DJ Eliot, Stand-Up Ends, and Creepy Creepers

NC State's new defensive coordinator brings some very different ideas than the Tony Gibson scheme we've watched since 2019. One is not better than the other, just different, and the biggest difference is in Eliot's hybridizing of concepts and positions.

In Tony Gibson’s defense, there was not a lot of positional versatility. You can’t do what Gibson wanted to do with a lot of tweener types on the field. It was a tite front heavy team, which meant two 4i defensive ends that maintained interior run fits and served as double-team eaters. Quality play from Gibson’s line forced the ball to the edge and kept his smaller, faster linebackers clean to flow to the ball. They were intentionally huge on the line and small at linebacker. There was nobody on the team that could play both positions.

One of the biggest differences with Eliot is in these defensive ends. Eliot still uses the tite front, but you’ll see a lot more over, under, and even fronts, all of which use the five technique that Gibson did not. These five-technique ends are often in linebacker bodies and they play from a stand up position. The versatility that they provide is key. It opens up wrinkles that create cloudier pictures for the offense through the use of creepers and sim pressures. You can comfortably drop your ends into coverage, which you will see a lot. 

Vocab Break! Creeper: Not a blitz, but a pressure with a second or third level defender playing from a base position while a first-level defender drops into coverage.

Let’s look at an example of how these ends are used.

Note the smaller bodies as stand-up ends on the line. Temple is in an even front with the middle of the field closed, and the Owls are going to play cover 3 but with a creeper. First, if you were to play basic cover 3 with no games from this look, it would look something like this. 

Bringing in the creeper element, you’ll see Temple drop the stand-up end into the hook zone, blitz the will linebacker, and slant the other three players on the line. You end up with pressure through the same gaps post-snap as you had pre-snap, but with the rushers coming from different places. 

Duke is running mirrored spin concepts here, and the windows are there. The Y will have the flat defender outleveraged. That flat defender is the read defender with the spin concept, and the quarterback could hit the speed out in rhythm, and if he could stand in the pocket, he might be able to hit the dig route at the second level as the flat defender chases the speed out. Instead, he feels the heat and leaves the pocket early. He gains a few yards, but left a first down completion on the field.

Here's the full play.

Duke looks to be in a half-slide protection, meaning the right guard and the right tackle are each responsible for the first and second player right of the center, respectively. This is called the man-to-man (or BOB) side, and the creeper throws a wrench in the protection by overloading the man-to-man side of it. The back does a good job identifying it, but the pressure gets the quarterback to bail on the pocket. The back likely releases if the front four come without that second level defender, and the QB has time to read off the movement of the flat defender. The little wrinkle blew up the process. This is how scheme can impact the game.

The stacked alignment should be a giveaway that that backer was going to blitz, but the protection didn’t change and it was enough to discombobulate the quarterback’s process here.

These are neat little wrinkles that this defensive scheme is built for. Using tweener players that fit into multiple positions and doing various things with them can create more uncertainty for the quarterback and protection. This is what players like Tra Thomas, Sterling Dixon, Sabastian Harsh, and Kenny Soares were recruited to do. It's the role that they needed the portal to fill. Here is one more example from the same game.

An almost identical play, but with the creeper coming from the other side and Temple playing cover 1 behind it. Note the end that bails picks up the tight end in man coverage.

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