Hawks D Against the Lambs

[LeveeBreak]

We have 2 weeks off and I can't help think about next season a bit. For as dominant as our D has been...we had considerable struggles against the lambs the past 2 games. How do we counter that next year?

Our D allows a soft middle, but it's hard to win games on dinks and dunks. The lambs are the team with the abiliity to hit explosives on our D.

I'd love to see MM bring Raheem Morris on in some capacity, assuming they could align philosophically. Morris's D impressed me against the lambs this year.

Just something to think about.

 

[kidhawk]

We have 2 weeks off and I can't help think about next season a bit. For as dominant as our D has been...we had considerable struggles against the lambs the past 2 games? How do we counter that next year?

Our D allows a soft middle, but it's hard to win games on dinks and dunks. The lambs are the team with the abiliity to hit explosives on our D.

I'd love to see MM bring Raheem Morris on in some capacity, assuming they could align philosophically. Morris's D impressed me against the lambs this year.

Just something to think about.

I’m quite certain that Macdonald will make beating our division rivals a priority to work on this off season. Winning the division is goal number one every year. To do that we have to beat the Rams, Niners and Cardinals.

 

[CouchLogic]

Mac has a ton of tape to digest and deep dive, I reckon things will look a lot more refined.

 

[Azvacar]

We have 2 weeks off and I can't help think about next season a bit. For as dominant as our D has been...we had considerable struggles against the lambs the past 2 games? How do we counter that next year?

Our D allows a soft middle, but it's hard to win games on dinks and dunks. The lambs are the team with the abiliity to hit explosives on our D.

I'd love to see MM bring Raheem Morris on in some capacity, assuming they could align philosophically. Morris's D impressed me against the lambs this year.

Just something to think about.

Yet they lost twice..... Number one offense.. and we had to play them three times.... Their salary cap is gonna become a cluster F..... wait till "I cant afford a house in LA on 450k a year PUCA" needs his money

 

[Dolomight12]

I look forward to seeing what MM cooks up next year, as well. For now I only care about his plan to neutralize the Drake Maye led Pats and dude with all the kids (I truly am blanking on his name l

 

[Dolomight12]

Diggs. I wanted his last name to start with a Q for some reason but knew it didn't

 

[5thgen]

Stafford was not pressured at all and he is crazy accurate. A lot of throws to puka were highly contested but little we could do because of his accuracy. Get pressure with four and we have a good chance.

 

[LeveeBreak]

Stafford was not pressured at all and he is crazy accurate. A lot of throws to puka were highly contested but little we could do because of his accuracy. Get pressure with four and we have a good chance.

Agreed. Lack of pressure is a fundamental challenge against LA. They had the 2nd lowest pressure rate this year. Couple that with Staffords incredible ability to read and react in a short passing game...probably foundational to the problem.

 

[JPatera76]

I look forward to seeing what MM cooks up next year, as well. For now I only care about his plan to neutralize the Drake Maye led Pats and dude with all the kids (I truly am blanking on his name l

And here I thought bot was Rivers and thought “damn old man rivers went to the Pats??” Hahahaha

 

[themunn]

Stafford did this to everybody this year to be fair. I think it's as good an offense as I've ever seen in the NFL.

Then there is the fact that we are divisional rivals so there's extra knowledge and drive to win.

I'm not really concerned that they carved us up as I think they have the perfect storm of players able to do it.

But if I was really asking Santa for another skill player - I think the defense is missing an interception threat in the secondary that can also shut down the field by QBs avoiding them/ Witherspoon is great but he has 2 career interceptions in 3 seasons. I don't know if that's because he takes away a part of the field from being targeted but it's the one area I definitely think we cna improve on.

 

[12th_Bob]

I hear Rob talking about some disrupter that can get instant pressure at the line of scrimmage so yeah, I agree. A game wrecker like Maxx or something, like Chris Clemons or Avril would be sweet.

 

[Jac]

Stafford did this to everybody this year to be fair. I think it's as good an offense as I've ever seen in the NFL.

Then there is the fact that we are divisional rivals so there's extra knowledge and drive to win.

I'm not really concerned that they carved us up as I think they have the perfect storm of players able to do it.

But if I was really asking Santa for another skill player - I think the defense is missing an interception threat in the secondary that can also shut down the field by QBs avoiding them/ Witherspoon is great but he has 2 career interceptions in 3 seasons. I don't know if that's because he takes away a part of the field from being targeted but it's the one area I definitely think we cna improve on.

Agreed. I don't think you have to overly adjust the defense based on Stafford's success. He's a unicorn in today's NFL, like Kurt Warner was. He's a robot with an accurate cannon. The only way to combat that is pressure, which is also tough if he's getting the ball out on time. But he's going to be 38 and seems like he may just want to make one more go of it at most.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Meh, the Rams are the only team that lights up this defense. Also, they beat the Rams 2 of 3 and should have had a clean sweep.

