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NFL defensive coaches are focused on stopping these trends this season
The NFL’s offensive masterminds continue to innovate and find new advantages, and the cyclical nature of scheme means defensive coaches will find a counter. It’s a chess match that continues every offseason.
For example, the popularity of outside schemes was met with more odd fronts with defensive linemen playing more patiently to cause indecision for runners. So last year, we began to see more old-school gap scheme runs from offenses. Defensive coaches are very good at what they do, so the new, shiny trends on offense typically lose their potency fast. What are those pesky defensive coaches thinking about heading into the 2024 season? I asked defensive coaches around the league what offensive trends, plays or concepts they’ve spent time coming up with answers for.
The Dolphins’ cheat motion
The most common answer I got was the “cheat” motion popularized by the Dolphins and Tyreek Hill. Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel unveiled it in Week 1, and it seems like every team has added it to their playbook. The motion is simple. A receiver with a tight split sprints outside to get a running start and the quarterback quickly snaps the ball as the receiver is still running, before the defense can properly react.
(Drew Jordan / The Athletic)
Cheat motion helps get receivers to full speed before the snap similar to how Canadian Football Players do, except NFL players have to do it moving horizontally. Cheat motion can be used to create rubs that are hard for the defense to adjust to because of how quickly the ball gets snapped.
Offensive coordinators got creative with their usage of cheat motion last season. They used it to get receivers both inside and outside, to get receivers open deep or open up space underneath, and combined it with run/pass options (RPOs). It’s been a pain to defend.
Week 3, 11:56 remaining in the second quarter, first-and-10
Rams coach Sean McVay was one of the best at using motion to create advantages in the passing game last year. Here, he called an inside variation of cheat motion to free up Tutu Atwell. Atwell initially was lined up outside against Bengals corner Chidobe Awuzie.
As Atwell motioned inside, nickel Mike Hilton had to switch onto him to avoid a possible rub.
However, because of the quick switch, Hilton played a step or two too far outside of Atwell, giving him too much space to work with inside. Hilton was supposed to have inside help, but the inside defenders were frozen by play action.
Hilton couldn’t recover and Atwell was open for an explosive pass play.
“A pro personnel executive for a team who was not authorized to speak publicly said that even his coaches, who did not face the Dolphins in 2023, put ‘cheat’ on their scout-team cards because they knew it would eventually come up from an opponent who was on their schedule,” The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue wrote in her report on the motion.
Defenses will definitely be more prepared for the motion this season. They’ll have quick checks and adjustments they can get to that will help them deal with it better, using all offseason to work with them.
One coach I talked to wasn’t as worried about the motion. He feels it is already overexposed and is more about the player who gets put in motion. Not every receiver can run a diverse route tree off of the motion.
“You have to have guys running routes running out of this thing. How many guys can actually run routes that involve a downfield break off of a full-speed motion? And how often are those guys targeted? It’s not quite as high as you people would think,” the defensive coach said. “There’s probably 10 guys in the league that can really run that route fast enough, clean enough, time it with another receiver off of the motion.”
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Pace of motion
Cheat motion isn’t the only way teams are getting creative with motion. The pace of the motion and at which point they snap the ball also can be problematic.
If teams aren’t varying the pace of their motions and snap points, the plays they run off of motion can become predictable. The best motion teams are conscious of all of this and weaponize it to make life hard on defenses.
“When a guy jogs across the formation slow and then boom, the ball gets snapped and he takes off, that’s a son of a bitch to defend and there’s no way to chart those other than just watching all the plays,” an NFL defensive coach said. “Also, if you have a guy that sprints across the formation that forces a defensive check then he gets set and then the ball gets snapped. That’s like that’s a big-time problem because it’s just creating a healthy dose of pre-snap conflict where defenders in the second level are unsure.”
NFC divisional round, 8:31 remaining in the third quarter, second-and-5
Here, the Rams started with three eligible receivers to Matthew Stafford’s right. This side was the passing strength of the formation, so the Lions lined up their nickel Brian Branch there.
