Football is a game of inches and milliseconds. Those small subdivisions of distance and time can be the difference between a completion or an interception, a sack or a completed pass, and a first down or a turnover on downs. Players at the highest level of the sport look for ways to get incrementally better, and one of the ways to do that is for players to conduct comprehensive tape analysis on themselves to identify inefficiencies in their game. Alex Highsmith, entering his NFL fifth season, thinks he found a couple small ways to improve that could make a big difference.
Appearing on the Green Light podcast with Chris Long, Highsmith was asked how much he varies his rush angles, and he discussed a few ways he can get better.
“Most of the times I try to keep the same angle with a few rushes to try to make everything look the same, but this year, too, I think I’ll work even more of my angle,” Highsmith said. “I felt like a lot of times I was taking a false step at times in my rush when I was standing at a two-point [stance]. And so sometimes getting back to that three-point [stance] helps me to really explode off…So just kind of looking at what I did last year, being able to really just fine tune details and just be able to get better in that way.”
There is no technically correct way of orienting your stance as a pass rusher. Different players have different ways in which they are comfortable. Highsmith says in the interview that he is an outside foot, outside arm back guy. T.J. Watt, by comparison, plays with his outside foot back, but his outside arm forward in the ground in his three-point stance.
Highsmith has identified that his two-point stance leads to some wasted movement in the form of a false step. That is pretty common to see with defensive players. Eliminating the wasted step, and the split second associated with that movement, can make a huge difference. It can be the difference between turning a pressure into a quarterback hit or a quarterback hit into a sack.
There are probably better examples, but here is a Highsmith pass-rush rep out of a two-point stance towards the end of the 2022 season via DLineVids on X. It is subtle, but watch as Highsmith slightly shifts his weight back for a gather step before driving forward as opposed to exploding forward right from the jump.
He also wants to work on finishing plays at the top of his rush. A good pass rusher will be able to counter off of what the offensive lineman gives them, or how the quarterback chooses to navigate the pocket.
“For me, it’s just really finishing at the top of the rush. I think just looking back over my film the past couple years, there’s been plenty of times where I felt like I have won with a chop-rip or a cross chop or a ghost, but then the quarterback stepped up and I just got pushed back past the quarterback,” Highsmith said. “So I think something for me that I’ve kind of worked on, just really working those moves at the top of the rush and getting back to quarterback level.”
Highsmith’s sack total dropped in 2023 compared to the season prior. With T.J. Watt out injured for much of 2022, Highsmith posted a career-high 14.5 sacks. He had slightly less than half of that in 2023 with seven. But if you look at how disruptive he was, he has steadily increased his total number of pressures year over year. He had a very impressive 69 total pressures in 2023.
Part of turning those pressures into sacks will be eliminating the false step and working on his counter moves at the top of his pass rush. Our Alex Kozora outlined some of the changes that Highsmith could make to his game earlier this month. Based on his career trend, Alex Highsmith should be in for a big year in 2024.
