Okay. I finally went back and watched the game.
We essentially ran three base defensive fronts:
1) The 3-3 Nickel Tite that we've been running all year. Sometimes flexed out to Okie. Sometimes as a Stack. Not much to see here.
2) A new, but somewhat anticipated, 4-2 Nickel Over. I will call it an Over, but how we set the front interior defenders flipped from Over/Under in a fashion that wasn't apparent to me just by watching closely. It's probably married to coverages in some fashion. Roach and Ossai alway played wide DEs, so I'm calling it an Over.
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But here's the crown jewel, the Play #8, if you will:
3) A 5-3 Swarm Flex. Whatever the opposite of modern, spread, Flyover Football defense is .... that's what this is. The way it worked is Ojomo and Sweat would sub for a couple DBs.
It looks like this: Coburn at NT(1), Ojomo at SDT(3), Sweat at WDT(5), Graham at SDE (6i), ILBs play Under rules. It's set to the boundary, so it's backwards, but the rules to this point are essentially the same as Under with Graham tucked in tight. CBs follow the X and Z. Sterns is Deep Safety. Pretty sure it was exclusively Man-1, but you could get creative to mix in zones.
Here's the fun parts:
Roach at Whip (Down 8i) follows the (inline) Y-TE. He's your 5th DL and usually WDE.
Ossai at Rover Safety/LB, yes you are reading that correctly, follows the (usually off) H-TE. Play #1 he was lined up as a Boundary Corner isolated 1on1. Play #2 he was Down 9 beside Graham. Against a FB set, he was Sam. Against a wing, he was Up 9 next to Roach. You get the picture, he moves around to keep unfair numbers in the box. Think jumbo Kam Chancellor.
So this thing beat the shit out of Utah. I guess Ossai wasn't seen as a mismatch for the Utah TEs because that was never threatened. The interior pressure killed them. Roach, Graham, and Ossai could passively play contain and letting the DTs flush the pocket. When you put 5 or 6 on the line, 1v1s are everywhere and that worked in our favor. Against the run it works the same way with just too many big bodies trying to penetrate. ILBs had a good game mopping up as well (shout out to Jacques).
I don't think it's repeatable with this personnel grouping against B12 competition but it was awesome for this game.
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In other notes, various pass-rush packages showed back up: Amoeba was back after not existing all season, Cowboy was back since LaTech/LSU, Buck was still in the rotation. Tite-Stack existed in short yardage when we didn't want to sub.
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TL/DR: The full 2018 playbook was back. We added a preview of something close to what Ash might be installing. And this year's Play #8 (and for me the key to the rout) was a super-jumbo version of an aggressive 90s defense.