Bear(5-0) Front, Combo Stunts & The New England Patriots
If you have been following me for a while you know I am a big proponent of using the Bear front in passing situations. A team who also believes in this and utilizes it in their 3rd down package is the New England Patriots.
Of their 47 sacks in their 2019-2020 season, 16 of those came in their Bear alignment. It also played a large part in their AFC championship game vs. the Chiefs and in their super bowl win vs the Rams win in 2018.
Benefits of the Bear front
The Bear front is a great front to use in passing situations for a number of reasons,
Firstly, it limits the protections that you are going to see from the Offense. There are usually only one protection that offenses use to block this front being man protection aka BOB(Big-on-Big) protection. Usually offenses stay away from the slide protection because it would mean the RB would be up against a defensive end of the edge or a bigger interior rusher in the B gap causing a huge mismatch.
This is a huge advantage because it allows the Patriots to better scheme stunts to exploit the 1on1 matchup they get from the offense
One of the unique ways the Patriots did this in their Bear front was using Combo Stunts or calls that have two stunts in them, specifically a 3 man stunt with a 2 man stunt opposite.
Two of their biggest combo calls they use involve using a 3 man stunt I call Fork with either 2 man games called Ears or Thumbs
Fork/Ears
Here they are running a combination of Fork and Ears. This combination works well because the Ears naturally pulls the OG away from the Wrapper coming around opposite from the Fork Stunt.
If just rushing 4, the OG would be available to pick him up, now he is no longer able to. Here, the penetration of both Collins in the A gap on the Fork side and By Butler on the Ears side lead to the success of this play.
Collins gets vertical so quickly the OC cannot recover to keep him of the QB, Whereas the violence in the pick by Butler allows Chase Winovich to wrap around tightly to get in on the Sack as well.
Fork/Thumbs
This variation involves running a Thumbs stunt on the backside away from the Fork stunt. This gets three penetrators up the field fast with both 5T’s wrapping inside to the first open grass they see.
The penetrators Butler, Hightower and Collins make this stunt successful because their verticalness does not allow the Offensive Line to pass off the stunt, enabling the wrapping Winovich and Van Noy to come around free to the QB.
Wrap/Thumbs
Another Variation they have use is running what I call a 3 man wrap game with either a 2 man thumbs or Ears game.
A wrap involves the 5T & 3T crossing face and penetrating inside with the 0T wrapping outside for contain. Again, this can get paired with either a thumbs or ears stunt. Here you can see tan example of New England running in this in their 2018-2019 AFC championship victory vs the Chiefs
There may not be a better stunting team in the League than the New England Patriots and they utilize combo stunts in a large part of their 3rd down package. These variations yielded gave them a ton of success in rushing the passer and helps their defense consistently produce year in and year out.
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