Vikings

How Danielle Hunter Enabled Za'Darius Smith's Big Day

Photo Credit: Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

You’ve probably seen this stat by now. Za’Darius Smith has lived in the backfield more than anyone else has this season. He’s been a slam-dunk free-agent signing. If you’re not convinced, consider that the Packers are paying over three times as much for Smith. So, how is this transpiring? And why is Za’Darius Smith suddenly the focal point of the defense and not Danielle Hunter or one of the other core pieces from the last decade?

The clips featured below are from a video posted to my Patreon page that goes into more depth and shows more examples of Smith getting pressure. If you like this article, consider joining me at Patreon.com/LukeBraunNFL.

The answer requires a lot of background to understand. The short answer is that the Vikings are attacking opposing protections in a way that gets Smith one-on-one with interior offensive linemen, which is his most infamous strength. But to understand how the Vikings are doing that, you have to first familiarize yourself with how opposing protections work in general.

For a deep primer, look to this piece from mid-season last year. To summarize, protections are designed to put some players in a “wall” with each other. That means offensive linemen hip-to-hip and therefore covering each other’s flanks. To compress that spacing, you have to leave other players in one-on-one situations with more space to defend. Deciding who gets the easy job and who gets the hard job is a judgment call, and it’s key to understanding NFL protections.

The Vikings deployed a few tricks to coax the Arizona Cardinals into calling the protection their pass rush was designed to attack. To do this, however, requires a genuine threat that is not Za’Darius Smith. Luckily, the Vikings have one of those. He’s Danielle Hunter. Hunter has gotten some flak this season, most of which is unwarranted, but he has experienced a drop in production compared to his norm.

If you want to find Hunter on any given play, you can simply watch the opposing offense and pay attention to which defensive lineman gets the most attention. Hunter is frequently chipped by one player, and even gets chipped by two with more frequency than I personally have ever seen.

This attention is exploitable. If you know the other team will weigh their protections toward Hunter, put Smith on the other side. You’re guaranteed to either get light defense against Smith’s pass rush, or a standard package against Hunter. Neither has a great track record for offenses. Pick your poison.

The Vikings added another layer of complexity. By threatening Smith over the center and having four other linemen down, the Cardinals have no choice but to call a “5-0” protection, which is a common term for man-to-man protection across the board. There are too many players for any sort of wall, so everyone just has to take one player.

Add to the equation that Smith started the play off the ball, and the center may feel like he’s uncovered something. It sure is suspicious to see No. 55 lined up seven yards away from the line to gain. Surely, he’s pass-rushing!  To Billy Price‘s credit, not every center would be able to find that and adjust the protection accordingly in time for the snap. To his detriment, he couldn’t also win the one-on-one that his protection call created for himself.

If you really need the Cardinals to call a certain protection, you can always coax that out by putting Hunter and Smith on the same side together. It’s difficult to imagine any center keeping their protections balanced when both of those players threaten from the same side, especially when that side has more bodies to begin with. To punish that, Smith needs to tap into some youthful athleticism and flash across the center’s face.

There were many more tricks like this, especially those featuring pre-snap shifts, but the idea is the same across them. The Vikings wanted the Cardinals, and particularly Billy Price, to turn a particular way. If he did, Smith would attack the space that Price vacated. Sometimes that applied to Justin Pugh, and sometimes they didn’t work at all. But they worked often enough to ruin anything other than Arizona’s quick game.

Kyler Murray was under an immense amount of pressure, and its impact on the game probably doesn’t need to be pointed out. Ed Donatell set this up to where the only way Arizona could win was to have Price hold up against Smith one on one. That was never going to happen.

If you want to see a more comprehensive review, here is my Patreon post that goes over these plays and much, much more.

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