham Gano had already missed a kick from 47 yards earlier in the game. Gano missed the kick and the Jets drove down the field without a timeout to get in field goal position. Kicker Greg Zuerlein made a 35-yard field goal to tie the game and the Jets won in overtime.
“Making the field goal, then they’d have 24 seconds with no timeouts and they’d have to drive the length and our defense was playing really well the whole game,” Daboll said after the game. “That’s why I made the decision.”
GO DEEPERBrian Daboll not on hot seat, but Giants' ugly loss to Jets is type of game that gets coaches firedEven if they made the field goal, they would still only be up one possession. Yes, it is unlikely the Jets would have driven the length of the field, but they could have gotten into position to throw a Hail Mary. Why not just try to get one yard and not have to worry about making the field goal in bad weather and all the ensuing scenarios? Daboll and the Giants outperformed expectations last year by taking calculated chances and they had a chance to take one to end the game but didn’t.
GO DEEPERYouTube TV cannot afford to have another NFL Sunday Ticket hiccup(Top photo: Wesley Hitt / Getty Images)
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Ted Nguyen is a NFL staff writer for The Athletic. He breaks down film to uncover the story that the X's and O's tell. He also covers the latest trends around the league and covers the draft. Follow Ted on Twitter @FB_FilmAnalysis
