BoredMarine13
Ravens Ring of Honor
Yep , definitely need some change in the way we do things. Just not convinced elected officials are capable of working together or applying common sense to find the middle ground
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The Random Thought Thread
- Thread starter The Greek
- Start date
truly glad Lamar chose the right path.
Ellicottraven
Ravens Ring of Honor
I'm sure he is entertaining folks in heaven already...
airconteka
MVP
They should have made Hamsterdam an actual thing. What a shitty day, Goose played before I was a Ravens fan, I'm going to have some beers and watch some old highlights.
JoeyFlex5
Hall of Famer
Agreed.
cobrajet
Hall of Famer
It isn’t an ideal situation but it would probably bring violent crime down. That may be a good starting point. That concept was around before “The Wire.”
RL52TheGreatest
Ravens Ring of Honor
RIP Goose
He was an integral part of our DL on the greatest defense of all-time and was also quite the character off the field. Definitely had a few beers last night in both Jaylon and Goose's honor.
He was an integral part of our DL on the greatest defense of all-time and was also quite the character off the field. Definitely had a few beers last night in both Jaylon and Goose's honor.
cobrajet
Hall of Famer
Jaylon was one of the players I was so excited about this year. When they announced how good he looked coming in this season, I was thinking, “This may be his year!” I am praying for his family, this has to hit them so hard. And Goose, he was larger than life, I miss him already.
For everyone that doesn't have the Athletic. Really nice read...
By Ted Nguyen
Jun 22, 2022
9
Under defensive coordinator Don Martindale, the Ravens finished in the top 10 of defensive DVOA, Football Outsiders’ efficiency metric, in three out of four seasons (two in the top five). After one down season marred by injuries, head coach John Harbaugh and the Ravens made a somewhat surprising decision by replacing Martindale with his former assistant, Mike Macdonald.
Macdonald, 34, is the youngest defensive coordinator in the NFL. Despite his youth, he was already with the Ravens for seven seasons (one as an intern and six as an assistant coach) before leaving to become the defensive coordinator for head coach Jim Harbaugh at Michigan for a season.
He impressed at Michigan, turning the Wolverines defense into a top unit and helping to get them into the College Football Playoffs in his lone season. Now, Macdonald will be tasked with getting the Ravens, a franchise that has been an example for consistently strong defensive play, back on track. Though Macdonald had a role in developing the system that Martindale deployed with the Ravens in 2018, the Ravens will be transitioning philosophically and schematically.
Martindale’s signature was heavy, aggressive blitzing with man coverage. At Michigan, Macdonald transitioned the defense from former defensive coordinator Don Brown’s man-heavy system to what was essentially a simpler version of Nick Saban’s and Kirby Smart’s man-match-heavy system, and as the season progressed, he added his own twists to it. However, he isn’t married to a particular scheme, and he has collaborated with the Ravens’ staff to develop a system that fits the strength of the players on the roster. Macdonald’s flexibility is likely one of the reasons he was chosen to replace Martindale, who stubbornly stuck with his aggressive scheme despite not having enough healthy corners to cover man-to-man at a high rate last season.
The Ravens will move away from playing so much man-to-man and will be more varied in their defensive approach. They’ll play more split safety (two-deep safety) coverages like quarters, Cover 6 (quarter, quarter, half) and Tampa 2 (two-deep zone). At Michigan, Macdonald didn’t blitz as much as Martindale, but there were games when he cranked up his aggression, like against Ohio State. But he used more simulated pressures, which are pressures in which the defense rushes four but with the fourth rusher coming from a second- or third-level defender instead of a defensive lineman, rather than bringing five or six at a high rate.
Although the Ravens will look different schematically, Macdonald has quickly endeared himself to the staff and players with his approach to building and teaching his defense. When he was hired, they met as a staff and talked over every coverage — how they taught it in the past and the techniques they used. Coaches brought up problems with how they installed certain coverages or techniques and went over the strengths and weaknesses of different techniques. For example, how did they want their corners and safeties to handle under routes in match coverages? What sort of footwork did they want their quarter safeties playing with? They reviewed everything they would teach so they could either reinforce why they were keeping it or decide they were going to teach it differently.
“He’s doing a unique job. … I’ve kind of never experienced it,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said at minicamp. “He’s really having everybody understand the whole philosophy of mainly just the group of coverages, as opposed to: ‘You got this call. How do you play this call?’ He’s kind of saying, grouping these calls all together, like, ‘What is the whole idea of this call?’ So I think he’s done a really good job of kind of really helping us all be smarter, to where I know what the D-line’s doing. I also know what the linebacker is doing. I also know what the safety’s doing — because, ‘The reason why I call this defense is because of this.’”
Often when learning a defense, defenders learn their jobs within certain calls but don’t get the bigger picture of why it’s called. They are simply expected to understand their individual responsibilities within certain calls and execute them. Focusing on just your job might make it easier to memorize, especially when you have an expansive list of calls you need to know, but Macdonald is teaching his players the goal of each call and why he might call it situationally.
“(Macdonald) did a good job of explaining we are getting into this (call) because of this reason,” a Ravens staff member told me. “For example, he’ll explain that we are getting into split safety because we want to stop a No. 1 receiver a lot of times. And then what are the stresses of split safety? The post routes over the top, like the grab post type of stuff. And then he’ll get into the top six stressors that you’ll see more of when you’re in split safety. We had a talk over that — the strengths and weaknesses of every coverage.”
By having players understand the why of each call, he is also giving them ownership of the defense and the tools to solve problems on the field. For example, if players see a slower receiver lined up in the slot and a stud outside, there are certain calls they could make on the field that would allocate their resources in the right places. Stephen Adegoke — now a defensive quality control coach for the 49ers — was on Michigan’s staff and saw Macdonald’s teaching methods firsthand.
