The rumors have been floating since January that Ron Rivera and the Panthers have been mulling a change in their core defensive philosophy, and while they wouldn’t – and still won’t – say it out loud, if you read the tea leaves, the recipe that the Panthers have been buying the groceries for this offseason is not the 4-3 stew that the Panthers have been serving up for almost all of Rivera’s tenure in Carolina.
And while they’d love for opposing coaches like Sean McVay and the rest of the teams on their schedule to assume the meal their offense will be consuming in Week 1 will be the same they saw last season, it appears likely that it will have a very different flavor in 2019.
“I don’t really think it’s all that secret,” said second year linebacker Andre Smith on this week’s episode of It Is What It Is. “You can tell what we’re switching to why who we drafted, so it’s not really that big of a secret. I think we’re trying to be more versatile on defense, have guys that can [rush the passer] and also drop back and everything like that, so I think that’s one of the big switches.”
“But the 3-4 that we’re switching to allows you to attack in many different ways and angles and things like that and I think that the new additions that we have fit the mold pretty perfectly.”
These plans have actually been in the works since last season when Rivera relieved Brady Hoke and Jeff Imamura of their duties and took over the defensive playcalling, making some changes to their defense that caught offenses like the Seahawks off guard, especially when they had defensive linemen standing up and rushing the passer off the edge – at times the Panthers had no linemen with their hands in the dirt and used all stand-up rushers.
“We are playing so many multiple-style offenses that you can’t just line up and let them attack and I kind of saw that last season in the middle of the year and started doing some different things and saw that every time we did some of those things, something positive happened,” said Rivera last week.
However, many of those ideas went out the window when Shaq Thompson suffered a shoulder injury and missed the final two weeks of the season – plus, with the Panthers out of playoff contention, perhaps it made more sense to hold some cards closely against your chest heading into free agency and the draft.
But now that the smokescreens have been employed and the pass rushers have been drafted and have jersey numbers in the 50s instead of the 90s and your key pass rush signing was a hybrid defensive end/linebacker instead of a defensive end, it’s time to start putting the formations you started practicing at the end of last season into a full scheme – Rivera helmed a 3-4 defense in San Diego that ranked as the NFL’s best in 2010 immediately before getting the head coaching gig here in Carolina.
“I think what [Eric Washington] and the guys have done in terms of the installation has been outstanding – their retention and then their ability to go out and operate and really execute the things we are putting in has been really good,” said Rivera last week during OTAs. “It was kind of neat to see the things that you think you’re capable of doing, and then watching them.”
“We have guys that have multiple skillsets and for what we want to do and how we want to do it, they’re going to be able to transition from one spot to the other because of those skillsets.”
While the Panthers will still use four-man fronts in their hybrid defense, it seems a good bet that with the personnel they currently have in the front seven – specifically after adding Burns, Miller & Irvin this offseason – their aim is to make it so that the personnel in the huddle won’t necessarily dictate who will line up where; the Panthers used a lot of nickel last season and they’ll continue to do that in 2019.
“It’s going to play into some of the things that I’d like to see us do in terms of even fronts versus odd fronts and different packages of rushers,” said Rivera earlier this offseason about the addition of Irvin. “You want position flexibility. If we have guys like Bruce who can play in a two-point and put his hand down…what it does is put stress on the offense that you’re about to play. Now they have to prepare [for more]. We did some of that last year [and] we did it successfully – but we didn’t have time to do more.”
“Now we have the opportunity to move things around, put some things in place and I think it’ll be pretty exciting for us.”
Exciting not just for players like Irvin who have played in the 3-4, but also for players who have excelled in the 4-3 – like Luke Kuechly.
“I think he’ll be even more successful,” said Smith about Kuechly, who was named to the AP All-Pro First Team as well as his sixth consecutive Pro Bowl squad in 2018. “I think he’ll get more sacks, honestly. A lot of the things that they changed with our coverages as well, I think they’ll be more successful. First things first, ballers are going to ball and he’s a baller. No matter what you put in front of him, no matter what – he’s going to ball, regardless.”
“It’s just a new look, it gives [an] opportunity for us guys to learn something new, sharpen our minds and look at things from a different perspective,” said Kuechly. “It’s been fun; it’s a little different, but there’s a lot of the same principles in it.”
Players like Mario Addison, who says his ideal weight in 2019 will be 255 as opposed to the 262 that he has played at previously and he anticipates having “about 45 interceptions” as he drops back into coverage more – Addison also says the three-man front will benefit smaller players like Burns, Miller and second-year player Marquis Haynes.
“I can tell you – this year, man,” said Addison with a grin. “We’ve got guys flying each and every way.”
“It’s going to be something special – watch.”
Want to hear more from Andre Smith? Check out the full interview here.
Want to read more about the 3-4? Check out what Vincent Richardson had to say about it earlier in the offseason.
