Taking A Balanced Approach
In an ideal world, an NFL tackle should look to keep his weight roughly evenly distributed between his two feet, with his legs outside his frame in order to lower his center of gravity and make it harder to be pushed off balance laterally. The best way of doing this is by opening the hips and taking small fast movements which stops the legs from either getting too close or too far from the frame. Williams doesn’t do this – at times, he’s not even close. On both of the following plays, you can see his weight shift considerably from leg to leg, with his legs alternating from very close together to very far apart with occasional steps either forward or back in order to try and keep his balance:
The effect of this can be seen in the following play, with his feet once again getting far too close together, raising his pad level and with it his center of gravity, allowing the defender to easily drive him off balance and get pressure on the quarterback:
Again, there are knock-on effects of this lack of balance, with the two most significant being the way in which bringing the legs together requires the player to straighten his knees in order to stay upright (if you’re not sure how this might occur, I suggest you stand with your feet touching and try bending your knees while keeping your back straight) and, as you might have realized if you’ve just tried this practical demonstration, it also leads to the player widening his arms in an attempt to regain his balance.
Williams does both, and what that means during the play is that is raises his pad level and exposes his chest to the defender. This makes it much easier to secure a punch to his frame and with his pad level raised, it makes it very easy for the defender to drive him upwards and backwards:
When all these issues are combined, what this means for Williams is that when he is faced with defenders who are able to even threaten a speed rush, he is forced to chose between letting them just run around him or making technical sacrifices which give the defender a number of options as to how to get pressure.
Coping Mechanisms
Of course, Daryl Williams hasn’t been able to survive in the NFL to this point by getting beat every play, and he does have a couple of ways of trying to cope with his deficiencies. The first of these is that he often looks to get an early strike in, looking to go wide rather than backward and so hoping to secure the block early and not allow the defender the space to work around him. This works most effectively when combined with the threat of a run, as that way he can rely on the fact that the edge defender is being asked to stay in a particular gap to force him wide:
The fact that the Panthers weren’t even pretending to try and run the ball by the mid-point of the third quarter against the Bucs was a particular issue for Williams, as without the threat of the run, defenders were able to just work north-south and eliminate this tactic from his repertoire.
The other thing he does quite often – and this is something he is particularly good at – is let the defender run around him without making an attempt to strike before focusing on driving the defender wide as he looks to turn the corner:
The issues with this is that it relies on the defender having gotten quite deep before turning the corner, and ultimately means that if the defender counters back inside effectively or the quarterback holds the ball too long, he is left without any ability to counter. This tactic essentially is the acceptance that you’re going to get beaten, and rather than trying to stop this happening, you put all your effort into trying to make it take as long as possible.
The other thing that Ron Rivera suggested after the game as something they might look to do in future is to help Williams, but this is really not a road that they should be exploring. If they look to do this with a running back or a tight end, the defense is able to easily counter this by bringing whichever defender was meant to be covering this player as an extra defender around the edge, either meaning the defense has an unblocked rusher or putting Williams back in a one-on-one rush situation.
The other way an offense can help a tackle, and this is something the Panthers have done in the past when he was playing at right tackle – and did again on Thursday – is to get Williams to set outside and then look for the guard to kick over to help if Williams gets beaten inside. The issue with this, is that the defense can counter by getting the defensive lineman on that side – either a three or a one-tech – to attack the guard, which can either stop the guard from kicking over or force the center into a situation where they are forced to block one-on-one with a starting leverage disadvantage:
Daryl Williams does some nice things as an NFL tackle, and while limited still, he is genuinely a good run blocker – in an offense where the Panthers are able to run the ball effectively and stay ahead of the chains, such as they did against the Rams, he can be a functional tackle. However, there are going to be times in a season when the run game doesn’t work well – such as on Thursday – as well as times when the Panthers are chasing a lead late and just don’t have the time to establish a run-first attack, and in both of these situations, Daryl Williams is an accident waiting to happen, especially at left tackle.
Opting to start Greg Little is a risk, as it is every time a team looks to start a player for the first time at any position, but unless the Panthers are able to show they can dominate teams as a run-first team every week, it’s hard to argue that continuing to play Williams is anything other than a risk in itself. Cam Newton is clearly not healthy, whether it’s just his foot or his shoulder as well – regardless, he is at a stage where the Panthers have to protect him and build an offense around him rather than trusting him to carry a sub-standard supporting cast.
Given the Panthers could well be facing a game – or more – without Cam, now might be the perfect time to give Greg Little a go, as by the time Cam returns, the Panthers would be able to either return Little to the bench so he can continue to develop or continue to roll with him as the season goes on. Daryl Williams doesn’t appear to be the long-term solution at left tackle, and it’s better to find out as much about the other options as soon as possible.
