Vikings linebacker Za’Darius Smith last had three sacks in one game in October 2020, against the Falcons. Sacking Matt Ryan three times is a lot different than sacking Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray three times.
After Sunday’s 34-26 win over Arizona, Smith explained to PFT how he managed to get to the fleet-footed Murray so many times.
“I have give a shout out to the guys up front because, without them, Kyler Murray would’ve been everywhere,” Smith said by phone. “We would’ve been us chasing the chicken, basically. Everybody did what they were supposed to do. We had a cage rush. We went into this week game practicing the whole week of caging the quarterback because we knew if he got out, he was going to get loose. For my teammates, that’s exactly how that happened and that’s how I was able to get to the quarterback, by everybody doing their job up front and then containing the rest lanes and everybody doing their job.”
The cage concept consists of the defensive lineman maintaining their lanes and methodically engulfing the quarterback. If any of them move to quickly or abandon their gap, the quarterback can slip through the crack and be gone.
“Basically, we collapse the pocket,” Smith said. “If we collapse them, he can’t see. He’s a short guy, so we went in this week knowing that. And as you can see, man, we executed it. We had a day.”
Indeed they did. And Smith is having a year, with 8.5 sacks in seven games.
