Eddie Jones is one of the smartest coaches in the game.

Maybe even the smartest. He is consistently imaginative, consistently inventive when it comes to his selections and system theory, and he seems to see the game in a unique way. As an analyst, he is someone to learn from in almost everything he does bar when there’s a microphone in his face in th week leading up to or directly after a game.

I think that the true measure of intelligence is a coach’s ability to learn from their defeats and, in that regard, I think we’re seeing the very best of Jones as a thinker on the game.

To properly analyse Jones’ system, we have to separate his attacking structure from his overall game philosophy. From an attacking perspective, Jones appears to have England running a 2-3-2-1 and 1-3-3-1 variant with a hinge option off the ruck.

That hinge option is for crashing onto tip passes or spreading the ball wider still in certain scenarios but usually, it’s to provide an accelerated cleanout option for the tight carry off #9.

But this structure is secondary to Jones’ overall game philosophy.

If we look at the numbers from the first four rounds of the 2020 Six Nations, we can see that Jones’ England have the second-lowest average time in possession (behind France) and have the second-highest amount of active time in positive territory (behind Scotland).

What does this mean? Well, effectively, England are forgoing a lot of phase possession to play mostly in the opposition’s territory.

This manifests itself in a lot of contestable kicking and kicking for pressure and position.

If you watch England’s attacking sequences, they rarely spend any time building multi-phase sequences anywhere outside the opponent’s 10m line.

If England have possession in Zone 1 shown above, they’ll kick to touch if under pressure or, ideally, they’ll kick to compete. If they have possession in the Zone 2 shown above, they’ll kick to space anywhere inside the opponent’s 10m line with massive chase pressure coming from the wings.

They’ll go for the kick inside three phases in Zone 1 through Youngs and, while they have a little more licence in Zone 2 , they’ll look to kick off Ford or Farrell inside four or five phases if they aren’t on set-piece phase play. They will look to play off a breakdown or tackle transition in Zone 2 also – get the ball wide to the space – but if that doesn’t materialize they will go the air quickly. You can see the intent to go wide and the decision to kick in this clip.

They were looking to play for a moment after the transition occurred in the 15m tramline – you can see Sinckler and George alive to where the space is – but when there are no options, Farrell goes back to game philosophy and hits the ball towards touch.

Ultimately, England want to play all of their rugby in Q3 and will forgo possession anywhere else on the field to achieve that territorial aim.

This is dictating your game philosophy to prioritise territory over possession for possession’s sake.

Attacking or defending, it makes no difference – this is where they want to play. England defend this area of the field with such ferocity that it’s the perfect illustration of offensive defence. You see two and three man tackles, defenders staying out of bridging rucks and excellent backfield communication.

You’ll find dozens of examples of this kind of defensive oppression in England’s Six Nations to date and when you understand this aspect of the game philosophy, Eddie Jones selection decisions in the back row become clear. He wants big-hitting, high-work rate, aggressive defenders and other considerations – like being dominant ball carriers – aren’t as important. In a game philosophy where you don’t prioritise multi-phase possession anywhere outside the opposition’s 22, you don’t need to have a raft of lead ball carriers so why select them? Why did Jones not replace Vunipola with Hughes, Dombrandt or someone similar? They didn’t serve the game plan.

When we look at England’s defensive system, we see a 12UP-1-2.

That’s twelve defenders in the primary line, Ben Youngs tracking the contact behind the primary line and two backfield defenders. When England are defending you in that Q3 space, they can overload on openside passes to dominantly win the gainline and, with Youngs tracking behind the contact point – as you see below – they have linebreak insurance and a player that can move up or drop back as required.

This leaves the primary line with a licence to hunt for dominant tackles because the stakes of overloading on an individual shot are mitigated by where you’re defending and where the opponent is attacking. Everything on the above sequence from a Welsh perspective is slow and static and, ultimately, having the ball here is no good to them. The natural inclination is for Wales to kick to exit, but this plays into England’s hands also depending on the kick. If you try to chip over the top of the blitz, the 12UP-1-2 puts Youngs in place to cover the inside space.

And if you kick to the other side of the field on a contestable, England are excellent at spotting the kick play, dropping back, setting screens and even looking to attack transition spaces.

But they’re just as likely to return the kick from whence it came.

All this is to lever England into the game they want to play. Without the Vunipola’s, England have to maximise their ball carrying impact and, as we’ve been over, you have to dominantly win the gainline somewhere.

For England, that’s off the set-piece and on kick transition where they can bring their dominant collision winner – Manu Tuilagi – into the game where he can do the most damage. On certain slow box kick receipts, Tuilagi would act as a hitter off the catch for a massive collision point.

But he was most effective when England won a set-piece in Q3. That’s where we saw England flex their attacking work on phase play.

Tuilagi was England’s key attacking weapon off the scrum and lineout. When three of your four scrums are to release one of the most dominant gainline athletes playing the game, you quickly realise that it doesn’t matter all that much if your “#8” isn’t the strongest carrier off the back of the scrum.

Because Curry doesn’t need to be a strong launcher off the base of the scrum and he hasn’t been selected to do so. The majority of Curry’s carries were off maul breaks or after 2+ phases.

When we break down the carrying numbers, we see Marler, Curry and Tuilagi topping the charts with Wilson, Kruis and Itoje only managing four carries between them. Courtney Lawes – essentially playing like another lock – is half way up the carrying charts but balances this out with a lot of defensive and breakdown numbers.

Let’s look at their numbers;

Name	Minutes	Own Ruck Arrivals	Tackles	Defensive Ruck Arrivals
Maro Itoje	80	35	16	8
George Kruis	57	27	13	0
Mark Wilson	76	25	25	14
Courtney Lawes	66	13	19	8

A near-perfect division of roles and the vast majority of this work happening without the ball.

Jones has almost perfected a “big” style of rugby that runs on dominating territory through kicking, choking the opponent’s means of exiting and then punishing them with a strong scrum and effective lineout.

This game has stylistic weaknesses.

A good box kicking and pressure team with strong defensive scrum/lineout are this English side’s kryptonite – South Africa, essentially – can turn this game plan inside out. Any side that can disrupt the English set-piece – France in game 1 – while also kicking and chasing well can hurt England too.

Any side that wants to take on this English side will need to find a way around that crushing Q3 pressure.