Welcome back to The Ringer’s Ball Knower’s Notebook. We’re taking the best and worst of the most recent slate and giving it a closer look through the all-22 film angles.
Our theme this week is defense. Don’t look so surprised, this is what I love most about the sport! I’ve diagnosed what’s gone wrong with the secondaries in Houston and Detroit, how the Rams D dominated Philadelphia en route to a 10-point comeback, and how Chicago knocked the Jets’ surprisingly good passing game out of its rhythm.
If you love offense, don’t worry—we’ll still give you something you chew on in our All-22 Spotlight segment. Jameis Winston, C.J. Stroud, and Joe Burrow will each get some recognition this week. Now, let’s talk some ’ball.
What Went Wrong: Houston’s Repeated Coverage Breakdowns
I feel like I’m just as shellshocked while watching Houston’s defense as the Texans players seem to be while playing it right now. Sunday’s 34-30 loss to the Cowboys is the latest in a string of disappointing performances from this unit to start this season. They’re currently tied for allowing the sixth-most points per game and have allowed the eighth-highest passer rating in the league through four weeks. Their 27.2 points allowed per game is the most a DeMeco Ryans defense has given up in his head coaching career, and it’s more than double what they allowed through the first four games of last season.
This can’t be explained away by injuries, as all their top contributors have played in every game. This isn’t something we can blame specifically on pass rush either, as Houston is currently ranked second in the league in sack rate and edge rusher Will Anderson Jr. is playing like the Defensive Player of the Year. This secondary only has itself to blame for allowing easy completions.
Cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. chalked up several of their problems to “communication” issues, and that definitely shows up on tape. In the clip below from Sunday’s loss to the Cowboys, the Texans gave up a 30-yard completion to CeeDee Lamb, and there was no defender within 10 yards of Lamb when he made his catch. This was because Stingley and safety Calen Bullock miscommunicated their responsibilities in their coverage—a three-deep zone blitz. Because Lamb’s alignment is so close to the middle of the field, Bullock is supposed to be looking for the receiver to run a deep crossing route. Because Bullock has a better angle on Lamb’s route than Stingley does, Bullock should cover the receiver across the field and Stingley should fall back toward the deep middle. This approach is meant to keep offenses from using vertical routes and to allow defenders to occupy the middle of the field. Stingley does his job, but Bullock doesn’t (he instead doubles on receiver George Pickens), and quarterback Dak Prescott has one of his easiest passes of the game.
Better communication can fix problems like these, but a couple of Houston’s defensive backs are simply liabilities in coverage. Cornerback Kamari Lassiter and safety Reed Blankenship are each allowing a completion rate over 70 percent and a passer rating over 110 when they’re targeted—and now opponents are hunting for big plays by attacking them. The stats through four games are pretty ugly:
At a critical moment in Sunday’s game, Prescott went after both Lassiter and Blankenship at once. In this next clip, Houston is running Cover 2 with Lassiter and Blankenship, which should give the Texans a double-team on Pickens. Pickens runs a sluggo route (slant-and-go) and fools Lassiter with a double move. Lassiter jumps underneath and allows Pickens to run by him. Blankenship’s job as the safety, meanwhile, is to read Pickens’s release and adjust his coverage based on what he sees. If Pickens releases outside, Blankenship has to make sure he’s over the top to help Lassiter on vertical routes; if Pickens releases inside, Blankenship just needs to get to his zone “landmark” of 18-22 yards deep and 2 yards inside the numbers (and yes, the landmarks are absolutely that specific).
But no matter what release Pickens gives, Blankenship can never be caught flat-footed. And this time, he stops his feet while looking at the quarterback, and Prescott delivers the ball in the soft spot between these two defenders. These are the kinds of mistakes veteran players cannot make at the end of a game.
Houston is now at 0-4 and playing objectively bad defense. The Texans can’t waste any time thinking about what they need to do to get back in the playoff picture. It’s time for some serious soul searching in the secondary. They need to figure out how to clean up these basic breakdowns, because that group is not playing up to the standard of an elite defense. Their issues aren’t rooted in scheme or strategy—their best players simply aren’t doing their jobs, and that’s made Houston one of the league’s most disappointing teams.
What Went Well: Los Angeles Shut Down Philadelphia’s Offense
We could just as easily have flipped our framing on this topic to focus on the problems Philadelphia’s offense is having right now, but the defensive coordinator in me wants to give the Rams credit for holding Philadelphia to less than 200 yards of total offense in their 24-20 comeback win in Week 4.
