Introduction
It was clear to anyone who was paying attention to the Chargers over the last two years that Jesse Minter was going to be a head coach sooner rather than later. He hit every mark you want to see in a head coach before his first bye week, the only thing that remained to be seen was sustainability and, as the 2025 season ended, it seemed the entire league had agreed that he had proven that mark. Jesse has interviews for all nine of the head coach openings because in just 36 games he has emphatically proven that he had all the makings of a leader who could build a contender in the right style. For the Chargers, the question then swung to how they could replace Minter’s immense impact, which was never going to be an easy feat.
The thing that became immediately apparent was that the Bolts couldn’t afford to forgo their advantage of knowing the best defensive system in the NFL as it was clear that everyone will be chasing it over the next few cycles. Especially after the Seattle Seahawks’ rapid ascension with Mike McDonald, the creator of the system which Jesse Minter ran with the Chargers, at the helm of that dominating defense that won them a Super Bowl.
The Chargers appointed Chris O’Leary as their new defensive coordinator just four hours after they announced his interview had taken place. To me that says that his return to Los Angeles was part of a long-term vision rather than a sudden pivot. Jim Harbaughโs decision to send him to Western Michigan gave OโLeary the one rรฉsumรฉ line he still lacked; full-time play-calling, while keeping him within a coaching orbit that could easily reconnect down the line when Jesse Minter inevitably landed a head-coaching job. At the same time, OโLearyโs two-year extension with the Broncos, which he signed on December 29th 2025, signaled just how highly he was valued there and suggests that both programs expected the arrangement to continue if, by some miracle, Minter had remained in place. That mix of deliberate development, mutual interest and timing now frames OโLearyโs arrival with the Chargers as something exciting.
Chris O’Leary: The man
Chris OโLeary presents himself as a grounded, relationship-driven leader who pairs humility with a strong competitive edge. In his introductory press conference, he emphasized gratitude for the people who shaped him and framed the job as something he takes personally, not just professionally. He comes across as a coach who wants to earn trust, empower his staff and players, and set a standard everyone can take ownership of, rather than relying solely on top-down authority.
Molden arrived in Los Angeles 10 days before the Chargersโ opener against the Las Vegas Raiders. OโLeary was in charge of getting him ready. The two met for 2 1/2 hours each day over three days. Molden said then that OโLeary was able to install all of Minterโs playbook in those three meetings.
Daniel Popper, The Athletic
At the same time, OโLeary makes it clear heโs focused on evolving the defense on the field. As Minter’s protege, he wants to build off what already works but he also wants to adapt his scheme to fit his personnel. He also stresses the importance of leaving players better than he found them, blending high expectations with genuine care. Overall O’Leary portrays himself as a coach who values people, demands growth and approaches the game with both precision and purpose.
A man of many influences: O’Leary’s Coaching Resume
- Graduate Assistant for Jesse Minter at Georgia State.
- Worked for Rick Minter at Florida Tech.
- Climbed the ranks at Notre Dame under:
- Clark Lea (current Vanderbilt HC)
- Marcus Freeman (Was favorite for the Steelers’ HC role until he signed a new deal to stay at South Bend)
- Al Golden (Bengals’ DC)
- Worked with Minter again with the Chargers as their Safeties coach in 2024.
- Western Michigan DC in 2025 where he reunited with Lance Taylor who was the running backs coach at Notre Dame.
What’s immediately obvious from diving into Chris O’Leary’s experience is that he has taken influence from each coach he has learnt under. His defensive education was also shaped by three of college footballโs most respected modern minds: Al Golden, Marcus Freeman, and Clark Lea. These three come from completely different branches of the defensive tree, but there is meaningful overlap in what they emphasize and those shared traits, together with his ties to the Minter family, have formed the backbone of OโLearyโs approach today.
“I worked with some really good defensive coaches, Al Golden, Marcus Freeman, Clark Lea, those guys all pieces we implemented into the defense. But the core philosophy and fundamentals are what I picked up here in L.A.”
