Film room: Pola-Mao makes strong statement in 1st career start

Defense will be counting on IPM for the rest of the season and he inspired confidence on Sunday

Heading into the game with five starters out, players stepping up from their typical roles was the theme of the Las Vegas Raiders’ Week 4 win over the Cleveland Browns. The guy who arguably embodied that the most was safety Isaiah Pola-Mao, who was making his first career start.

With Marcus Epps suffering a season-ending injury the previous Sunday, the Raiders are going to be relying on Pola-Mao to be a first-stringer for the rest of the campaign, and he made a resounding statement against the Browns.

The third-year pro earned a 78.2 grade from Pro Football Focus which ranked fourth among NFL safeties in Week 4, pre-Monday Night Football. The reason for that is he was all over the field, recording a sack, a pass breakup and six total tackles, including two ‘defensive stops’.

That type of performance was a comforting sight, so let’s flip on the tape and break it down.

It seems like Las Vegas has a little pre-snap confusion on this first rep but the defense eventually gets to the Cover 1 look it wants. The play call puts Pola-Mao as the hole defender on the short side of the field, and he scans for any receivers on crossing routes to see if he can help a teammate in coverage.

With no action coming his way, the safety gets his eyes back to the quarterback and recognizes that the offense’s play design is working toward the wide side of the field. So, Pola-Mao starts moving in that direction and then sees Deshaun Watson scramble.

Once the quarterback breaks the pocket, Pola-Mao gets on his horse and crashes downhill to make a nice open-field tackle. That prevents the third-down conversion and forces Cleveland to settle for the field goal. Especially with the Raiders in man coverage, Watson probably picks up this first down if Pola-Mao isn’t there.

Here we’ll get to see Pola-Mao’s sack and it was a true team effort.

This is a nice play-call by Patrick Graham as he disguises the blitz by having the safety walk up to the line of scrimmage late and overloading the left side (defense’s right) of the offensive line.

The late pre-snap movement results in the center not recognizing that an extra defender is on the line of scrimmage, so the center turns to his right instead of his left. That gives the Raiders a numbers advantage with four pass-rushers to three blockers which is how Pola-Mao becomes unblocked.

From there, the safety does a good job of staying high on the rush to force Watson to step up into the pocket where the three other pass-rushers are getting a push, especially Adam Butler. So, Watson has nowhere to go and Pola-Mao breaks down in the backfield to clean it up and get the sack.

This an excellent example of a pass-rush unit working as one with everyone doing their jobs.

We’ll take a look at the PBU and it’s even better from the All-22 angle.

Las Vegas runs Cover 1 where Pola-Mao is the deep safety. The defense must have been trying to take Amari Cooper away here since the safety was cheating to Cooper’s side of the formation instead of the three-receiver side. However, when Cooper runs the shallow crossing route, Pola-Mao recognizes it and wisely starts working to the middle of the field.

To finish, he’s readying Watson’s eyes and makes a good break on the corner route by Jerry Jeudy while timing up his hit perfectly to force the incompletion. So, Pola-Mao went from between the numbers and the hashmark on the boundary to the top of the numbers on the other side of the field to break this pass up.

Even better, it happened on third and four with the Raiders up four points and just 5:13 left on the clock. A clutch play in a big moment.

We’ll wrap up with another impressive play at the end of the game to help nail Cleveland’s coffin shut.

It’s third and long with Las Vegas playing Cover 4. At the bottom of the screen, Cooper does a good job of widening Jakorian Bennett off the line of scrimmage while running a slant route to increase the throwing window and make the catch.

That puts the Raiders in a tough spot, however, Pola Mao makes a perfect open-field tackle by getting his pads down and wrapping up to set up fourth down.

While this rep isn’t the sexiest of the bunch, it’s one of the most encouraging as the Raiders had been struggling to make open-field tackles in the secondary during the team’s first three games. Hopefully, the third-year pro will continue to solve that issue moving forward.