With less than a minute elapsed in the Monday night preseason game between the Atlanta Falcons and the New York Jets, Marcus Mariota threw a deep pass up the left side of the Jets’ defense to second-year tight end Kyle Pitts. Cornerback Bryce Hall was directed to cover Pitts deep without help, and if you watched Pitts at all in his rookie season, you know how that went. Hall tried to open his hips and stay with Pitts through the route, and that wasn’t going to happen.
Kyle Pitts is going to be a problem in this league pic.twitter.com/jqLjZcJLue
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) August 23, 2022
The result was a 52-yard gain, and had Mariota put a little more gas behind it, that would have been an easy six. Why the Jets didn’t bracket Pitts right out of the gate, we have no idea. We learned last season that giving one guy no help when Pitts ran deep was a plan doomed to fail.
Moreover, the coverage in this case was specifically doomed to fail. The Jets seemed unclear as to whether they were playing man or zone, and the deep safety left Hall hanging from the snap. This is not how to deal with Kyle Pitts in any way, shape, or form.
In his rookie campaign, with quarterback Matt Ryan, Pitts caught seven passes of 20 or more air yards on 12 targets for 239 yards, and (somehow) no touchdowns. More often than not, these deep completions were contested by single defenders, and more often than not, the result went decidedly in Atlanta’s favor.
“He’s got a really good skill set,” Ryan said of Pitts when I spoke with him about the rookie last September. “He’s big, long, very good hands, he’s very athletic, he’s an explosive runner… his ability to finish plays like that is rare from a tight end — his ability to run in space and eat up yards like he does is impressive.”
It certainly was, and Pitts created the same problem for opposing defenses that Travis Kelce of the Chiefs has established for years: One-cover-One is not a sustainable strategy.
The problem Pitts creates for your defense is similar to the problem Kelce creates. If you don’t have help up top, you are https://t.co/NNI0B3P6xy pic.twitter.com/UihRPjNWGV
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) August 23, 2022
Let’s take a look back to last season, what Pitts did on deep stuff against different coverages, and why the Jets should have known better.
Getting sticky through the route, or else.
If you want to play any kind of two-deep coverage when Pitts is the target… I mean, that’s supposed to make sense. You have one safety playing to the passing strength, and in Atlanta’s offense, wherever Pitts is, is the passing strength. Gang Green didn’t get the memo on this 28-yard completion in Week 5 — their Quarters coverage got drawn and quartered, and everybody forgot to match Pitts at the same time.
Not an optimal strategy.
turns out the jets didn't know how cover kyle pitts last season, either pic.twitter.com/xZFFVE3O4J
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) August 23, 2022
Cover-1 might be basically Cover-0 (literally).
If you want to play Cover-1 against Pitts when he’s rolling deep… well, we’ll say it again: The safety needs to work to the passing strength, and regardless of the formation, wherever Pitts is, is the passing strength. You can’t be late to the party, as single deep safety Jevon Holland was in Week 7, leaving cornerback Xavien Howard out to dry. Howard is one of the NFL’s better cornerbacks, especially in man coverage, but you’re asking a lot with Pitts’ stutter-fade here with a one-on-one. Holland was also a rookie last season, and Pitts is an alien, so that was surely part of the issue.
Hole in zone? Might as well go home.
On the play before that, the Dolphins tried throwing a little Cover-2 at the Falcons, and Matt Ryan had to have a smirk on his face, because he knew that Pitts was going to run a post underneath as part of a dual-vert package, and there was going to be a hole in that zone which Pitts could exploit.
Which is exactly what happened, for a 23-yard gain. If this doesn’t become 2-Match at some point, you are just asking to be scalded with the deep ball.
When are they going to learn?
In Week 15, the 49ers decided to play Quarters when Pitts was on the outside — much like the Jets did last season. And much like it was for the Jets last season, the idea of putting a cornerback solo on Pitts through a deep route was… at this point, teams should have had the trend on lock. Safety Jaquiski Tartt ran to the middle to help with the over route from the other side, leaving cornerback Ambry Thomas one-on-one to the boundary. And as we have already established, that’s basically none-on-one. 48 yards later, Pitts had once again proven the point.
One week later...
One week later, the Falcons played the Lions, and on this 35-yard play, the Lions ran Quarters with the cornerback covering Pitts to the boundary without help up top from the safety. No offense, but are we even watching game tape here? Looks like safety Dean Marlowe is covering hook/curl to his side with the blitz (maybe?), but ain’t nobody getting targeted up the middle if Ryan has time to exploit that mismatch to the right side.
Which, of course, he did.
How do you solve a problem like Kyle Pitts?
To their credit, the Patriots were the one team to figure it out last season. Pitts had three catches on five targets for just 29 yards in Week 11 against Bill Belichick’s defense, and on this interception by safety Devin McCourty, the Pats didn’t just bracket Pitts through the route — they beat him up at the line of scrimmage (courtesy of safety Kyle Dugger), and McCourty was right there to anticipate the throw, which was past Pitts due to the physical press delay. It’s a standard Patriots coverage concept — put your top cornerback elsewhere, and take another defender low, and your best deep safety deep, and handle it thusly.
As usual, Bill Belichick leads the way.
“He’s a beast, he’s a big challenge,” Belichick said of Pitts after the game, which the Patriots won, 25-0. “I thought our players did a good job [with] good awareness. They hit a lot try to throw a bunch of play-action passes. And I thought [linebackers Ja’Whaun] Bentley and [Dont’a] Hightower, [safety Adrian] Phillips and Kyle Dugger. Those guys had some good awareness on some of the over routes. Kyle made a good play there one of the third down plays early in the game where they’re trying to go to him, but he’s a tough guy to handle. He’s got a really good skill set. He’s a great player and got a quarterback that can get him the ball. I’m glad we don’t have to play him every week.”
For those teams that do have to face Kyle Pitts more often than not, anything but doubling No. 8 is a proven disaster — especially when he’s testing your defense deep.
At some point, you have to think the rest of the NFL will learn.
