2019 NFL Draft Guide: Coaching Systems -- NFC North

Hopefully by now, you’re starting to pick up on the different nuances of each scheme and how each coach/offensive coordinator likes to put his own spin on things. Once you you’ve identified each team’s scheme, you should have no difficulty identifying which players are best to draft and, once we’re in-season, which guys are best to pick up off the waiver wire.

Let’s keep rolling with our coverage here, but, as always, if you missed any of the AFC teams or our first dive into the NFC coaching, here are some helpful links for you:

AFC East (includes glossary of coaching terminology)

AFC North

AFC South

AFC West

NFC East

Now let’s head up to the great, white North, shall we……

NFC North

Chicago Bears

Offensive Breakdown: Last season, we expected Matt Nagy to pull pages and ideas right out of Andy Reid’s playbook and, for the most part, that is exactly what we got. It was a West Coast offense that leaned heavily on short, quick passes to the wide receivers, allowing them to make plays in space after the catch, while also incorporating a number of slants and drag routes. We also expected Nagy to do a lot more with his running backs and while we definitely saw plenty from Tarik Cohen , the work for Jordan Howard was much sparser due to his limitations as a pass-catcher. He was still used, but just not as often or as effectively.

This season we should see more of the same with Cohen and Mike Davis , though we expect David Montgomery to slide in and steal a lot of the work from both as he is the perfect hybrid of the two. The offense is designed to have a lot of pre-snap motion and use plenty of misdirection, though if the defense repeats its 2018 performance, the up-tempo may not be necessary. They pulled back on it last year and will do the same this season, if able. Nagy will continue to call the plays, though OC Mark Helfrich is supposed to get some opportunities as well.

Players Who Best Fit the System: Mitch Trubisky, Tarik Cohen , David Montgomery , Allen Robinson , Taylor Gabriel

Defensive Scheme: Multi-Front with a Cover-2 base

Defensive Breakdown: Vic Fangio built this defense on the versatility of its players and, given its level of success, you can expect new DC Chuck Pagano to maintain the majority of its elements. He will keep the 3-4 base but likely throw in some different looks give the fact that he has so many who can line up on the defensive line as well as in the linebacker corps. Where Pagano will really make his mark is in the secondary as that has always been his specialty. He’ll maintain the Cover-2 base as Fangio did, but you will probably see a lot more man-to-man coverage if his corners can stay with the receivers. Adding Ha Ha Clinton-Dix should help in the middle of the field, though new slot corner Buster Skrine may have some difficulty. If the corners do hold man-coverage well, you should probably expect even more blitzing than you saw last year.

Players Who Best Fit the System: Khalil Mack , Akiem Hicks , Roquan Smith , Eddie Jackson , Ha Ha Clinton-Dix

Detroit Lions

Offensive Breakdown: We knew the Lions were going to be in trouble last year when Matt Patricia came in as a first-year head coach and retained Jim Bob Cooter as his OC, despite the difference in styles and opinions as to how this offense should run. Guess who won out? Not only will Patricia see an offense more to his liking this year, but he brought in a strong, like-minded coordinator in Darrell Bevel to rebuild this team’s scheme.

While the offense will be based in a West Coast scheme that relies on short-quick passes to help set up the bigger plays downfield, this scheme will be run-first and run-heavy. That was always Patricia’s desire, that is exactly what he’ll get and Bevell is perfect for this as he ran a very similar scheme when he was the OC in Seattle. He doesn’t have a mobile QB in Matthew Stafford , but he’s got an array of running backs with varying styles at his disposal which should help set things up for the passing attack as well. Golden Tate would have been an ideal fit for this scheme, so it should be interesting to see how the Lions receivers adjust, at least when Danny Amendola gets hurt.

Players Who Best Fit the System: Kerryon Johnson , C.J. Anderson , Danny Amendola

Defensive Scheme: Multi-Front with man-coverage

Defensive Breakdown: With the tandem of Matt Patricia and Paul Pasqualoni continuing to build the defense, we can probably expect more of the same from last season. They used both three and four-man fronts, strong blitz packages and the mid-season addition of Damon Harrison certainly helped them improve against the run. Bringing in Trey Flowers from the Patriots gives them even more flexibility in how they line up and should keep offensive coordinators on their toes. As for the secondary, we should see the continuation of man-coverage as both Darius Slay and Justin Coleman are more than capable.