Chris O’Leary on his coaching education
Clark Leaโs imprint is the most obvious on film and philosophically: a focus on multiplicity, late safety rotations and pattern-matching coverages. These components were used in tandem to change the picture for quarterbacks without sacrificing structure. That background fits neatly with the modern NFL trend toward hybrid coverages and adaptable fronts. Al Goldenโs impact likely came in the form of pressure design and coverage-rush coordination, teaching OโLeary how to stress protections through disguise rather than constant all-out blitzing. Marcus Freeman, meanwhile, offered more of a cultural blueprint emphasizing physicality, clarity in assignments and the day-to-day standards that allow complex systems to function at speed.
Together, those influences meant that OโLeary returned to the Minter system fluent in flexible, quarterback-confusing defenses but with some other strings to his bow. So when O’Leary was afforded the opportunity to call his own plays at Western Michigan, he carried every lesson he was taught by his many mentors and filled his playbook with what he saw as the best parts of each of them. Like any accomplished artist; he is the product of his influences.
Why Chris OโLeary shouldnโt be treated as Jesse Minterโs padawan
When the Chargers hired Chris OโLeary to replace Jesse Minter, the immediate reaction was that this all felt familiar. O’Leary comes from Minter’s coaching tree; he has the same influences, the same vocabulary and the same teaching methods. Therefore, it’s fair that the conclusion was that O’Leary would run the same scheme, perhaps with a few cosmetic tweaks. It is an understandable assumption but it’s one that skips a few too many steps.
Minter established five separators when he arrived with the Chargers in 2024: ball disruption, tackling, effort and angles, communication and block destruction. Minter views these as the five non-negotiable fundamental components to any good defense. With the Chargers, he assigned one separator to each position coach. And each week, that position coach would present to the entire defense on his separator. In 2024, for instance, OโLeary presented weekly on ball disruption.
Daniel Popper talking about how O’Leary will look to carry on Minter’s Five Separators
Scheme lineage matters, but lineage is most certainly not identity; otherwise we’d just be cycling the same schematic ideas that were run when the forward pass was invented. Defensive systems are shaped as much by how the coordinators who run them choose to solve problems, as by the diagrams in their binders. While film study remains the ultimate authority in answering those questions, data can reveal a coach’s intentions through explaining the end results. Therefore even if Minter and O’Leary share the same process; who they are, where they’ve been and what they believe in, will likely determine different end results.
“The two things we’re going to focus on, number one we’re going to elevate what we do well. The foundation of our defense, we’re going to elevate that. We’re going to do what we do better. The second thing we’re going to do is we’re going to evolve the defense. We’re going to add things, we’re going to tailor things to the players, the personnel that we have going into the season. We’re really focused on taking what we built and the foundation that’s laid and taking it to another level.”
Chris O’Leary on what his plan of action will be
The divergence
There is going to be a huge misconception this off-season when the world of sport media talks about the Mike Macdonald system. They’ll point to the use of defensive tackles, big nickels and blitzing corners and think that’s the beauty of his genius. But the truth is that it’s not the scheme that made the Seahawks champions, it’s the modular language which has been developed to speed up the process between the conception of an idea and the execution of it on game day. It’s Murphy’s Law in action; any idea that can be taught, will be realized. Mike built something that can be anything you want it to be and that has empowered those who speak the language to fully be themselves.
Therefore those who have completed their Duolingo course in Macdonald’s mother tongue will be in position to install their very own idea of a perfect defense within a very short time frame. In his first preseason game Minter had the Chargers’ defense looking like they had been playing together for years. The same went for Chris O’Leary who managed to transition the WMU Broncos from mediocre to superior within two and a half games.
When Chris OโLearyโs Western Michigan defense is examined alongside Jesse Minterโs Michigan unit, using both film and trend analysis as markers, the picture that forms is not of an imitation coordinator merely calling an inherited system. What presents itself is a coach who has solved similar problems in materially different ways using the lessons he learnt from his mentors, as all the best coordinators have done before him. Even Mike Macdonald, the Super-Bowl-winning mastermind who invented the system that Jesse Minter championed, adopted the principles of Rex Ryan’s system to his own design.
