Pick a stat. Any major offensive stat will do: points scored, yards per play, expected points added, and so on. They’re all down compared to the past five seasons, and in some cases, the drop-off has been significant. Take EPA, for example. It’s probably the best available measure of offensive efficiency in football, and this season, NFL teams are averaging minus-0.4 EPA per offensive snap. That’s the lowest mark we’ve seen since the turn of the century, which is as far back as TruMedia’s database goes.
The eye test also matches the numbers. The football has been hard to watch at times this season. To get one high-scoring, back-and-forth affair, it feels as if we have to sit through a handful of field goal–kicking contests.
Sunday’s slate was supposed to offer a bit of a reprieve from that cycle. Three matchups featured battles between highly touted offenses: Baltimore Ravens–Detroit Lions headlined the early wave of games, Los Angeles Chargers–Kansas City Chiefs was the nationally televised late afternoon game, and Miami Dolphins–Philadelphia Eagles served as the main event for Sunday Night Football. This was the Sunday we had all been waiting for. But that wasn’t exactly how it went down.
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The Ravens cruised to a 38-6 win and had the game put away by the end of the second quarter. After a productive first half, the Chargers offense was bullied by the Chiefs defense and held to just seven points in the final two quarters of a 31-17 loss. The Eagles-Dolphins nightcap also finished 31-17, with the defending NFC champs holding the league’s most prolific offense to just one offensive touchdown. Week 7 was a continuation of what we’ve been watching all season: Defenses get out ahead of offenses and finally manage to stifle the creativity we’ve come to expect from offensive coaches over the past half decade.
The reemergence of the star defensive coordinator has been one of the most interesting by-products of this season’s defensive renaissance. A few years after the “Friends of Sean McVay” hiring cycle—when seemingly every team was looking to hire a young, offensive-minded head coach and looking past any candidate with a background in defense—it seems like the league is now headed in another direction. Young defensive minds like Mike MacDonald in Baltimore, Sean Desai in Philadelphia, and Ryan Nielsen in Atlanta are making names for themselves and should be at the top of the list of coaching candidates this offseason. And it’s not just the young guys, either. Veteran DCs like Steve Spagnuolo in Kansas City, Jim Schwartz in Cleveland, Dan Quinn in Dallas, and Brian Flores in Minnesota are making compelling cases that they deserve a second crack at a head job. It’s still early, but 2023 is shaping up to be a banner year for defensive coordinators. What does this mean for the league going forward? And how long will this resurgence last?
The matchup between MacDonald and Detroit’s offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson, was just a subplot in a game between two of the NFL’s best teams, but it’s one that will be in the minds of league decision-makers a few months from now. Johnson, now in his second full season as Lions offensive coordinator, has been widely regarded as the top head-coaching candidate for the upcoming offseason. And for good reason. Johnson has resuscitated Jared Goff’s career, which had been on life support following a dreadful debut season in Detroit in 2021, in ways even McVay couldn’t. He’s designed one of the league’s most diverse attacks, predicated on an intricate and creative run game that blends perfectly with a downfield passing game. With help from a talented roster, Johnson has created an offense that should be the envy of the entire NFL.
That offense mustered just six measly points against MacDonald’s defense on Sunday. If Johnson was at the top of the list of coaching candidates, the Ravens defensive coordinator wasn’t too far behind. And after Sunday’s beatdown, you have to wonder whether the 36-year-old, also in his second season as an NFL coordinator, has climbed up the pecking order. It’s just one game, and the success of a head coach isn’t solely based on X’s and O’s, but this was about as one-sided a matchup as we’ve seen all season. The six points Detroit’s offense managed came well after the game had been decided, and probably even make the unit’s performance sound better than it was.
The Lions could get nothing going on Sunday. The ground game ran into a brick wall, with Baltimore’s underrated defensive line eating up Detroit’s blocks, freeing up linebackers Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen to attack the line of scrimmage. When Goff dropped back to pass, it almost seemed as if MacDonald was listening in on Johnson’s calls. The Ravens were consistently positioned to defend whatever route combination the Lions had dialed up.
Goff attempted 53 passes in the game and was sacked five times. He averaged just 5.4 yards per attempt and finished with a QBR of 14.9. It was easily his worst performance of the season, and one of the worst of his career. For MacDonald, it’s just another line on what’s becoming an awfully impressive résumé.
If MacDonald vs. Johnson was the key matchup of next offseason’s hiring cycle, then the key matchup of the 2025 cycle came into focus in Tampa, where the Falcons reclaimed first place in the AFC South with a dramatic 16-13 win over the Bucs. As has surprisingly been the case all season, Atlanta was led by its defense, which now ranks in the top five in both defensive success rate and yards allowed. The unit, led by coordinator Ryan Nielsen, overwhelmed what had, through the first six weeks of the season, been a solid Buccaneers offense. The improvement we’ve seen out of Tampa Bay, and in quarterback Baker Mayfield in particular, has made first-year offensive coordinator Dave Canales a big name in coaching circles. But, like Johnson, he had no answers for Nielsen’s comprehensive plan.