Players Who Best Fit the System: Trey Flowers , Jarrad Davis , Darius Slay

Green Bay Packers

Offensive Breakdown: Identifying the scheme first-year head coach Matt LaFleur wants to employ in Green Bay is easy. He wants to use a West Coast-base that utilizes more running than what we’ve seen in previous Packers seasons and utilize the short, quick passes to set up the bigger pass-plays downfield. He also wants to infuse more RPO into the offense. While his new OC Nathaniel Hackett is more of a run-first guy, LaFleur is the one calling the plays and will run this offense. See? Nice and easy. Now the question we have to deal with is whether or not Aaron Rodgers is on-board. We’ve heard conflicting reports during the offseason where LaFleur says he will be in Rodgers’ ear calling all the plays while Rodgers is saying he will be running the offense and calling plays at the line whenever he feels he should. That kind of conflict will only hurt the team in the long run and could put LaFleur on an immediate hot-seat. If LaFleur gets his way, though – and the implementation of RPO could actually give Rodgers more of a control illusion – this offense could be explosive and put up a ton of points both on the ground and through the air.

Players Who Best Fit the System: Aaron Jones , Davante Adams , Geronimo Allison

Defensive Scheme: 3-4 base with man-coverage

Defensive Breakdown: DC Mike Pettine was retained by the new regime and will try to continue implementing his defensive philosophies here. Pettine likes the 3-4 base scheme, but will use a four-man front if he feels he’s up against a run. He wants his front-seven to be versatile and able to adjust on the fly, so recognition of the offense is going to be key. He likes to use man-coverage, usually press, on the outside which not only allows the front-seven to be more aggressive  in the pass-rush, but also the safeties who won’t need to drift as much if the coverage is tight.

Players Who Best Fit the System: Blake Martinez , Preston Smith , Adrian Amos

Minnesota Vikings

Offensive Breakdown: Despite the fact that Kevin Stefanski took over as the interim OC last year and is now the acting OC of the Vikings, we’re going to see a bit of an overhaul this season as Mike Zimmer brought in Gary Kubiak to serve as an assistant head coach and offensive advisor. Does that mean Stefanski is a figurehead? Yeah, for the most part. Kubiak and Stefanski worked on the playbook and scheme together, but this looks like it’s 90% Kubiak heading into training camp.

The passing scheme is based on the West Coast offense and we’ll see plenty of short, quick passes to move the ball downfield. We’ll also see plenty of 2-TE sets to help with both blocking and pass0-catching, but this offense also looks like it will be run-first and run-heavy. Kubiak….er…I mean…Zimmer brought in run-guru Rick Dennison to overhaul the offensive line blocking scheme and will emulate the zone-blocking schemes we’ve see him use in both Denver and Houston where both ground games were just downright explosive. The run-heavy scheme will them open up a lot more play-action which definitely caters to the type of QB we expect Kirk Cousins to be. Zimmer wants him to be turnover-free while fantasy owners want him to throw for 300 yards and three touchdowns each week. We should get something in the middle, depending on just how effective the ground game turns out.

Players Who Best Fit the System: Kirk Cousins , Dalvin Cook , Stefon Diggs , Kyle Rudolph

Defensive Scheme: 4-3 base with man-coverage

Defensive Breakdown: While George Edwards is the defensive coordinator, he remains more in charge of developing the linebackers and young talent while Zimmer, a defensive-minded coach, handles the play-calling. They actually do a great job of complementing each other and Zimmer definitely takes a lot of his cues from what Edwards is seeing on the field. They expect their lineman and linebackers to be versatile as they actually like to switch up to a 3-4 at times and they expect their defensive backs to be able to play on either side of the field as they like to use a lot of man-coverage, both off and press.

Players Who Best Fit the System: Xavier Rhodes , Harrison Smith , Anthony Barr , Everson Griffen