Insider: How Gus Bradley's defensive overhaul makes Colts more aggressive, attacking

INDIANAPOLIS — A major transformation is about to take place on the Grand Park fields.

A systematic overhaul far more extensive than the one taking place in the spotlight on the other side of the ball. Bringing in Matt Ryan to replace Carson Wentz is going to change the Colts offense significantly, but more from a stylistic standpoint than anything schematic.

What Gus Bradley is changing defensively will be much more significant.

“If I had to put a number on it, I’d say 30 percent,” Colts head coach Frank Reich said.

For reference, Reich has repeatedly estimated the Ryan shift at quarterback will alter the Indianapolis offensive playbook somewhere from 10 to 20 percent.

Bradley’s defense might not seem like a major shift.

Not at first.

The Colts will still line up in a 4-3 base defense, still play a lot of zone coverage, still be reticent to blitz heavily.

But there are key differences at every level.

“I think he’s going to bring a dynamic to our defense that is going to help us elevate,” Reich said. “We’ve played some really good defensive football over the last four years, and I’m expecting that we will continue to get better.”

UP FRONT

DeForest Buckner could barely contain his excitement this offseason.

From the moment Bradley hired Nate Ollie to be the Colts’ new defensive line coach to the beginning of the team’s offseason program, Buckner served as the new scheme’s hype man in the defensive line’s group chat, singing the praises of the attack philosophy he’d played in San Francisco with Robert Saleh.

Buckner knows.

Bradley and Ollie are taking off the leash.

“You won’t see the d-line really playing or reacting to blocks, moving with blocks, stuff like that. It’ll be more like we’re on a track, we’re getting vertical, penetrating a lot more,” Buckner said. “If guys are really embracing the scheme, you’ll see us in the backfield a lot.”

Ollie calls it the Attack Front.

“We’re taking the seat belt off,” Ollie said. “We talk about rush, crush, close. We want to stop the run on the way to the quarterback.”

Ollie first learned the attack front in Philadelphia, working under former Reich collaborator Jim Schwartz — who interviewed for the Colts defensive coordinator job that went to Bradley — then cemented his experience in the system while working for Saleh with the Jets last season.

And Bradley’s connection to the attack front isn’t hard to spot.

“It’s well-documented, Gus is like a second father to me,” Saleh said at the owner’s meetings.

By putting the Colts in an attack front, hell-bent on penetration, Bradley is shifting the emphasis on the Indianapolis defensive line away from the run and toward the quarterback.

Under former defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus, the Indianapolis front was ostensibly focused on penetration, but the Colts coaching staff often put heavy emphasis on stopping the run. Defensive linemen were asked to read blocks more often than they will be in Bradley’s system, and playing time at defensive end was often dictated by a player’s all-around ability. Lithe, explosive pass rushers like Kemoko Turay often had trouble getting on the field.

Bradley has long had a place in his defense for the pure pass rusher.

“I think sometimes in a 4-3 scheme, those outside linebacker types, back in the day, there was really no place for them. There was the left end and the right end, and they were both 275 pounds, and that’s how you played,” Bradley said. “Someone that’s 6-3, 250 pounds has a place in our defense now.”

The shift came too late for Turay, who signed with San Francisco in free agency.

Indianapolis had already upgraded by trading for one of Bradley’s prototypes for the position. Yannick Ngakoue, the 6-2, 246-pound quarterback-seeking missile who has been a force for Bradley in Jacksonville and Las Vegas, instantly gives the Colts the proven edge rusher they’ve long been trying to find.

“I feel like it fits my personality and my playing style perfectly,” Ngakoue said.

The more Bradley’s scheme evolves, the more the system asks its defensive ends to focus their attention solely on the quarterback. During his days in Seattle, Bradley often lined up the “big” end—the end opposite the LEO — tighter to the offensive line.

From what second-year defensive end Kwity Paye said this spring, that might not be the case in Indianapolis.

According to Paye, both defensive ends will spend most of their time lined up in a Wide-9, an alignment that puts the defensive ends on the outside shoulder of the tight end and asks them to explode to the quarterback. In both Schwartz’s Philadelphia defenses and Saleh’s schemes, the Wide-9 produced plenty of edge pressure.

Exactly the kind of pressure the Colts struggled to create consistently in the old system, and exactly the kind of pressure Indianapolis needs to put on the quarterback.

“We want to get off the ball and attack,” Bradley said. “This is hopefully a more disruptive, penetrating style of defensive line play, where they’re playing on the other side of the line of the scrimmage.”

Exactly where a Pro Bowler like Buckner wants to be.

“We’re blowing stuff up,” Buckner said. “And the guys behind us are cleaning stuff up.”

MIDDLE MEN

The Colts linebackers face the least amount of change from the Colts’ previous system to the one Bradley is installing.

“I would say the scheme is a little simpler, but that means you can play a little faster,” veteran linebacker Zaire Franklin said. “You still set up and break, eyes on the quarterback, make a play on the ball, play fast.”

Bradley’s scheme has long been built on simplicity.

But Franklin is also aware that the lack of complication at this point is partially a byproduct of switching systems.

“We were 500 level of Flus’s defense; we had been there in the same scheme, same position coaches, talking about the same things for four years,” Franklin said. “We’re kind of starting back at year one with Gus because it’s new, and it’s also less calls, so we know what we’re doing more and we can play fast.”

The last part is key.

Bradley, who first made his name in the NFL as a linebackers coach in Tampa Bay, has designed a defense that gives his linebackers plenty of chances to make plays.