The contrast between Minter and O’Leary is not only found in the slight disparities in the way they use their talent, to my eye it goes one step further than that. What I see reflects two coordinators answering the same question; How do I gain advantages without exposing my secondary? with different first instincts. Minter wants to slows the game down. O’Leary wants to speeds it up. Minter wins through control of space. OโLeary embraces the chaos of being on the front foot.
A Shared Language with Different Applications
To understand how the philosophical differences between Minter and O’Leary reveal themselves within the parameters of the same scheme, I think it’s important to find the appropriate way to examine and compare. I’ve seen a fair few analysts aligning Western Michigan’s defensive scheme to the Chargers tape from last season but that’s very much an apples-to-oranges exercise in futility. The college game is almost a different sport to the NFL; even the most sophisticated offenses in the FBS present a different set of problems to defenses.
Therefore comparing a top five NFL defense with immense talent to a unit who played in the MAC without a single four or five star recruit on their books, is going to lead you to unrealistic conclusions. It’s therefore best to differentiate between Jesse Minter’s Michigan defense and the WMU Broncos to give a fair chance for the data and film to meet in the same place.
“We want to stop the offense that we’re playing. We’re going to have a great system, we’re going to have great structure but it’s got to evolve and we have to tailor it each week to who we’re playing. In college that can be completely different. You’d be playing Triple Option one week and Five Open Spread the next week.”
Chris O’Leary on how schematic flexibility is important to him
Minterโs Michigan defenses were defined by discipline. They found clever ways to defend the run from two-high shells with their resources back-loaded to stop explosive passes. They ran Quarters and Cover-6 to smother downfield passing attacks, which could do as their simulated pressures dismantled pass protection schemes and the had elite talent up the spine. They controlled games by removing volatility as their impressive scheme was all built from the foundation of being able to execute the fundamentals better than their opponents even if they didn’t have a distinct talent advantage.
OโLearyโs Western Michigan defenses, at least by structure, lived in a completely different world to the disciplined calmness that Minter’s Wolverines operated under. The Broncos blitzed relentlessly; five-man rushes were the default rather than the exception, defensive-line movement was a constant and defensive backs were regular participants in the blitz structure. Three-high shells frequently collapsed into single-post coverages to add even more pressure. Everything was built from the foundation of taking the fight to the offense instead of reacting. Reacting in time to make a difference takes talent. Attacking endlessly takes bravery, that’s something that no star rating can account for and it’s a clever way to live if you don’t have the NIL budget to buy your way past recruitment limitations. Just ask Brian Flores how he earned his eight first place votes for the assistant coach of the year award.
Chris O’Leary’s Defense: By The Numbers
In his lone season as the defensive coordinator of the Western Michigan Broncos, O’Leary was tasked with turning what frankly was a mediocre defense into something that could help to build a foundation for future recruitment opportunities. Cut to one year later and it’s unanimously agreed that he surpassed those expectations and found himself in the territory where he earned the moniker of a programme builder. Chris is humble enough to give all credit to his players and staff but it’s obvious to anyone who has coached any level of sport that this kind of turnaround can only happen with a mastermind at the helm who had both the means and the motivation to seize this opportunity with both hands.
The numbers tell the story of just how impactful his appointment was but one thing they don’t quite articulate is that O’Leary in one off-season he managed to install an incredibly sophisticated and multifaceted scheme. The Macdonald/Minter modular playbook, which was handed down to him, made that feat an easier task but that should take nothing away from Chris because he didn’t just install the best parts selectively; he went above and beyond to give his unit all the tools they could handle. That trust and O’Leary’s tutelage combined to put the Broncos in the position to do great things in the MAC and that’s exactly what happened.
- Western Michigan went from 108th in total defense in 2024 to 9th in 2025.
