Sgt. Largent":3rqbzc6z said:
JGfromtheNW":3rqbzc6z said:
. The saving grace for our defense is that we've generally been pretty good at limiting TDs once the field shortens. "Bend but don't break" and all that jazz.
I think Pete and Richard lean too much on this though don't you?
I get it, scoring defense is all that matters at the end of the game. But allowing teams to march up and down the field with lopsided time of possession seemingly EVERY game not only wears out the defense, but it doesn't give our offense enough snaps to get into their tempo and rhythm. Obviously something we DESPERATELY need.
It definitely does feel like they lean too much on it. Even if we are holding teams to low PPG and it's statistically successful, it becomes a factor in playing complimentary football (or not playing in this case). As you said, it doesn't allow as many possessions for our offense to get into a rhythm and it wears our defense out - not only in individual games, but at the end of the season as well, when we want our guys to be playing the best ball of the entire year.
I guess it makes me miss DQ a lot, the guy seemed to dial up blitzes perfectly. Granted, Bennett/Avril were wreaking havoc and applying pressure earlier back then. It just seems like our defensive playcalling is too predictable to really confuse or challenge QBs who aren't completely miffed by zone coverages and a little pressure.
Football schemes and personnel need to evolve throughout individual games, seasons and over multiple seasons otherwise they get stale and teams begin to figure out what they can exploit. Our weaknesses in pass defense have been seam routes, wheel routes (usually based off a pick play/rub route) and check-downs/underneath passes after clearing zones.
I've been to three of the five games so far this season with limited rewatching, so I don't claim to be breaking our play down via all-22 like some people do, but it seems we've been consistently sticking with vanilla cover-3, press cover-3 and press cover-1. The vast majority of experienced QBs can identify what we're using by motioning one player across the formation and eyeing where our DBs are lining up pre-snap - it's that easy to predict where and how they're going to attack our defense on obvious passing downs. I don't know what the percentages are, but it seems like we need to get a little more creative with the zones and blitzes. I don't recall seeing our nickel CBs, Kam or Earl going after the QB on 3rd downs, I don't recall Bobby/KJ being blitzed with any type of regularity (we don't want to get TOO blitz happy). It just seems like, and this goes for the entire team and team philosophy, we don't play with the pedal to the metal in the way that can bury our opponents and cause the "snowball" effect that we got used to seeing 2012-2014. It's always going to be risk/reward, but so rarely does our defense actually get burned from taking a risk like sending an extra pass rusher.