A Look Back at How Vic Fangio's Bears Defense Throttled the Rams in 2018

Fangio's approach led to copy cats who slowed down the Rams offense for 2 years

If you listened to the recently released “Playcallers” podcast, then you know it was Vic Fangio’s Bears defense in 2018 that provided the rest of the league with the best approach for slowing down Sean McVay’s Rams Offense.

In their Week 14 game that season, Chicago held the #2 scoring offense in the league to just 6 points. Quarterback Jared Goff’s stat line was downright ugly: 20-44, 180 yds, 0 TD, 4 INT, 19.1 passer rating, 3 sacks.

At first glance, it appeared to be just a bad matchup for the Rams. A matter of the Bears’ D-line kicking the crap out of the Rams’ O-line. After all, L.A. would eventually recover and go on to reach the Super Bowl, with the offense scoring 30 and 26 points in their two NFC playoff wins.

Then the Rams were held to a Super Bowl record-low 3 points by Bill Belichick and the Patriots. It was another Belichick masterpiece. However, we later learned that much of it was inspired by what Fangio’s Bears had done earlier in the season.

That loss gave defenses around the league good answers for at least slowing down McVay’s offense over the next two seasons. The Rams would finish just 11th in scoring in 2019 and then 22nd in 2020.

Below, I’ll dive into how Fangio’s scheme derailed McVay’s offense by taking away the things it did best with their fronts and 2-Shell coverage looks.

Eliminating Explosive Runs

From 2017-18, the Rams had the second most runs of 10 or more yards in the NFL. Most of that came via the zone run. Specifically, their wide and outside-zone runs stressed defenses, leading to both big plays to the outside and cutbacks set up by the defense’s aggressive flow to the edge.

Fangio’s response was to take away the outside as an option. One of the alignments he used was a 6-1 with 4 down linemen, a linebacker set up off the edge to one side, and the nickel DB aligned off the edge to the other:

This was the famed 6-1 look that Belichick would bludgeon the Rams with in Super Bowl LIII two months later. As you can see below, it took away the outside by alignment, forcing running back Todd Gurley inside immediately where the Bears had 4 D-linemen penetrating upfield to eliminate the cutback:

On one play in the second half, Gurley made the mistake of trying to force the issue to the outside. The result was a 5-yard loss:

The Bears didn’t use this specific alignment a ton. But even when they didn’t, they utilized wide-9’s or other 5-man fronts signaling to the offense that the outside was closed. Sometimes they’d bring a blitz off the edge to force everything back inside as well. This turned the run game into a battle between interior lines, where the Bears had a distinct advantage.

The inability to even threaten outside prevented over-pursuit by the defense and eliminated any cutback lanes. This all added up to the absence of big plays on the ground. Gurley finished with just one run of 10+ yards and only gained 28 yards on 11 carries.

The score was never really out of hand at any point in the game (The Bears would win 15-6). However, the Rams practically abandoned their ground game, calling runs on just 13 of 61 plays. With the engine that made the Rams offense go eliminated, the Bears could turn their attention elsewhere.

Neutralizing Play-Action

The Bears’ approach to L.A.’s rushing attack limited the effectiveness of their play-action passing game as well, which happened to be a significant part of their offense. Jared Goff led all quarterbacks in 2018 with 2,023 passing yards and 15 touchdowns on play-action (according to PFF). Those totals accounted for 43.2% of his passing yards and 46.9% of his TDs that season.

Against the Bears, however, Goff would complete just 5 of 10 passes for 46 yards off of play action. And the Rams called it on just 23% of passes that night, compared to a season average of 36%.

The way Chicago shut off the perimeter by using the 6-1, wide-9’s, and blitzes off the edge kept the Rams from effectively using play-action off of their outside-zone running game. This was largely because the run fakes took Goff into pressure:

No quarterback likes to turn his back to the defense on a playfake only to turn around and have a defender in his face. Play-action off of outside zone against these alignments often leads to that unsettling result, though.

Even when Goff did have more time to throw, Bears safeties were able to hang back and play the pass because their front was handling the run so easily. The only attention they gave to the ground game was late run support. There were even multiple running plays where Bears safeties kept retreating into coverage at the QB-RB mesh point. This allowed them to easily absorb L.A.’s downfield route concepts (More on that below).

Fangio’s 2-Shell Coverage Scheme

In the passing game, it was Fangio’s 2-shell based coverage scheme that gave the Rams so much trouble and took away what made them dangerous as an offense.

