Man vs. Zone Defense: Which One Is Most Efficient Against Passing Plays?

Photo Credit: USA Today

As the NFL regular season approaches its final week of play, I will take a look at how NFL defenses have performed since 2018 in each of man and zone defense against passing plays. I will use two key metrics—EPA (Expected Points Added) and WPA (Win Probability Added)—to assess team effectiveness.

The results are outlined in Table 1 and Table 2 below.

Man Defense Vs. Passing Plays

Table 1: Evaluation of Man Defense against passing plays (2022 and 2024 data was not available)

Zone Defense Vs. Passing Plays

Table 2: Evaluation of Zone Defense against passing plays (2022 and 2024 data was not available)

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, zone defense has outperformed man defense when facing passing plays. Teams have allowed 10.4% fewer EPA per play and 22.8% less WPA per play while using zone coverage compared to man coverage. It’s evident that NFL teams have noticed this performance gap: the proportion of man defense usage against passing plays has declined from a peak of 37.2% in 2019 to a low of 28.5% in 2023.

How Should Offenses Adjust to the Increased Frequency of Zone Defenses?

• Increase the use of pre-snap motion with receivers: By incorporating more pre-snap motion into the offense, teams can create opportunities to overload one side of the field, increasing the likelihood of exploiting soft spots in the zone coverage. If a defender follows a receiver in motion across the field, it signals man coverage, allowing the quarterback to anticipate favorable matchups. This gives the quarterback a better chance to identify receivers with single coverage and exploit a defensive mismatch.
  
  Get the running back involved in space: In zone coverage, no single defender is directly responsible for the running back as a pass catcher. To take advantage of this, the offense should focus on getting the running back the ball in space through screen passes or wide tosses. These plays can lead to explosive gains, especially if the running back can find effective blocking or break tackles to gain extra yardage.