“On third down, if you never thought about calls as a player, you might have just said, ‘Hey, we’re running nickel hot blah blah blah,’ and you just run the call because that’s how you learned to run the play,” Adegoke said. “But if now you understand the situation, like, ‘Hey, this is a third-and-7-to-10 man-coverage pressure,’ you already know once we call this, ‘I’m playing inside leverage, and I gotta protect the sticks as a safety.’
“Let’s say I’m a D-lineman now and I know this call is a defensive front or stunt that we use against running quarterbacks in the red zone. Now we know we can’t get past the level of quarterback and we have to chop up the front to mix up the rush lanes. So understanding why you’re doing something makes it so much simpler.”
Mike Macdonald (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
As far as the grouping of coverages that Humphrey talks about, he means Macdonald separates types of coverages using nomenclature.
“So, let’s say all of your split-safety coverages are named after shoe companies, and then let’s say your two-man is named after music artists and your three-deep is named after phone companies,” Adegoke said. “So anytime you hear ‘T-Mobile,’ ‘Verizon,’ ‘AT&T’ or ‘Sprint,’ I already know it’s a three-deep family, so now I know that we got buzzers, we got hookers, and this is what’s going on. Because other people just, like, give these really abstract names and it just doesn’t mean anything.”
Although that might sound arbitrary, when 80,000 people are yelling and it’s freezing and raining, hearing a name and instantly being able to recall the coverage and having an idea of what everyone else is doing because you know what family the coverage is in is important. One of the reasons understanding everyone else’s job is beneficial is because against certain motions or shifts, a defender might have to exchange responsibilities with another player. All this happens in seconds, so any learning device a coach can use to teach it is useful.
“Just, like, the flexibility that I’ve been seeing with what he’s been doing,” Humphrey said. “I think we want to have it to where any DB could play any position at any time. I think that’s kind of the vision that I’ve seen behind it. I think I’m getting reps inside, getting some reps to safety, getting some reps here. (Chuck) Clark come down play corner.”
The addition of safety Kyle Hamilton in the first round — to add to an already deep and versatile safety group with Clark, Marcus Williams and Tony Jefferson — will give the defense the ability to fluidly exchange responsibilities and disguise its intentions more. Although the Ravens might not be as aggressive with bringing pressure, they’ll put more emphasis on being intentional with keeping offenses uncomfortable with what they show pre-snap.
“Aggressiveness actually means it’s about keeping the offense off balance and where they’re not really believing what they’re seeing on a down-to-down basis,” Macdonald said at his introductory news conference. “So a lot of times that will come with a schemed-up pressure. … You know that’ll happen. A lot of times it could be a fake pressure — it could look like this coverage and play like another one — you know you’re changing the stress points of the zones and things like that. And just trying to create doubt at all times, you know? You want to be the one pushing the envelope rather than the other way around, so that aggressiveness, that was something that’s a principle of the Ravens organization.”
It’s hard to argue with how successful the Ravens have been with Martindale’s live-and-die-by-the-blitz approach. They’ll still bring pressure, but it will likely be with more “safe pressures” like zone blitzes and simulated pressures. They’ll rely on being more sound on the back end and focus on disguising and creating confusion for quarterbacks, similar to Vic Fangio’s approach. Perhaps they feel this is the best way to stop the AFC’s top quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. Because blitzing those guys is asking to be punished. Moving on from Martindale to someone as inexperienced as Macdonald is a gamble unto itself, but the Ravens have never been afraid of thinking outside the box.
(Top photo of Marlon Humphrey: Tommy Gilligan / USA Today
Ravens DC Mike Macdonald transitioning defensive philosophy with varied, flexible approach
By Ted Nguyen
Jun 22, 2022
9
Under defensive coordinator Don Martindale, the Ravens finished in the top 10 of defensive DVOA, Football Outsiders’ efficiency metric, in three out of four seasons (two in the top five). After one down season marred by injuries, head coach John Harbaugh and the Ravens made a somewhat surprising decision by replacing Martindale with his former assistant, Mike Macdonald.
Macdonald, 34, is the youngest defensive coordinator in the NFL. Despite his youth, he was already with the Ravens for seven seasons (one as an intern and six as an assistant coach) before leaving to become the defensive coordinator for head coach Jim Harbaugh at Michigan for a season.
He impressed at Michigan, turning the Wolverines defense into a top unit and helping to get them into the College Football Playoffs in his lone season. Now, Macdonald will be tasked with getting the Ravens, a franchise that has been an example for consistently strong defensive play, back on track. Though Macdonald had a role in developing the system that Martindale deployed with the Ravens in 2018, the Ravens will be transitioning philosophically and schematically.
Martindale’s signature was heavy, aggressive blitzing with man coverage. At Michigan, Macdonald transitioned the defense from former defensive coordinator Don Brown’s man-heavy system to what was essentially a simpler version of Nick Saban’s and Kirby Smart’s man-match-heavy system, and as the season progressed, he added his own twists to it. However, he isn’t married to a particular scheme, and he has collaborated with the Ravens’ staff to develop a system that fits the strength of the players on the roster. Macdonald’s flexibility is likely one of the reasons he was chosen to replace Martindale, who stubbornly stuck with his aggressive scheme despite not having enough healthy corners to cover man-to-man at a high rate last season.
The Ravens will move away from playing so much man-to-man and will be more varied in their defensive approach. They’ll play more split safety (two-deep safety) coverages like quarters, Cover 6 (quarter, quarter, half) and Tampa 2 (two-deep zone). At Michigan, Macdonald didn’t blitz as much as Martindale, but there were games when he cranked up his aggression, like against Ohio State. But he used more simulated pressures, which are pressures in which the defense rushes four but with the fourth rusher coming from a second- or third-level defender instead of a defensive lineman, rather than bringing five or six at a high rate.
