![]() ![]() Last season, defenses blitzed just 25.3% of the time, the lowest rate over a full season since at least 2013, per TruMedia. That has come at the expense of blitzing aggressively. With so many passes getting thrown to that area, the defensive adjustment has been to flood more defenders into throwing lanes. The rate of passes thrown at or behind the line of scrimmage has risen each year since at least 2013 and in 2021, 71.4% of passes were thrown within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. The average depth of target has dropped over the past three seasons from 8.18 in 2019 to 7.79 in 2020 to 7.75 in 2021, per TruMedia. To fight against this, offenses have gotten the ball out quicker and shorter passes have increased. Having safeties that can play all over the secondary allows for more deception with these rotations.Īs a result of the shifting structures across the league, passing to both the intermediate level of the field (11-19 air yards) and deep (20+) produced the lowest EPA per attempt for offenses since the 2017 season. This is also a big reason for the increase in safety value and versatility. Those pre-snap safety alignments are about having the flexibility to show one thing and change the look after the snap. The highest team was at 45% and 15 teams were over 40%. (Yes, we’re going to oversimplify some concepts here… you’ve still got over 500 pages in this thing to go.) But “two-high shell” doesn’t necessarily mean “two-high coverage” 17 teams used a two-high pre-snap shell on at least 50% of snaps in 2021, per Sports Info Solutions, but zero teams used some version of a two-high coverage on over 50% of pass plays. The increase of two-high safety shells was in part to limit the explosive pass plays. What defenses are doing now is in reaction to that - limiting the space an offense has to work with. Last year in this foreword, we explored the concept of space and how offenses were getting increasingly better at manipulating it to set up big plays and create yards after the catch.
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