A new film breakdown of Patrick Toney’s defense went around last week, this one from a former Cornell and, after transfer, Baylor player who’s trying to kickstart a YouTube channel.
At just under ten minutes long, it’s a lot more concise and digestible than many film study videos out there. It’s not one of those 45+ minute sessions with long digressions as you so often see. It also repeats itself a fair amount, so somehow it still could use some editing down anyway. Here it is if you didn’t get to seeing it.
The main point the video is trying to get across is the concept of a defense with a “creeper” player. Toney employed one at Louisiana, and he’ll employ one in Gainesville.
The creeper is not a new revolution that Toney himself created. You wouldn’t expect a 31-year-old to have a completely brand new scheme anyway, unless it was something so off-the-wall that no one in their right mind would try it.
I found a breakdown from 2019 that discusses college and pro teams using creeper packages. The most applicable example to Gator fans would be Dave Aranda, who used the creeper in his time as defensive coordinator at LSU.
If you’ve heard the phrase “simulated pressure”, then you’ve more or less heard of a creeper defense. It’s an evolution of the old and well-established zone blitz. With a zone blitz, the defense sends five (or more) rushers and plays zone coverage behind it. Some of the fancier ones will try to make it look like six guys are coming but then only send five to try to confuse quarterbacks by having an unexpected player dropping back. You’ve seen this kind of thing a million times whether you recognized it as such or not.
With simulated pressures/creeper sets, blitzing is entirely optional. Toney will sometimes make it look like six guys are coming but then drop two of the potential rushers. At that point he’ll only be sending four, and four doesn’t qualify as a blitz anymore. Done correctly, you can more easily get pressure.
A simple example would be to make it look like you’re overloading the left side of the offensive line, which could cause the center or a blocking running back to favor that side at the snap. You then have one or two of the guys showing overload left drop back while sending an extra player at the middle or right side of the line. You’ve now made the blockers shore up a place where you’re not strong and leave more vulnerable a place where you’re actually going to apply pressure. By the time the offense reacts and tries to adjust, there’s a very fast and very mean gentleman in the quarterback’s face.
The point of all this is to achieve a defensive coordinator’s dream: get real pressure with four. Plenty of defensive schemes try to achieve that, whether you’re talking about the Tampa 2 or 3-4 defenses with war daddy nose tackles or creeper schemes.
By rule, the offense must have five players wearing a number between 50 and 79 who cannot be eligible for a pass. Well, in college anyway; the tackle eligible play is a thing in the NFL. The quarterback will be taking the snap, so mathematically there are at most five players to worry about going out for a pass. On some pass plays, it’ll be four or fewer because a back and/or tight end will solely block.
If a defense can reliably get pressure with four, then it can drop seven into coverage. Seven-on-five usually gives the advantage to the seven if they’re coached and schemed competently. Seven-on-four is a massive edge.
So who exactly is the creeper on a given play?
I fudged things a bit earlier when I equated creeper sets and simulated pressure. Given that there is no standard dictionary of football, some terms can get muddied. Remember the rush end position that Will Muschamp and Todd Grantham called Buck? Well, now it’s called the Jack position under the new staff. Update your lingo at your leisure.
Some folks do use creeper and simulated pressure interchangeably. You can also find those who draw a real distinction between the two.
The latter camp would point out that a simulated pressure makes it look like a blitz is coming before the snap, whereas a creeper player doesn’t show blitz before the snap. If you’re thinking that there could be overlap there, you’re right.
If a defense puts five on the line of scrimmage, that’s a simulated pressure. If they then only rush three of those guys but send the guy seemingly lined up in coverage over top the slot receiver, then that extra guy being sent is the creeper on the play. It’s a simulated pressure, because they showed blitz but only sent four, and it’s also a creeper set, as someone who wasn’t showing blitz ended up rushing.
So, Brenton Cox is never going to be the creeper on a play. He always lines up on the line of scrimmage in the box. That indicates that he’s a threat to rush on every snap. He might drop back as part of a creeper set, but he himself won’t be it.
Linebackers, corners, and safeties are going to be the creepers, provided they aren’t showing blitz ahead of time. Here is where the scheme really shines: you might have no one showing blitz, but multiple players could be the creeper. The offense will either have to guess who it is and risk being wrong or simply react and risk being late. In the former case where it guesses, it even guess wrong that anyone is a creeper and then waste a player blocking someone who’s not coming.
If your head is spinning a bit right now, that’s okay. It’s hard to get this stuff across in solely words, but it actually isn’t that complicated in theory. Check out the video and the links I’ve put in here to see some examples in motion. It’ll make a lot more sense.
The key to everything is mixing things up. If Toney gets into a rut where he’s using the same guy as the creeper over and over, then offenses can anticipate it and adjust their protections accordingly. The whole point is to be unpredictable and make the quarterback see ghosts. You want the passer to panic in the pocket because it feels like rushers are coming from every direction while no one ever seems to get open.
We’ll see how well it works in practice with the players on hand and a relatively young guy running the show. At the very least, UF now has someone running something that’s more on the cutting edge of defensive thought instead of someone going with a scheme that was past its sell-by date.