Los Angeles’s defense was clearly the best unit in the game. The Rams held Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts to 93 passing yards, sacked him four times, and didn’t allow a single third-down conversion. Their third-down defense is the focus of my attention here, as it seemed like Hurts was always under duress or looking at blanketed receivers downfield, if not both, on those critical downs.
On the third-and-2 play clipped below, the Eagles are trying to goad the Rams into selling out to stop the run. They’ve got two tight ends on the field and have lined up Hurts under center. This suggests that Philadelphia is trying to set up a play-action pass, where Hurts can find receiver Dontayvion Wicks open on a crossing route or tight end Johnny Mundt open in the flats. But on the snap, Rams edge rusher Byron Young strikes Mundt with so much physicality that the receiver can’t slip out into the flat, and he puts enough pressure on Hurts to move him off of his spot. That buys time for cornerback Josh Wallace to recognize the play-action and sink underneath to cover Wicks’s crosser. Young completely blew the play up, leaving Hurts no choice but to throw the ball out of bounds.
In the next clip, Rams defensive coordinator Chris Shula schemes up a one-on-one rushing opportunity for Young by bringing a zone blitz, and the Rams end up getting two unblocked defenders to sack Hurts. Pre-snap, Los Angeles is trying to manipulate Philadelphia’s protection by walking linebacker Nate Landman up to the line of scrimmage. This forces the Eagles offensive line to slide the protection toward Landman, but they’ve been fooled. The Rams’ blitz is actually coming from safeties Kam Kinchens and Quentin Lake on the opposite side, and Philadelphia doesn’t have enough players to account for the additional rushers.
This is what defensive coaches call a “four strong” or “four weak” pressure, which is designed to overload one side of the offensive line. Philadelphia’s rookie right tackle Markel Bell, filling in for Lane Johnson, has no idea who to block, Kinchens or Young, so he blocks neither. Hurts has no “hot read” and has to concede the sack. This was an excellent play call from Shula, and he used some of his best players as pass rushers and attacked a mismatch between Young and Bell.
And in our final clip—a strip-sack from Young that effectively ended the game—we’ll see everything come together perfectly for Los Angeles’s defense. Here, Philadelphia is trying to run a “dagger” concept, using deep vertical and in-breaking routes to find a void in coverage. But the Rams are playing Cover 4, and their defensive backs do such a great job of staying over the top of the Eagles receivers that Hurts has to hold the ball to let the play develop. Hurts is waiting for someone to break open, and he doesn’t feel Young coming off the end. Once again, Young has beaten Bell for a sack.
Shula made the right call here by having his defenders sit in a soft zone coverage and force Hurts to be patient, and the defensive backs were disciplined enough to protect their cushions. That in turn gave Young an opportunity with a second effort on the pass rush and helped secure Los Angeles’s comeback win.
Los Angeles has been a hard team to evaluate this season. They are loaded with talent but have played a lot of messy football over the first three weeks. Sunday’s defensive performance isn’t just a relief, but proof that this team doesn’t need its superstar cast to play winning football. They just need to stop getting in their own way.
What Went Wrong: Detroit’s Poorly Designed Defense
For any struggling team, there comes a time when coaches have to accept that their scheme or philosophy is a poor fit for their personnel and make adjustments for the sake of maximizing the skills of their players. After a 32-26 loss to the Panthers on Sunday night, that time is now for Detroit’s defense. Bryce Young carved up the Lions secondary all night—finishing with 329 passing yards and a pair of touchdowns.
Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard is incomprehensibly committed to blitzing in ways that expose his secondary. Detroit is averaging the seventh-most blitzes per game, tied with the Jets—whose head coach, Aaron Glenn, was Sheppard’s predecessor in Detroit. That aggressive approach to defense is deeply entrenched in Detroit’s identity under Dan Campbell, but it simply isn’t working. Opposing quarterbacks have a passer rating of 123.3 and are averaging 8 yards per pass attempt against the Lions’ blitz. And it’s not like the blitzes are resulting in real pressure. The Lions rank 22nd in pressure rate and are 17th in quarterback hit rate when they rush with more than four defenders.
Young wasn’t fazed by Detroit’s pressure at all, completing five of six passes for 71 yards and a touchdown against the blitz without taking any sacks. In fact, it seemed like he always knew where the pressure was coming from. In the clip below, Carolina uses a bluffed motion from running back Chuba Hubbard to reveal who would cover him. When safety Chuck Clark rolls down, Young now knows that Clark is responsible for covering Hubbard, and the quarterback can change the pass protection to account for possible blitzers coming from the opposite side. On the snap, Carolina’s offensive line slides to the right, Hubbard picks Clark up on his blitz, and Young has enough time and space to maneuver in the pocket and find receiver Tetairoa McMillan wide open in the middle of the field.