Although the Ravens will look different schematically, Macdonald has quickly endeared himself to the staff and players with his approach to building and teaching his defense. When he was hired, they met as a staff and talked over every coverage — how they taught it in the past and the techniques they used. Coaches brought up problems with how they installed certain coverages or techniques and went over the strengths and weaknesses of different techniques. For example, how did they want their corners and safeties to handle under routes in match coverages? What sort of footwork did they want their quarter safeties playing with? They reviewed everything they would teach so they could either reinforce why they were keeping it or decide they were going to teach it differently.
“He’s doing a unique job. … I’ve kind of never experienced it,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said at minicamp. “He’s really having everybody understand the whole philosophy of mainly just the group of coverages, as opposed to: ‘You got this call. How do you play this call?’ He’s kind of saying, grouping these calls all together, like, ‘What is the whole idea of this call?’ So I think he’s done a really good job of kind of really helping us all be smarter, to where I know what the D-line’s doing. I also know what the linebacker is doing. I also know what the safety’s doing — because, ‘The reason why I call this defense is because of this.’”
Often when learning a defense, defenders learn their jobs within certain calls but don’t get the bigger picture of why it’s called. They are simply expected to understand their individual responsibilities within certain calls and execute them. Focusing on just your job might make it easier to memorize, especially when you have an expansive list of calls you need to know, but Macdonald is teaching his players the goal of each call and why he might call it situationally.
“(Macdonald) did a good job of explaining we are getting into this (call) because of this reason,” a Ravens staff member told me. “For example, he’ll explain that we are getting into split safety because we want to stop a No. 1 receiver a lot of times. And then what are the stresses of split safety? The post routes over the top, like the grab post type of stuff. And then he’ll get into the top six stressors that you’ll see more of when you’re in split safety. We had a talk over that — the strengths and weaknesses of every coverage.”
By having players understand the why of each call, he is also giving them ownership of the defense and the tools to solve problems on the field. For example, if players see a slower receiver lined up in the slot and a stud outside, there are certain calls they could make on the field that would allocate their resources in the right places. Stephen Adegoke — now a defensive quality control coach for the 49ers — was on Michigan’s staff and saw Macdonald’s teaching methods firsthand.
“On third down, if you never thought about calls as a player, you might have just said, ‘Hey, we’re running nickel hot blah blah blah,’ and you just run the call because that’s how you learned to run the play,” Adegoke said. “But if now you understand the situation, like, ‘Hey, this is a third-and-7-to-10 man-coverage pressure,’ you already know once we call this, ‘I’m playing inside leverage, and I gotta protect the sticks as a safety.’
“Let’s say I’m a D-lineman now and I know this call is a defensive front or stunt that we use against running quarterbacks in the red zone. Now we know we can’t get past the level of quarterback and we have to chop up the front to mix up the rush lanes. So understanding why you’re doing something makes it so much simpler.”
Mike Macdonald (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
As far as the grouping of coverages that Humphrey talks about, he means Macdonald separates types of coverages using nomenclature.
“So, let’s say all of your split-safety coverages are named after shoe companies, and then let’s say your two-man is named after music artists and your three-deep is named after phone companies,” Adegoke said. “So anytime you hear ‘T-Mobile,’ ‘Verizon,’ ‘AT&T’ or ‘Sprint,’ I already know it’s a three-deep family, so now I know that we got buzzers, we got hookers, and this is what’s going on. Because other people just, like, give these really abstract names and it just doesn’t mean anything.”
Although that might sound arbitrary, when 80,000 people are yelling and it’s freezing and raining, hearing a name and instantly being able to recall the coverage and having an idea of what everyone else is doing because you know what family the coverage is in is important. One of the reasons understanding everyone else’s job is beneficial is because against certain motions or shifts, a defender might have to exchange responsibilities with another player. All this happens in seconds, so any learning device a coach can use to teach it is useful.
“Just, like, the flexibility that I’ve been seeing with what he’s been doing,” Humphrey said. “I think we want to have it to where any DB could play any position at any time. I think that’s kind of the vision that I’ve seen behind it. I think I’m getting reps inside, getting some reps to safety, getting some reps here. (Chuck) Clark come down play corner.”
The addition of safety Kyle Hamilton in the first round — to add to an already deep and versatile safety group with Clark, Marcus Williams and Tony Jefferson — will give the defense the ability to fluidly exchange responsibilities and disguise its intentions more. Although the Ravens might not be as aggressive with bringing pressure, they’ll put more emphasis on being intentional with keeping offenses uncomfortable with what they show pre-snap.
“Aggressiveness actually means it’s about keeping the offense off balance and where they’re not really believing what they’re seeing on a down-to-down basis,” Macdonald said at his introductory news conference. “So a lot of times that will come with a schemed-up pressure. … You know that’ll happen. A lot of times it could be a fake pressure — it could look like this coverage and play like another one — you know you’re changing the stress points of the zones and things like that. And just trying to create doubt at all times, you know? You want to be the one pushing the envelope rather than the other way around, so that aggressiveness, that was something that’s a principle of the Ravens organization.”
It’s hard to argue with how successful the Ravens have been with Martindale’s live-and-die-by-the-blitz approach. They’ll still bring pressure, but it will likely be with more “safe pressures” like zone blitzes and simulated pressures. They’ll rely on being more sound on the back end and focus on disguising and creating confusion for quarterbacks, similar to Vic Fangio’s approach. Perhaps they feel this is the best way to stop the AFC’s top quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. Because blitzing those guys is asking to be punished. Moving on from Martindale to someone as inexperienced as Macdonald is a gamble unto itself, but the Ravens have never been afraid of thinking outside the box.
