Matt Eberflus has the goods

The architect of Chicago's defense is up to stuff, breaking his own tendencies and passing the critical game-plan builder and play-caller tests

A public announcement: I may be falling for Matt Eberflus. 

Through six weeks, Chicago has run one of the most air-tight, well-coordinated defenses in the league. The stars have sparkled, but the cohesiveness of the system is what has fueled a group that currently sits fourth in the league in EPA/play – and second in dropback EPA/play. By any conceivable metric, they stack up against the league’s best, ranking in the top five in the percentage of successful plays allowed, touchdown drives conceded, missed tackle rate and turnovers forced.

But even with the unit’s early success, there were nagging concerns bubbling away under the surface. Eberflus continues to be one of the most tendency-led coaches in the league. In his early Chicago days, that meant his front structures and coverages. He played four-down-and-go football, with the secondary dropping to depth in vanilla coverages and rallying to the ball — just as he had as the DC in Indianapolis. It was. Those tendencies have shifted slightly this year. Eberflus has toggled between coverages and embraced (ever so slightly) the disguise world. At times, in tiny doses, Eberflus has been downright funky. But in the opening five weeks of the season, one point held: the Bears had obvious tendencies. 

Take blitzing. Eberflus does not send heat. He is still reliant on a four-man rush. Chicago’s blitz rate hovered around 27% during the opening five weeks of the season, with few bells or whistles elsewhere in the pressure scheme. The Bears ran simulated pressures at an 8% clip — right around the rate we see from the branches of the 49ers’ defensive tree, a crop of coaches who seem to view sim pressures as some sort of communist plot to overthrow the government. When Eberflus was comfortable blitzing, it was of the five-man variety. And of those five-man pressures, 45% (!) involved a player blitzing from the slot/overhang position. 

(A quick note: definitions for sim pressures, creeper pressure and zone pressures are not always standardized. This is what I roll with for TRO: Sending six defenders after the QB is a blitz; sending five defenders is a pressure; sending four but with an unexpected dropper is a creeper; a defense presenting like it will send five or six but sending four is a simulated pressure. The ‘option’ blitz world can muddy the waters.)

Dig even deeper, and the tendencies came with a flashing neon sign. The Bears sent pressure on second-and-long or second-and-medium at a pace that far outstripped any but the most maniacal defensive minds. And those pressures were coming from one guy: Kyler Gordon.

Gordon was responsible for 18 total blitzes from the slot position in the first five weeks of the season, with Jack Sanborn tacking on two and Josh Blackwell being gifted to a lone rush. Scan across the other top defenses in the NFL — the Vikings, Broncos or Chargers — and none of them offer such discrete down-and-distance tells. Some are more keen to do certain things in the pressure world, but the Bears, five weeks through this thing, existed in a universe of their own.

Think about this: 80% of the pressures Chicago sent in the first five weeks came from one player, typically against similar offensive formations, and flowing through a similar blitz path. Behind those blitzes, the Bears bounced between two staple coverages (cover-1 or cover-3), without any unorthodox rotations. 

So, as an offense, if you found yourself in second-and-something-other-than-short against the Bears, you knew who was coming, where they were coming from and that the coverage behind would be of the middle-field-closed variety. You can almost hear Bruce Arians purring just thinking about it. It’s not as though there is noise in the numbers, either: the rates were consistent week-to-week, without a single game spike.

On its face, it was ripe for a torching.

Oddly, though, opposing coaches did not cotton on in the opening five weeks — or at least they did not lay traps to take advantage of the tells. The Bears have faced savvy offensive minds, ranging from the league’s best to its good. Sean McVay, Bobby Slowik and Shane Steichen have all had a crack at Chicago’s defense. All of them failed to create a designed explosive against a Gordon blitz. Where were the slip screens, waiting for Gordon to zip upfield while a convoy of blockers raced to the space the corner had vacated? Where were the routes tailored to, in the vernacular of coaches, replace the blitzer? There were plays to be made — and some quarterbacks escaped to create with their legs — but there was nothing customized to attack Gordon or Chicago’s proclivity for second-down, slot pressures.

It can be easy for a coach to get high on their own supply. Despite the clear tendency, it was working. In Gordon, Eberflus has an explosive, slippery, physical player who is outstanding against the run and has enough sauce to disrupt the pass. The designs in those early weeks created free runways, with Gordon notching up a handful of unblocked pressures. If he could actually, you know, finish, we would probably be sizing Gordon up for a golden jacket already. But even though Gordon would often outrun the pressure or get lost in traffic, he was creating a nuisance. He was also laying out a roadmap for when and how an opposing staff could scheme up an explosive play.

And then London rolled around. Eberflus went into the game against the Jags in Week Six with injuries in his secondary, the bedrock of his defensive success. Add to that the five weeks of tendency-based footage and it was screaming out for someone — anyone! — to shred his pressure package.

But Eberflus switched things up. He went to work attacking his own tendencies, leveraging the threat of Gordon to spring free runners at Trevor Lawrence from elsewhere and submarining Jacksonville’s early-down offense. It was a masterclass in self-scouting and game-planning.

Rather than blitzing Gordon on second down, Eberflus changed his approach. He sent his corner on first downs. 

It worked. One of the defining traits of modern defenses is blitzing the nickel to the passing strength to help limit wide-zone runs and attack RPOs; sending the slot/overhang on early downs helps the defense build a five or six-man wall against the run. It is, partly, the foundation of the Ravens-style defense popularized by Mike Macdonald and that has filtered throughout the league, with franchise after franchise scooping up people who have stood near one of Macdonald or the Harbaugh brothers. 

Eberflus channeled his inner Raven against the Jags, to great effect. Gordon ran freely into the backfield to stone-wall first-down runs. When Jacksonville looked to start a series throwing the ball, Gordan came bursting through the line with a free path to Lawrence (seriously, though, can someone please ask Gordon to slow his feet and finish?). 

Things got really interesting on second down. When the Jags found themselves in second-and-long or second-and-medium in the first half (thanks, largely, to Gordon being tagged in as the fifth or sixth man in the wall), a five-alarm fire went up in their huddle. WATCH FOR GORDON! WHERE IS GORDON?

Check out Trevor Lawrence below. Who is he staring at? Who is he ID’ing to make sure Jacksonville’s protection plan is sound? 

You guessed it! It’s Gordon. Based on the situation and his pre-game tape study, Lawrence was right. Everything about the down and distance told him Gordon would be arriving in the backfield to say ‘hello’. And so Lawrence set to work, canning calls to get to a blitz beater or sliding his protection to account for the slot corner.

But it was a bluff. Eberflus had altered his strategy, blitzing Gordon on first downs and then bluffing pressure with his cornerback on second downs.

Gordon is nothing if not a showman. On second downs, he would dance around pre-snap with giddy hyperactivity, selling the everloving bleep out of his role. You best believe I’m coming, Trev. As Lawrence rattled through his pre-snap work, Gordon would slip closer to the line of scrimmage… before backing away. He would set up inside an edge defender… before bailing out. He would take a stroll inside the slot receiver, a signal that he was preparing to shoot downhill… before drifting out into coverage. He would align in off coverage, before darting down to the line, as though he was getting a head start on a blitz… before sinking back into coverage. 

As Lawrence and his protectors kept eyes on Gordon – BAM! – a fifth rusher would arrive from somewhere else, free and untouched to the quarterback.