Commanders' Defensive Tactics vs. Buccaneers' Offense

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers' offensive coordinator has an idea of how the Washington Commanders will defend his squad.

Aug 10, 2024; East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA; Washington Commanders cornerback Emmanuel Forbes (13) celebrates after breaking up a pass to New York Jets wide receiver Mike Williams (18) during the first quarter at MetLife Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Lucas Boland-Imagn Images / Lucas Boland-Imagn Images

The game of football is pretty straightforward on the surface. If the Washington Commanders score more points than their opponents - the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this weekend - then they win. Easy.

After that though, it gets a little more difficult as teams like the Commanders and Buccaneers do everything they can to stunt, twist, cross, post, bomb, and screen - among other things - their way to an advantage over one another.

Washington has an apparent advantage over teams this season, at least early on, as opponents like the Buccaneers don't have a lot of tape to study this coaching staff with this roster. However, there are personality traits for every coach that tends to show itself on the tape no matter where they are or what roster they're coaching.

For the offensive coordinator in Tampa Bay, those personality traits that show up in schemes are what he's leaning on as he prepares to face what's expected to be one of the heavier man coverage defenses in Washington.

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Aug 10, 2024; East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA; Washington Commanders cornerback Emmanuel Forbes (13) celebrates after breaking up a pass to New York Jets wide receiver Mike Williams (18) during the first quarter at MetLife Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Lucas Boland-Imagn Images / Lucas Boland-Imagn Images

“Just having different priority calls,” Coen said when asked about scheming to face more man coverage compared to zone. “Your concepts and plays that you’ll have in will be maybe a little bit heavily built towards their top lead-dog coverages, while also having answers within those plays for their supplementary coverages. If they’re a heavy man[-to-man] team, we might have a couple man [-to-man] things, but we might have a couple zone answers and vice versa. We always say, ‘Expect man[-to-man], adjust to zone.’ That’s kind of our thought process with anything in the NFL. Even zone coverage, often times, is played like match coverage, like man[-to-man] coverage, especially when it’s a fire zone. That’s how they play it.”

In its most basic sense a ‘fire zone’ is a blitz by the defensive front with zone coverage played behind it. However, the zone coverage behind it is usually a match zone which then looks a lot like man if read and executed properly. The phrase ‘every zone become man coverage’, comes to mind. 

Of course, Quinn and Whitt know what it's like to lean on those personality traits, so the awareness goes both ways.

And even though there will be a certain amount of Whitt and Quinn's signature aggression, that doesn't mean it's going to come in the same form, because this isn't the same team they had in Dallas.

"This is the players' game," Whitt said this offseason about shaping his defense. "And (you're) going to hear me talking about 'feed the studs', and...we are designing our defense around the players that we have. I think if you're just limited to saying, 'Hey, we run one scheme and that's all we have', no, you have the players that you have and you make sure that you are putting them in the best position to play high-level football."

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Stick with CommanderGameday and the Locked On Commanders podcast for more FREE coverage of the Washington Commanders throughout the 2024 season.

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