Broncos Film Room: Finding “greatness” in the defensive coaching candidates

After previewing the offensive coaching candidates, and the schematic elements that they could bring to the Denver Broncos, it’s time to look at the remaining three interviewees, all of which coach on the defensive side.

While the offensive coaches the Broncos have interviewed are both position coaches, the three defensive candidates have all had experience as defensive play callers, with two of them doing so this year.

Here’s what we found.

A class above the rest

Chicago Bears defensive coordinator, Vic Fangio, has been one of the NFL’s best DCs for a while now, but 2018 might be his best season yet. He’s turned a young group of defenders, many of which hadn’t played together for all that long, into the NFL’s best unit by a long shot.

Chicago’s held opponents to a league-best 17.7 points per game, was top-five in red zone scoring percentage, and tops in takeaways.

Fangio coaches an aggressive 3-4, with a ton of different looks both up front and on the back end. He’ll mix it up with lots of fronts and have anywhere from five to three men fronts. Coverages will be even more diverse, as he’s not afraid to play zone, much like in this cover-4 interception below.

This is interesting for Denver because he doesn’t need a shutdown corner with length who can play on an island, smart players with good eye discipline who can play physical and tackle soundly are more of what his ‘D’ requires.

While at the San Francisco 49ers, he was all about using big defensive ends, Justin Smith to clog up two blockers to free up edge rusher Aldon Smith. The other thing those Niners defenses did was cover masterfully with their inside linebackers, Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman, who were the stars of that defense, could cover a ton of ground.

The speed and ability to cover lots of ground for his inside linebackers has remained a key, while his fronts have become faster and a bit more modern.

Fangio has used a lot of four man fronts with outside linebacker Leonard Floyd standing up and Khalil Mack often playing with his hand in the ground. Even in these even fronts, by keeping Floyd on the field, Fangio still had five primary pass rushers and could drop either of his outside rushers in coverage. In fact, not only are his inside backers asked to do a lot in coverage but so are his outside guys, which would suit Von Miller and Bradley Chubb, who are quite versatile, to perfection.

His interior defensive linemen have to be stout but also require some wiggle now, just clogging gaps like Justin Smith used to isn’t enough, a big reason why Akiem Hicks has had a breakout year with him in 2018.

The way in which the Bears played the Los Angeles Rams this year was incredibly impressive, overpowering their offensive line and taking away the middle of the field with exceptional underneath coverage largely due to their linebackers’ speed.

Watch the play below where he drops Mack in coverage in the slot in a base look and is able to get an interception by confusing Jared Goff.

Fangio will stay in base a lot but also drop different guys and stay unpredictable, similar to what the Rams do on offense.

At the same time, he’ll throw in blitzes with five or six rushers, often blitzing a cornerback from the slot or outside and overloading one side. He’ll also overlap edge rushers with Floyd lined up behind Mack, a new modern version of the two Smith’s overlapping in San Francisco.

His defense is very reminiscent of what Wade Phillips used in Denver with a bit more zone-coverage concepts.

With some added speed at inside linebacker and along the three-man front, the Broncos could instantly be a top unit in the NFL with Fangio at the helm.

The next Bill Belichick disciple

New England Patriots linebackers coach, Brian Flores, is an up and comer in the NFL and, despite not officially having the title of defensive coordinator, he’s been the man in charge of calling the Patriots defense this season with strong results.

Despite giving up a good amount of yards, especially in the air, Flores ‘D’ is one of the stingiest scoring defenses in the NFL.

Like any defensive disciple of Belichick’s, Flores understands two key principles; being a chameleon play caller who adapts to his opponent’s strengths and taking away opposing teams’ No. 1 options.

This requires high football IQ, depth, and versatility, especially among the DBs on the roster.

There’s no better example of that adaptability than what Flores and the Patriots did against the Pittsburgh Steelers this year, a top passing offense that loves to spread it out and go with vertical routes. The Patriots played in tons of dime defense from the onset with six DBs on the field regularly.

They stack lots of players on the line but still have plenty of DBs and LBs on the field. This allowed the Patriots to have more speed to cover underneath and take away short throws over the middle. Nothing comes easy against them as they play disciplined, assignment-sound football.

Watch the play below where no one dropping in coverage is a linebacker, only DBs in stout man coverage. That aggressive coverage with unique personnel groupings makes Flores very attractive in today’s NFL.

This year, Flores’ defense played more man outside, a priority in the offseason by adding a high-end cornerback like Stephon Gilmore. Flores doesn’t need to play man or have high-end cornerbacks it just so happens that’s how the Patriots decided to dedicate their resources in 2018.

The Patriots run a lot of sub packages and try to take away big plays from opponents forcing opposing quarterbacks to string together long drives to beat them.

New England’s fronts can be very creative and exotic as and they’ve loved to move around linebacker Dont’a Hightower around, lining him up everywhere. They keep offenses off balance and give very few things to key in on pre-snap.

The Patriots managed to shut down some of the NFL’s best offenses this year but also had some less-than-stellar outings and gave up a lot of yards. It’s worth wondering how much of an upgrade Flores would be over Vance Joseph, who also had to play a good amount of bend-don’t-break defense. Then again, it would be fun to see what Flores could achieve with the Broncos defensive talent.

Old hat

Chuck Pagano hasn’t truly called the plays for a defense since back in 2011 with the Baltimore Ravens, where they were a top-three unit and went all the way to the AFC Championship. He hasn’t had a top-10 defense since 2014, when a ragtag bunch for the Indianapolis Colts again made it to the conference championship—beating the Denver Broncos in the process.

Keying in on what Pagano likes to do isn’t as easy as with Fangio or Flores who’ve called defensive plays this season. However, we did go back to watch some tape from both 2011 and 14 to get a feel.

First off, Pagano is adaptable and will play to his opponent—for example against the Pats in 2011, he often dropped eight in coverage.

Despite being a 3-4 coach, he used lots of four man rushes, playing sound coverage. Unsurprisingly, given his past as a DB coach, his defenses are well schemed on the back end and he needs reliable safeties who can cover lots of ground, playing a decent amount of cover-3.

He likes to blitz a good amount too with his DBs and is very good at manufacturing pressure—it was impressive to see how the 2014 Colts produced 41 sacks despite not having a single player who had more than 6.5 sacks, but 15 defenders had at least a half sack. He’ll stand up two rushers on one side and have the two DL on the opposite side with their hand in the ground, he likes to attack with off balanced fronts and exotic looks.

Like in the clip above, he can be aggressive and is unafraid to play man outside, testing QB’s accuracy downfield. His mentality is “you have to win on my terms” defensively, but he can also apply more of a bend-don’t-break approach.

Pagano also likes to utilize a good amount of nickel and dime coverages, will mix it up and try to confuse QBs.

He’s the perfect coach to pair with an averagely-talented defense because he’s adaptable and can make it work. His approach is also a bit old-school, he needs beef up front and hard-hitting safeties.

The biggest question with the Boulder native is that he hasn’t coached for a while, can he modernize and tweak things?