Cooper Kupp then sprinted to the other side and got set. Because of the pace of the motion, the defense bumped linebacker Alex Anzalone outside instead of having Branch follow Kupp across the formation. As Kupp got set, they had some time to possibly adjust but chose not to because the Rams could have snapped the ball at any time.
Instead of snapping the ball, the Rams had receiver Puka Nacua also motion across the formation. Still, the Lions kept Branch to the right even though the passing strength of the formation had completely flipped.
After the snap, Anzalone had to run with Nacua on a wheel route. Kupp also ran a route across the formation, holding the defenders on that side. No one was left in the flats to defend the running back screen, which was perfectly set up.
In the last five-plus seasons, coaches from the Kyle Shanahan/Sean McVay tree have effectively used motion to create advantages in the running game and to dress up their play-action concepts. Now they are getting extremely creative with using motion to create advantages in the passing game. Forward-thinking defensive coaches should have spent the offseason adding counters and tools to their playbooks for their secondary to use on the field against these different types of motions.
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Four-strong concepts
Overloading one side of the formation before the snap is difficult for a defense to handle. Especially with so many defenses playing more match coverages in which defenders look at receivers and try to match with them based on their route stems. Four-strong means the offense is either lining up four eligible receivers to one side or getting four receivers with their routes after the snap.
One concept mentioned a lot by the defensive coaches I talked to was popularized by Shanahan and the 49ers. They would flood one side of the field with four routes but have fullback Kyle Juszczyk lead block for the running back on a swing route.
Several teams have copied this concept, but the Packers’ Matt LaFleur has his own version that is particularly hard to stop. The 49ers run their four-strong concept out of 21 personnel (two backs, one tight end, two receivers) and they’ll run it out of 1-back. This is a little easier for the defense because all the eligible receivers are compressed initially.
LaFleur runs his variation out of faster personnel groupings. Also, he’ll combine the swing with an escort with a downfield concept.
NFC divisional round, 1:19 left in the first quarter, second-and-11
Here, the Packers are running their four-strong concept with an escort out of 12 personnel (one back, two tight ends, two receivers). Tight end Tucker Kraft is the escort (lead blocker) for the running back swing out of the backfield. Instead of shorter routes like the 49ers’ version, the Packers had a dagger concept called.
The 49ers defenders dropped deep to defend the downfield pass combination, leaving the swing open underneath.
Kraft took out the flat defender, giving the running back space to run down the sideline.
Counter
As defenses have moved to play more light boxes and odd fronts, offenses have swung back to using more gap scheme plays. The most popular gap scheme play is counter, in which the front side of the offensive line down blocks while two pullers come from the back side — usually a guard and either a tackle, tight end or fullback.
The popular Vic Fangio/Brandon Staley system deploys two deep safeties with a focus on stopping explosive pass plays while conceding the run, and the extra defender who has to come up to play the extra blockers created by counter comes from the secondary. That’s asking a lot of the safety.
Week 14, 14:13 remaining in the second quarter, second-and-11
On this play, the Giants ran counter as a run/pass option (RPO). They were in a spread formation and had a glance concept to the counter side (left). Quarterback Tommy DeVito was reading the safety.
The safety stepped down to defend the counter, leaving the glance wide-open behind him.
One defensive coach said he was thinking about ways to defend QB counter options, which he believes he sees more of in his division than traditional zone read. Even with an extra defender in the box, a QB counter is very difficult to stop if the quarterback is a legitimate running threat.
Week 14, 13:00 remaining in the second quarter, first-and-10
Here, the Giants ran QB counter with running back Saquon Barkley taking the snap. Barkley had two options: hand off to receiver Wan’Dale Robinson running left with a lead block or keep the ball and follow the counter blocking with two pulling offensive linemen to the right.
Barkley read the defensive end to the right. If he stayed outside, he would have kept the ball, but because he stepped inside, Barkley made the right read and handed the ball off.
If the end stayed outside, the Giants would have a numbers advantage and excellent blocking to the right for Barkley.
Counter is an old-school concept, but as coaches prioritize defending the pass, they’ll have to think of ways to limit physical runs like the counter with lighter boxes.
(Top photo of Tyreek Hill in motion: Miami Dolphins via Associated Press)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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