(Top photo of Marlon Humphrey: Tommy Gilligan / USA Today
Whatever he likes to do or come up with for our defense, hopes it work out cause we got a lot of talentFor everyone that doesn't have the Athletic. Really nice read...
Ravens DC Mike Macdonald transitioning defensive philosophy with varied, flexible approach
By Ted Nguyen
Jun 22, 2022
9
Under defensive coordinator Don Martindale, the Ravens finished in the top 10 of defensive DVOA, Football Outsiders’ efficiency metric, in three out of four seasons (two in the top five). After one down season marred by injuries, head coach John Harbaugh and the Ravens made a somewhat surprising decision by replacing Martindale with his former assistant, Mike Macdonald.
Macdonald, 34, is the youngest defensive coordinator in the NFL. Despite his youth, he was already with the Ravens for seven seasons (one as an intern and six as an assistant coach) before leaving to become the defensive coordinator for head coach Jim Harbaugh at Michigan for a season.
He impressed at Michigan, turning the Wolverines defense into a top unit and helping to get them into the College Football Playoffs in his lone season. Now, Macdonald will be tasked with getting the Ravens, a franchise that has been an example for consistently strong defensive play, back on track. Though Macdonald had a role in developing the system that Martindale deployed with the Ravens in 2018, the Ravens will be transitioning philosophically and schematically.
Martindale’s signature was heavy, aggressive blitzing with man coverage. At Michigan, Macdonald transitioned the defense from former defensive coordinator Don Brown’s man-heavy system to what was essentially a simpler version of Nick Saban’s and Kirby Smart’s man-match-heavy system, and as the season progressed, he added his own twists to it. However, he isn’t married to a particular scheme, and he has collaborated with the Ravens’ staff to develop a system that fits the strength of the players on the roster. Macdonald’s flexibility is likely one of the reasons he was chosen to replace Martindale, who stubbornly stuck with his aggressive scheme despite not having enough healthy corners to cover man-to-man at a high rate last season.
The Ravens will move away from playing so much man-to-man and will be more varied in their defensive approach. They’ll play more split safety (two-deep safety) coverages like quarters, Cover 6 (quarter, quarter, half) and Tampa 2 (two-deep zone). At Michigan, Macdonald didn’t blitz as much as Martindale, but there were games when he cranked up his aggression, like against Ohio State. But he used more simulated pressures, which are pressures in which the defense rushes four but with the fourth rusher coming from a second- or third-level defender instead of a defensive lineman, rather than bringing five or six at a high rate.
Although the Ravens will look different schematically, Macdonald has quickly endeared himself to the staff and players with his approach to building and teaching his defense. When he was hired, they met as a staff and talked over every coverage — how they taught it in the past and the techniques they used. Coaches brought up problems with how they installed certain coverages or techniques and went over the strengths and weaknesses of different techniques. For example, how did they want their corners and safeties to handle under routes in match coverages? What sort of footwork did they want their quarter safeties playing with? They reviewed everything they would teach so they could either reinforce why they were keeping it or decide they were going to teach it differently.
“He’s doing a unique job. … I’ve kind of never experienced it,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said at minicamp. “He’s really having everybody understand the whole philosophy of mainly just the group of coverages, as opposed to: ‘You got this call. How do you play this call?’ He’s kind of saying, grouping these calls all together, like, ‘What is the whole idea of this call?’ So I think he’s done a really good job of kind of really helping us all be smarter, to where I know what the D-line’s doing. I also know what the linebacker is doing. I also know what the safety’s doing — because, ‘The reason why I call this defense is because of this.’”
Often when learning a defense, defenders learn their jobs within certain calls but don’t get the bigger picture of why it’s called. They are simply expected to understand their individual responsibilities within certain calls and execute them. Focusing on just your job might make it easier to memorize, especially when you have an expansive list of calls you need to know, but Macdonald is teaching his players the goal of each call and why he might call it situationally.
“(Macdonald) did a good job of explaining we are getting into this (call) because of this reason,” a Ravens staff member told me. “For example, he’ll explain that we are getting into split safety because we want to stop a No. 1 receiver a lot of times. And then what are the stresses of split safety? The post routes over the top, like the grab post type of stuff. And then he’ll get into the top six stressors that you’ll see more of when you’re in split safety. We had a talk over that — the strengths and weaknesses of every coverage.”
By having players understand the why of each call, he is also giving them ownership of the defense and the tools to solve problems on the field. For example, if players see a slower receiver lined up in the slot and a stud outside, there are certain calls they could make on the field that would allocate their resources in the right places. Stephen Adegoke — now a defensive quality control coach for the 49ers — was on Michigan’s staff and saw Macdonald’s teaching methods firsthand.
“On third down, if you never thought about calls as a player, you might have just said, ‘Hey, we’re running nickel hot blah blah blah,’ and you just run the call because that’s how you learned to run the play,” Adegoke said. “But if now you understand the situation, like, ‘Hey, this is a third-and-7-to-10 man-coverage pressure,’ you already know once we call this, ‘I’m playing inside leverage, and I gotta protect the sticks as a safety.’
“Let’s say I’m a D-lineman now and I know this call is a defensive front or stunt that we use against running quarterbacks in the red zone. Now we know we can’t get past the level of quarterback and we have to chop up the front to mix up the rush lanes. So understanding why you’re doing something makes it so much simpler.”
Mike Macdonald (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
As far as the grouping of coverages that Humphrey talks about, he means Macdonald separates types of coverages using nomenclature.
“So, let’s say all of your split-safety coverages are named after shoe companies, and then let’s say your two-man is named after music artists and your three-deep is named after phone companies,” Adegoke said. “So anytime you hear ‘T-Mobile,’ ‘Verizon,’ ‘AT&T’ or ‘Sprint,’ I already know it’s a three-deep family, so now I know that we got buzzers, we got hookers, and this is what’s going on. Because other people just, like, give these really abstract names and it just doesn’t mean anything.”