The thing about Fangio’s scheme is that he doesn’t always end up playing a 2-shell coverage. Instead, he starts with that look most of the time and then the defense can move to a number of different coverages post-snap. That forces the quarterback to process more once the ball is in his hands since there are fewer pre-snap tells.

In this particular game, the Bears would start in some kind of 2-shell look on more than 80% of the Rams plays before moving after the snap. They played some kind of single-high coverage roughly 25% of the time. On the rest of those snaps, they played an assortment of two-high coverages, including different quarters variations, cover-2, quarter-quarter-half and half-quarter-quarter.

Fangio’s scheme matched up extremely well with the Rams offense for multiple reasons. It largely took away the deep ball. It allowed Bears safeties to play top-down on the Rams’ route concepts, enabling them to more easily catch and carry those deeper routes and break on anything at the intermediate level.

It also helped eliminate those deep crossing routes that the Rams loved to run, particularly the post-cross combination off of play-action. And ultimately, it made Goff have to work through his reads deeper into the play instead of allowing him to hit his back foot and know where to go with the ball.

This first example came off of play-action with the Rams running that patented Post-Cross combo:

The Bears would play quarters and lock the backside corner on the X-receiver. From a press position, he managed to stay on top of the post route, which was really a “B-Line” post on this play:

The safety to the strong side was responsible for the #2 receiver running the crosser. In this coverage, however, he would also have help from the backside safety, who was able to turn his attention inside with the backside corner locked onto his receiver. Both safeties were then able to pounce on the crosser once they saw Goff targeting him:

With the front-side corner also playing on top of his receiver, all 3 vertical routes would end up in front of the coverage. The result was a contested throw to the crosser leading to an incompletion:

This next play is an example of one way Fangio handled the Rams’ predominant use of 3x1 formations. This time, the Bears would play half-quarter-quarter (Cover-2 to the strong side, quarters weak):

To the backside, the corner locked up on his receiver and disrupted him at the line:

The running back stayed in to chip initially. In this coverage, that made him the Will linebacker’s responsibility once he released. That also freed up the backside safety to turn to the 3-receiver side and take any deep routes coming his way:

To the front side, you can see that the corner aligned with cushion only to step up as the cover-2 flat defender post snap (An example of subtle disguise to keep the quarterback uncertain). The safety to his side would drop to the deep half and get on top of any vertical routes:

It helped that the Mike linebacker also re-routed the #3 receiver, disrupting the timing of his sail route:

The Bears had everything covered here. The x-receiver was disrupted and locked up. Any potential crossers from the 3-receiver side could be handled by the backside safety. To the front side, the safety was able to keep any deep routes in front of him. And the disruption by the Mike linebacker underneath kept the intermediate route to that side from getting to the right spot on time.

As a result, Goff was forced to make a contested but low-reward throw underneath. The result was another incompletion:

Here’s one more example. The Bears would play more of a straight-forward quarters coverage against the Rams’ 3x1 formation on this snap. As on the previous plays, they were able to keep all routes in front of them. Again, notice how that backside safety turned inside and was able to account for any crossers or vertical routes coming from the 3-receiver side:

Goff was forced to settle for a short completion late in the down.

If you take another look you’ll see how the middle linebacker did a great job of recognizing the route concept and taking away the in-breaking route from the #2 receiver, who would finish as the #3 route inside.

Top to bottom, Fangio’s defense was ready for every route concept the Rams threw at them.

The Impact of the Pass Rush

A good pass rush in general will make any scheme right. So it’s hard to separate the Bears’ dominant pass rush that night from Fangio’s scheme itself.

Goff was pressured on more than 50% of his throws against the Bears (according to PFF), which unsurprisingly made him uncomfortable from start to finish. When you couple that with the coverage that forced Goff to do lots of processing once he had the ball in his hands, the results were not good.

Just look at a play like this in the second quarter. Goff saw a blitzer flash up the middle (who was eventually picked up) and completely lost his feet despite a clean pocket. Instead of staying with the play and reading the field (where he had multiple open receivers), Goff threw the ball away:

On this play in the 3rd quarter, Goff stared down his receiver on the outside right from the get-go. That’s something quarterbacks tend to do when they aren’t sure what they’re seeing and don’t feel comfortable working through their reads. They pre-determine throws and hope for the best.

The cornerback here was able to read the receiver through to Goff and had plenty of time to jump the route for an interception as a result:

When it was all said and done, Fangio had cracked the code of arguably the most potent offense from 2017-18. It would take the Rams offense 3 years and a blockbuster trade for Matthew Stafford to eventually regain the upper hand on the NFL again.