Happy holidays, everyone! As we approach Christmas eve and I didn’t have the time to write a full-fledged article, I thought this was a good time to talk about one critical area of growth for the Jaguars, Patriots, Bears and Panthers, who all won yet again this past weekend and are in the driver’s seats to home playoff games, after being projected to have losing records, based on betting odds. In fact, Carolina is the only one among those that hasn’t secured playoff berth yet.

The purpose of this isn’t to sing the praises of Drake Maye or talk about the Bears defense still leading the league in turnovers forced. Rather, I want to shine light on one piece of the puzzle for each of these teams, which has allowed them to get to this place, but is rarely ever being talked about.

 

Jaguars – Trevor Lawrence operating with (justified) confidence

As I tweeted out on Sunday, this version of the former first overall pick from 2021, is the best we’ve ever seen. In the offseason preceding the 2024 regular season, after Lawrence had signed a five-year, 275-million-dollar contract extension, I released a video on if he was worthy of that level of financial commitment. Along with the structure of the deal potentially being pretty beneficial to how they’d continue to build the team around him, I thought there were a lot of positives for how he played the position and highlighted how getting runs stuffed at the highest rate in the league previously, the elementary nature of their passing concepts and the teaching of their receivers, made his job a lot harder than it needed to be. Liam Coen coming over to Duval County after the success the Buccaneers offense had under him as the coordinator in charge, has been a godsend for Trevor’s career, and they’ve felt significantly more dynamic as a unit in pretty much all areas. Travis Etienne has put together a major bounce-back season, now sitting at just one yard short of the 1000 mark in rushing, and having already reached the end zone 13 times. Over the course of this six-game winning streak they’re currently on, the Jags rank top ten in EPA per play, and Trevor Lawrence not only leads the league in dropback success rate (61.6%) over that stretch, but even coming off a six-touchdown performance, I thought he might’ve just had his best game as a pro, considering the quality of the Broncos defense they were facing.

 

 

The way he‘s seeing the field right now, identifying leverage advantages pre-snap, and how he attacks the tight windows in coverage, is as good as it’s ever been for T-Law. He’s never been a quarterback hesitant of hitting his back foot and ripping throws, but the results have been mixed. Even if you exclude his rookie year under Urban Meyer, when the entire operation felt toxic, up until a month ago, for what PFF labels as “big-time throws” and “turnover-worthy plays”, the ratio was pretty close (72 vs. 62). Over the past four games, he’s gone 11-to-zero in that regard. And it’s not a perfect metric, but it generally does a much better job of contextualizing a QB’s performance than traditional statistics, especially when it comes to risk assessment. The two main differences to how Trevor performed previously are the additions of Jakobi Meyers (traded for and extended already) and Brenton Strange (returning from injury), as well as simply the general level of comfort in Liam Coen’s system. When you go back to the film from early in the season, you saw a bunch of drops and last year’s rookie sensation Brian Thomas Jr. reluctance to extend for passes in traffic, partly because the ball location exposed him to some big hits. Now that you have Jakobi running these back-side digs, Brenton Strange is a big target sitting in between hashes and BTJ can be more of your vertical threat outside the numbers, the distribution of roles just fit a lot better. Meyers’ presence has allowed him to truly attack the middle of the field with confidence, as he has secured six of nine contested targets, while Parker Washington has now had a couple of big performances when called upon, finishing 60% of those opportunities himself. Coen has done an excellent job of creating cleaner pictures for his quarterback with excellent route spacing and reducing the total of non-play-action dropbacks that ask him to exhaust progressions and potentially make bad decisions late in the play-action. They throw plenty of screens and move the launch point on boot action, with how comfortable Lawrence is on the run, regularly having a sixth lineman on the field to force defenses into base personnel and help sell the run. Paired with his individual growth above the shoulders, cleaning up his throwing mechanics and marrying his feet to the timing of the pattern has led to much more consistent accuracy, after that had felt more scattershot at times in his career. He doesn’t seem nearly as frantic as he did last season for example, either hitching up or sliding sideways in controlled fashion. Plus, his internal clock is more in line with the flow of the play and how they pocket is being affected, understanding when to take off or he has chances to find his targets on secondary efforts.

 

 

 

Patriots – Tackling excellence

Once again, anyone who’s read or watched my content this year is – and even when I both outlined Drake Maye as a breakout candidate for 2025 as well as highlight him as a steal in fantasy drafts – knows how impressed I am with the second-year quarterback and how the return of offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to New England has jump-started his development. You can make a strong case for him to be the league’s MVP, considering the supporting cast he’s elevated to being top-three in both EPA and success rate on dropbacks. A bunch of these role players stepping up with increased opportunities, has been an essential piece to that as well. With that in mind, I believed there’s one other area they’ve been tremendous at. It’s not their defensive prowess in the grand scheme of things, as they rank 21^st in success rate allowed (45.7%), and they’ve really struggled to keep opponents out of the end zone once they’ve moved inside their 20, as they’ve surrendered an NFL-high 74.3% of red area trips to end in touchdowns. However, they’re just outside the top ten in EPA per play (-0.013). Part of that is thanks to their situational awareness and how their coaching staff has them prepared, limited opponents to a 38.6% conversion rate combined on third and fourth down, but most importantly their proficiency at tackling. According to pro-football-reference.com, no other team has missed fewer tackles (64) or given up less plays of 40+ yards (three) as a result. With Drake and company being among the explosive aerial attacks, that’s a strong for success, which has manifested itself in a 12-3 record so far.

