Robert Saleh picked the wrong words.
Ahead of their Week 4 matchup in September, the defensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers brought up unprompted how “advanced” a system the opposing Jacksonville Jaguars have under coach Liam Coen for legal “signal stealing.”
Saleh later said he intended to pay the Jaguars a compliment. The way Coen’s offense deploys motions, for example, sends a lot of information to his players and coaches because of how defenses react. Jacksonville’s coaching staff, pollinated from others Saleh has coached with and against, is meticulous about filing away and later using what it gleans from the defense.
Saleh’s initial phrasing, which seemed to surprise the Jaguars, went viral, and news cycles featured speculation about whether he offered the comment to try to get in his opponents’ heads. Ultimately, Saleh and Coen had an on-field verbal confrontation after the Jaguars beat the 49ers 26-21.
Throughout the week leading up to that game and beyond, there has been an awful lot of chatter in league circles about how a topic so buzzy to the average fan was all completely normal from the perspective of any NFL team.
Conversations with coaches, players, scouts and football operations employees shed more light on the meticulous work behind the scenes every team does to try to get information about its opponents.
It’s not stealing — but some do it better than others.
Motion and formation changes broadcast and gather a huge amount of information, as Saleh referenced, depending on the side of the ball. Every team uses motion. The frequency depends on the team — and so does the intent of the motion.
Some motions simply tell an offense whether a defense is in man or zone coverage. Formation-changing motions can not only give an offense a numbers advantage, but also show how defenses tend to align to two separate looks before the snap. Many defensive coordinators ask their video departments to cut them a reel of the plays offensive coaches like to run most frequently out of each formation. They are less focused on the motion itself and instead are looking for any concept patterns that might help their players gain an advantage when an offense changes formations before the snap.
NFL play callers such as Dallas Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer use motions to create matchup advantages and to learn about the opposing defense. (Robert Deutsch / Imagn Images)
Speed motions help receivers get free releases off the line of scrimmage against more aggressive cornerbacks and then manipulate angles and space in the second and third levels of the defense. Other motions change gaps, and therefore defenders’ responsibilities. What routes does a team like to pair with different types of motion? How do defenders’ assignments change depending on the pairing?
During film study, detailed coaches and players don’t watch a motion just for the result, but also for all of the small shifts and reactions on either side as that motion is unfolding. They then apply what they see to their game planning.
For example, an NFL offensive assistant coach said ahead of one game, he studied how a team reacted to fly motions that sent a receiver into the boundary. His own team had just had success with longer routes off this motion the previous week against a specific type of zone coverage. When watching clips of how the next week’s opponent defended that kind of motion, he saw that though they played a similar type of zone, their cornerbacks were allowed to play with more depth against fly motions than the previous team’s. That informed a shift in game planning to use those motions tied to underneath routes, instead of the longer-developing ones.
That coach believes going through the opponents’ motions is one of the most important elements of the game planning process.
As part of the information-gathering process, coaches are also searching for verbal and nonverbal communication before the snap.
One NFL coordinator recalled a 2016 matchup before which film study revealed the opposing defensive backs pointing to the sky when facing a certain receiver formation. The coaching staff believed the signal meant they were not going to match the routes out of that formation (as their regular coverage rules might dictate), but instead drop over specific zones. Though the coverage look they showed before the snap didn’t show the offense whether they’d match, the signal did. Without catching it, offensive coaches might have incorrectly predicted the defense would play its typical coverage to match their routes. Instead, they could shift their routes to unoccupied zones.
Another team recently noticed its upcoming opponent frequently signaled to check to a specific type of blitz against a formation change into a condensed set. To confirm the signal the defender made on his check was actually a pattern, coaches went through all of the opponents’ pressures against condensed formations. They were right. They could then build plays that countered that pressure into their game plan.
Why didn’t the defense change such an obvious tell before the game, knowing it could show up on film? Some teams change their signals frequently or use a lot of dummy calls; others don’t. It is a constant risk/reward scale. If a team changes its signals, but one player uses an old one, or there’s a communication breakdown somewhere along the 11-man game of verbal and nonverbal “telephone” that is a defense, the entire play busts. “You want to disguise, but you never want your disguise to take away from your coverage,” as one player put it.
Pass rusher Micah Parsons gestures to Packers defensive teammates before a snap against the Bengals. (Tork Mason / Imagn Images)
And, one assistant coach added, defenses seem to be signaling less or using more subtle methods of communication. Saleh’s defensive rules are known around the league because he’s been coaching for so long, the coach pointed out. He added that Saleh’s players are always well coached and the entire unit executes his game plan at a high level year after year. It doesn’t necessarily matter whether the opposing offense knows or suspects they know the call.