Carolina did this sort of thing all night. In the next clip, the Panthers use McMillan on a run-pass option to find an open void in an underneath zone and turn it into a 21-yard gain. Receiver Brycen Tremayne comes across in motion, and Detroit’s underneath defenders can’t communicate who is responsible for which receiver quickly enough, leaving McMillan uncovered. It’s an inspired idea to use cornerback Roger McCreary as a blitzer, but it was wasted because his teammates couldn’t sort out the coverage behind him.
The last example is just a flat-out bad defensive call from Sheppard. With the ball on the 10-yard line, chances are that any Panthers pass play would be designed to get the ball out of Young’s hands quickly. Still, Detroit runs a Cover 0 blitz and sends its blitzers “from depth,” meaning they’re rushing from an off-ball alignment. Not only does Carolina pick up all of the extra rushers, but blitzing from depth also gives Young enough time to see McMillan break open on a slant. Safety Christian Izien has no chance to cover him or contest the throw.
Defensive coaches sometimes just get beaten by an opposing coordinator's play call—like the deep completion to McMillan we covered earlier. But it’s a different issue when your opponent is walking into the end zone with no resistance—even as you’re trying to blitz them. Detroit aspires to be aggressive, yet everything was far too easy for Young.
Detroit currently ranks last in defensive expected points added per game, and there’s a bigger gap between it and Dallas at no. 31 than there is between Dallas and the 27th-ranked Dolphins. Sheppard is clearly trying to establish a defensive identity and has to do it without key starters like Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph in his secondary. But it’s time for Sheppard to admit that it isn’t working and to make adjustments because the Lions cannot reasonably expect to make the playoffs when they’re playing this poorly on defense.
What Went Well: Chicago Dominated New York
Just last week, we covered how well Jets quarterback Geno Smith was playing to start the year, and I thought that Sunday would be a great opportunity for him to showcase his rediscovered accuracy against the vulnerable Bears secondary.
There couldn’t have been a more opposite outcome; Chicago won 23-12 and never really gave the Jets a shot at building a rhythm. The Bears offense did a great job of controlling the game on the ground, rushing for 232 yards and holding the ball for 42 of 60 minutes. But Chicago’s defense held New York to an 0-for-7 day on third down, sacked Smith three times, and gave up less than 100 net passing yards. Besides the Rams’ dominant effort against Philadelphia, this was the best defensive performance of the week.
New York’s offense had only 32 plays on Sunday—including 18 passes—and just eight of its throws were completed. Chicago performed so well on passing downs thanks to its combination of strong coverage and well-designed blitzes, which kept Smith uncomfortable in the pocket. In the third-down clip below, defensive coordinator Dennis Allen is giving a pre-snap overload to one side of New York’s offensive line. Smith tries to adjust the protection to account for additional rushers, but the Bears put left guard Jordan Meredith in a lose-lose situation. Defensive end Dayo Odeyingbo runs a twist away from Meredith, and safety Elijah Hicks blitzes through his gap after Meredith turns his back. Because right guard Joe Tippmann isn’t sliding toward the overloaded side and running back Braelon Allen isn’t responsible for potential blitzers from that side either, Smith has no choice but to heave the ball toward the sideline—and it's nearly picked off by corner Tyrique Stevenson.
The threat of pressure seemed to influence some of Smith’s misses, too. On our next third-down clip, Chicago has eight defenders crowding the line of scrimmage, but they bail out into a Cover 6 zone. Smith has time to work through his progression—and could’ve found tight end Jeremy Ruckert on an in-breaking route if he’d had a little more patience—but he fires the ball to a blanketed Garrett Wilson to make sure he isn’t hit by any rushers from his blind side. This clip shows the benefits defenses get from hitting quarterbacks early. The Smith we saw carving up Detroit’s defense a week ago is gone, replaced by a version that’s more cautious and hurried in the pocket.
Chicago’s defense still worries me when it’s playing against top competition, but I was encouraged by Sunday’s win. In a one-game sample, Allen’s aggression knocked a good passing game out of rhythm.