 

 

The Pats have certainly had their struggles defensively when it comes to applying pressure (26.2% – fifth-lowest in the league) and now having dropped to 24^th in rushing success rate (43.2%), following their two worst outings in that regard since coming off their bye week. Their two biggest free agency additions in Milton Williams and Robert Spillane right up the spine of that unit has been huge, although they should both thankfully be back in the lineup now. What they’ve been able to count on, even with backups filling in, is their ability to bring ball-carriers to the ground, and do so with in violent fashion. Their week 11 Thursday Night victory over the Jets stands out to me, considering how they enforced their will on their division rivals by laying the hammer on those guys every time they tried to spring a run out the edge or extended for a pass in front of them, which they had a chance to drive up on. Even with how protective the NFL has become with players approaching the sideline, if they don’t take that early exit, there’s this old school mindset of punishing them for trying to pick up additional yardage. Having said that, they typically don’t concede reliability for the opportunity to put the hurt on teams wearing the other color of jersey. The teachings of Mike Vrabel, DC Terrell Williams and the guy who’s taken over for him in the interim (Zak Kuhr), due to medical reasons, have really beard fruits, as everyone on the field is playing to their leverage and just makes sure to secure the stop first while staying on their feet, for the rest of the cavalry to arrive and be able to attack the ball. Among their players in the back-seven, who are the ones to typically find themselves in open-field situations and can square up the ball-carrier, only one of ten with 100+ defensive snaps has missed at least 12% of his attempted tackles, according to PFF. Nobody embodies that better than their top corner Christian Gonzalez, who finds himself matched up against the opposing team’s number one receiver regularly, but has also finished 51 solo tackles and not whiffed on a single attempt up to this point.

 

 

 

Bears – Their physical, multi-layered run game

This is something I broke down in detail in a video released last week.

 

 

Chicago is now 11-4, having just avenged their loss to the Packers in dramatic fashion, and *the* biggest driver for their success has been the run game Ben Johnson has installed since coming in this past offseason. All the little details in how they present those plays, how they affect the eyes of defenders, and then the hard-nosed running style of their ball-carriers, has allowed them to climb to second behind only the Rams in rushing success rate (46.8%).

 

 

 

Panthers – Creating confusion with post-snap coverage rotations

It’s been quite an odd rollercoaster-style season for the Panthers. Following an 0-2 start, they went on to win four of their next five, and now these past eight weeks have alternated wins and losses. Their resume includes wins over perceived Super Bowl contenders like the Packers and Rams, but they also got swept by the Saints and got stomped 40-9 by the Bills at some point. I’d say the one steady presence for them has been the run game, despite various injuries along the O-line and having to re-calibrate their running back usage. Rookie Tetairoa McMillan stepping up as the go-to target for Bryce Young, who has stood strong inside the pocket and has really been able to manipulate that space for himself on extended plays, has been huge as well. However, something I didn’t foresee, that has allowed them to actually win these tight affairs, is the defense coming up with timely plays. As you look through their key victories, they’ve typically been able to force their ball-control approach onto opponents, but then they also were able to fool the other quarterback once or twice per game, and come up with a monster takeaway or two. While Ejiro Evero’s group isn’t tapping into a variety of complex ideas, they rarely present a static shell and make opponents execute while presenting the answer.

 

 

Coming into this past week, Carolina ranked in the bottom-ten in overall blitz rate (25.6%) and were also just outside the top-20 in stunt rate (14.9%). You can say that sort of coincides with the lowest pressure rate in the league as a unit (21.4%), but I’d say that they simply don’t have the horses to affect opposing quarterbacks with their defensive front on a consistent basis. And yet, they’re now somehow up to 15^th in total success rate allowed (44.3%). Part of that has been Derrick Brown and the beef they have on the defensive interior, while having that cover-three structure behind it, to not allow opponents to stay ahead of the chains with their run game. Yet, when they’ve gotten to more obvious passing downs, for as much zone coverage as they run, they’ve rarely just stuck with the pre-snap picture and allowed quarterbacks to pick them apart. According to Fantasy Points Data, Carolina is right at the tops of the NFL with a disguise rate of around 45%. And it’s not necessarily like they draw up some kind of exotic Steve Spagnuolo-esque coverage rotation, where three defenders completely shift their landmarks once the play has started. However, as we’ve moved to more of a pure progression world for these passers around the league, where they don’t necessarily just key the safeties as they take the snap and if one buzzes down, that offers a solution for where to go with the ball, or at least allows them to cut off one half of the field, simply having defenders in spots where they’re not anticipated, often ends up being more effective than trying to throw the kitchen sink at guys, since they’re not even really trying to process *all* the information, but rather just try to attack space. Plus, of course then you have a hyper-aware and smart player like Jaycee Horn, who never seems to get caught covering grass, but rather is actively looking for work and had a pair of incredible picks against the 49ers a few weeks ago. Only five defenses have recorded more than interceptions than the Panthers (13) and those extra possessions, with how they want to operate offensively, have often put them in the driver’s seat.