As soon as he was promoted from defensive line coach to defensive coordinator of the Carolina Panthers, Eric Washington started thinking about how the first meeting with his new defense would go, what kind of message he could use to set the tone for his first season leading a group of men with Super Bowl aspirations. There are plenty of things he considered: Be Smart. Be Physical. Play with great effort. Take the football away. Create negative plays. Stop the run. Get to the spot. All of these have been a huge part of what the Carolina Panthers have done on defense since Washington joined the staff in 2011, but in his opinion, it’s less about the plays being called than who’s executing them.
“We don’t major in defensive concepts here at the Carolina Panthers. We have a system that we believe in and that system really involves how we do things and what we do; so we want the players, the men on our side of the ball, to appreciate that,” Washington told us this week. “Our philosophy and my philosophy doesn’t revolve around defensive concepts as much as it does a culture. We want to be sound with that, we want to be on the high end of that and if we do, it won’t matter what we call. We’ve got great personnel, and our approach has always been and always will be, as long as I’m here, personnel driven.”
This isn’t new, of course, as Washington’s predecessor Steve Wilks shared a similar philosophy – Wilks worded it as “it’s not the call, it’s the men” – but Washington said in a phone interview with The Riot Report that as he transitions from his role of position coach to coordinator that he’s able to collaborate with the rest of his staff to utilize all of his resources to put forth the best plan for the players on a daily basis, but says that there are more moving parts now that he’s in charge of the entire defense as opposed to a defensive line group that he coached to 40 sacks and the third-best run defense in the NFL in 2017. The growth that Wilks – and Sean McDermott before him – encouraged in their position coaches helped mold Washington into the coach he is today, and the former Grambling State tight end that played under legendary coach Eddie Robinson is hopeful that growth trickles down to the players.
But the aggression of Wilks, one of the most blitz-happy coordinators in the league last season, may not carry over to 2018, although Washington isn’t giving up all of his secrets.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Washington said when asked about blitzing at the same rate as Wilks. “Every situation is different. Steve saw the need to pressure based on how he saw the game, how he managed the game and whatever circumstances we found ourselves in at that particular time. At the end of the day, what you want to accomplish is being able to get off the field on third down and create negative plays, and sometimes pressure will help that and sometimes the basic configuration of your defense will get that job done. We’ll be prepared to do both very efficiently.”
Washington worked with one of the deepest defensive lines in the NFL last season, with the defensive tackles and ends each rotating constantly and wreaking havoc on the offensive line – one of the hallmarks of their defense was being able to rotate in fresh players on a per-play basis without the intensity of their rush decreasing no matter who was on the field – and the quality won’t be going down in 2018. With Dontari Poe replacing Star Lotulelei as the run-stuffer on the inside and second-year player Daeshon Hall set to make his playing debut after spending his entire rookie season on injured reserve, the defensive line will continue to be a strength under new defensive line coach Brady Hoke.
While the defensive line has a dearth of talent, one place the Panthers lineup may still be in flux as the team heads into next week’s draft is at the free safety slot. Washington’s #1 trait for a safety is the ability to help in run support, followed closely by the ability to be a great communicator; he says that a good safety is a “two-sided coin,” needing the ball skills to play in the post to go along with the ability to step into the box in run support. Is there a chance the team can find someone like that in the draft that could possibly start for his defense?
“First of all, you want to make sure that guys fit our system, that they have the traits and the skills, and then best case scenario, they grow and develop rapidly and quickly,” Washington said about finding a starter in the draft. “If you invest a draft pick in any player, you like to envision that person contributing for you on Sunday, whether it’s in a starter’s role or in a rotational role.”
One player that won’t be contributing on Sundays, at least for the first four weeks of the season, is the franchise’s all-time leading tackler Thomas Davis, who has been suspended for the first four games of the 2018 season for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing substances, and in Washington’s mind, once again, the answer is personnel-driven.
“The next linebacker has to step up,” said Washington. “Attrition is sometimes, unfortunately, a natural part of why players are available and we they aren’t available and so the next player will step in. And that will be Shaq Thompson and we’ll continue to move forward. We feel great about the depth that we have at the linebacker position so the next player will just have to step up and they will, like we’ve had to do on different occasions.”
“We’ll keep everything going in the direction that we need it to go in.”
