Ben SolakJan 7, 2026, 06:20 AM ETCloseBen Solak joined ESPN in 2024 as a national NFL analyst. He previously covered the NFL at The Ringer, Bleeding Green Nation and The Draft Network.
This, like many things my dad tried to convince me of when I was 8, is not really true. (All kids have to give their Reese’s to their dads on Halloween was another lie.) Healthy teams win championships. Balanced teams win championships. Lucky teams win championships. If we’re forced to split the hair between the two sides of the ball … offensive teams generally win championships.
I didn’t have advanced analytics when I was 8, so I couldn’t tell my dad this: Of the 30 teams that made the Super Bowl in the past 15 seasons, 27 had an average offense or better. The league average for points per drive over those 15 years was 1.9; only the 2015 Broncos and 2012 Ravens made the Super Bowl below that mark. The league average for EPA per play was 0.02; only those same two teams and the 2023 Chiefs were worse.
Defensively, we see more below-average teams. Eleven of those 30 Super Bowl participants were below average in defensive EPA per play; six were below average in points per drive allowed, and another four were bang-on average. In general, teams with elite offenses and average defenses appear late in the postseason, while the opposite — elite defenses, average offenses — fail to make it.
Yet defensively, these aren’t just the three best defenses. They stand a clear head and shoulders above the rest. By points per drive allowed: Seattle is best (1.48), Houston is second (1.52) and Denver is third (1.62). By first-down conversion rate allowed: Houston is best, Denver is second and Seattle is third. By defensive success rate: Denver is first, Houston is second and Seattle is … fourth. (Those pesky Browns ruined my perfect stats.)
Joseph has been calling on defense since 2016 — back when Macdonald was a defensive assistant with the Ravens and Ryans had just retired as a player. Of our three defensive wizards, he’s the one with the long white beard.
Nobody gets to call plays for a decade straight without developing a defensive identity, and Joseph’s is crystal clear: aggression. His units have blitzed on at least 30% of opposing dropbacks in each of the past nine seasons and have been top-five teams in blitz rate in each of the past eight seasons. Seattle and Houston, for perspective, were both bottom-eight teams in blitz rate this season. Joseph, far more than his contemporaries at the top of the defensive mountain, sends the heat.
But even decade-long playcallers have to change their ways at some point. Opponents watch film and dial in on tendencies. Offensive schemes change, and suddenly the blitz path that worked great in 2018 keeps giving up easy completions in 2025.
You might remember Week 3 of the 2023 season when the Dolphins scored 70 points on the Broncos. It was a truly embarrassing loss, and one that appeared to end Joseph’s tenure as the Denver defensive coordinator before it even began. We know how the story ends, of course, with this world-ending unit just two years later. This season, Joseph recalled speaking to Payton after that Dolphins game: “Let me be me, and I promise I’ll help you win.”
It took some time to turn the boat around, but Joseph got back to being himself. With a star cornerback in Pat Surtain II, a competent CB2 on the outside in Riley Moss and a standout young slot in Ja’Quan McMillian, Joseph started playing far more man coverage. Denver went from 28% man coverage in 2023 (barely above league average) to 37% in 2024 (fourth-highest rate) to 39% this season (third highest).
In 2025, the Broncos gave up an astonishing 4.4 yards per play in man coverage. Over the past five seasons, they were one of only three teams to give up fewer than 5.0 yards per play in man coverage while running it at least 35% of the time.
“I don’t call a lot of man. What we do is mostly pressure up front with matchup principles in the back end,” Joseph said in November. “It’s like playing a box-and-one defense in basketball. It’s zoned inside and match outside. These days, the beauty of playing great defense in this league is the ability to have different structures. If you can get [defensive backs] close [to wide receivers] without giving it that ‘man’ tag, that’s the expertise.”
Again, in December: “I think the beauty of playing defense in this new NFL, this pass-first NFL, is can you get [defenders] close without playing man? When you tell a defender he’s playing man, that means he has both sides of the route. If you’re playing, maybe, a fire zone, he has one side of the route. Confidence-wise he’s going to play more aggressive for you.”
We can find plenty of examples of Joseph’s box-and-one coverage — a basketball term for a defense that plays zone coverage save for one defender, who tracks the most dangerous opponent across the court in man-to-man. Joseph likes the box-and-one approach because it maximizes the competitive advantage offered by a truly elite cornerback in Surtain.
