Film Room: Exploring the Saints’ flexible 'Big Nickel' defense

The Big Nickel is in Rob Ryan’s roots.

In the late 1980s, he was in a hotel conference room in the middle of Oklahoma when defensive mastermind and father, Buddy, gave a two-day discourse on his 46 defense. Its origins were only a few years earlier as a nickel defense.

As the Chicago Bears' head coach, Buddy Ryan created a 5-1-5 package from scratch to slow down the San Diego Chargers' high octane offense in Week 8 of the 1981 season. It featured three safeties. The Bears blitzed the Chargers' offense into two interceptions and held them to 17 points. Four years later, the 46 evolved into the most dominating, Super Bowl-winning defense the NFL has ever seen.

Pressure was always in the air. It came from all directions all the time. That's what Buddy's defense was founded on in Chicago, and his son, Rob, took that with him. Wherever he went, he dialed up exotic blitz packages that had accompanying disguised coverages.

His latest stop is in New Orleans. Rob Ryan was hired to fix the Saints defense in 2013. He brought flexibility, disguise and pressure. Always pressure. He put his most talented players on the field and found roles for them. Nickel packages. Dime packages. Seven defensive backs. Five defensive linemen. You name it, he did it.

This flexibility showed in Week 5 against his father's old team, the Bears. Rob used a Big Nickel on more than 92 per cent of the defensive snaps, according to Pro Football Focus. Like his father, he used three safeties and dialed up one of the best blitzes of the young season.

On second-and-10, the Saints had a perfect opportunity to bring pressure. The Bears were spread out in a trips right set and exchanged pass protectors for pass catchers. This allowed the Saints to show blitz from both ends of their 3-3-5.

To the quarterback's left and the weak side, a slanted defensive end was at the five-technique and an outside linebacker showed blitz. With a left tackle and left guard there, the Bears appeared to have it picked up.

To the quarterback's right and the strong side, a nine-technique defensive end and two safeties, Kenny Vaccaro and Malcolm Jenkins, showed blitz. With a right guard, right tackle and a tight end there, it appeared to be picked up.

In the secondary, free safety Rafael Bush showed single-high coverage in the middle of the field and two cornerbacks played off coverage outside. It appeared to be Cover 3, the base coverage of the 46 defense.

But when the play began, suddenly everything changed.

The Saints dropped their two safeties in coverage to the right and blitzed not only the outside linebacker from the left, but the near inside linebacker as well.

In the secondary, the safety rotated outside to the weak side, while the strong-side cornerback rotated toward the middle. The third cornerback, on the weak side, rolled down into the flat.

It became a two-deep, four-under fire zone blitz.

The Bears were unprepared. They slid their center and the entire right side of the offensive line to the right to block safeties who never came. It was four blockers against the nose tackle and defensive end.

To their left, the guard and tackle were left to block the defensive end, the outside linebacker and inside linebacker. That left two blockers to only account for three rushers.

And with the receivers blanketed, quarterback Jay Cutler was sacked.

What makes the Big Nickel effective is its flexibility, which naturally plays into Ryan’s philosophy. The three safeties can play deep, in the slot or in the box. They can also cover or blitz. This causes confusion for quarterbacks and creates better defensive matchups, which the Saints had against the Bears with Vaccaro and Jenkins shutting down their bigger and physical receivers who played in the slot.

But when the safeties are in the box, they’re essentially replacing linebackers and are forced to become run defenders. This is risky because they have to get off of blocks and tackle ball carriers. When they don’t, suddenly longer runs happen like in the first quarter of the wild-card game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

It was fourth-and-1, and the Eagles were going for it. They knew the Saints would come out in the Big Nickel (78 per cent of game's snaps), so they came out in a twins right set. They also had a tight end at each end of the trenches. Once the slot receiver reduced his split, there were nine gaps in total to defend for the Saints, who had all three safeties in a soft box.

At the snap, the right tackle climbed to the second level and mauled the strong-side safety, Bush, sealing him toward the sideline and creating an alley for the running back to pick up eight yards.

The play was nearly double the 4.6 yards per carry Saints gave up in 2013, which was fifth-most in the NFL. But despite the struggles of the run defense, Ryan says he plans on using the Big Nickel more going into 2014, especially with the addition of free safety Jairus Byrd, who is a better ball-hawk and more disciplined tackler than Jenkins was.

It evolved into his base defense last season, when he used it on more than 61 per cent of the snaps. In some games, he used it more than 80 per cent of the time, including 85 per cent in Week 4 against the Miami Dolphins and 89.7 per cent in Week 12 against the Atlanta Falcons, according to Pro Football Focus.

The flexibility of the Big Nickel allows him to attack the offense in multiple ways, but the key will be stopping the run. Once his defense does that, it'll be one of the league's most dominant, like his father's.