Although that might sound arbitrary, when 80,000 people are yelling and it’s freezing and raining, hearing a name and instantly being able to recall the coverage and having an idea of what everyone else is doing because you know what family the coverage is in is important. One of the reasons understanding everyone else’s job is beneficial is because against certain motions or shifts, a defender might have to exchange responsibilities with another player. All this happens in seconds, so any learning device a coach can use to teach it is useful.
“Just, like, the flexibility that I’ve been seeing with what he’s been doing,” Humphrey said. “I think we want to have it to where any DB could play any position at any time. I think that’s kind of the vision that I’ve seen behind it. I think I’m getting reps inside, getting some reps to safety, getting some reps here. (Chuck) Clark come down play corner.”
The addition of safety Kyle Hamilton in the first round — to add to an already deep and versatile safety group with Clark, Marcus Williams and Tony Jefferson — will give the defense the ability to fluidly exchange responsibilities and disguise its intentions more. Although the Ravens might not be as aggressive with bringing pressure, they’ll put more emphasis on being intentional with keeping offenses uncomfortable with what they show pre-snap.
“Aggressiveness actually means it’s about keeping the offense off balance and where they’re not really believing what they’re seeing on a down-to-down basis,” Macdonald said at his introductory news conference. “So a lot of times that will come with a schemed-up pressure. … You know that’ll happen. A lot of times it could be a fake pressure — it could look like this coverage and play like another one — you know you’re changing the stress points of the zones and things like that. And just trying to create doubt at all times, you know? You want to be the one pushing the envelope rather than the other way around, so that aggressiveness, that was something that’s a principle of the Ravens organization.”
It’s hard to argue with how successful the Ravens have been with Martindale’s live-and-die-by-the-blitz approach. They’ll still bring pressure, but it will likely be with more “safe pressures” like zone blitzes and simulated pressures. They’ll rely on being more sound on the back end and focus on disguising and creating confusion for quarterbacks, similar to Vic Fangio’s approach. Perhaps they feel this is the best way to stop the AFC’s top quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. Because blitzing those guys is asking to be punished. Moving on from Martindale to someone as inexperienced as Macdonald is a gamble unto itself, but the Ravens have never been afraid of thinking outside the box.
(Top photo of Marlon Humphrey: Tommy Gilligan / USA Today
RL52TheGreatest
Ravens Ring of Honor
For everyone that doesn't have the Athletic. Really nice read...
Ravens DC Mike Macdonald transitioning defensive philosophy with varied, flexible approach
By Ted Nguyen
Jun 22, 2022
9
Under defensive coordinator Don Martindale, the Ravens finished in the top 10 of defensive DVOA, Football Outsiders’ efficiency metric, in three out of four seasons (two in the top five). After one down season marred by injuries, head coach John Harbaugh and the Ravens made a somewhat surprising decision by replacing Martindale with his former assistant, Mike Macdonald.
Macdonald, 34, is the youngest defensive coordinator in the NFL. Despite his youth, he was already with the Ravens for seven seasons (one as an intern and six as an assistant coach) before leaving to become the defensive coordinator for head coach Jim Harbaugh at Michigan for a season.
He impressed at Michigan, turning the Wolverines defense into a top unit and helping to get them into the College Football Playoffs in his lone season. Now, Macdonald will be tasked with getting the Ravens, a franchise that has been an example for consistently strong defensive play, back on track. Though Macdonald had a role in developing the system that Martindale deployed with the Ravens in 2018, the Ravens will be transitioning philosophically and schematically.
Martindale’s signature was heavy, aggressive blitzing with man coverage. At Michigan, Macdonald transitioned the defense from former defensive coordinator Don Brown’s man-heavy system to what was essentially a simpler version of Nick Saban’s and Kirby Smart’s man-match-heavy system, and as the season progressed, he added his own twists to it. However, he isn’t married to a particular scheme, and he has collaborated with the Ravens’ staff to develop a system that fits the strength of the players on the roster. Macdonald’s flexibility is likely one of the reasons he was chosen to replace Martindale, who stubbornly stuck with his aggressive scheme despite not having enough healthy corners to cover man-to-man at a high rate last season.
The Ravens will move away from playing so much man-to-man and will be more varied in their defensive approach. They’ll play more split safety (two-deep safety) coverages like quarters, Cover 6 (quarter, quarter, half) and Tampa 2 (two-deep zone). At Michigan, Macdonald didn’t blitz as much as Martindale, but there were games when he cranked up his aggression, like against Ohio State. But he used more simulated pressures, which are pressures in which the defense rushes four but with the fourth rusher coming from a second- or third-level defender instead of a defensive lineman, rather than bringing five or six at a high rate.
Although the Ravens will look different schematically, Macdonald has quickly endeared himself to the staff and players with his approach to building and teaching his defense. When he was hired, they met as a staff and talked over every coverage — how they taught it in the past and the techniques they used. Coaches brought up problems with how they installed certain coverages or techniques and went over the strengths and weaknesses of different techniques. For example, how did they want their corners and safeties to handle under routes in match coverages? What sort of footwork did they want their quarter safeties playing with? They reviewed everything they would teach so they could either reinforce why they were keeping it or decide they were going to teach it differently.
“He’s doing a unique job. … I’ve kind of never experienced it,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said at minicamp. “He’s really having everybody understand the whole philosophy of mainly just the group of coverages, as opposed to: ‘You got this call. How do you play this call?’ He’s kind of saying, grouping these calls all together, like, ‘What is the whole idea of this call?’ So I think he’s done a really good job of kind of really helping us all be smarter, to where I know what the D-line’s doing. I also know what the linebacker is doing. I also know what the safety’s doing — because, ‘The reason why I call this defense is because of this.’”