How they played the Rams has nothing to do with how they will play the Pats.

 

[keasley45]

We had one of the best D lines in the league. We get pressure. But if you can't cover the Rams wr's long enough for that pressure to get there, you get what we have seen in our last 2 games.

MMs strategy to play more man coverage against the Rams was right (I think). And if you rewatch the game and the number of passes they made that were into extremely tight windows or came as the result of a defender falling, you can see that the strategy was sound. And that it took a Stafford / Puka / Adams to do it. Jobe is just 2 inches too short and 10 pounds too light. Same with Spoon. Give Spoon a head of steam and he hits like a jackhammer. Ask him to jam Puka off the line... Good luck.

Other teams who were successful against the Rams were willing to blitz them. That's not MMs thing. He sees blitzing a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul and against a HOF QB like Stafford, a losing proposition. He has also stated multiple times that he doesn't believe in copying what other teams did as a basis for your own strategy. He has confidence in what he / we do and wants to call his game that way.

The zone schemes we ran against the Rams prior to the last 2 games just weren't effective against McVay and I don't think they ever will be a sound way to beat Stafford / McVay in zone without a monster Edge or interior rusher.

Can we add a guy like that? Yeah. But in the position we are heading for (low draft pick, needing to pay a bunch of stars sooner than later) it might be more prudent (and cost effective) to upgrade a guy like Jobe to a longer, sturdier corner. A premium edge guy is going to price us out of keeping guys I think we would benefit from having locked up.

And, shoveling a crap ton of money in FA to a premier Edge is also counter to the 12 as one philosophy. Our front right now is the teams strength. Our backend and CBs... Take away Woolen and we have Spoon and dudes.

As much hate as Woolen is getting, outside of the TD he gave up when he was mentally on the sideline, he covered Puka really well.

Give Spoon more reps in man so he doesn't constantly trip over his feet when he turns to shadow his guy and we are better - that happened 3 times for completions. It happened last game as well.

Add a solid, bigger #2 CB in the draft or FA and we look better against the Rams, guaranteed.

 

[Timberhawk]

For as rough as it was our D did hold them scoreless for all of the 4th quarter and some change. I know they could have kicked a field goal but they didn’t and we stopped them. And there is the first game this season.

Macdonald also said he saw them do new things in the game, we will learn from that.

A lot of players and coaches admitted they could have executed better, so another off season of learning and improving will help.

Lastly, getting even more talent through trades, signings and the draft will help too.

I think we are poised to be even better next year and largely due to the Rams and how good they are. Iron sharpens iron and all that.

Go Hawks!

 

[sutz]

One thing we have to remember is that Mike is only in his second year here. With all the success we're having it can be hard to remember that. As good as they are they are still a bit of a work in progress. The Lambs seem to have our number to some extent, though we seem to be catching up. I'm starting to think that maybe the Lambs have peaked and will be slipping just as we are ascending. Hope so.

We're also entering that stage of deciding who to keep and who to let go for financial reasons. Within 2-3 seasons some pretty important parts of the team are gonna need new contracts, either here or elsewhere. Unless players start giving us those mythical "home team discounts" we're gonna have to let some guys walk. Schneider built it, now we'll have to see if he can maintain it.

 

[hox]

I said it before the game. Their OL is good enough to neutralize our pass rush. If Stafford has time, he will beat even the best coverage.

These dudes went off on our secondary.



MM could send some blitzes, but he's generally not going to do it on first and second down. Rams switched up their game plan to pass deep on 1st/2nd and long (vs running/short passes), and it burned us. This was the tendency breaker that MM was talking about.

We have a bunch of A and B-tier rushers, but no S-tier. We need an S-tier type of rusher like Maxx Crosby to replace C-tier guys like Boye Mafe.

Stafford can and will make mistakes while under pressure. We did not generate enough pressure in the last two meetings.

 

[AROS]

13 personnel is a bitch. Their 10 foot tall TE was carving us alive outside of that drop. Watching the game yesterday I saw Spoon inexplicably falling down the entire game. That 19 yard running play we looked so bad I was like “is this really our defense?”

Not a good game nor look.

The good news is I have faith in these men and coaches. When they don’t play well, they always bounce back the next game and shine.

What’s the next game?

Oh that’s right. The Super Bowl.

Good luck Patriots. Ya gonna need it.

 

[hox]

The Patriots OL is not nearly as good as the Rams OL. We'll be fine there.

 

[hawkfan68]

The Rams have a very good OL.... I believe it's top 5 in the league. Furthermore, their rbs are good blockers. With that said, Nwosu and DLaw were within a hair's reach of getting to Stafford. Stafford also has a very quick release and having two big WRs can help with the short quick passes. It's a well schemed offense. The score doesn't reflect it but the defense played well enough. Not their best but sometimes you have to credit your opponents strength. Not many teams have held the Rams under 30 points. The Seahawks have done that 2 of the 3 times facing them this season.