- Western Michigan’s defense ranked second in the Mid-American Conference in scoring defense, allowing 17.4 points per game.
- O’Leary’s unit allowed 179.9 passing yards per game, placing 19th in the country.
- They ranked 5th in Sacks (43) and 24th in TFLs (83) out of all FBS teams.
- This helped them go 10-4 and win their first MAC conference title since 2016.
To add context to how impressive this was; the WMU Broncos lost to three superior teams to start the season 0-3 and then went on a 10-1 run to end the season. Illinois and Michigan State were obviously too strong for them but they went toe to toe with the North Texas Mean Green, who had the best passing offense in the FBS and only lost out to them in overtime. That kind of baptism by fire could have deflated Chris O’Leary but instead he saw that as a learning opportunity and came out stronger for it. The impressive win-loss record and season-long metrics tell their own story but this wasn’t the result of luck recruitment or by doing the small things right and letting inferior competition make the mistakes. As you’ll see from this next section, O’Leary did things the right way by leaning into what he wanted to do, not what would have been easy.
The MACโs offensive meta is built on tempo to make the most of the space that is afforded them given their lack of elite athletes. Youโll see heavy doses of spread formations, RPOs and inside/outside Zone with a view to playing quick whilst stretching the field laterally. They want to move the ball with efficiency so they tend to have an appetite for quick-game concepts which are designed to isolate defenders in space and force one on ones. MAC defenses have responded to this conference-wide approach by playing with split safeties to negate the RPO conflict and pair this with more simple coverages to avoid being caught out by tempo. This all speaks to a more static but disciplined structure with a view towards limiting explosives.
To blitz in this division was seen as a fraught pathway because the ball was being kept out of harms way by either being out too fast for a pass rush or the quarterback was given options so he could avoid turnovers. So for a team to attack the way that O’Leary did, in the context of a division that pushed defenses to being more reactive was not only a sign of a pragmatic aggression but it also showed that O’Leary is willing to go against the grain if he feels like it’s the best course of action for his team.
The coverage on the backend blends with this philosophy too; to play in a single-high structure means you are committing an extra man to the box and WMU did this 53.1% of the time. On the face of things that seems like it would align with an old-school man blitz scheme but being from the Rex Ryan > Mike Macdonald > Jesse Minter pipeline, Chris was always going to deliver his aggression through the medium of zone pressures with zone match in behind it.
A System Built on Pressure
The most revealing aspect of OโLearyโs Broncos is actually not how often they blitzed, it is how well designed and varied those pressure paths were. They came from every part of the secondary to attack both the inside the tackles and outside the edges. The resulting menu was deep but flexible to the game-plan, however there were patterns that consistently appeared even if the delivery method changed:
- Corner ‘Hot’ blitzes
- Safety ‘Trail’ paths
- ‘Abel’ (Cross-dog linebackers) Fire Zones
In Macdonald’s system, the pressure paths lead the play call but the coverage tag changes who runs it. O’Leary used this framework to get to those three favorite concepts from an ever changing pattern on the backend. For example the play call in the Diagram above would have been Able Nickel Over. The defense understands that they are running Able (a cross-dogs linebacker blitz) from Nickel which means they’ll only be able to cover with 5 as it’s a 6 man pressure. They know the Boundary Safety will need to step in to fill the vacated middle hole role as the Field Safety has to cover the deep threats turning this into a 2-under-3 Fire Zone coverage.
The play below was taken from their game against Illinois is a variation on the play call above ran against a very similar formation. This is Trail Nickel Over Henning with the change being that instead of a cross-dogs blitz, the Broncos run a Trail concept with the Boundary Safety trailing the Mike linebacker through the same gap but they pair this with Henning (a fake nickel blitz) to add another layer to the puzzle that the offense have to solve.
As you can see the same per-snap alignments produced multiple outcomes and this is something that O’Leary explored throughout the 2025 season. When they came out with three safeties high before the snap could mean a nickel blitz with quarters away. Or a safety insert with man to the pressure side. Or a linebacker exchange that altered the protection picture while leaving the secondary intact.
