It seems that Jordan Younger can’t ever escape being in chase mode.
As a player, he was an All-CFL defensive back who constantly needed to react to what the opponent in front of him was doing, following along tightly in order to prevent a successful play from happening on his watch.
Now, in his first year as the defensive coordinator for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, it’s not his feet he has to depend on but rather his brain. And that brain of his has moved the needle on a Bombers’ defence that struggled early in 2024. Now it is one that boasts cohesion and a little taste of unconventionality.
“Football moves in cycles,” said Younger as he sat in a booth for Grey Cup Media Day, earlier this week. “And it’s usually offences that dictate the trends, right? So the style of offence changes, and the defence has to adjust and adapt in order to stop those offences.”
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Before we proceed to investigate how Younger has gotten his Blue Bombers’ defence to arrive at a place where it can be considered in lock-step with modern CFL offences – indeed perhaps slightly ahead – let me first reconsider the opening to this piece.
As a player, Jordan Younger was not blessed merely with the quick feet that allowed him to excel at multiple positions like halfback, safety and SAM. While he was playing, he was considered one of the brightest minds out there on a CFL playing field.
That football IQ of his helped make him a standout as a player, twice an All-CFL and a two-time Grey Cup champion while a member of the Toronto Argonauts.
Now, it’s making him one of the top defensive coordinators in the CFL.
“He thinks and thinks and thinks and thinks, looking for great answers,” said Bombers’ head coach Mike O’Shea, holding court in his own booth on Media Day. “Not just looking for AN answer. He looks for great answers.
“He’s very creative in that way.”
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(Jamie Douglas/CFL.ca)
In looking for those great answers, Younger has pushed the Winnipeg defence into a lofty position, with early season struggles giving way to growing successes. The unit ended the regular season as the stingiest in the CFL when it comes to a number of defensive categories, allowing the fewest passing yards per game (234.8), fewest number of completions (330), lowest completion percentage (60.9), lowest amount of net offence given up per game (328.6) and lowest average amount of yardage given up on first down (6.0).
That all adds up to Winnipeg’s defence being on the field less than any other unit in the CFL in 2024 (933 plays).
“What I’ve tried to do is just constantly find ways to maximize each player’s individual skill set,” explained Younger of the growth in his scheming. “It’s just trial and error, you know what I mean?”
More error than he’d have liked in the early part of the season but as the campaign wore on and the Bombers as a whole started to get their footing, Younger saw things begin to gel on the defence he’d designed.
He knows when it really started happening, too.
“Maybe the BC game, at home, where we shut them out,” said Younger, referring to a 25-nothing win against the Lions in Week 9. “It’s like, wait a minute. If we can nail it like this, what does that mean, right?
“Hard to replicate that kind of success.”
“It was really a perfect storm of their game plan versus our game plan that week,” he continued. “You need some luck for it to play out that way, definitely. But having that type of success in a CFL game, playing at that high a level, I think it kind of energized everybody and allowed us to really buy in and start to invest in it.”
One of the things that Younger has gotten the players to value is a style that has them often going with three pass rushers up front and nine defenders dropping into various levels of pass coverage. It’s something Toronto coach Ryan Dinwiddie has referred to as a “light box.”
“They’re taking away your quick, easy throws by playing a lighter box,” said Dinwiddie.
It is a style that has left the Winnipeg defence vulnerable to the run, for sure. The Bombers gave up an average of 104.2 yards per game in 2024, ranking them down in sixth.
“Every team has it,” said Younger of the rush three, drop nine style. “I think the way we invest in it may be different than some other teams.
“They may have one or two versions of it. We have multiple.”
That the Bombers have multiple versions of that particular kind of defence is evidence of Younger’s willingness to be a creative thinker, though he just sees it as a way to make things easier for his pass coverage unit.
“There’s a lot of pressure on the defensive backs in the Canadian game,” he explained. “So, I think, in regards specifically to that kind of thing, it’s just a way to divide up the responsibilities of coverage so that players can play more confident.”
Defensive coordinator Jordan Younger says his team has multiple versions of the rush three drop nine style (Jamie Douglas/CFL.ca)
For O’Shea, having Younger step up and into the coordinator’s role after five years as defensive backs coach has been a boon to the Bombers’ fortunes as they turned a season that started out with two wins and six losses into an 11-7 campaign, a Western Final win and a fifth straight berth in the Grey Cup game. What has been so impressive?
“The amount of thought he put into what he wanted to do,” said O’Shea.
“How right he is. Not that he would ever talk about that, but he’s figured a lot of stuff out.”
“He is an original thinker. He is not afraid to colour outside the lines for sure.”
O’Shea went on.
“And then there’s his ability to connect to the players and teach them, put them in the right spots and have them learn. He’s a very good teacher in that regard.”
I wondered how Younger was enjoying the successes of his first year as a coordinator and, at first, he wondered if he could really do justice to the question considering he’s still immersed deeply in the job. Got a big game on Sunday, after all.
But then, as O’Shea had suggested, he thought about it and came up with a better answer.
“Seeing the players start to believe in each other and start to believe in a system, start to believe in what we’re doing,” Younger replied.
“And seeing them hit a point where we kind of just took off. If there’s joy in this it was those moments where you could see it click. It was like, ‘alright, this is our defence. We can make this work.’”
That, they certainly have done.