Inside the Chargers' run defense turnaround: Connecting the 'what' with the 'how'

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — One of the most surprising facets of the Los Angeles Chargers’ defensive turnaround is how they are playing against the run.

Through six weeks, the Chargers defense ranked first in both expected points added per designed rush and success rate against designed rushes, according to TruMedia.

The improvement coach Jim Harbaugh, defensive coordinator Jesse Minter and the rest of the coaches have generated in just eight months is nothing short of astonishing.

Under the previous coaching staff, from 2021 to ’23, the Chargers ranked 31st in defensive EPA per designed rush and last in success rate against designed rushes, according to TruMedia.

The explanation for the massive jump in this phase is multi-pronged.

To start, general manager Joe Hortiz made two offseason additions to the middle of the defense who have helped elevate the run-stopping: defensive tackle Poona Ford and linebacker Denzel Perryman.

Ford is having a remarkably resurgent season. He is the anchor on the interior, steady and stout.

“We have a force in Poona,” said linebacker Daiyan Henley.

“He’s been a monster,” said defensive lineman Morgan Fox.

“He raises everybody’s game around him,” said defensive line coach Mike Elston.

Perryman has brought a violence and quick trigger to the second level of the Chargers’ run defense. It’s the brand of football Perryman has played throughout his 10-year NFL career, the first six of which were with the Chargers. Perryman made stops in Carolina, Las Vegas and Houston before returning for this season to the organization that drafted him.

The other key personnel shift has been Henley, who is now playing consistent defensive snaps for the first time in his young career. Henley, a third-round pick in 2023, only played 53 defensive snaps last season. His rookie season was derailed by a preseason hamstring injury. This year, Henley has played the second-most snaps of any Chargers defensive player. And he has been excellent in run defense, playing with a controlled fire that led to two tackles for loss in the first three games of the season.

“Being willing to go hit, being willing to get downhill, being willing to go make that contact,” as Henley described it this week.

The personnel adjustments have been important. But there is more to the improvement than merely different players. So many of the Chargers defenders were here under the previous regime, from Fox to defensive lineman Otito Ogbonnia to safeties Derwin James Jr. and Alohi Gilman to edge rushers Khalil Mack and Tuli Tuipulotu.

In reality, a largely unchanged group of players has turned into a truly ferocious run-stopping unit.

That process can really be boiled down to one word: coaching.

“What we preach and how we preach it and how the coaches detail it out, and then the players’ willingness to want to be better than maybe what it’s been before,” Minter said this week.  “When you throw all that together, you’re hopeful to get the results.”

jesse minter is him

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— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) October 17, 2024

Within the blanket idea of the Chargers’ run-defense coaching are two primary pillars.

There is the scheme, and there is the philosophy.

Elston put those concepts into simpler terms.

The scheme is “what we want to do,” Elston said.

The philosophy is “how we’re going to do it,” he said.

Since the players arrived at the team facility in early April, the Chargers have spent equal time on both pillars — the what and the how.

“There are coaches that I’ve been around that try to out-scheme other teams and spend more time on the what and less time on the how,” Elston said. “And that works at times. But it’s not as consistent.”

“I wouldn’t say one is more important,” Harbaugh said this week. “It’s like the carpenter. What’s more important, the hammer or the screwdriver or the saw? They’re all real important.”

On a broad level, the philosophy is rooted in a standard of physicality that Harbaugh demands.

“If I don’t do it the way they want it,” Mack said, “there’s gonna be movement happening.”

This standard applies to all three phases. Play with maximum physicality on each snap, or do not play for Harbaugh’s Chargers. That is ingrained in the culture, and it has been preached by the coaching staff since “Day 1 of OTAs,” according to Henley.

“It’s just an emphasis on being big-time tacklers and being able to make sure tackles,” Fox said. “When we do arrive, arriving violently.”

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— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) October 18, 2024

Physicality alone is not enough, though. It must be paired with a relentless attention to detail.

“There are a lot of physical teams out there that don’t have a lot of success,” Elston said. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to have a good blend of physicality along with, OK, how are we going to do this? How are we going react to these blocks? How are we going to strike these guys? … There’s a lot of coaching and teaching that goes into the how you do it, and I think we do it pretty well.”

