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Aug 22, 2023

Chicago Fans Complained About Sean Desai's Soft Zone Coverages in 2021

If you hated Jonathan Gannon, you’re gonna hate Sean Desai. That’s assuming he does a lot of what he did in 2021 in Chicago, which featured plenty of two-high safety and soft zone concepts. He comes

If you hated Jonathan Gannon, you’re gonna hate Sean Desai.

That’s assuming he does a lot of what he did in 2021 in Chicago, which featured plenty of two-high safety and soft zone concepts. He comes from the Vic Fangio tree, which is where Gannon took a lot of his concepts from.

Funny enough, everybody whined about Jonathan Gannon’s soft zone coverage for two seasons, so I typed variations of “Desai zone” and “Desai soft coverage” into the Twitter search to see if Chicago fans had the same complaints. Lo and behold:

Bears in this soft zone crap. Bleep you, Desai.

— Kris Armstrong 🇺🇦 (@KrisArmstrong1) December 13, 2021

https://twitter.com/BRoman30/status/1457927633208020995

No more soft zone Desai.

— Ryan Fraley (Senator in America’s Soccer Capital) (@fraydog) October 3, 2021

Sean Desai is awful….. zone?? You moron! #GBvsCHI

— BearsOffseasonJunky (@DRULZ29) December 13, 2021

WTF Desai why are you playing a soft zone against a backup QB blitz the Ravens that’s what the Dolphins did

— Camfrey15 (@cameronDwinfrey) November 21, 2021

2021 was Matt Nagy’s final year in Chicago. They went 6-11 in Justin Fields’ rookie season, so the offense was not very good.

Desai, however, had Robert Quinn, Roquan Smith, seven games of Khalil Mack, and Eddie Jackson, among others, so the defense had some players. Quinn had the 18.5 sacks that year and went to the Pro Bowl.

Nick Sirianni was asked about Desai at the NFL Combine and said this:

One thing that we definitely have now is what we had our first year going into it. We have a little bit of unknown. Now, whoever we play first game can go and watch some of Sean’s stuff from Chicago or even some of the things from Seattle. But one thing that we have is some uncertainty again going into that first game, where you hide some things in pre-season football.

So not give everything away, but what I did like is some of the similarities to the things that we do, that we’ve already been doing here on a very successful defense with different coverages, different run blitzes, things like that.

According to the Sport Radar data, Chicago had a 23.3 blitz percentage in 2021, which was 21st in the league. They were fourth in the league with 49 sacks and 3rd with eight strip sacks, so it was similar to the Eagles in that they got to the QB with four and didn’t have to send extra rushers to get there. They allowed 60 plays of 20+ yards, which was middle of the pack, and when you go down the list of numbers you find that the stats more or less mirror what Gannon produced in two years here.

There are some relevant and interesting passages from a 2021 NBC Chicago article:

Before understanding how Desai might put his spin on Fangio’s defense, we first need to understand the defensive philosophy. While much of the league was moving towards Seattle’s single-high “Legion of Boom” defense in the last decade, Fangio was holding steady with a defense that focused more on overlapping coverages with two-high safeties and lighter boxes.

“The defense has withstood the test of time,” Desai said. “It might be hot now and that could just be guys like you are catching onto it, but the defense was good in San Francisco when (Fangio) was doing it then. It was good for the New Orleans Saints when he was the outside linebackers coach back then. So that part of it, it’s proven through the test of time and it’s adjusted and it’s been adaptable through all different kinds of offense.”

…

“I think we can we put pressure on a quarterback and opposing offenses in different ways, and we’re going to do that,” Desai said. “Pressure doesn’t mean five-, six- or seven-man rushes. It means mental pressure. It means physical pressure. And I think the defense allows us to do that.”

So yeah, Desai is basically another version of Gannon. Unless he changes up his philosophies significantly in Philly, you’re gonna see a lot of the same. Buckle up!