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Film Breakdown: The Adjustments That Allowed Mike White to Destroy the Bengals' Defense

Cincinnati couldn't stop the young quarterback in Sunday's loss.

Mike Santagata

This past Sunday was a brutal and frustrating loss for the Cincinnati Bengals. They were coming off of one of the biggest wins in recent history after dismantling the Baltimore Ravens in M&T Bank Stadium. 

This game does serve as a reminder that any team can win. It does not matter who the favorite is on paper, when the game is played there is always a chance that the underdog can overcome adversity. So how did Mike White and the New York Jets’ offense dismantle the Cincinnati Bengals’ defense?

Making Life Easy

In short, the Bengals made life easy on White, especially in the second half. The statistics show this along with the film. All he had to do was hit short, easy passes throughout the game. 

His average depth of target was 3.7 yards. Ben Roethlisberger also threw a lot of short passes earlier this season against the Bengals. His average depth of target was still 5.4 yards. One difference is that the Bengals missed 15 tackles against the Jets. They still missed 11 tackles against the Steelers but you can see the difference in the yards per attempt between the two quarterbacks. 

White was at nine yards per attempt in this game, despite throwing the ball less than half of that distance through the air. Roethlisberger’s yards per attempt were just about equal with his average depth of target. To me, this shows that the Bengals were missing tackles and allowing easy yards to the Jets while they were able to make stops against the Steelers. Both of those teams had similar game plans to attack underneath, but there was only one game where this really worked.

While the yards after catch is one area that was an issue there were multiple problems in this game. Not only did they make life easy on White by allowing dump-offs to go for big gains due to missed tackles, but their defense was also easy to read.

Cover 3 buzz is a variation on Cover 3 that has the strong safety come down to play the hook zone. The WILL linebacker will play the curl flat zone instead. Typically defenses will run this coverage and hold the safety deep until after the snap to rotate. This can cause the quarterback to hold the ball a tick longer as he is confused by the coverage. Instead of doing that, the Bengals show 3 buzz pre-snap. This is just making life easy on the offense. Once the safety rotates down, the quarterback knows he has a mismatch of a linebacker on his slot receiver. All the slot does is attack the curl-flat defender’s outside before sitting to his inside. By attacking the outside, he is widening him and creating a larger hole between the curl-flat and the hook zone. Just an easy pitch and catch for the offense.

Here the Bengals show Cover 1 pre-snap and ultimately play Cover 1. To attack Cover 1 here the Jets run a classic west coast offense staple: double slants with a flat. What makes this play difficult to defend in Cover 1 is that the linebacker on the back has to weave through traffic to keep up with him. Wilson does a terrible job of getting through traffic on this play and instead lets a 1-yard pass turn into a big gain. The outside slant is also open because it works against the cornerback’s leverage so White had multiple options open on the play.

There is somewhat of a disguise on this play, but with the safety walked all the way out to the numbers, it is not a very good one. The Bengals have their underneath defenders on the line of scrimmage and no one over the slot to the boundary. Another easy play for White and the Jets to just toss the ball out to the receiver who is open pre-snap. The linebacker cannot get out there in time and the safety to that side is way too deep to make a play on this ball.

All of these plays are different coverages. This one is a 2-man variation and the Bengals show that they are playing it pre-snap. The Jets attack the Bengals' 2-man by isolating the back against the linebacker. The pass is about a yard downfield and an easy throw for the quarterback. It’s also an easy read for him knowing that he is getting 2-man on this play. 

The running back makes a nice play to gain separation against the linebacker by getting on his toes before breaking out. Wilson does a poor job of recovering here and it leads to a big gain. Not just zone coverage was being beaten for easy gains, but the thing about these plays is that there are no disguises, no post-snap movement, and it’s all on 4-man rushes.

Very clear and obvious man blitz look from the Bengals on this play. They line up with no one deep, the defensive backs on a line, and a pressure front. This is actually a pretty difficult throw from White, but it’s an easy read. The slot receiver to the boundary presses vertical and then out. This attacks the corner back’s leverage who is protecting the inside. 

This throw is actually quite difficult. White is throwing from his back foot in the perfect spot towards the sideline. There is a debate about whether the receiver actually caught the pass on Twitter, but it was ruled a touchdown after a brief review.

The Bengals call Cover 3 sky on this play which is similar to Cover 3 buzz which was the first play. Just flips the roles of the strong safety and linebacker. The Jets widen the curl-flat defender with the flat route to create a hole in the zone. The receiver pushes vertical and outside to open up the area between the deep corner and the hook zone. Once he sits, White puts the ball right on him for an easy gain. This throw travels a little bit of distance but is a pretty simple throw for an NFL quarterback. It’s also a very easy read because the offensive coordinator dialed up another play to beat the coverage that the Bengals showed pre-snap.

