Derek Mason's 2-4-5 defense in Stillwater

After coming within inches of winning the Big 12 Championship, Mike Gundy and Oklahoma State quickly had two notable challenges ahead of them for the 2022 offseason. First, they had to replace defensive coordinator Jim Knowles who’d done a great deal to power OSU’s run at the Big 12 title with his defense (ranked 2nd in FEI). Secondly, they needed to work out how to adjust their defense to make use of an Edge position room which returns Trace Ford and Brock Martin along with phenom freshman Collin Oliver (10.5 sacks in 2021).

They may have solved both issues in one move when Gundy was able to poach Derek Mason from Auburn to be the new defensive coordinator in Stillwater. Mason was the head coach at Vanderbilt for seven years before he was fired and he took back up the DC mantle, working for Bryan Harsin at Auburn. After one solid year in which Auburn was ranked 20th in defensive FEI, he bailed on their dysfunction for this job, which is lower on the coaching totem pole but certainly offers a more stable environment.

Mason is traditionally a 3-4 defensive coach, but in the modern era of base nickel defense his unit at Auburn last year looked like this:

It’s a 2-4-5 defense with fairly small personnel comprising the front.

• Boundary Edge is Derick Hall (6-foot-3, 251 pounds)
• Boundary lineman is Colby Wooden (6-foot-5, 278 pounds)
• Field lineman is Marcus Harris (6-foot-2, 279 pounds)
• Field Edge is Eku Leota (6-foot-4, 240 pounds)
• Boundary inside backer is Zakoby McClain (6-foot-0, 219 pounds)
• Field inside backer is Owen Pappoe (6-foot-1, 226 pounds)
• Nickel is Zion Puckett (6-foot-0, 209 pounds)

A small group overall with an emphasis on zone replacement blitzing (drop either Edge and bring a linebacker or defensive back). Considering Oklahoma State’s likely configuration on defense in 2021, this approach could be just what the doctor ordered.

Oklahoma State’s remaining personnel

The Cowboys were a multiple front team in 2021 but they had a simple structure which guided their formations. Here was the basic role of each members of their starting front:

• Tyler Lacy, 6-foot-4, 295 pounds, field defensive lineman. He might be an end outside of the offensive tackle or he might be a nose shaded inside a guard but he was always the outermost defensive lineman.
• Israel Antwine, 6-foot-4, 295 pounds, nose tackle. He was always in between Lacy and the other defensive lineman.
• Brendon Evers, 6-foot-2, 292 pounds, boundary defensive lineman. Evers had a role similar to Lacy except he’d align to the boundary.
• Brock Martin/Collin Oliver/Trace Ford, all approximately 6-foot-2, 240 except Oliver who was 225, Leo/Edge hybrid. These guys could line up anywhere, on the edge, stacked behind the nose, or mugged in the B-gaps.
• Devin Harper, 6-foot-0, 235 pounds, field inside backer.
• Malcolm Rodriguez, 5-foot-11, 225 pounds, boundary inside backer. Both inside backer positions were similar, they’d line up one to the field and the other to the boundary.

If you’re curious, the safeties had similar rules as the defensive lineman. Thomas Harper and Tanner McCalister (split time) would line up to the field, Kolby Harvel-Peel in the boundary, and Jason Taylor between them.

It was a hybrid 3-3-5 which played out like a 4-2-5 more often than not, but it was something different than a 2-4-5 like Mason is bringing. Of the players listed above, only there positions return their starters for the Cowboys in 2022.

Brendon Evers and Tyler Lacy, the two swing defensive end/tackles, and all three guys who manned the “Leo” hybrid Edge position. Those three guys, Martin, Ford, and Oliver, are all really good players and among the best players on the whole team for Oklahoma State.

The structure laid out above only had roles for one of those three Edge players at a time on a standard down (they could play all of them together on a passing down). Someone was going to have to learn how to play inside backer, the structure was going to need to change, or else the Cowboys were going to have to bench two of their best players.

An obvious solution would be to play with two Edges at a time, but this requires substantial and wholesale changes to the defense. Changes which are now surely occurring with the hire of Derek Mason.

