Ravens DC Mike Macdonald transitioning defensive philosophy with varied, flexible approach

May 2024 · 8 minute read

Under defensive coordinator Don Martindale, the Ravens finished in the top 10 of defensive DVOA, Football Outsiders’ efficiency metric, in three out of four seasons (two in the top five). After one down season marred by injuries, head coach John Harbaugh and the Ravens made a somewhat surprising decision by replacing Martindale with his former assistant, Mike Macdonald.

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Macdonald, 34, is the youngest defensive coordinator in the NFL. Despite his youth, he was already with the Ravens for seven seasons (one as an intern and six as an assistant coach) before leaving to become the defensive coordinator for head coach Jim Harbaugh at Michigan for a season.

He impressed at Michigan, turning the Wolverines defense into a top unit and helping to get them into the College Football Playoffs in his lone season. Now, Macdonald will be tasked with getting the Ravens, a franchise that has been an example for consistently strong defensive play, back on track. Though Macdonald had a role in developing the system that Martindale deployed with the Ravens in 2018, the Ravens will be transitioning philosophically and schematically.

Martindale’s signature was heavy, aggressive blitzing with man coverage. At Michigan, Macdonald transitioned the defense from former defensive coordinator Don Brown’s man-heavy system to what was essentially a simpler version of Nick Saban’s and Kirby Smart’s man-match-heavy system, and as the season progressed, he added his own twists to it. However, he isn’t married to a particular scheme, and he has collaborated with the Ravens’ staff to develop a system that fits the strength of the players on the roster. Macdonald’s flexibility is likely one of the reasons he was chosen to replace Martindale, who stubbornly stuck with his aggressive scheme despite not having enough healthy corners to cover man-to-man at a high rate last season.

The Ravens will move away from playing so much man-to-man and will be more varied in their defensive approach. They’ll play more split safety (two-deep safety) coverages like quarters, Cover 6 (quarter, quarter, half) and Tampa 2 (two-deep zone). At Michigan, Macdonald didn’t blitz as much as Martindale, but there were games when he cranked up his aggression, like against Ohio State. But he used more simulated pressures, which are pressures in which the defense rushes four but with the fourth rusher coming from a second- or third-level defender instead of a defensive lineman, rather than bringing five or six at a high rate.

Although the Ravens will look different schematically, Macdonald has quickly endeared himself to the staff and players with his approach to building and teaching his defense. When he was hired, they met as a staff and talked over every coverage — how they taught it in the past and the techniques they used. Coaches brought up problems with how they installed certain coverages or techniques and went over the strengths and weaknesses of different techniques. For example, how did they want their corners and safeties to handle under routes in match coverages? What sort of footwork did they want their quarter safeties playing with? They reviewed everything they would teach so they could either reinforce why they were keeping it or decide they were going to teach it differently.

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“He’s doing a unique job. … I’ve kind of never experienced it,” cornerback Marlon Humphrey said at minicamp. “He’s really having everybody understand the whole philosophy of mainly just the group of coverages, as opposed to: ‘You got this call. How do you play this call?’ He’s kind of saying, grouping these calls all together, like, ‘What is the whole idea of this call?’ So I think he’s done a really good job of kind of really helping us all be smarter, to where I know what the D-line’s doing. I also know what the linebacker is doing. I also know what the safety’s doing — because, ‘The reason why I call this defense is because of this.’”

Often when learning a defense, defenders learn their jobs within certain calls but don’t get the bigger picture of why it’s called. They are simply expected to understand their individual responsibilities within certain calls and execute them. Focusing on just your job might make it easier to memorize, especially when you have an expansive list of calls you need to know, but Macdonald is teaching his players the goal of each call and why he might call it situationally.

“(Macdonald) did a good job of explaining we are getting into this (call) because of this reason,” a Ravens staff member told me. “For example, he’ll explain that we are getting into split safety because we want to stop a No. 1 receiver a lot of times. And then what are the stresses of split safety? The post routes over the top, like the grab post type of stuff. And then he’ll get into the top six stressors that you’ll see more of when you’re in split safety. We had a talk over that — the strengths and weaknesses of every coverage.”

