mistaowen wrote:It feels like both of our safeties are soo deep in coverage for some reason, especially on third downs. Add to that Wagner seems to be dropping too deep in his middle zone leaving the middle wide open where most of the passes go against us. Would be nice to see him and Earl lined up closer more often. Earl's one blitz was | | close to a sack and he tipped the ball, almost resulting in a pick.
We definitely need to make some schematic changes now that teams know how to beat our D. Hopefully that means more Kam and Earl.
I touched on this a bit and those drops are by design. Tampa 2 is useful, but we do it far too much and teams are attacking what they're expecting, which is the Tampa 2. The difference between a standard cover 2 and a Tampa 2 is the depth of the zone drop of the MLB. Other than that they're the same. Safeties have deep half and the corners have the flat while also covering back to the 10 yard area on the sideline. OLBs are stressed more in the short zones in the Tampa 2 and teams have been eating away at that making our OLBs choose between the various out and in patterns by TEs, slot, and backs. They're crossing it up a lot. TE will run an out and they'll run a HB or FB angle underneath or have the TE cross the face of a LB in a cross or in pattern and sneak the HB outside. Slot WRs are obviously getting into the action too. Teams have been sending a guy in the deep seam and running Wagner off deep and beating us up underneath. Classic way to attack the TAMPA 2. They're also getting into that area between the safety and CB along the sideline. Again, stressing the CB to make a choice to come up shallow or get deeper. A good example of this would be some of our red zone D. On the one touchdown Browner wasn't going to let Megatron get behind him and left the other WR in the flat. He was too late and it was a TD. FF a couple quarters and you have Sherman in that scenario on the other side of the field. Sherman let Megatron get behind him because he also has to worry about the receiver in the flat. Sherman took the shallow part of the zone and the safety didn't get over. Classic way to attack the cover 2 AND tampa 2. Luckly Megatron dropped the TD.
These things aren't that complicated and we're not adjusting. We're not mixing up our coverages near enough and teams are figuring out what they can attack. No one is attacking a particular player on our D. They're attacking our predictable design.
Either Gus or Pete REALLY needs to step it up. Not sure who, be need better diversity and better mixture.