Minter dabbled in this world during his time as Michigan’s coordinator but he preferred to be more selective and strike with precise timing with a view towards efficiency, with the Chargers his blitz to pressure ratio was consistently amongst the best in the league. Under Minter, Michiganโs pressures were organized differently too; Minterโs creepers often replaced rushers rather than adding them. A linebacker might mug the A-gap only to drop while a defensive end looped late inside. The objective was to distort protections while preserving coverage numbers.
Michigan’s Pressure Style & Front Identity in 2023
- Blitz: 39.6%
- Pass Blitz: 34.4%
- Run Blitz: 36.3%
- Sim Pressures: 36.2%
- Pass Stunts: 27.0%
- Run Stunts: 7.3%
- Pressure Rate: 34.1% (SIS)
O’Leary lived on the other side of the coin, he prioritized pressure over coverage number advantages. Western Michigan sent extra rushers on roughly 38% of dropbacks and rushed five more than 60% of the time. They ran 6+ man pressures regularly and their defensive-line stunts hovered near 30% but their simulated pressures were comparatively rare. Together these figures describe a defense that believes in a commitment to playing downhill. That is not the profile of a coordinator dabbling in aggression, it’s the profile of one who has decided aggression is the cleanest path to control.
WMU’s Pressure Style & Front Identity in 2025
- Pass Blitz: 38.2%
- 5-Man Rush: 60.7%
- 6+ Rushers: 29.7%
- Stunts: 28.4%
- Pressure Rate: 35.3%
- Quick Pressure: 22.9%
- Sim Pressures: 8.3%
- Slot CB Blitz: 16.6%
- Box Safety Usage: 28.9%
Both approaches are valid answers to the same riddles, each coordinator simply choose opposite methods for getting there and that is one of the places where Minter and O’Leary differentiated.
A Backend Built to Enable the Rush
The coverage numbers at Western Michigan reinforce their pressure fronted system. Cover 3 and Cover 1 made up over half the calls, with quarters, Cover-6, and Cover-2 filling in the rest. In isolation, that reads like a single-high defense but in practice, it functioned as a rotating, split-field system.
WMU Coverage Tendencies from 2025
- Cover 3: 37.7%
- Cover 1 (Man): 15.4%
- Quarters: 16.1%
- Cover 6: 10.6%
- Cover 2: 11.4%
A defining feature of OโLearyโs system is how he builds from split-field coverage rules (Quarters/Cover 6/2-read) and spins them into MOFC structures like Cover 3 or Cover 1 post-snap. The defense will often align in a two-high shell before rotating a safety down into the post or the fit. That rotation can create a Rip/Liz scheme by buzzing down the boundary safety look. The key is that his underneath defenders were still able to operate off split-field match principles, allowing the unit to handle vertical releases and RPO conflicts while structurally becoming a single-high defense after the snap. Itโs a clean way of marrying zone-match teaching with MOFC spacing and run support.
Much like his pressure menu, his coverage identity featured repeatable components amongst the protean picture:
- Three-safety shells
- Trix/Poach against Trips
- Quads/Palms vs Spread
- Nickels traveling with passing strength
Those are sophisticated coverage rules that are usually taught over the course of an entire college career, which speaks to O’Leary’s abilities as a teacher but it also showed how he was able to keep his defense agile on a week-to-week basis. They are also rules which have been designed to support pressure as they allow for flexibility on the backend sustain enable the threat of multitudinal attacks.