The Falcons shut down Tampa Bay’s run game and forced the offense into long third downs. That’s when Nielsen’s pressure designs and various man coverage concepts are best utilized. Atlanta’s numbers against the pass aren’t great on early downs, but the defense ranks second in success rate on third and fourth down. What makes the run defense, which leads the NFL in EPA allowed, so impressive is that Atlanta isn’t loading the box with hulking defenders. The Falcons are playing a lot of dime defense and rank near the bottom of the league in average number of defenders in the box. This is how modern defense is meant to be played: defending the run with light boxes on early downs and attacking the pocket when the offense is backed into a corner.
MacDonald and Nielsen were seen as possible rising stars before the season, but Desai, who’s in his first year as Eagles defensive coordinator after replacing Jonathan Gannon in the offseason, hadn’t been in that conversation. That could change after he put the clamps on the Dolphins offense, which had been lighting up defenses around the league.
The tactics were different from what we saw out of Atlanta’s and Baltimore’s defenses, but the overall strategy was the same: Stop the run without conceding the deep parts of the field, get into third-and-long, and then attack. The Dolphins led the NFL in rushing entering the game, and Tua Tagovailoa had been sacked the second-fewest times of any starter in the league. On Sunday, Desai’s defense held Miami to just 45 yards on the ground, and Tagovailoa was sacked three times. Miami was missing several key players on the offensive line, but I’m not sure any team would have been capable of blocking Philly’s defensive line on Sunday night. Philly was also down several starters in the secondary, and that didn’t seem to affect its pass defense.
Across the league, defenses are starting to replicate the blueprints we’ve seen out of Philly, Baltimore, and Atlanta, which is a big reason offensive production has plummeted. This influx of young defensive minds who cut their teeth going up against these new-age, high-tech offenses has undoubtedly helped this defensive rise—but that alone doesn’t explain the phenomenon. Several veteran defensive coordinators with previous head-coaching experience are also on pace for career years that could earn them a second chance at a head job. And they’ve managed to stay at the top of their games with similarly creative tactics.
Chiefs defensive coordinator Spagnuolo is the best example. Spags’s defense has helped Kansas City to a 6-1 record while the offense has struggled to get its shit together. The Chiefs rank sixth in EPA per play and third in points allowed, and they’ve done it with a wholly modern approach. Kansas City is second in the NFL in dime usage—so don’t expect to see a bunch of lumbering linebackers on the field when you face this defense—and plays a ton of “man-match” concepts that make it difficult for a quarterback to parse what’s happening in the secondary. Kansas City plays defense like the best NBA teams do: It has athleticism and can switch everything.
On top of that, Spags is still throwing gas whenever he decides to blitz, which doesn’t happen as often as you might think based on the veteran play caller’s reputation. The Chiefs rank outside the top 10 in blitz rate, but when they do send extra guys, it usually results in a free rusher. Justin Herbert, who rarely takes sacks, had difficulty figuring out Kansas City’s pressure packages on Sunday.
The Chiefs are getting good play out of their front, but Spagnuolo’s designs are also lowering the degree of difficulty. Kansas City has generated the fifth-most unblocked pressures in the NFL this season, per Pro Football Focus. The leader in that stat is Baltimore, with 37 unblocked pressures. Neither team is stocked with blue-chip talent at edge rusher, but it hasn’t mattered, thanks to their coaches’ ingenuity.
If there is one thing connecting all of these top defenses led by top defensive minds, it’s creativity, whether it’s on the front end with meticulously choreographed pressures, or on the back end with shape-shifting coverages. The league’s best defenses aren’t just lining up and playing: They’re answering all of the changeups and curveballs offenses devised over the past decade-plus with their own off-speed pitches, and offenses are striking out more often than not.
Outside of Johnson in Detroit, there isn’t a lot of hype around other young offensive play callers for the first time in what feels like forever. Those guys have been upstaged by 30- and 40-something defensive assistants. And now even some of the more seasoned defensive coaches, the type of candidate teams have largely ignored in recent coaching searches, are jumping over OCs on the list.
We still have three-plus months of football left this season. Offenses could land a counterpunch, and when the offseason’s hiring cycle starts up we could be right back to where we’ve been the last few years—with young offensive minds getting pushed to the front of the line. But if defenses continue to win this battle, and more light is shined on the coaches calling the shots, we could see a significant (and, frankly, refreshing) shift in the NFL’s hiring practices.