By having players understand the why of each call, he is also giving them ownership of the defense and the tools to solve problems on the field. For example, if players see a slower receiver lined up in the slot and a stud outside, there are certain calls they could make on the field that would allocate their resources in the right places. Stephen Adegoke — now a defensive quality control coach for the 49ers — was on Michigan’s staff and saw Macdonald’s teaching methods firsthand.

“On third down, if you never thought about calls as a player, you might have just said, ‘Hey, we’re running nickel hot blah blah blah,’ and you just run the call because that’s how you learned to run the play,” Adegoke said. “But if now you understand the situation, like, ‘Hey, this is a third-and-7-to-10 man-coverage pressure,’ you already know once we call this, ‘I’m playing inside leverage, and I gotta protect the sticks as a safety.’

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“Let’s say I’m a D-lineman now and I know this call is a defensive front or stunt that we use against running quarterbacks in the red zone. Now we know we can’t get past the level of quarterback and we have to chop up the front to mix up the rush lanes. So understanding why you’re doing something makes it so much simpler.”

Mike Macdonald (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)

As far as the grouping of coverages that Humphrey talks about, he means Macdonald separates types of coverages using nomenclature.

“So, let’s say all of your split-safety coverages are named after shoe companies, and then let’s say your two-man is named after music artists and your three-deep is named after phone companies,” Adegoke said. “So anytime you hear ‘T-Mobile,’ ‘Verizon,’ ‘AT&T’ or ‘Sprint,’ I already know it’s a three-deep family, so now I know that we got buzzers, we got hookers, and this is what’s going on. Because other people just, like, give these really abstract names and it just doesn’t mean anything.”

Although that might sound arbitrary, when 80,000 people are yelling and it’s freezing and raining, hearing a name and instantly being able to recall the coverage and having an idea of what everyone else is doing because you know what family the coverage is in is important. One of the reasons understanding everyone else’s job is beneficial is because against certain motions or shifts, a defender might have to exchange responsibilities with another player. All this happens in seconds, so any learning device a coach can use to teach it is useful.

“Just, like, the flexibility that I’ve been seeing with what he’s been doing,” Humphrey said. “I think we want to have it to where any DB could play any position at any time. I think that’s kind of the vision that I’ve seen behind it. I think I’m getting reps inside, getting some reps to safety, getting some reps here. (Chuck) Clark come down play corner.”

The addition of safety Kyle Hamilton in the first round — to add to an already deep and versatile safety group with Clark, Marcus Williams and Tony Jefferson — will give the defense the ability to fluidly exchange responsibilities and disguise its intentions more. Although the Ravens might not be as aggressive with bringing pressure, they’ll put more emphasis on being intentional with keeping offenses uncomfortable with what they show pre-snap.

“Aggressiveness actually means it’s about keeping the offense off balance and where they’re not really believing what they’re seeing on a down-to-down basis,” Macdonald said at his introductory news conference. “So a lot of times that will come with a schemed-up pressure. … You know that’ll happen. A lot of times it could be a fake pressure — it could look like this coverage and play like another one — you know you’re changing the stress points of the zones and things like that. And just trying to create doubt at all times, you know? You want to be the one pushing the envelope rather than the other way around, so that aggressiveness, that was something that’s a principle of the Ravens organization.”

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It’s hard to argue with how successful the Ravens have been with Martindale’s live-and-die-by-the-blitz approach. They’ll still bring pressure, but it will likely be with more “safe pressures” like zone blitzes and simulated pressures. They’ll rely on being more sound on the back end and focus on disguising and creating confusion for quarterbacks, similar to Vic Fangio’s approach. Perhaps they feel this is the best way to stop the AFC’s top quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. Because blitzing those guys is asking to be punished. Moving on from Martindale to someone as inexperienced as Macdonald is a gamble unto itself, but the Ravens have never been afraid of thinking outside the box.

(Top photo of Marlon Humphrey: Tommy Gilligan / USA Today)

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