Does a good pass rush actually help out the secondary?

It has been widely believed for the longest time that having a good pass-rush can make an average or mediocre secondary look really good or better than they actually are because they force the quarterback to get the ball out quickly. In other words, they don’t ask the defensive backs to have perfect coverage for 5 seconds or more every play.

Given the Kansas City Chiefs have needs in both the secondary and in the pass-rush department and only so much money to spend, the conversation of which is more important and which one should get more attention has come to the forefront once again.

I am a firm believer of the opinion that bad defensive backs are bad defensive backs and they will get exposed at the end of the day regardless of a good pass-rush. We don’t have to go back very far in Chiefs history to find supporting evidence of this either. In 2018, the Kansas City Chiefs led the entire league with 52 sacks and yet still had one of the worst pass defenses of all time to go with it.

At the same time, we have to acknowledge every situation is different. It’s almost a chicken or the egg scenario when it comes to coverage ability vs pass-rush. I think we can all agree that having a good pass-rush is extremely beneficial to a secondary in theory, but does having one always mean there’s nothing to worry about on the back end?

Today I’ve decided to do a little bit of a deeper dive into the question and factored in the way the NFL is played today to best answer whether or not a pass-rush is as vital to a secondary as everyone makes it out to be.

It has been widely believed that having a good pass-rush can make an average or mediocre secondary look good.

The first thing I did when researching this topic was pull up some of the most recent NFL teams pass-rush rankings and also looked at their pass defense to compare and find out if there was any correlation. We do already know that the 2018 Chiefs defense goes against this idea but obviously, one team is a small sample size.

Just from this past season, the Pittsburgh Steelers led the entire league in sacks with 3.2 sacks per game and had one of the highest pressure rates despite blitzing less than two-thirds of the time in a majority of their games. At the same time, the Steelers pass defense ranked just 13th in the league with an average of 223.8 pass yards given up per game. Also, the Steelers led the league in sacks in 2020 but their pass defense was much better ranking 2nd in all of the NFL. So, did the secondary truly benefit from a good pass-rush? Because it isn’t like the personnel in the secondary drastically changed from year one to year two. The only notable difference was Steven Nelson was released.

Just out of curiosity, I also looked at the NFL’s best pass defense from this past season and compared it to the pass rush. The Buffalo Bills had not only the best pass-defense by the numbers last season but they had the No. 1 scoring defense. They ended up 12th in the league in sacks, but they did have the best pressure rate in the NFL which certainly helps. San Francisco was right behind Buffalo in sacks and also had a top 10 pass defense. So, yes it’s still true that a handful of teams who have good pass rushes tend to have good pass defenses because of it. Other recent teams have had really good pass defenses such as the 2019 Baltimore Ravens (5th) and the 2019 Denver Broncos (11th) but ranked in the bottom half and bottom third of the league in sacks and pressure rate.

However, some of the other top pass defenses like Carolina and New England who ranked 3rd and 4th respectively, had “meh” pass rushes relative to their defensive rank. Carolina ranked 15th in sacks and 7th in pressure rate. New England ranked 21st in sacks and 11th in pressure rate. Of course, the pressure rate which is more important to a lot of people wasn’t too bad yet when you think of Carolina’s and New England’s secondaries there are so many featured talents like Stephon Gilmore, J.C. Jackson, Jonathan Jones, Donte Jackson, etc. Those defenses are built around their secondaries and it’s fair to even wonder if great coverage has resulted in more sacks/pressures for them. That’s probably an angle not a lot of people looked at it from before.

There have just been so many teams over recent years that have had parts of their defense on such different ends of the spectrum. The 2019 Tampa Bay Buccaneers are another as they ranked 8th in sacks and 11th in pressure rate but were putrid in defending the pass as they ranked 30th in yards allowed per game.

Something else we have to consider is that so many quarterbacks are entering the league like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, etc. that are phenomenal under pressure or when they’re leaving the pocket that pressure isn’t really doing the defensive backs all that much good in coverage and sometimes asks them to cover for even longer in more advanced areas of the field. That’s why it is difficult to even take a team’s pressure rate at face value or weigh it more than sacks because at least sacks prevent a throw from ever happening whereas pressure might mean nothing to the end result of a play.

The way the game is played and how some quarterbacks will even dink and dunk to get the ball out quick should also be acknowledged but that could be a whole other conversation. Linebackers have also become a bigger part of coverage plans for teams in the short game, though, so it can be a poor reflection of the secondary when the linebackers aren’t doing their job. That’s a whole other conversation, really.

This scatter chart from PFF also shows a number of teams’ pressure vs coverage and the results are all over the charts with a high volume of teams in each area of the graph.

There’s just not enough evidence to tip the scale on either side in favor of one. The idea that pass rush helps out a secondary is not wrong nor crazy. There are a lot of cases where it does. However, there are almost just as many examples where the pass rush did absolutely nothing to change the play of the secondary in a good way and it’s fair to say that with the Chiefs, their pass defense has vastly improved despite their pass-rush getting worse every year since Patrick Mahomes took over the reins.

Some will point out that the secondary has much better players now than it did three or four years ago but that’s kind of the point I’m making here. To say pass rush is infinitely more valuable than coverage ability when it’s clear that the Chiefs pass defense was bad with bad players and a good pass rush only hurts the theory that pass-rush helps a secondary.

Again, I’m not saying a good pass-rush equating to a good secondary is a total farce but you can’t put together a historic pass-rush and then a bunch of no-name defensive backs and think the pass-rush will cover it up. A secondary with a pass-rush is better than a secondary with no pass-rush and NFL defensive backs will tell you that but it maybe doesn’t matter to the degree that a lot of fans have been led to believe.

You still need a good secondary or your pass-rush won’t matter much. Good defensive backs will still do what good defensive backs do and bad ones will get exposed at some point no matter what. Both phases of the defense are important. Hot take, I know. They both should receive equal investments.