Why did we play zone the first half?

[SalishHawkFan]

That's something that's puzzled me today. Seattle played a lot of zone the first half and got burned by it. Schaub passed for 260+ yards by halftime, more than any other QB had an entire game. Then, second half, we go back to our man press coverage and Schaub gets like 60 yds through nearly 3 qtrs of play and Texas gets shut down offensively.

First half, defense looks awful, Houston dominates. near as I can tell, the only halftime adjustment we made was going back to what we do best: man coverage.

Which begs the question: Why were we in zone in the first place?

 

[Ozzy]

I'm curious as well. The staff must of saw something that made them think they were vulnerable to it. Was happy to see us go back to what we do best in the second half and shut them down. I expect more press man coverage on the outside against Indy.

 

[RolandDeschain]

I've been trying to figure this out, too. I don't know. We have exceptional personnel for man coverage. We should use it almost exclusively. Stick Sherman on the fastest of the top 2 receivers, stick Browner on the other.

 

[SeatownJay]

The residual effect of the team being in close proximity to Gus Bradley the week before?

 

[DavidSeven]

Well, these decisions don't exist in a vacuum. I don't think you can really judge the choice of coverage without knowing what aspect of the Texans' offense they were trying to stop. I don't remember off-hand, but it could be that they sent blitzers more often than usual, which might, in turn, require more zone coverage. Matt Schaub is the most blitzed QB in the league because he's an utter statue and makes mistakes under pressure.

 

[RolandDeschain]

I'd love to see a list of which games we played at least 50% zone in, compared to which games we played at least 80% man in. I suspect zone has resulted in more points allowed by us, but I don't have any evidence to back it at present.

 

[Sac]

Why? We wanted a challenge, that's why.

 

[seedhawk]

Lulled them, made it look easy, then, BAM, legion of boom at their best.

 

[irocdave]

Wondered the same thing. The hawk D backs played well off the line of scrimmage also. As the game whore on they started creeping and playing man. Another thing I remember from the game is that they steered clear of Browner for the most part. It almost seemed like they wanted to go after Sherman.

 

[enamel]

My theory is that the game plan with our patchwork o-line was to try to win some short field drives. In order to get those short fields, the D would have to take the ball away. The second level played zone off coverage so they could keep their eyes on the play as it developed. If it was a run, they'd go to the ball. If it was a pass, they would look for pick opportunities forced by pressure and tipped balls.

It was a big gamble on the pass rush getting home within 2.5-3 seconds on passing plays, which didn't happen for the most part. When the pass rush started working in the second half, it was because Schaub's first and second reads weren't there. Man coverage is what eventually allowed for QB pressure.

This is why I can see them sticking to the soft zone game plan for an entire half: if it paid off, it would pay off big. It wasn't about winning coverage battles on individual plays. It was about killing Texans drives and turning them into Seahawks points.

 

[Ozzy]

But at what point do you give it up? Wouldn't 3 and outs give us good field position too? I can see both sides it just seems like a lot of risk for small reward especially with how this defense plays.

 

[Trrrroy]

Battle Red Blog did an article on how the Texan's were likely to attack the Hawk's defense. Apparently they've been running a lot of pick plays against man coverage with great success, forcing defenses to go zone to avoid giving up big gains. Carroll and Co. may have predicted this would be the case and decided to build their opening gameplan around zone, not wanting to give up the big play. Just a guess on my part.

 

[Cartire]

We played a lot of cover 2. Which is mostly man coverage. This included the first half. Watch Shaub motion the wide-outs and BB or Sherman running with them down the line to the other side.

Man coverage was killing us with the LB's. They couldn't stick on the TE's.

The real issue was, why we're playing so much 4-3 cover 2, when we were looking at 3 wr sets all game. We should have been playing more nickel. That was the real issue.

 

[SmokinHawk]

I think they were utilizing a lot of rub/pick concepts in their routes, which is usually countered with zone defense. Unfortunately, we are only average at zone defense.

 

[SalishHawkFan]

I think they were utilizing a lot of rub/pick concepts in their routes, which is usually countered with zone defense. Unfortunately, we are only average at zone defense.

If that's the case then two thoughts come to me: Why did man work so well the second half if they could have run rub/picks? If the rub/pick play is so good against us that we went to zone, which we are not as good at, do we have a potential exploitable weakness on defense where offenses can beat our man with picks to force us into zone where we're weak?

Turns out I wasn't the only one noticing all the zone we played:

Rivers McCown: Seattle playing a little more zone than I thought they would early....I was perplexed by how often Seattle was using zone early in this game when they clearly had the horses to go man-to-man with Houston's skill position players.

The defense played a lot of soft zone in the first half. I expect to see the words "short middle" next to the majority of Matt Schaub's completions. Garrett Graham's touchdown came on a seam route against what looked like Cover 3. On the other hand, it also resulted in defenders pointing and shrugging at each other, so who knows. In the second half, they switched to a lot more blitzing and man coverages, and that's when Houston started to have serious problems.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/audibl ... ine-week-4

 

[SmokinHawk]

I think they were utilizing a lot of rub/pick concepts in their routes, which is usually countered with zone defense. Unfortunately, we are only average at zone defense.

If that's the case then two thoughts come to me: Why did man work so well the second half if they could have run rub/picks? If the rub/pick play is so good against us that we went to zone, which we are not as good at, do we have a potential exploitable weakness on defense where offenses can beat our man with picks to force us into zone where we're weak?

Turns out I wasn't the only one noticing all the zone we played:

Rivers McCown: Seattle playing a little more zone than I thought they would early....I was perplexed by how often Seattle was using zone early in this game when they clearly had the horses to go man-to-man with Houston's skill position players.

The defense played a lot of soft zone in the first half. I expect to see the words "short middle" next to the majority of Matt Schaub's completions. Garrett Graham's touchdown came on a seam route against what looked like Cover 3. On the other hand, it also resulted in defenders pointing and shrugging at each other, so who knows. In the second half, they switched to a lot more blitzing and man coverages, and that's when Houston started to have serious problems.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/audibl ... ine-week-4

Pete had also mentioned in his presser that they were showing a good deal of respect to Andre Johnson by doubling him most plays, early in the game. I think they abandoned that philosophy altogether at halftime. The pass rush was also dialed in during the second half and that gave our secondary the break it needed.

 

[getnasty]

Don't know how many times i've heard Richard Sherman say "when we man up, we stand up". It seems to me that the secondary loves to play man. I always wonder why we don't man up with our corners let Earl play center field and send a extra rusher or 2 more often. I hate when we play zone, Sherm and BB thrive on getting up and jamming guys. If it's a running QB i can see the need for zone but other then that skip it.

 

[vin.couve12]

The reality is that they played cover 3 most of the game. Kam also said as much.

Also, press coverage is not necessarily synonymous with man. You can press with your corners whether in zone or man and we do both.