Here is the last play in the collage of easy throws. The Bengals line up in a clear quarters look and then play quarters post-snap. By working the interior receiver outside first, the Jets have expanded the flat defenders. This isolates the linebacker one on one with the running back. Again the running back wins that battle. All he does is release through the line and then break outside. The linebacker is playing off here, but still cannot react and recover on the route. He also misses a tackle letting the back gain even more cheap yardage. Yet again this is another throw that travels about one yard beyond the line of scrimmage but is a gain of 10+ and a first down.

Fire Zones and Creepers

If the Bengals just lined up and played without any type of plan to confuse White during the game I would kind of understand what happened. They just underestimated the quarterback and waited for him to make a mistake. The weird thing about this game is that the Bengals included plenty of plays early in the game that confused White. This led to the Jets only scoring just seven points before the 2-minute drive at the end of the half. They cut out a lot of these plays after halftime and started to play much more conservative. Let’s look at some of these concepts in a little bit closer detail and how they worked.

Like much of the vocabulary in football, the definition of a creeper changes depending on who you are talking with. For this article, we will describe a creeper with a few rules. It has to be a 4-man pass rush, someone has to drop off from the defensive line into coverage, someone has to blitz from depth (linebacker, safety, or corner), and the defender is not bluffing a blitz prior to coming. This is all somewhat confusing in print but should become more clear with examples.

Related: Bengals Drop in Power Rankings Following Loss to Jets

This is a Cover 2 creeper and you can see it passes all of the rules. Hendrickson drops off the end into a zone, Hilton blitzes off of the edge without a bluff, and it’s a Cover 2 zone. In addition to the pressure being confusing, the Bengals look to be in a one high coverage pre-snap. Right before the snap, Chidobe Awuzie pushes back towards the deep half to the boundary, and Jessie Bates shifts to take the deep half to the field. This creates a ton of confusion for the quarterback. He cannot simply hit the receiver he thought that he had pre-snap. Instead, he has to hold the ball and check it down for a short gain.

This is the same exact creeper and it is another successful play for the defense. Even if this pass is not batted down, the defense is right there to make a play on the ball or receiver. White tries to throw this pass as if he is getting a true blitz rather than a creeper. He is throwing the ball to where the blitz is coming from. The issue for him is that on these calls, the defense has not removed a player from their coverage shell, so it still plays out like Cover 2 at the end of the day. A quick throw underneath is not something that should beat Cover 2 with all of the defenders squatting in that area.

This creeper looks to be a 3 deep zone rather than a 2 deep zone. It still works as a successful play for the defense. By this point, Awuzie has seen White try to throw the ball quickly when he sees second-level blitzers. Due to this, he squats from his deep third and waits for the throw. It almost results in an interception, but he drops the ball. 

The Bengals are in a 3-down front for this play so they actually bring two second-level defenders on the creeper while dropping one of the ends. The confusion caused by this play resulted in Mike White hanging a ball up for grabs off of his back foot. He is throwing this as if he is getting a 0 blitz, but instead, the defenders are watching him and waiting for the throw.

These were all of the creepers against passes in the game. Just 3 plays, but on those 3 plays, there were 2 yards given up. To go with those yards given up there were also 2 balls tipped by the defense. The defense got their hands on the ball more often than the offense did.

A similar concept to the creeper is the fire zone. For this article, a fire zone will be described as a 5-man zone pressure which is a much more general description than the one given for creepers. The main difference is that on fire zones, there will be a defender pulled out of the coverage shell to blitz. This leaves six defenders in coverage compared to the seven coverage defenders on creepers.

This is a 4-deep, 2-under fire zone. All five of the defenders on the line of scrimmage come as pass rushers leaving only six defenders in coverage. The play ends in an interception because White again has his process sped up by the pass rush. Once he feels the pass rushers coming, he tries to throw the ball to the running back as his check down. The issue is that the running back is not yet ready for the ball, so it doinks him in the helmet instead. Germaine Pratt makes an excellent play on the ball to get the interception and a turnover caused by the zone pressure.

This fire zone is a little bit different as it is 3 deep and 3 underneath. White has to make an excellent throw to beat this coverage. While rolling to his right, he throws the ball to his left for a gain of six. This is not an overly successful play for the defense, but they really made the offense work for the yards that they gained rather than just allowing cheap completions and easy reads.

Here is the last fire zone that the Bengals implemented and it’s another different coverage behind it. This fire zone has two deep defenders and four underneath. This is another successful play for the defense as it ends in an incomplete pass. White’s process is again sped up on the play and it hurts him. Again, even if this pass is completed, it would end up as a short gain provided that the defender makes the tackle.

There were six zone pressures (combining creepers and fire zones) brought against the Jets when they dropped back. By my count, the final line was two of six for eight yards and an interception. That line is much different than the one that White ended up with for the day. Like most young quarterbacks, the game plan should have included more confusion against him. When he was confused or sped up, he played poorly. When the defense just sat back and waited for him to make a mistake, he played well. The shocking thing is that the Bengals cut back on the zone pressures after halftime and instead opted to play in spot drop zones without any disguise. There could be a reason for this that I have not considered, but it seemed like a mistake.

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Mike Santagata
MIKE SANTAGATA

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