All-22 Spotlight: C.J. Stroud Can’t Miss
All offseason, the talk surrounding the Texans was about how much quarterback C.J. Stroud had to prove. He’d badly botched an opportunity to contend last postseason, and because he has yet to sign an extension, he’s truly playing for his future in Houston this year.
No quarterback has more at stake in 2026 than Stroud, and he’s responded by playing his best football. His 47 percent success rate is the highest he’s ever had through the first four weeks of a season, and this is the first time since his rookie year that he’s gotten through a season’s first month without throwing any interceptions. He’s put his team in position to win three of its four games this year.
Stroud’s doing his best work when he has his top target, receiver Nico Collins, on the field. When Collins and Stroud are playing together, Houston has a 118.7 passer rating—good for second in the league behind the unstoppable 49ers offense—and they’re sixth in expected points added when Collins specifically is targeted.
Their 22-yard touchdown connection on Sunday is a perfect example of how dialed in Stroud is. On the play shown below, Stroud perfectly navigates his way around Dallas’s interior pass rushers and keeps his eyes downfield. Collins finds a soft spot against Dallas’s Cover 2 shell, and Stroud places the ball precisely where it needs to be to complete the pass and protect Collins from a dangerous hit.
It’s hard to play the position much better than Stroud is to start the year, and I’m hoping that Houston’s defense pulls it together so that his stellar play can get them some wins.
All-22 Spotlight: Joe Burrow’s Bad Pick
Quarterback Joe Burrow is awesome 90 percent of the time. He’s one of the best pure pocket passers of this century, up there with the likes of Matt Ryan, Kurt Warner, and Philip Rivers.
But because his game is typically confined to the pocket, pressure has a way of bringing out the worst 10 percent of his play. When Burrow is pressured within the pocket, his passer rating is a rough 55.9, ranking 22nd out of 32 quarterbacks with at least 10 dropbacks. That puts him behind Kyler Murray, Malik Willis, and Jalen Hurts—three guys whom fans would probably assume play much worse under pressure in the pocket than Burrow. Burrow’s number is weighed down by his two interceptions this season—a pick-six against Tampa Bay in Week 1 and an ugly pick to Jaguars cornerback Jourdan Lewis in Sunday’s 22-17 loss.
Burrow’s interception against Jacksonville happened because he didn't do enough to buy himself space in the pocket—and he's unwilling to extend plays with his legs. The Bengals were trying a dagger concept against Jacksonville’s Cover 2 defense, and the in-breaking route was wide open coming across the field. All Burrow needed to do was slide away from left tackle Orlando Brown, who was being walked backward by edge rusher Josh Hines-Allen. Instead he sat still in the pocket, allowing Hines-Allen to disrupt his throwing motion.
After the game, Burrow said that he wants even more responsibility for carrying this offense, even though he’d just lost a game in which he threw 54 times. I think that his confidence and desire to lead the Bengals are honorable, but Cincinnati can’t possibly put any more on his plate. Burrow needs to do a little more to mitigate pressure when the outcome of the game is in his hands.
All-22 Spotlight: A Jameis Winston Dime
We got a classic Jameis Winston experience in the Giants’ 36-24 win over the Cardinals: two horrific, inexplicable interceptions, and a handful of excellent throws that leave you unsure how such a contrast can exist in the same quarterback.
Winston’s best throw of the game was a touchdown strike to tight end Theo Johnson. It showed how quarterbacks can register whether a receiver is open, even if a defender is in close proximity. From the broadcast angle, you see Winston whizz the ball right past the ear of linebacker Mack Wilson. That may look like an unnecessarily risky throw, but he did exactly as he’s coached to do against a coverage like this, and I’ll explain why.
The all-22 gives us a complete coverage picture and some context for why Winston would make this decision. Arizona is playing a version of Cover 4, where the underneath defenders match routes from the receivers and the safeties double-team the deepest or most dangerous receiver running downfield. We’ve covered it before, but this is a popular call against red zone passes because it takes away timing-based concepts and quick throws from the quarterback. Wilson is matching Johnson’s route up the middle of the field as part of this coverage, and Winston knows that Wilson can’t contest the throw because his back is turned and he has no way of knowing when the ball is coming or where it's placed. To an NFL quarterback, that means Johnson’s open, even though Wilson’s running stride for stride with him.
Throws like these may seem risky from the couch, but it’s textbook quarterback play, and a willingness to throw the ball into tight windows like these is necessary to complete passes in the red zone. Because it's Winston making the throw, I understand why any Giants fan would get squeamish as he released it, but this was one of the best decisions he made all game.