Michigan’s Coverage Tendencies from 2023
- Cover 3: 34.0%
- Cover 1 (Man): 15.1%
- Cover 2: 10.5%
- Quarters: 18.2%
- Cover 6: 13.3%
When Minter was the Wolverine’s DC, his secondary used similar tools as O’Leary has shown this season, but it was toward a different end. Minterโs coverage shells were built to cap explosives first and foremost, allowing the front to hunt with four. This is where the disparity between their numbers can be found:
- Cover 3: OโLeary: 37.7% > Minter 34.0% [+3.7%]
- Cover 1: OโLeary 15.4% > Minter 15.1% [+0.3%]
- Quarters: OโLeary 16.1% < Minter 18.2% [-2.1%]
- Cover 6: OโLeary 10.6% < Minter 13.3% [-2.7%]
- Cover 2: OโLeary 11.4% > Minter 10.5% [+0.9%]
The two coordinators run the same coverage styles which have been taught in similar ways but the disparity is revealed when you look at the gaps in their call frequency. O’Leary plays single-post (MOFC) more often whereas Minter relied on two-high (MOFO).
The Run Game Tells the Same Story
Even on early downs, OโLearyโs fronts played with an attacking posture. Defensive linemen wrapped across faces on stunts to cut off zone tracks. Ends and apex players exchanged gap responsibilities at the mesh point against zone-read concepts. Tight ends were contacted consistently rather than allowed to climb cleanly to give the Broncos linebackers clean angles. The aggressive principles of the pass rush spilled over into Western Michigan’s run defense; it was decidedly a downhill run fit team but it used chaos as a force multiplier by moving the angle of attack to where they thought they could find leverage margins.
Michiganโs fronts, by contrast, were often content to win through talent, leverage and mass on early downs. Their setup allowed their elite interior defensive linemen to win the day by dominating compressed gaps and allowing their linebackers to start slow and finish fast. It also helped having an elite nickel player who could patrol the strong side alley all on his own. Once again, both philosophies can work. They simply reveal different starting assumptions about where their defenseโs advantage lies.
How Much of This Is About Talent?
This is where the conversation has to become honest. Western Michigan does not recruit at anywhere close to the level of the Wolverines. That reality inevitably shapes call sheets because pressure can be a necessity when you cannot rely on four players to win consistently. Stunts can replace raw horsepower and off-ball blitzes can inject speed where size is lacking.
Revenue Share & NIL Collective budgets 2025
- Michigan Wolverines: Revenue Share ($20.5m) + NIL Fund ($16.3m) = $36.8m
- Average MAC Team: Revenue Share ($1.9m) + NIL Fund ($800k) = $2.7m
Source: Athlon Sports
Some stylistic differences will naturally come from the realities of your personnel but the talent gap between the Wolverines and Western Michigan does not explain everything. OโLeary did not merely lean on pressure; he organized his entire structure around the pressure concepts at the front of his play calls. The aggression O’Leary showed was not a fluctuating series choices dictated by situation, it came from an identity choice that remained constant. Macdonald’s modular system may make it easier to build an aggressive defense to counteract a talent deficit but it doesn’t take away the fact that O’Leary kept his foot to the floor the entire season.
Film Study: Apples to Apples
When I first started watching O’Leary’s scheme I immediately recognized some of the movement patterns but it wasn’t from watching Minter’s Charger defense from the end of 2025, nor was it similar to his Michigan team in 2023. As I said on the Thunder Down Under Podcast last week; O’Leary’s Western Michigan team was more closely aligned with how the Chargers’ played in their opening preseason game in 2024 against the Seattle Seahawks.
This was the first glimpse we saw into Jesse Minter’s vision for the Chargers’ defense and based off of his 28 secondary blitz calls from that game I thought we were about to see a transition to a downhill team and as you can see from the selection of clips below, a lot of the same concepts start to appear.
This game also included a familiar concept: Trail Nickel Over but in Minter’s world, where he wants the math on the backend to be the determining factor, this involved dropping out the Strong side OLB to enable him to be in a two-high shell to limit explosives.
Conclusion
The easiest story to tell is that the Chargers replaced Jesse Minter with a younger version of Jesse Minter. It is a comforting narrative because it implies continuity and the stability that comes with but the combined weight of the data and tape argues otherwise. They both lean on split-field coverages, they both manipulate quarterbacks with late rotations and they both borrow heavily from modern NFL pressure and coverage families. On a whiteboard, their systems would share language.