Minter divides the how into five primary categories that he calls separators: communication, block destruction, effort/angles, tackling and ball disruption. Every day, the Chargers meet as a full defense to go over the separators. A position coach is assigned to each separator. Defensive backs coach Steve Clinksdale covers communication. Elston covers block destruction. Defensive assistant Dylan Roney, the de facto edge rushers coach, covers effort and angles. Linebackers coach NaVorro Bowman covers tackling. And safeties coach Chris O’Leary covers ball disruption.

At every meeting, each coach gets to present 12 to 15 plays on his separator.

“Guys want to show up on the block destruction tape,” Mack said.

The tape comes from games and from practices.

According to Fox, Ford hit a Denver ball carrier so hard in Week 6 that he broke his facemask.

“That’s the part of the how — how we’re going to do things, how we’re going to communicate, how we’re going to block destruct, how we’re going to tackle, how we’re going to get the ball off of people, how we’re going to take the proper angles,” Elston said. “You spend 15, 20 minutes at that a day as a full defense — not just positionally but as a full defense — there’s a tremendous amount of buy-in. That’s Jesse’s blueprint.”

The second phase is the what, the run scheme itself.

“I think of it as a run wall,” Harbaugh said.

Elston translated that Harbaughism: “We are going to knock people back, stay square, play a fit and be able to create a wall from inside out and be able to tear off a block and not let the ball through the middle of our defense.”

Some NFL defenses ask the front players to penetrate and seek negative plays. That is not how the Chargers defend the run schematically. Penetrating defenses are high risk, high reward. The Chargers, instead, are looking for consistency.

To achieve that, Minter builds in contingencies to his run fits. As Elston explained, there are players assigned to each gap — the A gap in between the center and guard, the B gap in between the guard and tackle, the C gap in between the tackle and tight end, etc. If a player is blocked out of his gap, Elston said, “the next guy outside is going to fill that spot so on and so forth until you get all the way out to the corner.”

And so, in theory, one player blocked out of his assigned gap does not lead to a 60-yard touchdown run.

“You’re not putting all your eggs in one basket with everybody at the same level at the line scrimmage,” Elston said. “There’s layers. There’s people responsible for certain fits. And then when something changes, there’s another layer to it that can step in and make that fit right.”

He added: “If it’s second-and-5 because they gained 5 yards on first down, we can get off the field still. But if it’s a 65-yard gain, that’s a problem.”

The Chargers were one of five teams to not allow a run of 25 yards or more through the first six weeks of the season.

From 2021 to ’23, they allowed 23 such runs, including a league-leading 13 of 35 yards or more.

“If a guy does make a good move, somebody’s got your back,” James said. “You feel that when you’re out there.”

The Chargers have achieved this success in run defense despite devoting the fewest resources to the line of scrimmage. Through six weeks, the Chargers played with six or fewer defenders in the box on more than 80 percent of their defensive snaps, the highest rate in the league.

They are the most efficient run-stopping team in the league, and they are doing with with the fewest bodies.

“It’s in how we block destruct,” Elston said. “Our guys understanding when we have a light box and how we have to play it and understanding that, yeah, you could penetrate, you could go try and make SportsCenter, go get a TFL. But that’s not what we’re doing. That’s not the scheme of the defense in this call.”

Defending the run in light boxes brings Minter’s defense to life. It allows him to devote resources to the back end. If the Chargers could not defend out of these light boxes, they would likely have to walk a safety down, limiting the types of coverages they can play. With two safeties deep, Minter can get to every type of coverage and implement the disguises and post-snap rotations that make processing exceedingly difficult for opposing quarterbacks.

“That’s why you see the quarterback scrambling around so much on us,” James said, “because there’s nobody open really.”

The Chargers have a good run defense.

Just another example of a changing tide.

“What you’re seeing on the field is a hungry group that wanted to be great,” Elston said. “You show them what we’re going to do, teach them how we’re going to do it and then they got to go out there and execute it. And I think on all those levels, there’s been very good buy-in.”

(Top photo: Brooke Sutton / Getty Images)