This was not supposed to happen.
The stars were aligned for the Pittsburgh Steelers to shut down the New York Jets’ run game. The Steelers allowed the fifth-fewest yards per rush attempt in 2024 and retained all the talented front-seven players who helped them achieve that ranking. To boot, they added one of the league’s best corners in run support, Jalen Ramsey.
Days before the game, New York lost arguably its most talented run blocker, right guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, who would be replaced by a porous run-blocking center, Josh Myers. Before this injury, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin had already told the media that his team was expecting New York to hit them with a run-first approach.
Pittsburgh had a defense loaded with run-stuffing talent, and its seasoned coaching staff ensured the players were prepared to face a bevy of runs. Meanwhile, the Jets were down an elite run-blocker, and it was the first game running a new scheme filled with new players – including a quarterback whom the opponent was familiar with.
In no universe should the Jets have run for 182 yards and three touchdowns in that game. Except for this universe, apparently.
New York’s rushing attack pounded Pittsburgh for four quarters, keeping the Steelers guessing with a combination of zone reads from Justin Fields and the traditional run game. With their running backs, the Jets primarily relied on inside zone, but threw the occasional curveball with outside zone or power.
Fields finished with 12 carries for 48 yards and a pair of touchdowns, while Breece Hall led the way with a resurgent performance, totaling 107 yards on 19 attempts. Isaiah Davis added 18 yards while Braelon Allen chipped in nine yards and a touchdown.
The Jets finished with a sterling 0.111 EPA per rush, placing fifth-best in Week 1. They were successful on 48.6% of their runs, ranking sixth-best, signaling their consistent ownership of the line of scrimmage for four quarters.
Considering the Jets’ run game achieved that degree of success against Pittsburgh of all teams, the ceiling is limitless against their Week 2 opponent, the Buffalo Bills.
The Buffalo Bills’ run defense is ripe for the picking against this type of offense
Buffalo miraculously pulled off a 41-40 win in its season opener, erasing a 15-point Baltimore Ravens lead in the fourth quarter. The comeback was necessary because of a horrendous defensive performance against the run.
The Bills allowed Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry to combine for 239 rushing yards and three touchdowns on just 24 carries, an astronomical 10.0 yards per carry between the superstar duo. Overall, Buffalo allowed a rushing success rate of 50%, the fifth-worst mark of Week 1.
This makes Buffalo a juicy matchup for New York – not just because of Buffalo’s overall struggles against the run, but also because it came against a similar type of offense.
No, Justin Fields and Breece Hall should not be considered on par with Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry just yet. But with Fields at quarterback, the Jets’ run game operates with the same core goal as Baltimore’s Jackson-centric attack: threaten the edge with an athletic quarterback to open space between the tackles for a home-run threat at running back.
That’s exciting for the Jets, as Buffalo has had major problems containing the Ravens’ run game for two years in a row. In Week 4 of the 2024 season, Baltimore picked up a 35-10 blowout win over Buffalo on the strength of 34 carries for 271 yards and two touchdowns.
Overall, across their last two regular season games against the Bills, Baltimore amassed 63 carries for 509 yards and five touchdowns, paving the way for 68 points offensively. Even in their 27-25 playoff loss to Buffalo, the Ravens ran 30 times for 176 yards and a score.
Jets offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand should be giddy about the possibilities against this defense. He has the weapons at his disposal to replicate Baltimore’s success – or at least come close to it.
Putting Fields and Hall on Jackson and Henry’s level based on career accomplishments would be silly. But New York’s duo has a much closer ceiling to Baltimore’s than you probably think.
After Jackson, Fields is arguably next in line when it comes to pure rushing skills at the quarterback position. Among quarterbacks with at least 50 career games played, Fields is second all-time in career rushing yards per game (50.1) behind only Jackson (60.0).
Meanwhile, Hall’s career yards per carry (4.6) is almost identical to Henry’s before he joined the Ravens (4.7). Henry has spiked to 6.1 since stepping into the Ravens’ offense alongside Jackson, who opens up interior running room that Henry never had in Tennessee. It’s only one game, but Hall jumped to 5.6 in his debut alongside Fields.
