In 2023, 12 of 14 playoff teams were top 15 in scoring, the exceptions being Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh. However, 10 of 14 playoff teams were top 15 in points allowed, the exceptions being the Rams, Miami, Detroit, and Philadelphia. The two Super Bowl participants were Nos. 2 and 3 in defense, and Super Bowl champion Kansas City was only No. 15 in points scored. Neither team scored 20 points in regulation in the Super Bowl.
Season points scored and yielded isn’t everything. Baltimore and Dallas were top five in both categories and didn’t get to the Super Bowl. Still, being good at both enhances your chances to get a ring.
There are three components to good defense – pass rush, coverage, and run stops. Nothing beats getting pressure on the quarterback, though, for stifling an offense. (Just ask any Giants quarterback.) Patrick Mahomes’ lone Super Bowl loss came when a tough Tampa Bay pass rush bullied a Kansas City offensive line that had injuries to multiple starters.
There are two ways to get pressure on the quarterback – with good edge defenders and interior defensive linemen who can win one-on-one matchups, and with blitzes that create a numbers advantage for the defense. Blitzes are most effective when they are disguised, e.g., this crucial play late in regulation during the Super Bowl when Trent McDuffie faked dropping back and then blitzed, forcing Brock Purdy to hurry his third down throw for an incompletion:
The problem is that relying on the blitz too much shouldn’t be a base defense strategy. Steve Spagnuolo actually blitzed on 51% of Brock Purdy dropbacks during the Super Bowl, much more than he usually does. The one above worked, but overall, both Purdy and Mahomes handled the blitz well:
Both QBs performed better when blitzed than when not, because a good QB knows to throw the ball to the space vacated by the blitzing player where there is likely to be an open receiver.
Quarterbacks do not, however, like being pressured in general. You can see from the chart above that Mahomes and Purdy did noticeably worse when pressured than when kept clean – but mostly that was when pressured with a four-man rush that allows the secondary to maintain integrity in coverage, rather than when facing a blitz.
Under Wink Martindale, the Giants in 2023 blitzed more than any team except Minnesota:
As you can see, though, it didn’t do much good. The Giants only got pressure 20.9% of the time, much less than Kansas City’s 27.8% with a much lower blitz percentage. The Giants also had a lower hurry percentage and QB knockdown percentage than Kansas City, and fewer sacks as well.
Under Shane Bowen, Tennessee only blitzed about 20% of the time, so we can expect that Bowen will rely more on traditional four-man rushes. Last year, 12 of the 13 Tennessee players with the most pass rush snaps were edge defenders or IDLs. Contrast that with the Giants, who had all three of their rotational off-ball linebackers in their top 10 players with pass rush snaps, plus safety Isaiah McKinney at No. 13. Where is that pressure going to come from, and what moves do the Giants need to make in the offseason to improve their pass rush from 2023?
The edge defender position gets most of the attention in the NFL in discussions of pass rush, but actually interior pressure can be even more effective. It can get there quicker when it happens, it’s harder for a QB to see over an IDL rushing up the middle, and it flushes the QB from the pocket even when it doesn’t get home.
The Giants are fortunate to have the NFL’s best interior pass rusher in 2023 under contract in Dexter Lawrence. A big question for 2023 is how Bowen will use Lawrence. Last season Wink lined him up mostly in the A-gap and often as a classical nose tackle (0-technique) lined up right over the center. To say that Lawrence flourished there is putting it mildly. Bowen did not employ that type of alignment much last season. I’d like to be a fly on the wall when Bowen and Andre Patterson talk about Lawrence’s use.
Beyond Lawrence, there are only question marks at IDL after the Leonard Williams mid-season trade. A’Shawn Robinson is a free agent while Rakeem Nunez-Roches is under contract, but neither of them brings much to the table in the pass rush. Late-round draftees D.J. Davidson and Jordon Riley showed some promise last season as IDLs but their pass-rush potential is largely unknown.
On the edge, there are unfortunately just as many question marks. Kayvon Thibodeaux had a productive sophomore season with 44 total pressures and 13 sacks, but he was inconsistent from game to game, and there’s a feeling that meat is being left on the bone. One possible explanation is that he didn’t get much help from the opposite side, where the once-promising Azeez Ojulari had another injury-plagued and unproductive season, and where free agent Jihad Ward (will he enroll at Michigan to play for Wink?)