Here’s a second-and-6 against the Jaguars in Week 16. Brian Thomas Jr. is isolated to the backside of a 3×1 formation, and Surtain is across from him in true man coverage. Denver is sending a blitz and dropping a defensive end, eventually settling five players in coverage against the four remaining Jacksonville eligibles.
Quarterback Trevor Lawrence comes out of the play fake and does the smart thing by quickly identifying the one-on-one on the boundary. But Surtain is running Thomas’ route for him. This is the “and-one” of the box-and-one coverage philosophy. Because the offense isolated Thomas, Surtain can isolate him in turn, chasing him across the field independent of safety help and the rest of the coverage distribution.
With Denver’s underneath droppers sitting in the quick windows, Lawrence is forced to hold the ball. After the routes develop, Moss (No. 21) ends up chasing Jakobi Meyers (No. 3) across the field. This is Joseph’s second initiative: getting defenders in coverage on only one side of the route.
Moss is initially waiting for any out-breaking or vertical routes from the two receivers on his side of the field. He has good leverage on those potential routes, but when one receiver settles and Meyers starts crossing the field, he has to chase in space. If he were responsible for both sides of the route, he’d be beat.
But he isn’t. There’s a linebacker dropping into Meyers’ path right as he breaks, a dropping defensive end waiting for him at the numbers should he take the route shallow and a deep safety driving on the route as it climbs vertically. Because the Broncos can play true one-on-one coverage with Surtain, they get to use extra players to pack the other side of the formation.
It’s one thing to find the extra players. It’s another thing to yank them from unexpected places and create pass rush one-on-ones in the process. That brings us back to Joseph’s strength: blitzing. The synergy between Joseph’s pressure packages and deeper coverage bag is what has elevated Denver’s 2025 defense to new and rarefied air.
Here’s a third-and-10 against the Chiefs in Week 11. The score is tied late in the fourth quarter — as gotta-have-it as a down gets.
Joseph lines seven potential rushers along the line of scrimmage: four down defensive linemen, two linebackers mugged up in the A-gaps and the nickel McMillian lurking in the shadows off the left tackle. The Kansas City back, Kareem Hunt, is responsible for the linebacker closest to him and McMillian. When both come, Hunt takes the linebacker and leaves McMillian as a free rusher.
Joseph got these numbers in part because he trusts Moss in man coverage on Rashee Rice on the weak side. But Moss’ job is made easier by the threat of linebacker Jonathon Cooper (No. 0), whom Rice chips before he releases. This is the synergy. Cooper has one of the fastest get-offs in football, and because he demands extra attention, Moss doesn’t need to do as much in coverage.
The unblocked sacks are fun, but the real magic is how Denver wreaks havoc with a complementary rush. Cooper and teammate Nik Bonitto have two of the fastest first steps in football — sixth and fourth, respectively, by NFL Next Gen Stats’ tracking. And in the Broncos’ true 3-4 defense, their wide alignments give them quick paths to the quarterback’s back shoulder. No team shuts the back door faster than Denver, which forces quarterbacks to climb the pocket.
It’s a catch-all measure of defensive diversity concocted by Cody Alexander of Match Quarters. Up near the top, among the most diverse defenses — more personnel groupings, more coverage variety, more blitzes — you’ll see the Broncos, whom we just discussed.
Now look at that little purple bar way, way, waaay at the bottom. That’s the most homogeneous defense in the NFL by a country mile: the Houston Texans.
Houston has two personnel packages. Yes, just two. It has played 985 snaps this season, and 973 of those snaps have been in either base (three linebackers, four defensive backs) or nickel (two linebackers, five defensive backs) personnel. The Texans played one snap of dime (six defensive backs), which might have just been an accident, and 10 snaps of goal-line personnel. If we remove goal-line snaps, they played all but two defensive snaps this season in base or nickel.
How much better are Houston’s 11 than your 11? Its defensive success rate in nickel personnel was fifth highest through a full season over the past 20 years, which is as far back as the personnel data goes. The Rams had similar efficiency in 2025, but they played nickel nearly half as often and found success by switching up their personnel. Opponents know what the Texans are going to do, and they still can’t beat them.
You would think with such a tightly knit core group of personnel that the Texans could — and would — run a large variety of coverages. Surely with the same players on the field for every snap it would be easy to disguise intentions, and all that time together would foster strong communication and unlock complex coverages.