Whats Wrong w/the Defense? - 490 Pass Yards to Steelers!

[JPatera76]

I feel a lot of it has to do with A) Lack of Rotation and B) The way Richards is using the D reminds me of Bradley, he's being conservative too much imo. Just my 2c though.

 

[cHawkPhan]

It may also be worth noting that Pittsburgh runs a zone-blitz defense which is effectively cover-3, which varies from our defense only in that they blitz more aggressively. This familiarity in each other's defensive styles certainly contributed to the effectiveness of both QBs - both teams know how to attack each other's defenses because it's what they run themselves.

That actually does help explain the added success of both Qb's in yesterday's game. So now I feel less confident about our offensive outburst...guess we'll learn more on that side of the ball in the next few weeks
Unfortunately it still does not answer why we just cannot seem to generate pressure, stop long drives or hold onto fourth quarter leads.

 

[NOLAHawk]

It really is the depth on the D line. Last year when Bennett started playing every snap, you notice the effectiveness of our pass rush stop. Big Ben had too many opportunities to throw those passes, some of those were just totally indefensible they were perfect how can you defend the indefensible. You need to get to the quarterback before you can throw them.

 

[Seahawk Sailor]

I'm just going to say that they did enough.

Sure, they do "enough" every game they allow fewer points than our offense can score, but really is this the benchmark for criticizing the caliber of the defense? If our offense had scored say, 29 points, easily enough to reasonably expect a win most games, we'd have lost, and everyone would have been livid at the defensive performance. Russell Wilson and the receivers having career days muted the defensive problem, but who here didn't spend almost the entire game in fear the offense would perform as our offense has been all year?

"Holding them to field goals" is fine, but 30 points of field goals (and some touchdowns) is still a ton of points. Any team out there would reasonably expect to win a game they scored 30 points in, and usually they'd be right in that expectation. Our defense was a sieve on Sunday. Yes, we finally got back into a groove picking off interceptions, which frankly kept things from getting completely out of hand in their favor, but we gave up far too many yards and points, regardless of the turnovers.

 

[SouthSoundHawk]

I'm looking at Richard.

The team seems soft as *************************** this year. I'm sick of our coaching staff doing "good enough", when the talent of the core players has been carrying their asses.

I'm obviously not looking at the bright side though. I think there have been flashes of greatness across the board, but there seems to be no one capable of harnessing/directing the potential (outside of Pete and he can only do so much y himself).

 

[KiwiHawk]

It may also be worth noting that Pittsburgh runs a zone-blitz defense which is effectively cover-3, which varies from our defense only in that they blitz more aggressively. This familiarity in each other's defensive styles certainly contributed to the effectiveness of both QBs - both teams know how to attack each other's defenses because it's what they run themselves.

That actually does help explain the added success of both Qb's in yesterday's game. So now I feel less confident about our offensive outburst...guess we'll learn more on that side of the ball in the next few weeks
Unfortunately it still does not answer why we just cannot seem to generate pressure, stop long drives or hold onto fourth quarter leads.

We've definitely had some problems on the defensive side, but I guess my point is that they aren't as bad as the yardage yesterday would suggest. They've made some adjustments, the most notable being Williams benched. Shead for his years in the league is still pretty new to the game and will take time to get up to speed. Lane is just back from a long injury and isn't in shape yet.

The secondary's effectiveness makes a big difference to the pass rush. As an illustration, Wilson was sacked yesterday immediately following a pump-fake. Had he thrown the pass, it wouldn't have been a sack. Might have been even worse - this is in no way an indictment of Wilson's decision - but the point is that an extra fraction of a second turned that play into a sack.

Our defense was getting close - and at #5, Pittsburgh's pass blocking is no slouch - but needed that extra fraction of a second to get there.

 

[seahawkfreak]

And the hand wringing begins. This is a game that we should all feel good about not concern. There were a lot of positives with our D and is not a garbage defense. This reminds me of people in college who would get upset cause they got a 96 instead of a100.

I haven't seen anybody say they don't feel good about yesterday, but 90% of the feel good is how the offense performed, not the 30 pts and 500 yards the D gave up.

So that's what we're complaining about.

That's how sports works, it's not black and white, or all or none...........we don't JUST have to feel amazing excitement OR abject disappointment. There's a gray area to discuss both sides of each loss and win.

The name of the post is " what's wrong with our defense "? Sherman had a career game. The Dline isn't getting pressure because Pittsburgh has a good Oline and we rarely blitz. ET and KC aren't playing at their best. Lane just got back and Shead is a new starter. These are all things that can be fixed or improved and looking at the stats is not the way to look at how well the defense played, IMO. The D had some big moments yesterday and I don't think that should be taken away from them. They came through for us.

I'm not trying to stop a discussion. I feel over reacting takes away from our best win of the season though.

Well some of us don't think it's overreacting to be concerned with giving up 30 pts and 500 yards of offense......at home.

If you think this is the same dominating defense of the past 2 years, then I think you're crazy. Cause I see some serious issues right now, 5 blown leads, lack of pressure, bad DT play, and the LOB giving up huge plays.

I don't think it's the same but that doesn't mean we can't win with it. Also they didn't blow the lead last night, that's my point. We beat a good team that needed this win as much as we did.