Often when learning a defense, defenders learn their jobs within certain calls but don’t get the bigger picture of why it’s called. They are simply expected to understand their individual responsibilities within certain calls and execute them. Focusing on just your job might make it easier to memorize, especially when you have an expansive list of calls you need to know, but Macdonald is teaching his players the goal of each call and why he might call it situationally.
“(Macdonald) did a good job of explaining we are getting into this (call) because of this reason,” a Ravens staff member told me. “For example, he’ll explain that we are getting into split safety because we want to stop a No. 1 receiver a lot of times. And then what are the stresses of split safety? The post routes over the top, like the grab post type of stuff. And then he’ll get into the top six stressors that you’ll see more of when you’re in split safety. We had a talk over that — the strengths and weaknesses of every coverage.”
By having players understand the why of each call, he is also giving them ownership of the defense and the tools to solve problems on the field. For example, if players see a slower receiver lined up in the slot and a stud outside, there are certain calls they could make on the field that would allocate their resources in the right places. Stephen Adegoke — now a defensive quality control coach for the 49ers — was on Michigan’s staff and saw Macdonald’s teaching methods firsthand.
“On third down, if you never thought about calls as a player, you might have just said, ‘Hey, we’re running nickel hot blah blah blah,’ and you just run the call because that’s how you learned to run the play,” Adegoke said. “But if now you understand the situation, like, ‘Hey, this is a third-and-7-to-10 man-coverage pressure,’ you already know once we call this, ‘I’m playing inside leverage, and I gotta protect the sticks as a safety.’
“Let’s say I’m a D-lineman now and I know this call is a defensive front or stunt that we use against running quarterbacks in the red zone. Now we know we can’t get past the level of quarterback and we have to chop up the front to mix up the rush lanes. So understanding why you’re doing something makes it so much simpler.”
Mike Macdonald (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
As far as the grouping of coverages that Humphrey talks about, he means Macdonald separates types of coverages using nomenclature.
“So, let’s say all of your split-safety coverages are named after shoe companies, and then let’s say your two-man is named after music artists and your three-deep is named after phone companies,” Adegoke said. “So anytime you hear ‘T-Mobile,’ ‘Verizon,’ ‘AT&T’ or ‘Sprint,’ I already know it’s a three-deep family, so now I know that we got buzzers, we got hookers, and this is what’s going on. Because other people just, like, give these really abstract names and it just doesn’t mean anything.”
Although that might sound arbitrary, when 80,000 people are yelling and it’s freezing and raining, hearing a name and instantly being able to recall the coverage and having an idea of what everyone else is doing because you know what family the coverage is in is important. One of the reasons understanding everyone else’s job is beneficial is because against certain motions or shifts, a defender might have to exchange responsibilities with another player. All this happens in seconds, so any learning device a coach can use to teach it is useful.
“Just, like, the flexibility that I’ve been seeing with what he’s been doing,” Humphrey said. “I think we want to have it to where any DB could play any position at any time. I think that’s kind of the vision that I’ve seen behind it. I think I’m getting reps inside, getting some reps to safety, getting some reps here. (Chuck) Clark come down play corner.”
The addition of safety Kyle Hamilton in the first round — to add to an already deep and versatile safety group with Clark, Marcus Williams and Tony Jefferson — will give the defense the ability to fluidly exchange responsibilities and disguise its intentions more. Although the Ravens might not be as aggressive with bringing pressure, they’ll put more emphasis on being intentional with keeping offenses uncomfortable with what they show pre-snap.
“Aggressiveness actually means it’s about keeping the offense off balance and where they’re not really believing what they’re seeing on a down-to-down basis,” Macdonald said at his introductory news conference. “So a lot of times that will come with a schemed-up pressure. … You know that’ll happen. A lot of times it could be a fake pressure — it could look like this coverage and play like another one — you know you’re changing the stress points of the zones and things like that. And just trying to create doubt at all times, you know? You want to be the one pushing the envelope rather than the other way around, so that aggressiveness, that was something that’s a principle of the Ravens organization.”
It’s hard to argue with how successful the Ravens have been with Martindale’s live-and-die-by-the-blitz approach. They’ll still bring pressure, but it will likely be with more “safe pressures” like zone blitzes and simulated pressures. They’ll rely on being more sound on the back end and focus on disguising and creating confusion for quarterbacks, similar to Vic Fangio’s approach. Perhaps they feel this is the best way to stop the AFC’s top quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. Because blitzing those guys is asking to be punished. Moving on from Martindale to someone as inexperienced as Macdonald is a gamble unto itself, but the Ravens have never been afraid of thinking outside the box.
(Top photo of Marlon Humphrey: Tommy Gilligan / USA Today
Really cool to see how Macdonald is teaching the defense to the players so far. Long way to go until we can see how it actually turns out, but it seems like he's making it easier to understand and should hopefully fix a lot of the communication issues that we had last year in the secondary.
Tank
Hall of Famer
Unfortunately at this point I see you and your brothers as damage control personnel rather than crime prevention officers. Shiz is way out of hand and I really feel for you guys, mean that with the utmost respect. I can't stand the way you are sometimes treated.
For everyone that doesn't have the Athletic. Really nice read...
Ravens DC Mike Macdonald transitioning defensive philosophy with varied, flexible approach
By Ted Nguyen
Jun 22, 2022
9
Under defensive coordinator Don Martindale, the Ravens finished in the top 10 of defensive DVOA, Football Outsiders’ efficiency metric, in three out of four seasons (two in the top five). After one down season marred by injuries, head coach John Harbaugh and the Ravens made a somewhat surprising decision by replacing Martindale with his former assistant, Mike Macdonald.
Macdonald, 34, is the youngest defensive coordinator in the NFL. Despite his youth, he was already with the Ravens for seven seasons (one as an intern and six as an assistant coach) before leaving to become the defensive coordinator for head coach Jim Harbaugh at Michigan for a season.