The Jets have every reason to believe they can mimic Baltimore’s success. If New York can run the ball on Pittsburgh, they can do it against a defense that just got stomped by the same style of offense.
Engstrand would be wise to steal a few pages from the playbook of Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken. Let’s take a look at some of the ways Baltimore has exploited Buffalo’s run defense.
Ravens’ run game film vs. Bills
Target the safeties
A consistent theme emerges from the Ravens’ last two regular season game plans against Buffalo: They emphasized exploiting the safeties in the run game.
In the Ravens’ Week 4 win last season, Buffalo’s safeties combined for an utterly shocking total of eight missed tackles. Think about that: eight missed tackles from one position!
Baltimore went back to the well in this year’s opener. While the Bills’ safeties dropped to just two missed tackles, that’s only because they hardly got to the ball in the first place. Baltimore targeted the safeties with great success, either plowing them on blocks or benefiting from poor angles.
Starting safeties Taylor Rapp and Cole Bishop posted run defense grades (per Pro Football Focus) of 48.7 and 41.5, respectively, making them the only starting safety duo of Week 1 in which both players had sub-50 grades against the run.
Here is a great example of how the Ravens exploited Buffalo’s safeties in Week 1.
While it can be tempting to just pound Derrick Henry between the tackles for positive chunks, the Ravens know he has elite home-run ability, so they like to set him up on the outside to hopefully create a lane for him to reach the third level and go one-on-one with the safeties. That’s what happens here.
Baltimore runs a crack toss, and with three well-executed blocks – a crack block from the tight end, a lead block from the fullback, and the right tackle climbing to pin the linebacker inside – Henry gets a lane to sprint north-south.
Threatening the edge puts pressure on one safety (Rapp, No. 9) to make a critical decision. Rapp takes a poor angle, overpursuing outside, leaving Henry to go one-on-one with the other safety, Bishop (No. 24), who gets humbled. No, Hall isn’t throwing a stiff arm like that, but he might have the speed to simply outrun Bishop instead.
New York has the pieces to execute this concept. Mason Taylor and Jeremy Ruckert had surprisingly impressive season debuts as blockers and could throw the crack block that Mark Andrews executed for Baltimore on this play. Andrew Beck can get out in space at fullback, while the Jets’ right tackle, Armand Membou (who had a shockingly great debut against T.J. Watt), is athletic enough to climb and beat the linebacker to the play side.
The Jets didn’t run many gap-blocking concepts in Week 1, mostly relying on inside zone. That gives them a great opportunity to hit Buffalo with a changeup this week. With only one game of film on Engstrand’s offense, the Bills can only prepare for a heavy lean toward inside zone, so Engstrand has a chance to surprise them with the crack toss and other gap-blocking plays.
The risk of gap-blocking plays is that they only have one designed hole, so if things aren’t blocked up perfectly, there is a greater risk of a loss or no gain, as there are fewer options for the running back to improvise. Contrarily, zone plays are designed for the running back to scan across the line of scrimmage until a hole naturally opens up, as the linemen are instructed to take the defenders where they’re going rather than block for a specific hole. It puts more emphasis on the running back’s vision and creativity.
There is arguably more home-run potential with outside gap-blocking plays such as the crack toss, which, as seen on this play, is because it creates the chance of the running back being able to sprint directly through a hole he targets from the get-go. Zone plays offer more opportunity for down-to-down consistency due to the options they create for the running back.
Look for the Jets to mix in some plays of this nature against Buffalo, whether it’s crack toss, power, or another gap-blocking concept designed to give Hall a shot at going one-on-one in space with Buffalo’s weak safeties – such as the one below.
On Henry’s first play against the Bills in last year’s Week 4 game, the Ravens went right at Rapp with a gap-blocking concept.
Baltimore is in 21 personnel (2 backs, 2 WR, 1 TE) with both wideouts to the left side. The only skill position players on the right side of the formation are Mark Andrews (tight end) and Patrick Ricard (fullback), which drags Rapp toward the box and makes him a focal point of the blocking concept.