“They’re going to have a chance to be very active in the defense,” Bradley said. “We put a lot on them, but there’s a lot of opportunities for them as well. If you look at guys that have been in this system, the Bobby Wagners and Fred Warners and guys like that at linebacker, they’re around the ball a lot.”

That should be music to the ears of Darius Leonard.

Bradley does not blitz much, but linebackers such as Wagner and Warner have been able to produce sacks in similar schemes.

From a pass rush perspective, Bradley could make a significant change if he alters the strong-side linebacker position to the way he’s deployed the position when he’s had pass rushers like Bruce Irvin or Uchenna Nwosu in the past. In that role, the strong-side linebacker is an extra edge rusher good enough to play defensive end in obvious passing situations, but it’s unclear if the Colts have a fit in that role in 2022.

Indianapolis initially drafted Ben Banogu in the second round in 2019 to play that type of role, but he was shifted to defensive end quickly under Eberflus. Banogu spent the offseason playing the LEO spot under Bradley.

Any big changes for the Colts’ off-the-ball linebackers will come in coverage.

Unlike Eberflus, whose defense was based in coverages with the middle of the field open (two safeties splitting the field), Bradley’s is based in coverages that close the middle of the field (a single safety up the middle), altering where the linebacker’s help is over the top.

The Indianapolis linebackers will also have to play more match coverage, matching routes in a technique that turns a typical zone into something more like a matchup zone in basketball. Bradley’s defensive philosophy has become Cover-3 match-based.

In Bradley’s system, the hook defenders are sometimes used to match routes.

The linebackers are often the hook defenders.

THE BACK END

Playing match coverage has been the biggest evolution in Bradley’s defense over the years.

An evolution the Colts defense had to make halfway through last season, in order to bring down the sky-high completion percentages often allowed under Eberflus.

When Bradley rose to a head coaching candidate as the coordinator for the Legion of Boom, Seattle’s star-studded defense played a “landmark”-based zone, a traditional zone that required players to drop to a spot and break on the ball.

That was a long time ago.

“It’s now evolved to where it’s more of a match principle, based on some pre-snap and post-snap indicators,” Bradley said. “Actually, it helps us if people say ‘Oh, they’re just running Cover-3.’ That, in a way, is what we want people to say, so we can kind of break them down and know how they’re going to attack us. Then we have some curveballs, some change-ups.”

Bradley’s defense still remains rooted in the Cover-3, the way Eberflus’s scheme is rooted in the Cover-2, but the reality is that all NFL defenses play a variation of coverages.

The matching the Colts will do with Bradley at the helm is the key. When Indianapolis began incorporating more match principles into the defense halfway through last season, the secondary’s coverage went to another level, playing a key role in breakout seasons for players like Isaiah Rodgers and former starter Rock Ya-Sin.

Match zone coverage is now the foundation of Bradley’s system.

“Offenses know how to attack a traditional 3-deep,” new Colts defensive backs coach Ron Milus said. “We’ve got to be able to make our adjustments. They know how to drain a guy out and suddenly there’s a void. Somehow we’ve got to fill that void.”

The best way to think of it, according to Milus, is to imagine a 2-3 matchup zone on the basketball court.

A matchup zone that draws its keys from the offense’s formation.

“Pre-snap is the key for us, we give ourselves pre-snap indicators to where we know if we’re going to have to match a route quicker, based on formation, based on the release of a back,” Milus said. “It’s not so much like we’re zoned up and break on the ball. No, no, no, no, we’re trying to get close.”

Close in coverage.

Close when the ball is snapped.

Unlike some zone teams, teams that prefer to line up their cornerbacks off the line of scrimmage, allowing receivers to get a free release in exchange for a cushion, Bradley wants his cornerbacks to press the wide receivers in front of them.

“People that have played in it or watched it, they know that we like to be aggressive on the perimeter, to be able to play press coverage,” Bradley said. “Even in our zone coverages.”

TAILOR-MADE

Bradley’s defense is going to continue to evolve.

Reich has long valued the ability to adapt and evolve. Indianapolis created a new position this offseason, hiring long-time NFL head coach John Fox to be the team’s senior defensive assistant, a position designed to encourage the evolution of Bradley’s defensive scheme.

But the Colts players themselves will likely be the chief source of inspiration.

“We throw a lot at them, just to see what their skill set is, what they can handle and what they can perform at a high level with,” Bradley said.

For example, Indianapolis has the kind of player Bradley’s never coached before.

Kenny Moore II is a pressure player, the kind of cornerback who can slide into the slot in sub-packages and create havoc at the line of scrimmage.

“There’s some things that we’ve always wished we could do, and now we can do,” Milus said. “The one thing we can do with Kenny, maybe that we couldn’t do with other guys—not saying they couldn’t do it—but Kenny, I see him coming off the edge as a blitzer, I see him doing a good job in the run game, showing up quicker than the average nickel.”

Moore II’s physicality opens up a world of possibilities.

Having an interior force like Buckner, the kind of defensive tackle Bradley’s never had, opens up possibilities. Leonard’s penchant for the big play is something the Colts’ new defensive coordinator hasn’t been able to tap into at linebacker since he had Wagner in Seattle, and even then wasn’t at Leonard’s level.

“It’s going to evolve,” Bradley said. “It evolved last year, it will evolve this year, based on some of the personnel we have, how we utilize their skill set. There is a foundation you start from.”

A foundation built on taking the fight to the opponent’s passing game, rather than sitting back and reacting.

A foundation that raises the ceiling for this Colts defense.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: New defensive coordinator Gus Bradley makes Colts more aggressive