We’ve all seen it before. Many times. Too many times, in fact.
A team has a lead late in the fourth quarter, and the defense seemingly operates not to lose, regularly sitting in conservative off-man or zone coverage. Blitzing is minimized. They try to keep everything in front. And all it does is allow the opposing offense to do anything it wants as it matriculates the ball down the field to get the game-winning or game-tying score.
Heck, we just saw it in the Buffalo Bills win over the Rams on Monday Night Football in Week 5. In a 27-27 game in the fourth quarter, Josh Allen led the Bills on a scoring drive, capped by a James Cook touchdown that, after the extra point, gave Buffalo a 34-27 lead with 1:39 remaining.
Then the Bills defense played on back on its heels.
No blitzes. Enormous cushion from the cornerbacks. Rams scored a touchdown on an eight-play drive that took 1:34 off the clock and didn’t even need to use a timeout.
It was precisely the consensus defensive coordinator philosophy in these type of end-of-game scenarios.
The idea for it first stems from a fear of allowing a deep pass over the top for a touchdown. Aligned with that fear is the thought that it’s harder for an offense to methodically move the ball down the field on a long drive without making a key mistake. A dropped pass that turns into an interception, the quarterback getting stripped while he’s sacked etc. So the defensive coordinators attempt to force the opposing offense into a long drive. And there’s credence to this line of thinking.
But I think it’s wrong. Or, it’s probably more apt to write, it’s not the optimal way defenses should approach these late-game scenarios while holding a lead… and the reason isn’t solely based on the defense itself.
And this dawned on me after studying the surge in end-of-half scoring a few weeks ago.
Here’s my thesis statement on this topic:
Defenses holding a lead late in games should deploy an aggressive strategy up front and in the secondary to make it as challenging as possible for the opposing offense to move the balland all but completely eliminate any fear of allowing a quick touchdown BECAUSE allowing a quick score is not the worst possible outcome… allowing a slow one is.
And the numbers back up this claim.
I used the handy nflverse play-by-play data from 2001 to 2025 to check the outcomes for drives in the final 2:00 to 4:00 of the game when a team was trailing by between 4 to 8 points.
In all of these scenarios, a touchdown was surrendered by the defense on 35.1% of those drives. So that’s the baseline.
Of course I couldn’t view and assess if the defenses were “aggressive” or “conservative” in those scenarios. But the key to this study was the timing of the allowed touchdown and what transpired on the ensuing drive. How quickly did the defense allow the go-ahead or game-tying score? And how often did the originally leading team’s offense go on to retake the lead afterward?
To find the differences here, I broke the initially allowed touchdown into two buckets — scoring drives of 90 seconds or less (quick TDs) and those that took more than 90 seconds (slow TDs).
Here’s what I discovered:
When a defense protecting a 4 to 8 point lead surrendered a touchdown on a possession beginning within 2:00 to 4:00 remaining in the game, the speed of the initially allowed score certainly mattered to the next offensive opportunity:
- After allowed touchdown drives that took 90 seconds or less, the original leading team scored (FG or TD) on the ensuing drive 33.7% of the time
- After allowed touchdown drives that took longer than 90 seconds, the original leading team scored (FG or TD) on the ensuing drive 19.4% of the time
And that seams natural doesn’t it?
More time on the clock, the stronger the likelihood of scoring.
With how efficient offenses have gotten in late-game scenarios, it’s completely sensible for the defense with the lead to crank the aggression in search of a turnover even if that philosophy technically raises the chances of a quick-strike touchdown from the opponent.
Because even in that scenario, giving your offense as much time as possible to counter is incredibly valuable.