The main changes in adopting the 2-4-5 structure are in the play of the Edge players. Presumably a Derek Mason 2-4-5 scheme at Oklahoma State would look something like:

• Field Edge: Trace Ford, Brock Martin, or Collin Oliver
• Field D-lineman: Tyler Lacy
• Boundary D-lineman: Brendon Evers
• Boundary Edge: Trace Ford, Brock Martin, or Collin Oliver

For Lacy and Evers, they’d be doing some of the things they did before, changes would be relatively minor. For the Edge players, it’d be different. Their roles were simpler when Knowles was moving them around and often amounted to basic, attack-dog assignments. When you’re on the Edge full-time you have to abide by set rules for how offenses will try to block you and deal with more targeted play calls. Martin is certainly up for it and we recently saw Trace Ford captured on film working out:

Trace Ford has made some gains. Bro what?! (Pic via @desirae_ford) pic.twitter.com/eTno1aTb3e

— Eddie Radosevich (@Eddie_Rado) February 21, 2022

Ford was listed on their spring roster at 6-foot-3, 240 pounds but in this pic above he appears to potentially be closer to 250 or 260. Ford was listed at 227 coming out of high school. Martin is listed at 250 and Oliver still at 225. They’d need extra weight to play these positions because the 2-4-5 asks the Edge players to contain and set the edge with physicality, squeezing gaps closed or spilling pulling blockers. It doesn’t work terribly well if the Edge players aren’t monsters controlling the perimeter of the box, see the 2021 Texas Longhorns.

The inside linebacker positions would remain fairly consistent in a 2-4-5 scheme. The biggest changes would be the overall scheme and the approach to blitzing, both of which would move away from Knowles’ quarter coverages and zero blitzes.

What would a 2-4-5 mean at Oklahoma State in 2022?

There’s a few schematic shifts which would inevitably occur in the transition to Mason’s playbook. One of the biggest would surely come on the back end, where Jim Knowles and his horde of upperclassmen defensive backs were executing a wide variety of schemes within the quarters coverage family.

At Auburn last season, Mason ran predominantly man coverage, particular type designed around matching up 1-2-3 from outside in starting with the cornerbacks. It looked a lot like Cover 3 at times because they played off-man but it was really Cover 1 with some tight matching rules closely akin to Charlie Strong’s defenses.

It’s a simple set-up and highly conducive to playing with a lot of young defensive backs who’d benefit from having simple rules about who they’re supposed to be covering. As it happens, here’s a guess at the starting nickel secondary for the Cowboys in 2022:

• Left cornerback: Jabbar Muhammad, 5-foot-10, 175 pound junior. First year starter in 2022.
• Nickel: Thomas Harper, 5-foot-11, 180 pound senior. Rotational player in 2021.
• Field safety: Jason Taylor, 6-foot-0, 215 pound redshirt senior. Starter in 2021.
• Boundary safety: Kendal Daniels, 6-foot-4, 195 pound redshirt freshman. First year starter in 2022.
• Right cornerback: Kyrie Black, 6-foot-0, 185 pound junior. First year starter in 2022.

This is a much younger and less experienced group than their predecessors. The simple assignments of Mason’s brand of Cover 1 should be helpful in allowing this group to make use of their athleticism. It’s also designed to help the defensive front be aggressive with zone blitzing. Here are some of the benefits of the 2-4-5 matched with simple coverage for bringing pressure:

That’s three different blitzes which can attack the weak spots in different protections while bringing only four pass-rusher all while playing the same basic match coverage behind it. The ability of the Edge players to drop and play credible underneath coverage against a running back or tight end combined with the ability of the defensive backs to match good receivers outside (particularly at cornerback and nickel) allows the defense to muddy everything in the middle of the field.

This is close to what Texas wanted to do in 2021 under Pete Kwiatkowski, but their Edge players weren’t great in the pass rush and they tried to back it up with quarters coverage and a lot of complexity on the back end they hadn’t mastered.

OSU has much better personnel to make a good go of this in year one than did the Longhorns. The curious thing will be whether Mason installs his simple, zone-blitz friendly Cover 1 or if the existing staff will try to maintain more of the quarters coverages OSU has been playing for most of the decade.

Dave Aranda’s Bears use the blitz style above as well, but they play both Cover 1 and quarters behind it and they use a 3-down front rather than the 2-4-5 when Aranda has a nose tackle who’s worthy of anchoring around (they do). In the 3-down varieties of this scheme you don’t drop either Edge, there’s really just one on the field. OSU will play the more complicated 2-4-5 brand, they need to as that’s the whole point, getting more of their star Edge players on the field.

If Derek Mason can get this thing rolling next year, it could be very effective in pass defense. The next question would be run defense where you hope having a safety hanging around near the box makes up for having smaller personnel up front and one of your safeties backing up every snap. Assuming the Cowboys are able to successfully install sound coverages which make the most of having multiple Edge players, their challenge in 2022 will be doing so while also installing a sound run defense with all new linebackers and new rules up front. With positive results, the Cowboys could challenge for the Big 12 title in Spence Sanders’ senior year. Otherwise, they may be a year away on defense and depending on a resurgent offense to be back atop the standings.

Can Derek Mason install his scheme and get the Cowboys back to the Big 12 Championship Game? Discuss for free on the Flyover Football board!