Hurry up O's, bunch WR sets, & field-stretching pases VS. us

[nanomoz]

Was this game an aberration, or was it a brilliantly-devised plan to beat our style of defense?

It's not really a secret that Browner and Chancellor aren't the fastest guys at their positions. The Colts pass protected well enough to free up some deep passes. Their bunch WR sets helped create confusion to throw a wrench at our press man to man coverage.

Also, the hurry up offense made our constant defensive rotations look like they need to be re-thought. We couldn't get set quickly enough, and it resulted in a penalty (ill-called or not) and two wasted time outs.

It's interesting that the Colts attacked us in a way so different from the way Houston did.

Is this how to beat the Seahawk defense? Or am I worrying about nothing? Our defense was nearly completely healthy. We can't blame all the D's problems on the offensive line injuries (and corresponding lack of continuity) and officiating, can we?

Discuss, please. I want some people that are smarter than me to weigh in on this stuff.

 

[rjdriver]

Great stuff.

I agree the hurry up gassed us a bit. I think we flat out got tired. I thought the D minus the one protection breakdown was awesome in the first half. Remember we started with 3 consecutive 3 and outs, game was looking like blowout until A blocked FG and that aforementioned blown coverage.

I agree that the Colts attacked us differently than Houston, but they have Luck, who is far more skilled than Schaub is. Luck didn't make a lot of mistakes, and he had a a few great throws under pressure.

In principle the speedy bunch sets are the way to expose our defense, but you have to a very competent QB to do so, especially with our pass rush finally coming of age. That's why IND scared me, that's why DEN scares me. That's why STL doesn't scare me, they have speed, but not a QB to match.

I was actually wanting to see WT3 at corner toward the end of the game, but what do I know? I hope some others chime in.

 

[nanomoz]

Good point--I'm not giving Luck enough credit. He's already a lot better than he was last year. He looked like the love child of Rodgers and Roehtlisberger yesterday.

It may have helped to lock Sherm onto Wayne late in the game, putting Thurmond on Heyward-Drop.

 

[Scottemojo]

The first team actually struggled with bunch sets way back in pre season.

 

[SmokinHawk]

The first team actually struggled with bunch sets way back in pre season.

Bunch sets take us out of what we do best - press man coverage.

 

[iigakusei]

I definitely thought we looked tired...the hurry up they ran in the 2nd half was a great strategy.

 

[lobohawk]

Other than the terrible pick 6 (which was also a bad play call there)....Schaub gashed the Hawks much worse than Luck.

 

[nanomoz]

The first team actually struggled with bunch sets way back in pre season.

This is true. Good point.

 

[TwistedHusky]

The simple way you beat a hurry up offense is to fake injuries.

That is why the crowd of teams that run the hurry up always boos real injuries.

Frankly, if choose not to do it you are not being a good sport, you are being stupid.

But the bunch sets are a different issue, and one that will probably hurt us in the future.

The Seahawks are going to find that as a team they are going to draw scrutiny over a normal opponent and have people pick apart their weaknesses. Every team has weaknesses.

The good part is we are learning the biggest areas we can be exploited BEFORE the playoffs, and that is much more important than a regular season win.

As for beating our defense, our defense is very physical. They have a reputation and play right up to the line on a lot of this stuff. What they do is play in a grey area that is tilted toward the offense in the first place. But they force the referee to call everything and they simply will not call the borderline stuff every time.

The problem is that because a lot of those calls are subjective they could and yesterday we learned what is going to happen when we play with refs that call the ticky-tack stuff. Worse, because we have a reputation for being physical, the moment we bump someone even inadvertently - if they fall down the referee is going to assume we caused it. So we are going to see a lot of borderline to bad PI calls when we do get called.

However, we have to be ready for this because do you honestly think that if we did go to the SB that Payton Manning is not going to get those calls? Of course he is. So we should be ready to adjust to referees that give even more advantage to the offense, because they simply will against the good QBs. In those games we are going to have to rely on our offense to carry us, and right now with 1/2 the line out nobody knows if it will be able to .

 

[MontanaHawk05]

The simple way you beat a hurry up offense is to fake injuries.

Which is why both Wagner and Wright conveniently went down during the Colts' hurry-up drive.