The Ravens run a concept known as “crunch,” which involves wham and trap elements. The defensive tackles are left unblocked to be down blocked by the right guard and fullback. The center and right tackle climb to open up a hole in the B-gap; the center wants to pin his man inside, while the right tackle wants to kick out the edge defender, allowing Henry to run between the two blocks. Downfield, the tight end must climb and take care of the safety as the last line of defense.
Baltimore executes every block perfectly, and with Andrews topping it off by taking out Rapp, Henry has nobody between him and the end zone. This one requires no Herculean power from Henry; it’s pure speed, which means Hall has the ability to match this if the Jets can block it up.
The key to this run becoming an 87-yard touchdown instead of merely a nice chunk (outside of Henry’s superhuman speed for his size) is the formation.
Putting two “big” players (a FB and a TE) as the only threats to one side is a good way to lure the safety toward the line, as he does not have to respect a vertical threat. Because of the alignment, Rapp was only about 10 yards off the ball before the snap, and then he played aggressively post-snap. This meant that all Henry had to do was clear Rapp within 10 yards, and he was gone.
Engstrand is equipped to weaponize his formations in the same fashion, as his scheme, like Baltimore’s, is predicated upon the usage of big personnel packages. In Week 1, the Jets ranked 10th in 12 personnel usage (32.3%) and fifth in 21 personnel usage (9.7%).
Look for Engstrand to drag Buffalo’s exploitable safeties into the run concepts through creative usage of his personnel packages and formations.
Target Joey Bosa on zone read / Creatively use formations and motions to open run lanes for the QB
Joey Bosa was once among the best edge defenders in football, but now that he’s 30 years old with a plethora of injuries behind him, those days are long gone. The Ravens knew it, as they showed no fear of the five-time Pro Bowler.
Jackson ran towards Bosa on two zone reads in the first half, succeeding on both. Bosa clearly has little chance of keeping up with a quarterback like Jackson or Fields at this stage of his career.
In addition to targeting Bosa on each play, take note of how Baltimore created a numbers advantage on the second play.
The zone read is set up to send Jackson toward the weak side of the formation (away from the tight end), which, pre-snap, already has Buffalo lined up with fewer reinforcements to the side of the play that Jackson will run toward if he keeps the ball.
Then, by motioning the slot receiver from the weak side to the strong side, Baltimore opens up even more room to the weak side, as both the slot corner and the free safety respond to the motion by shifting toward the strong side.
Because of the initial formation and the ensuing motion, Buffalo is left vulnerable to a potential Jackson run to the weak side. Bosa becomes the critical player. After the slot defender shifts, Bosa is the last line of defense to contain Jackson on the edge, so he needs to stay home and force the handoff at all costs. Instead, he bites on the running back, and Jackson makes the easy read.
With the extra wrinkle of the tight end sifting back side to lead block for Jackson, it’s essentially a walk-in for the two-time MVP.
Building a great offense around a mobile quarterback requires much more than just calling zone reads and relying on the quarterback to either keep it or hand it off based on the edge defender. Offenses like Baltimore and Philadelphia have become elite with this play style because they augment the threat of the quarterback with further creativity to put him in an even more advantageous position to make plays.
Engstrand did that phenomenally in Week 1, and in Week 2, he will have an even more favorable opportunity to do so. The Bills’ defense loves to rotate and shift as much as any defense in the NFL, making them vulnerable to ceding outside running lanes to the quarterback in response to pre-snap motion.
Against Pittsburgh, Engstrand ran pre-snap motion 66% of the time, ranking sixth in the NFL, way up from the Jets’ 45% in 2024. That’s a great sign for the long-term future of the Jets’ offense, and it will be especially beneficial this week.
Targeting Bosa in the zone read is the surface-level goal for New York, as Fields can easily outrun the 30-year-old defensive end. But it’s up to Engstrand to supplement that with creative formations and motions to free up extra room at the second and third levels, allowing Fields to turn his five-yard runs into breakaway touchdowns.