 

[IndyHawk]

Lack of obvious holding calls against the opposition which gives opposing QBs an unfair advantage and facing very good passing games with Cary Williams and Jeremy Lane in his first game since the Super Bowl might have something to do with giving up a lot of yardage to those two teams. If either game is officiated fairly, the Seahawks win in blowouts and the passing totals are nowhere near what they were.

I agree with this.I see so much holding not called.The mix of dbs leads to mixed play.The thing is we can get better,it's always the hottest team playing D in the playoffs that wins.We could be that team if Kam and Earl find themselves

 

[RussB]

Pass rush.

 

[XxXdragonXxX]

59 attempts. 490 yards. 8.3 YPA.

They came out and threw the the ball all game long. They completed 63% of their passes and threw 4 picks. Pretty easy to rack up yards throwing 59 times. It's not like they completed an ungodly high % of their passes or had a high YPA, sheer volume that came with a high volume of turnovers as well.

Comparatively we completed 70% of our passes for 345 yards with an 11.5 YPA with no interceptions.

I'm taking our defenses performance all day.

 

[Tech Worlds]

I defense just isnt any good anymore against good teams. I dont know why.

our stats get padded against bad teams where we dominate. Put a good QB against us and we struggle. Weird because that didnt used to so obvious.

 

[Largent80]

It may also be worth noting that Pittsburgh runs a zone-blitz defense which is effectively cover-3, which varies from our defense only in that they blitz more aggressively. This familiarity in each other's defensive styles certainly contributed to the effectiveness of both QBs - both teams know how to attack each other's defenses because it's what they run themselves.

That actually does help explain the added success of both Qb's in yesterday's game. So now I feel less confident about our offensive outburst...guess we'll learn more on that side of the ball in the next few weeks
Unfortunately it still does not answer why we just cannot seem to generate pressure, stop long drives or hold onto fourth quarter leads.

Hello....We WON the game in the 4th quarter.

 

[seahawkfreak]

De. Williams 8 caries for 29 yards, 3.6 yards per carry. Sherman, when covering Brown, held him to 3 catches 24 yards. Good things did happen on defense yesterday. We can build off of this.

 

[StoneCold]

I have a similar feeling about our D as I've had the first part of the year for our O. Lots of talent and underperforming. I felt our O would come around and I feel the same way about the D. Watched the first half of the Steeler game and we had some good stops, but got burned on a few plays. Mostly open receivers in the seam or when Ben would step up and have just that bit of extra time.

On a few of plays to Miller I saw that Shead appeared to be shadowing the seam. He was just a bit late, but was there to make the tackle. With a bit more experience he is going to see that develop sooner and knock those balls away.

 

[KitsapGuy]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/lelandrollings/status/671473248144461824[/tweet]

 

[Smellyman]

I still can't believe we rushed 3 so many times and they still completed passes with 8 in coverage.

rewatch the game!

 

[scutterhawk]

Lack of obvious holding calls against the opposition which gives opposing QBs an unfair advantage and facing very good passing games with Cary Williams and Jeremy Lane in his first game since the Super Bowl might have something to do with giving up a lot of yardage to those two teams. If either game is officiated fairly, the Seahawks win in blowouts and the passing totals are nowhere near what they were.

Absolutely ^
It sure as hell doesn't help that the Seahawks are playing against a high octane Offense and against a stacked deck of officials.
Yesterdays victory was karma's way of saying, NOT THIS TIME. :141847_bnono:

 

[scutterhawk]

What I don't get is when we won the Super Bowl our pass rush was at it's best when we had Clemons at DE, Bennett at DT, and Avril at DE. I was kind of expecting a resurrection of that when we drafted Clark, but Clark is nowhere to be seen and Bennett seems to be used exclusively as DE for pass rush, even though he can wreak havok from the inside.

On passing downs would we look better if we were Clark, Hill, Bennett, and Avril a crossed the line?

Clark?, Nowhere To Be Seen?, so are you saying Frank Clark's sacking of Roettenbuger didn't happen yesterday?
:16:

 

[WilsonMVP]

I was must distressed with the lack of pressure from our DL. It's not like Big Ben is a mobile QB but I heard Pete say this morning that the Steelers also kept a TE in a lot to help protect.

Right, because the book on how to beat our defense is to keep in extra blockers because we refuse to blitz more than 15-20% of the time. So Bennett's getting double teamed and our DT's are doing nothing against extra blockers.

So why is Pete being so stubborn, he has to see this in the film room?

Switch it up, show more looks, more stunts, delayed blitzes, corner blitzes, whatever. I love Pete, but holy moly is he stubborn when it comes to changing his schemes.

If anyone has watched the Vikings the last 2 years or Bengals before that Zimmer does an amazing job with the Double A Gap Blitz package. I wish we would encorporate that into our D. We have really good LBs and IMO we have the personell to do that way more often.

 

[WilsonMVP]

What I don't get is when we won the Super Bowl our pass rush was at it's best when we had Clemons at DE, Bennett at DT, and Avril at DE. I was kind of expecting a resurrection of that when we drafted Clark, but Clark is nowhere to be seen and Bennett seems to be used exclusively as DE for pass rush, even though he can wreak havok from the inside.

On passing downs would we look better if we were Clark, Hill, Bennett, and Avril a crossed the line?

I agree. I think we would be much more effective with that front 4. Loading Bennett and Avril to one side is a matchup nightmare for the offense. Clark is a beast. Did you see how quick he got that sack