The best teams are often the most detailed in their preparation. Many coaches and players start with a series of film cutups that show leaguewide explosive plays (pass plays of 20-plus yards; run plays of 10- or 12-plus yards) and then their next opponent’s. These reels are put together by the team’s video department, which is part of the football operations staff and films every angle of every practice. (These video crews are separate from in-house content creators.) Explosive plays can most quickly change a game, so coaches need to understand how their opponent is trying to attack or defend them.
Modern technology allows video crews to filter every play from every game into endless buckets — sorted among run plays, pass plays, down and distance, red zone, etc. Typically, film study moves from explosives, to first- and second-down looks (including specific run and pass tendencies, personnel groupings and reactions by defenses), to pressure packages on passing downs and third downs, to late-down tendencies such as how often a team will go for it on fourth down and what plays it prefers depending on the yardage to gain.
Most NFL teams have analytics and/or research and development departments that help the video crew sort plays based on what coaches need or should be aware of. These staffers are also hunting for information, looking at everything from the success rate of plays on specific down and distances, to habits of specific play callers, to patterns that develop out of alignments and personnel groupings, to the most successful routes for a receiver and how teams cover them, to how defensive backs stand before the snap and whether that reveals any clues about the type of coverage he’s going to play or whether he’s already gotten a tell from the offense, and even to how many times a right-handed quarterback will throw to his left.
The game plan has to be ready for the first full practice and walk-through of the week Wednesday, and it’s adjusted from there based on player feedback or midweek surprises such as injuries. With limited time to watch and plan, it is the job of the video staffers to cut the fat out of some of the film depending on which coach they’re working with that week. If an assistant defensive line coach is tasked specifically with helping to game plan short yardage or goal line defense, he’s not getting a lot of tape on pass explosives run out of long-developing motions.
Quarterbacks such as Detroit’s Jared Goff are constantly searching for information on the opposing defense. (Mitch Stringer / Imagn Images)
Assistant coaches also watch the broadcast copy of the game. That footage sometimes includes sounds the on-field and player microphones pick up — and that typical all-22 film doesn’t.
On the all-22 angles of their film, for example, coaches can definitely see when Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen “alerts” to a changed call. He points to his helmet. But from those film angles, they might not be able to as clearly see what Allen is signaling to running back James Cook behind his back, when Cook is aligned behind him. In the season opener against the Baltimore Ravens, the “Sunday Night Football” broadcast picked up and zoomed in on Allen right after he alerted. Allen put both hands behind his back and pointed to his left. Then TikTok got ahold of it (yes, some teams even have staffers combing through social media).
Coaches listen for calls and adjustments from the quarterback and the “green dot” player on defense (the player in charge of relaying the defensive call from the defensive coordinator to the rest of the group). Tendencies after dummy calls, or after a quarterback switches from an initial to a second or even third play based on the look he gets from the defense, are all charted, and many coaches go so far as to note the noises, looks and hand signals they see among all of the players during those plays.
Advance scouts travel to watch upcoming opponents in person and are given designated seats in the press box to do so. As with anyone credentialed for a game, filming during game action is prohibited. The scouts are getting an in-person look at the opposing players and game plan, and are on the lookout for anything the all-22 cutups can’t pick up, because the pieces of film are clipped closer to the snap itself. In person, a scout is looking at the long seconds from the huddle to the line of scrimmage, or logging the scenarios that inspire an offense to go no-huddle and how fast they run those plays.
What tempos do offenses mix in? How fast do teams get to certain alignments and how frequently are they used? How much of the play clock does a team use? That can help inform a defense about the timing of its pressure, especially simulated pressure (that aims to make the quarterback hesitate or make the wrong decision) and delayed blitzes. If a team switches frequently in and out of tempo plays, scouts can bring that back to coaches, who will install similar periods in practice.
They are also watching sideline communication from coaches to players. The scouts might only pick up one or two clues in a game, if any.
But every little bit matters. Sometimes the details that film can’t catch make an enormous impact.
In 2017, a 30-year-old Sean McVay went to watch his friends Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur and Raheem Morris coach the Atlanta Falcons to a decisive win over the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game. It was the last game McVay would watch in person as a fan for the next nine years, because about a week prior, he had been hired as the Los Angeles Rams’ coach.
From his view in the stands, McVay noticed how quickly the Falcons got to the line of scrimmage from the huddle, and their snap timing in their no-huddle packages, especially with a running clock. The way they weaponized the entire play clock was not a detail McVay had been able to pick up when watching all-22 film. When LaFleur became his offensive coordinator in L.A. a few weeks later, McVay installed similar packages of plays and operational details that became key elements of that season’s explosive Rams offense.
McVay copied an advantage he noticed in Shanahan’s offense and turned it into one for the Rams.
Of course, it didn’t lead to any postgame confrontations between the two. That we know of.