He impressed at Michigan, turning the Wolverines defense into a top unit and helping to get them into the College Football Playoffs in his lone season. Now, Macdonald will be tasked with getting the Ravens, a franchise that has been an example for consistently strong defensive play, back on track. Though Macdonald had a role in developing the system that Martindale deployed with the Ravens in 2018, the Ravens will be transitioning philosophically and schematically.
Martindale’s signature was heavy, aggressive blitzing with man coverage. At Michigan, Macdonald transitioned the defense from former defensive coordinator Don Brown’s man-heavy system to what was essentially a simpler version of Nick Saban’s and Kirby Smart’s man-match-heavy system, and as the season progressed, he added his own twists to it. However, he isn’t married to a particular scheme, and he has collaborated with the Ravens’ staff to develop a system that fits the strength of the players on the roster. Macdonald’s flexibility is likely one of the reasons he was chosen to replace Martindale, who stubbornly stuck with his aggressive scheme despite not having enough healthy corners to cover man-to-man at a high rate last season.
The Ravens will move away from playing so much man-to-man and will be more varied in their defensive approach. They’ll play more split safety (two-deep safety) coverages like quarters, Cover 6 (quarter, quarter, half) and Tampa 2 (two-deep zone). At Michigan, Macdonald didn’t blitz as much as Martindale, but there were games when he cranked up his aggression, like against Ohio State. But he used more simulated pressures, which are pressures in which the defense rushes four but with the fourth rusher coming from a second- or third-level defender instead of a defensive lineman, rather than bringing five or six at a high rate.
Although the Ravens will look different schematically, Macdonald has quickly endeared himself to the staff and players with his approach to building and teaching his defense. When he was hired, they met as a staff and talked over every coverage — how they taught it in the past and the techniques they used. Coaches brought up problems with how they installed certain coverages or techniques and went over the strengths and weaknesses of different techniques. For example, how did they want their corners and safeties to handle under routes in match coverages? What sort of footwork did they want their quarter safeties playing with? They reviewed everything they would teach so they could either reinforce why they were keeping it or decide they were going to teach it differently.
“He’s doing a unique job. … I’ve kind of never experienced it,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said at minicamp. “He’s really having everybody understand the whole philosophy of mainly just the group of coverages, as opposed to: ‘You got this call. How do you play this call?’ He’s kind of saying, grouping these calls all together, like, ‘What is the whole idea of this call?’ So I think he’s done a really good job of kind of really helping us all be smarter, to where I know what the D-line’s doing. I also know what the linebacker is doing. I also know what the safety’s doing — because, ‘The reason why I call this defense is because of this.’”
Often when learning a defense, defenders learn their jobs within certain calls but don’t get the bigger picture of why it’s called. They are simply expected to understand their individual responsibilities within certain calls and execute them. Focusing on just your job might make it easier to memorize, especially when you have an expansive list of calls you need to know, but Macdonald is teaching his players the goal of each call and why he might call it situationally.
“(Macdonald) did a good job of explaining we are getting into this (call) because of this reason,” a Ravens staff member told me. “For example, he’ll explain that we are getting into split safety because we want to stop a No. 1 receiver a lot of times. And then what are the stresses of split safety? The post routes over the top, like the grab post type of stuff. And then he’ll get into the top six stressors that you’ll see more of when you’re in split safety. We had a talk over that — the strengths and weaknesses of every coverage.”
By having players understand the why of each call, he is also giving them ownership of the defense and the tools to solve problems on the field. For example, if players see a slower receiver lined up in the slot and a stud outside, there are certain calls they could make on the field that would allocate their resources in the right places. Stephen Adegoke — now a defensive quality control coach for the 49ers — was on Michigan’s staff and saw Macdonald’s teaching methods firsthand.
“On third down, if you never thought about calls as a player, you might have just said, ‘Hey, we’re running nickel hot blah blah blah,’ and you just run the call because that’s how you learned to run the play,” Adegoke said. “But if now you understand the situation, like, ‘Hey, this is a third-and-7-to-10 man-coverage pressure,’ you already know once we call this, ‘I’m playing inside leverage, and I gotta protect the sticks as a safety.’
“Let’s say I’m a D-lineman now and I know this call is a defensive front or stunt that we use against running quarterbacks in the red zone. Now we know we can’t get past the level of quarterback and we have to chop up the front to mix up the rush lanes. So understanding why you’re doing something makes it so much simpler.”
Mike Macdonald (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
As far as the grouping of coverages that Humphrey talks about, he means Macdonald separates types of coverages using nomenclature.
“So, let’s say all of your split-safety coverages are named after shoe companies, and then let’s say your two-man is named after music artists and your three-deep is named after phone companies,” Adegoke said. “So anytime you hear ‘T-Mobile,’ ‘Verizon,’ ‘AT&T’ or ‘Sprint,’ I already know it’s a three-deep family, so now I know that we got buzzers, we got hookers, and this is what’s going on. Because other people just, like, give these really abstract names and it just doesn’t mean anything.”
Although that might sound arbitrary, when 80,000 people are yelling and it’s freezing and raining, hearing a name and instantly being able to recall the coverage and having an idea of what everyone else is doing because you know what family the coverage is in is important. One of the reasons understanding everyone else’s job is beneficial is because against certain motions or shifts, a defender might have to exchange responsibilities with another player. All this happens in seconds, so any learning device a coach can use to teach it is useful.
“Just, like, the flexibility that I’ve been seeing with what he’s been doing,” Humphrey said. “I think we want to have it to where any DB could play any position at any time. I think that’s kind of the vision that I’ve seen behind it. I think I’m getting reps inside, getting some reps to safety, getting some reps here. (Chuck) Clark come down play corner.”
