Pass Coverage or Pass Rush?

[AkronsWitness]

On 6/22/2020 at 5:08 PM, KingOfTheDot said:

Belichick builds up defense back to front while conventional wisdom dictates a pass rush helps the team more.

For me? Would I rather have the Sack Exchange or Revis Island + Cromartie...probably lean more towards Revis and Cromartie only because I like to blitz.

You can scheme pressure on the QB no matter who is on the DL, you can't scheme a DBs ability to stick to a WR.

[Chiefer]

Depends on the QB

of you got Mahomes than you want pass coverage, hes got the wheels to get away from pass rush but he’s young enough to be fooled by coverages. 

Tom Brady you want a heavy rush because he doesn’t have the wheels to get away. Certainly not now. He’s seen so manY coverages that he can manipulate things how he wants.

[minutemancl]

On 6/27/2020 at 3:43 PM, Gmen said:

The NFL has much more quick passes than in the past.  I feel like a good corner can disrupt the passing game regardless, while a good passrusher can be neutralized with the quick passes.

That's the boiled down point a lot of these articles try to make. A great pass defense on the backend is more consistently impactful than a great pass rush. It's a hard point to argue with; I think in today's NFL, Bill has it right in building his defense back to front.

[J-ALL-DAY]

The type of scheme your defense plays a part in this debate but what is often overlooked is the coverage ability of the LBs on your defense. Whenever anyone ever says coverage>pass rush, they usually are only referring to the DBs. But LBs in the quick passing game era and in zone schemes are super important. You are seeing a shift where teams are drafting smaller LBs that run like safeties. 49ers in particular have LBs that have top level coverage abilities and that helps out the pass defense in a big way. 

I co

[HTTRDynasty]

Lost in all of this is PFF's admission that their Pass Rush grades are much more stable year-to-year than their Pass Coverage grades.  There is a high variance in coverage grades over a given player's career, due to the competition he faces, the scheme he plays in, simple luck, etc.  It's a much more reactionary position than pass rush, so its production is extremely dependent on a variety of factors outside of DB skill.

Even the great DBs have bad years in coverage, as Darius Slay had last year, for example.  Gilmore has had his share of bad seasons as well, and if you look at this past DPOY season, the QBs he faced were below average as a whole.  When the QB competition increased towards the end of the season, Gilmore's performance began to tail off.  So when building a team, that also needs to be taken into account.

[AntonChigurh]

Easier to cover the wr for 2 seconds instead of 5, no matter how good of a cb you may be. 

[Darbsk]

I think the boring answer is you need a little of both. If you have a great pass rush but poor secondary then guys will get open before the pass rush can get there, even if you have an excellent set of DBs they simply cant cover for 5 or 6 seconds consistently and if the QB can move around something will get open or the linebackers can get picked on.

The very best teams seem to be the ones without glaring weaknesses, so better to have a good secondary and pass rush than elite at one and poor at the other. Usually the weakest link will get exposed and one elite pass rusher can be schemed against or one elite cover guy can be schemed away from, if a team has a balanced pass rush and good coverage then they have more flexibility to confuse the offense with coverages and blitzes. Its a fascinating chess game 😀

[Billy86]

If I could have one unit be stellar and the other ok, I would take the stellar pass rush though not by a big distance. 

If I had to make a choice of one not being awful, I would go with DBs. Awful DB play across the unit is possibly the single biggest killer to have on your team outside of QB, in my opinion. 

[MSURacerDT55]

I'm sure ill be in the minority on this but I will stand on elite pass rush. You can argue that both of the Giants superbowl wins were attributed to elite pass rush. I know he Colts had Peyton Manning, but the mere presence of Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis caused the Bears to rely on short passes and allowed Kelvin Heyden to get a pick 6 as well as Bob Sanders to get another int for significant yards. Elite pass rush especially not having to blitz is hard to come by, and elite interior pass rush is even harder to come by, with elite interior pass rush, there is pretty much nothing you can do about it or you will be severely limited trying to account for it. 

Also something to think about, one downfall of having elite pass coverage as opposed to an elite pass rush is that its that true they will be able to cover all day, Quarterbacks will also be able to scramble for cheap first downs as well to extend drives which are killer.

Edited July 30, 2020 by MSURacerDT55

[diamondbull424]

Well depends on what Ramsey and Adams end up getting paid when their time comes.

As it stands though I’d much rather pay my top flight CB $17m than to have to pay $27m for my pass rusher. As it stands I could almost furnish my defense with two elite safeties for the price of an elite edge. Money in the defensive backfield seems like it’ll go a lot further.

[DerbyRam]

The irony for me is that: elite pass rush is more likely to cause turnovers as the QBs get panicked into bad decisions, equally elite pass coverage is likely to result in more sacks as they hold the ball for longer. I like turnovers so I would go for the elite pass rush.

[rocky_rams]

If it came down to it, I would def prefer a weaker pass rush than a weaker pass coverage today, that’s for sure 

Edited August 3, 2020 by rocky_rams

[rocky_rams]

On 6/22/2020 at 12:42 PM, HTTRDynasty said:

A lot of you are probably already aware, but there's been on ongoing argument from the analytics community for the past few years - with PFF leading the charge - that Pass Coverage is more important than Pass Rush on both an aggregate team and individual player level.

I wanted to see how many on this site agree with this.  If so, why?  If not, why not?

Here are a few articles on the subject.

https://www.pff.com/news/pro-pff-data-study-coverage-vs-pass-rush

https://www.pff.com/news/pro-pff-data-study-coverage-vs-pass-rush-revisited

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-pff-data-study-coverage-vs-pass-rush-part-three

There’s so much more to it than just pass coverage and pass rush. 

As far as individuals go, I def think that a pass rusher has more of an ability to wreck the game vs a CB. 

For example, let’s look at Watt, Miller, Mack, and Donald’s year’s recently. There’s a reason why a pass rusher makes more money than a CB/DB. 

But if it ever came down to it, I would def prefer a weaker pass rush vs a weaker pass coverage. 

But on the flip side, a dominant pass rush can wreck more games than a dominant pass coverage. 

[Tetsujin]

Is it just me, or is everyone playing man coverage nowadays with Cover 1 & 2?

If I was a D coordinator, I'd run a 3-3-5, with 2 of the LB's being good EDGE players, and play full zone coverage 90% of the time.

The 5 DB's being CB,CB,SS,SS,FS. A symmetric looking defensive formation. The CB's being former S's who play the run well.

The 2 SS's should be fast and great in med. zone coverage and play just a bit behind LB depth most of the time.

That should neutralize the opponent's run game.

Play almost all zone with 4-5 pass rushers most plays and force the opponent to throw on most downs with many many pass attempts per drive. keep everything in front and hope to get a few incompletions and a splash play. It'd require a really good deep zone FS.

Edited August 3, 2020 by Tetsujin

[Danger]

On 6/30/2020 at 10:29 AM, AntonChigurh said:

Easier to cover the wr for 2 seconds instead of 5, no matter how good of a cb you may be. 

A pass defender can cover 1 receiver.

A Rusher can prevent the QB from throwing to any receiver.


The answer is pass rush undoubtedly.