On the field, however, their instincts diverge. Minter has historically solved problems by subtracting volatility to force long drives. OโLeary, at least at Western Michigan, solved them by adding stress to make that aggression sustainable. Some of that divergence can be explained by roster context; Western Michigan needed to manufacture pressure whereas Michigan did not.
Minter went from an ultra aggressive to a passive structured base very quickly once he realized he had the stars in the right positions to be regimented and win games without exposing his offense through being too aggressive. OโLeary is not inheriting a MAC roster, he is walking into a Chargers defense stocked with NFL bodies, a lot of free-agent flexibility and some draft capital. That alone may pull his structure closer to Minterโs in some areas; fewer five-man rushes, more simulated pressures and heavier two-high usage.
But tendencies tend to travel and coaches reveal who they are in the problems they choose to solve first. OโLeary has historically solved defensive problems through volume, movement and pressure married to rotation. Even with upgraded personnel, it would be surprising if those instincts disappeared entirely. What will likely change is frequency, not philosophy.
“We’re going to tailor things to our personnel. And slowly but surely, that will evolve and look different over time. But that’s the starting point.”
Chris O’Leary on making the defense his own
The Chargers are unlikely to abandon Minterโs structural foundations anytime soon. Too much of that system is already in place, and it has proven effective. OโLeary will operate within that framework, but his track record suggests the first noticeable changes will come through added pressure, both literal and philosophical. Expect higher blitz rates, more involvement from defensive backs and increased movement along the front, all designed to speed the game up rather than slow it down. It wonโt feel like Minter 2.0 so much as a succession plan sharpened by aggressive intent.
Another great article Ryan….thank you!
This is likely a very simplistic view but I see O’Leary needing a couple of pieces that the Chargers don’t currently possess….a shutdown corner and an IDL who can consistently push the pocket. Somewhat of a big ticket with the IOL needs and limited draft picks. I expect more activity in the free agent market will be a necessity.
Perhaps our current DB’s can hold up adequately but I think that’s going to require, at the least, that we retain Oweh and Mack, or find a reasonable replacement for Mack (I hate saying that). Oweh needs to be retained in order to create the type of pressure you’ve outlined here. Tuli alone can’t do it and Mack is slowing down, like it or not.
I recognize and appreciate Minter’s contributions but must admit….I’m excited for the possibility of a more attacking style defense. In fact, I want to see more of that mentality on both sides of the ball.
Finally got around to finishing reading this
Ryan Watkins. Another fantastic piece!
I thought it was clever that you chose to compare Minter’s Michigan with O’Leary’s Western Michigan instead of against Minter’s Chargers. Great choice.
You basically address all of the relevant variables. I’m most interested to see how much the divergence you identified was due to the lesser talent O’Leary had to work with coupled with the less talented Offenses they faced on their schedule in the MAC (ie, maybe you can get away with being more aggressive when you’re less likely to be punished than you would facing Big 10 Offenses).
We’ll find out soon enough if the differences reflect truly different mindsets or merely the practical realities each of them faced in their respective conferences.
The only other comment I want to make is a technical one. I now have zero clue what a Fire Zone actually means:
Thanks as always for the great work!
Google AI says:
Zone blitzes can be separated into two categories: Fire Zone and Replacement Blitzes. Fire Zones end up with 5 or more bodies whereas Replacements (such as creepers) are seen with 4 or less being sent. However since developing my 101 understanding I have learnt that Fire Zone is the umbrella term and that there are groups of terms beneath that which are defined by the coverage structure behind the pressure:
Fire Zones = 3 under + 3 deep (5 blitz)
Hot Zones = 2 under + 3 deep (6 blitz)
Duce Zones = 4 under + 2 deep (5 blitz)
Quattro Zones = 2 under + 4 deep (5 blitz)
Annoyingly the term Fire Zone has stuck as both the primary term for a non-replacement zone blitz AND for the 3-under-3-deep version of it. I need to do a better job of separating those two terms into easily identifiable components so thanks for highlighting that this is getting confusing Al.