The addition of safety Kyle Hamilton in the first round — to add to an already deep and versatile safety group with Clark, Marcus Williams and Tony Jefferson — will give the defense the ability to fluidly exchange responsibilities and disguise its intentions more. Although the Ravens might not be as aggressive with bringing pressure, they’ll put more emphasis on being intentional with keeping offenses uncomfortable with what they show pre-snap.
“Aggressiveness actually means it’s about keeping the offense off balance and where they’re not really believing what they’re seeing on a down-to-down basis,” Macdonald said at his introductory news conference. “So a lot of times that will come with a schemed-up pressure. … You know that’ll happen. A lot of times it could be a fake pressure — it could look like this coverage and play like another one — you know you’re changing the stress points of the zones and things like that. And just trying to create doubt at all times, you know? You want to be the one pushing the envelope rather than the other way around, so that aggressiveness, that was something that’s a principle of the Ravens organization.”
It’s hard to argue with how successful the Ravens have been with Martindale’s live-and-die-by-the-blitz approach. They’ll still bring pressure, but it will likely be with more “safe pressures” like zone blitzes and simulated pressures. They’ll rely on being more sound on the back end and focus on disguising and creating confusion for quarterbacks, similar to Vic Fangio’s approach. Perhaps they feel this is the best way to stop the AFC’s top quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. Because blitzing those guys is asking to be punished. Moving on from Martindale to someone as inexperienced as Macdonald is a gamble unto itself, but the Ravens have never been afraid of thinking outside the box.
(Top photo of Marlon Humphrey: Tommy Gilligan / USA Today
exciting times
when i watched the dolphins and brian flores rip apart our gameplan with the sim pressures etc. this was kind of what i was envisioning but it sounds like, even more than that, we're just going to be as multiple as we can using a ton of man-match and game-plan specific coverages
i think the most interesting thing we learned from rookie minicamp was when kyle hamilton talked about them installing the cover 3 shells - i dont have any stats for this but id imagine that wink was among the least prolific cover 3 play-callers in the NFL during his tenure here
in regards to the Dolphins and how they wrecked our gameplan, we did sign Rob Leonard, whom was the outside linebackers coach on Flores staff in 2021.
ndub
Ravens Ring of Honor
And for a Manning to go there is classic. The family is southern through and through, and going to Texas U is keeping that alive
BoredMarine13
Ravens Ring of Honor
I’m not gun nut but I do have a unique relation with them thanks to work. Im a big believer in safe responsible usage. Also education on weapons. I’m always happy to talk off line or in another chat about it as to not derail the conversation, But by god these silly gun rumors going around as gospel need to chill lol. Also don’t judge I’m a dark humor dude with some weird experiences
1. A 9mm will blow out your lungs and a .556(AR platform) will decapitate a man.
Absolutely not on both lol. Not even close. It will certainly change the shape of the back of your head but not even close to taking it off. You need a .50 cal M8, most likely a .20MM to take it off somewhat cleanly. People watch too many movies and think body parts just start popping off. .556(AR platform) is a tiny round, small enough that it will go in your shoulder, ricochets off a bone and come out your left ass cheek. As someone who carried an M4(AR/.556) and thrown a few rounds down range, I can promise you the head stays on. The 9mm comment is just a lie, i don’t know what else to tell you. It’s not even remotely possible. Both rounds can cause serious trauma, as they were intended, but it’s much cleaner than movies or some political figures want you to believe.
1. “ if you don’t comply police or military will confiscate your weapons”
Lol no we will not becuase I don’t plan on getting shot by some rando. Also the average gun owner is better trained and using better set ups than the vast majority of LEO and military.( “military grade equipment” = piece of shit made by the lowest bidder, everything in the private sector is better). People really think we’re something special , but i promise the level of incompetence , even in the JSOC community, is hilarious. I have stories for days with dudes shooting themselves or a truck by accident while hanging out. I also had a guy accidentally discharge a .40mm grenade out the side of a helicopter. Cops aren’t far behind as some don’t even have budgets to compelte their annual pistol qual. There’s a reason why dipshits grab their pistol thinking it’s a taser and then discharge it. Lack of training.
Anyways thats my rant.
1. A 9mm will blow out your lungs and a .556(AR platform) will decapitate a man.
Absolutely not on both lol. Not even close. It will certainly change the shape of the back of your head but not even close to taking it off. You need a .50 cal M8, most likely a .20MM to take it off somewhat cleanly. People watch too many movies and think body parts just start popping off. .556(AR platform) is a tiny round, small enough that it will go in your shoulder, ricochets off a bone and come out your left ass cheek. As someone who carried an M4(AR/.556) and thrown a few rounds down range, I can promise you the head stays on. The 9mm comment is just a lie, i don’t know what else to tell you. It’s not even remotely possible. Both rounds can cause serious trauma, as they were intended, but it’s much cleaner than movies or some political figures want you to believe.
1. “ if you don’t comply police or military will confiscate your weapons”
Lol no we will not becuase I don’t plan on getting shot by some rando. Also the average gun owner is better trained and using better set ups than the vast majority of LEO and military.( “military grade equipment” = piece of shit made by the lowest bidder, everything in the private sector is better). People really think we’re something special , but i promise the level of incompetence , even in the JSOC community, is hilarious. I have stories for days with dudes shooting themselves or a truck by accident while hanging out. I also had a guy accidentally discharge a .40mm grenade out the side of a helicopter. Cops aren’t far behind as some don’t even have budgets to compelte their annual pistol qual. There’s a reason why dipshits grab their pistol thinking it’s a taser and then discharge it. Lack of training.
Anyways thats my rant.
JoeyFlex5
Hall of Famer
Oh man, I hope Texas doesn’t ruin him, they’ve been awful for a very long time now.