Socci's Notebook: As Mr. Inside & Outside, Jabaal Sheard Exceeding Expectations
BOSTON (CBS) -- The Tennessee Titans had just passed midfield with their second possession on Sunday, driving to rebut an opening score by the Patriots.
Facing 2nd-and-9 from New England's 47-yard line, quarterback Marcus Mariota stood in the shotgun formation, flanked off his right hip by running back Antonio Andrews. On opposite sides of scrimmage, New England's Akiem Hicks folded his 6-foot-5, 325-pound frame into a three-point stance, virtually eye-to-eye with Titans' right guard Chance Warmack.
Several steps away, to Hicks' left, teammate Jabaal Sheard was upright, seemingly positioned upon the snap to attack the outside shoulder of Tennessee tackle Byron Bell and, in the event of a pass, try to pressure Mariota. Yet as the ball was snapped, Andrews took a step toward Sheard as if feigning a block, before sprinting into the right flat as a would-be receiver.
Mariota immediately looked toward Andrews, only to discover that Sheard read the running back's actions all the way and was in the way, jamming and covering the play's primary target down the line. Left to look for an alternative, the rookie Mariota inched up and to the his left, but quickly ran out of time before another choice could avail itself. Hicks overpowered Warmack and wrapped up Mariota for the first of five Patriots' sacks.
Viewed from a wide angle, the collaborative effort of individuals Sheard and Hicks perfectly demonstrated a subject head coach Bill Belichick discussed two days earlier.
"Team defense is always a function of in the passing game, pass rush and pass coverage, so they play off each other," Belichick said last Friday. "One without the other really can be negated, so what you need is both at a competitive to high level. The better our coverage, the better our rush, the better our rush, hopefully the tighter our coverage, so they go hand in hand."
Often that interconnectivity is obvious when a longer-developing play is designed for a pass deeper downfield. Seconds elapse and a once-comfortable pocket collapses and, eventually, so does the quarterback; at which time the announcer invokes the phrase, "that was a coverage sack."
In this instance, however, when everything happens instantly, the cause (one man's reaction) and effect (another's reward) might have gone unrecognized if the announcer wasn't an ex-quarterback. Hicks was credited with the sack. Sheard was credited on the radio.
"Great job by Jabaal Sheard getting to the back in the flat," Patriots Radio Network/98.5 The Sports Hub analyst Scott Zolak remarked. "That's where Mariota wanted to go... he's looking to get the ball out in the flat right away.
"You see the athletic ability of Jabaal Sheard. For a defensive down guy to have the ability to read (the) back in the flat -- 'I got him in coverage' -- that's the old elephant position that Willie McGinest used to give you -- the ability to not only be able to rush the passer but run with the back in the flat."
Sure enough, Sheard would later do the former. Shortly before halftime, he got to Mariota's replacement Zach Mettenberger. It was his third sack in the last two weeks, including a pair forced fumbles at Houston.
At 6-foot-3 and roughly 260 pounds, Sheard fits McGinest's physical description of the aforementioned elephant position.
"You know what an elephant is?" the 6-5 McGinest told ESPN staff writer Tania Ganguli in April 2014. "It's a linebacker that's a big linebacker. I played at 265. It's a really big linebacker and the guy can play D-end too, but he's an undersized defensive end. It's kind of a 'tweener.'"
McGinest worked with the likes of Lawrence Taylor and Charles Haley under Bill Parcells and Pete Carroll, respectively, as well as Patriot all-time great Andre Tippett in an effort to fill the elephant role. He then helped define it under Belichick.
"Once Bill Belichick came, we implemented that system, we were good at that," McGinest recalled on a media conference call last spring, following his induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame. "We had the personnel and balance for that. He brought over Mike Vrabel and some other guys and we were all interchangeable. We could do a lot of different things, which made our defense a little more dangerous."
They, of course, stood the test of time; and were rewarded for it with multiple championships. Their successors on the present-day Pats are either defending their first title or, in the case of newcomer Sheard, simply seeking a first. That difference aside, one can see emerging similarities, especially the athletic interchangeability up front.
As exhibited, and embodied, by Sheard.
During his first four seasons as a second-round draft choice of the Cleveland Browns, Sheard had to annually adjust to different demands by new coordinators. Schemes changed and so did his level of statistical production. He dropped from 8.5 sacks as rookie to two sacks in his final fall with Cleveland.
Nevertheless, Belichick and his personnel staff viewed Sheard as someone who'd be a fit for New England's defense. So they signed him as a free agent in March. But at the time, they had no way of envisioning just how expansive his role could become.
"I'd say the big thing about Jabaal that has kind of been a little bit of a revelation is just his versatility," Belichick said during midweek preparations for Tennessee. "In Cleveland he basically just played left defensive end on every play – first down, second down, third down, and he played it well. Here, as you've seen, we've used him in different spots."
Inside. Outside. Left. Right. Rushing the passer. Dropping in coverage.
"He's long, he's athletic, he's got very good paying strength, has got good in-line quickness," Belichick continued. "He's a hard guy to block in the run game, he's a hard guy to block in the pass game, and he can match up against a lot of different players both inside and outside.
"Didn't know that he couldn't do it, didn't know that he could do it. (We) just didn't know, but he's done a good job with all that (and) has given us a lot of versatility as well as production, obviously. I mean he could just line up in one spot and play that well, too, but his ability to move around helps us do some other things."
Since arriving in New England, as Sheard's shown he can do one thing well, he's been asked to try another. And so on, and so on.
"He came here, we asked him to do some different things, it went well, we continued to do it, we built on it," Belichick said. "He worked hard to learn some different coverage techniques, inside pass rush techniques. It's a little different angle of going to the quarterback, different in the games, working off the outside lineman instead of always working off the inside guy, things like that.
"He's worked hard to adapt to those changes or those things we've asked him to do. We didn't know exactly how it would turn out. Sometimes some guys can do it, sometimes they can't."
Sheard has done it in part by learning from one who did it before. None other than McGinest.
"I mean, that's a guy that I watch film on still to this day," Sheard told reporters in August, following a practice on the night McGinest was inducted into the Hall at Patriot Place. "How he used to rush, how he'd attack, how he was relentless.
"Watching a great, man, it's always something you want to do -- look back and see how they used to rush. I mean, the game doesn't change. I mean, guys sack, pass rush. His relentless effort is what got him there."
The same has been seen of Sheard en route to his seven sacks in 11 games. And like McGinest and Vrable, he's teamed with Chandler Jones and Rob Ninkovich -- sometimes playing off one another, sometimes spelling each other -- to make this Pats' defense a little more dangerous.
"I think Chandler and Rob not having to be out there every single snap has also benefitted them and they've been very productive, too, so that's been a really good situation for us," Belchick concluded on a conference call early this week. "We probably hoped it would go that way but couldn't envision that it would have gone any better than it has."
Bob Socci is the radio play-by-play voice of the New England Patriots. You can follow him on Twitter @BobSocci.
