Everyone already knows that Todd Monken loves to run the football and that he\u2019s been insanely effective at it. What most people overlook is how he\u2019s able to be so consistently good at it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not because he \u201dalways has great running backs\u201d, though that\u2019s probably a part of it, but it\u2019s due to how he uses simple offensive formations to create extra gaps along the line of scrimmage. It\u2019s one of the main reasons why he\u2019s so accustomed to using unbalanced and 12-personnel formations.<\/p>\n
One of the best parts about NFL players and defensive coordinators is that they\u2019re not stupid, and Todd Monken uses that to his advantage.<\/p>\n
If Monken overloads one side of the line of scrimmage, whether that be with a fullback lined up next to the tight end in a wing formation or just with an additional tight end, he knows that defenses won\u2019t simply overload that side as well. They\u2019ll have to either rotate the backside safety down to occupy the spot vacated by the shifting linebacker, or they\u2019ll be susceptible to a counter or weakside jet sweep.<\/p>\n
Even if a defense does overload one side of the line to match the offensive formation on obvious run downs, it usually leaves smaller defensive personnel on the backside to counter up into.<\/p>\n
Since defenses don\u2019t usually match personnel unless they\u2019re unusually confident in their ability to defend the flank, Monken\u2019s able to run different power or playside pin\/pull variations to extreme effectiveness. Whenever an offense can gain a consistent numbers advantage in the run game, it\u2019s easier to take advantage of the defense either on the strong or weak side.<\/p>\n
Be prepared to see a lot of power run in 2026, with lots of play and run-action sequenced off of it in the passing game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone already knows that Todd Monken loves to run the football and that he\u2019s been insanely effective at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,85,54,91914,2337,7,781,6],"class_list":["post-898519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-browns","tag-browns","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-browns","tag-cleveland-browns-analysis","tag-clevelandbrowns","tag-football","tag-general","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116620481233666079","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}