Defensively Speaking: Getting Creative

Ohio State’s defense put together a great performance against Iowa on Saturday. The first team defense shut down Iowa’s run game from the very first snap. What I want to focus on in this article, however, is some of the more exotic pressure schemes Jim Knowles called for throughout the day. Before we get into this, I want to say up front that not all of these pressure schemes necessarily “worked” on Saturday. However, because I’ve been wanting to see more creativity from Knowles in terms of pressure calls, I have to give him credit for at least showing that he’s willing to try some different things. Let’s take a look.

Most notably, for the first time since arriving at Ohio State, Knowles called for a Cover 3 simulated (sim) pressure. Additionally, Ohio State had 3-2-6 dime personnel on the field for this play. Remember, a simulated pressure is when the defense has five or more players on the line of scrimmage at the snap but only four players rush and one of them is a back-7 player (and one of the defensive linemen drops into coverage). See the clip and diagram below:

Additionally, Knowles called creepers on a couple occasions paired with 2-steal coverage. Like a sim pressure, a creeper is a concept where you have a back-7 player insert as a fourth rusher while a defensive lineman drops into coverage. The difference between a sim pressure and a creeper is that creepers are run out of a base alignment rather than out of a formation with five or more defenders on the line of scrimmage. See an example of Ohio State’s 2-steal creeper below:

Note how Sonny Styles inserts as a fourth rusher while JT Tuimoloau drops into coverage. The field safety (Caleb Downs) and the boundary cornerback (Davison Igbinosun) are the two deep ½ defenders, and there are five underneath defenders.

Furthermore, Knowles has always loved to blitz the boundary safety (Lathan Ransom). However, against Iowa, he showed that he is also willing to blitz the field safety (Downs). Below, Knowles calls for a fire zone (5-man pressure with 3-deep / 3-underneath coverage) with Caleb Downs as the fifth rusher:

Knowles blitzed the field safety in run situations as well:

The last pressure call I want to highlight is one that Knowles has called three or four times per year since he got to Ohio State, and it is by far one of my favorites – the Triple A-gap blitz. He runs this blitz out of a double A-gap mug alignment (meaning both linebackers are up on the line of scrimmage in the A-gaps and both defensive tackles are in 3-techniques) and pairs it with “Train” coverage (Cover 0 with two rats).

On this blitz, both linebackers insert into their respective A-gaps, and a safety comes behind them as a third A-gap blitzer. Meanwhile, the two 3-techniques drop into coverage as underneath “rats” with eyes on the quarterback. Everyone else is in man coverage. See the clip below:

I hope this article allowed everyone to get an idea of how much variety we saw from Knowles on Saturday. Again, I understand that not all of these pressures got home and Iowa ended up finding holes in Ohio State’s zone coverage a couple times. However, I am still encouraged by the increased variety, and I don’t think Knowles should be scared to use these concepts going forward.