Top five defensive schemers in the NFL right now

With this group of men, it is all about making offenses work. These defensive coordinators and coordinating head coaches can game-plan for their specific opponents on a weekly basis to take away what they do best, force them to adjust what they do and then find out how to counter the way offenses want to attack them mid-game.

Whether that may be finding the right personnel packages, aligning the front, confusing the quarterback with coverages and just teaching defensive assignments to keep opponents from moving the ball and scoring points against them. Here are my top five guys at doing so:

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#1 Bill Belichick

Even after more than three decades as a defensive coordinator and head coach in the NFL that dark lord up in New England is the very best defensive coach in the game. As everybody always says, he takes away what you do best as an offense and he is masterful with his halftime adjustments but is also how he teaches different techniques and the way his players have everything in their repertoire to execute specific gameplans.

It starts with what he demands from each position group – he wants defensive linemen that can hold their ground in the run game and either two-gap inside or keep their contain on the edge, he is looking for big linebackers to fill gaps in the run game and take advantage of those smaller third-down backs in protection and he asks his defensive backs to be able to play pretty much every coverage while looking for physical boundary corners who can play press-man.

Because of that he can use multiple fronts depending on their matchups, play a lot of six DB packages, make blitzes dependent on the number of guys in protection and just completely change their approach during games. Everything is detailed and run with perfection pretty much as good as it gets. I know they just got 37 points hung on them by Baltimore, but that is kind of the only weakness I see with this defense – they are not as big upfront as they have been in recent years.

#2 Don "Wink" Martindale

Next up is the guy who’s team just handed BB and the Patriots their first loss of the season. After Dean Pees retired as DC in Baltimore before returning for that job in Tennessee, former linebacker coach Don ‘Wink’ Martindale took over play-calling duties. Like his mentor this defense excels due to the multiplicity they show every week.

While they don’t quite have the same amount of fronts they run, they like to involve everybody in their blitz packages and run a bunch of coverages behind it. The Ravens can play big with almost 1000 pounds by their three down-linemen in Brandon Williams, Michael Pierce and Brent Urban, which makes them almost impossible to run against, but they can also leave Williams and Pierce on the field in nickel packages with two outside linebackers lining up wide.

In the secondary they keep you honest with single- and split-safety looks and then roll them high and low, play combo-coverages or use one of those safeties as a robber. What has kind of become Martindale’s staple is putting seven defenders at the line of scrimmage and bring as many as all of them, but also as little as three or four and playing coverage behind it.

Their problems have really come when they are missing one of their highly paid big guys up front and they are much better when having cornerback Jimmy Smith in the lineup.

#3 Dean Pees

At number three is that former DC of Martindale, who I just talked about. I have always been a big fan of Dean Pees, who kind of is one of the original guys to run that hybrid scheme with a base 3-4 front, but a bunch of different odd and even alignments to confuse blocking schemes. Not a lot of people may think of them that way, but the Titans right now are allowing only 18.3 points per game and these last two have been the only matchups, in which they have allowed more than 20 points per game.

They are also tied for sixth in total takeaways (14) and third down percentage (33.6), even though, even though their offense is bottom ten in most offensive categories.

What Pees is really good at is giving opposing quarterback obvious pre-snap looks and then completely changing things up as the ball is snapped, such as lining his free safety up in the middle of the field, but then bringing him down at the snap and letting his corners sink into cover-two or showing a five-man rush with his two outside linebackers on either edge, but instead bringing both inside backers and dropping the outside guys into the respective hook-zones.

Tennessee has a D-line they can rotate through, one of the best inside linebacker tandems with Jayon Brown and Rashaan Evans, corners who can re-route their guys and stay on the hip pocket and highly versatile safeties led by Pro Bowler Kevin Byard. That’s how they led the Patriots to ten points at home last year and gave the Browns a rude awakening in the season-opener.

#4 Sean McDermott

With my next nomination I went with the guy whose defense has been one of the top five in the league for the last two year. Sean McDermott arrived in Buffalo in 2017 together with Brandon Beane, coming over from Carolina, and they have completely turned around that roster and the culture. They have parted ways with several highly paid veterans and brought in quality free agents, but mostly built through the draft.

That’s how this defense has come together as well. Their two starting corners were drafted and picked up as UDFAs, they selected their starting nickel, both inside linebackers, their starting 3-tech defensive tackle and a couple of rotational guys.

Unlike the other names I already talked about, the Bills don’t have a super versatile scheme with a bunch of fronts and personnel packages, but instead they are very good and making small adjustments according to their opponents.

They either have four D-linemen with their hand in the dirt or an outside backer in an over front, two linebackers with 83 and 100 percent of the snaps respectively and four defensive backs all being on the field for at least 94 percent of the plays.

What makes McDermott special as a defensive coach is not necessarily the way he can confuse offense, but instead how well everybody seems to know tendencies and their assignments.

They primarily run gameplan-specific zone coverages, where their defenders do a great dropping into areas to take away the staples of the opposing passing game and are highly effective at reading the receiver patterns.

#5 Mike Pettine

And finally, I want to give Mike Pettine some love. I said before last offseason that the Packers should retain their defensive coordinator no matter who they bring in as their new head-coach because I saw a plan in what he does and the way he coaches defense. All he needed was some more pieces of personnel to really succeed.

For the first time in forever Green Bay under general manager Brian Gutekunst went out and spent a bunch of money in free agency to bring in outside linebackers Preston and Za’Darius Smith as well as safety Adrian Amos from the division-rival Bears. They also drafted Michigan’s Rashan Gary and Maryland DB Darnell Savage to add to a secondary that I already talked about being filled with a bunch of young talent.

What Pettine does best is at is cutting his pass rushers loose and scheming guys free, which has led to career years for the Smith “brothers”, who have combined for 16.5 sacks. He lines them up all over the front and makes it tough for opposing to decipher who is actually coming from where.

The Packers are very effective at messing with protection schemes without having to bring a lot of blitzes, outside of Savage from the slot a couple of times a game. Outside of the way he changes up his 3-4 looks, he likes to play matchups behind that in the secondary, where he tries to utilize his coverage-guys in roles they excel it.

The one real weakness for the Packers recently has been their run defense, which comes from the lack of strong play on the interior. If they do a better job clogging up those lanes, this defense could be good enough to go to a Super Bowl with Aaron Rodgers.

Next up: Wade Phillips, Vic Fangio, Mike Zimmer, and Robert Salah