It has only been two games — two meaningless preseason games — but the early signs have been encouraging. Maybe this will finally be the year opposing tight ends stop treating the Dolphins secondary like an amusement park. Last year it started with Visanthe Shiancoe's six-catch, 86-yard output for the Vikings in Week 2 and continued with Dustin Keller (six catches, 98 yards), Bo Sciafe (seven catches, 51 yards), Olsen (four for 40), Ben Watson (10 for 100), Brandon Pettigrew (four for 74 and a touchdown) and on through Rob Gronkowski (six for 102 and a score). "Last year on third downs — and even on first downs — our linebackers were getting exposed in space," Dolphins General Manager Jeff Ireland said during Friday's TV broadcast. That's why Ireland admitted it was "important" to make changes at the position. This year it won't just be Dansby with the ability to chase tight ends from sideline to sideline. Friday night, you saw that kind of range from Kevin Burnett, the free agent addition brought in to replace the oft-injured Channing Crowder. How quick is Burnett? "He's real quick," Dansby said. "He thinks he's better than me but he's not." Not quite, but Burnett's ability to drop in coverage is a marked upgrade on Crowder, who regularly had to come off the field on third down. What's more, Yeremiah Bell no longer should have to move down from strong safety in the nickel package. It also should be noted that both Dansby and Burnett both played safety in the Southeastern Conference, so agility is not an issue. And don't forget A.J. Edds, the 2010 fourth-round pick out of Iowa who missed all last season with a torn ACL. So far this preseason Edds is showing the same coverage skills that drove Big Ten quarterbacks nuts. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/...hins-0822-20110821,0,3491598.column?track=rss
This is one of the areas I'm really pleased with the upgrades they've added, more speed and athleticism, hopefully Edds can fill that downhill ILB role in some situations otherwise we are short a run stuffer at ILB and you just have to have one of them for situational football at least.
This is going to hurt the Pats quite a bit. Part of how they run the ball is they downsize your defense. If Miami is facing a 2 TE set they'll have the advantage of staying in their base defense or at worst bringing in Sapp who is good in run support.
Edds was supposed to fill that role last year before injury so I am not sure about him being a "run stuffer". I have liked what I've seen of him though, especially since we didn't see him at all last year.
The drafting of Edds last year and the signing of Burnett this year was a direct response to the Pats loading up at TE. Anyone could see that the moment they happened.
Not impressive. He led the league in 2010 for ILBs in YAC allowed with 431. Thrown at 67 times with 48 receptions for 540 yards. Passers throwing into his coverage area had a rating of 87.9. PFF ranked him the 5th best pass rushing ILB and 25th best run defender amongst ILBs. In his last year in Dallas though, he ranked as the 7th best pass coverage ILB and was 37th in most YAC allowed with 111.
^^Thanks for that info. Crowder's numbers are actually better than his and Crowder is also a better run defender.
Crowder was thrown at 21 times with 15 catches for a 14.3 yd average. The average per catch was 3rd worst amongst ILBs. The passer rating for passes thrown into his coverage was 119.9 which was 7th worst for ILBs. Tim Dobbins was the worst ILB last year for passer rating into his coverage with a 142.6. Thrown at 14 times with 13 catches and a league worst 17.8 average per catch.
Spitler has the bad ankle/foot and Edds may have to be a downhill guy, hopefully he has some Offerdahl in him.
I wrote about this strength vrs strength a soon as we signed Burnett, we have better personnell to go up against them, then most teams in the league do...I said Dansby really has instincts like the biggest safety in the league, and Burnett has excellent footwork..
Yeah I did too DJ. I guess we are both on the cutting edge and those writers read here and plagiarize us.
this is interesting and our tightends have not been doing to opossing defenses what oposing tight ends have done to our linebackers.
I LOVE the way we match up with those clowns. The Jets showed what can happen when you have two CBs who can cover their outside guys 1 on 1. It allows you to flood the middle of the field and/or double their slot guys. The Jets also had a front line that could hold up vs the run vs NEs 2TE set even when they were in nickel. Our front is capable of doing the same, and with Burnett replacing Crowder we have the option of not going nickel at all. The wild card is Wake. If we can generate pressure without blitzing, in addition to the above then we'll be in very good shape.
I agree with all of that. The part I bolded is the key to giving making things tough for Brady. He's great against the blitz, but when we've gotten pressure with just four, he's looked fairly average against us.
I'll go further and say that when Brady is pressured he wilts. Seriously. Anytime the guy doesn't get 30 seconds back there he looks like a little kid who's about to pee thier pants. If Wake can get there, and that's a big IF because the Pats O-Line is always phenominal, all by himself we will sweep the Pats.
Differently designed offenses, we focused on all around type of Te's, they went with move Te's and one blocking specialist.
Problem is GMJ, the Jets run the ball with power, our two ILB's are not really run stuffers, this switch does create a mismatch with the Jest now.
Totally agree. Our pass rush has bothered Brady for much of his career. Wake had him flustered in the first half of the Monday night game last year. IIRC it was 3 pressures, a sack, a holding call, he totally disrupted what NE was trying to do. To their credit they adjusted, went to the quick game and kept Brady upright for the most part after the first few series, and then the ST debacle happened. But it was 7-6 at the half and I'd love to have seen what would've happened if the game had stayed competitive. Guess we'll find out on the 12th .
They run the ball with power with multiple WRs out there and Keller. If they run at us in base formations we'll be fine we'll get by. They're dangerous out of that athletic spread set.
I don't know that you *have* to have one of those players. The Steelers and Chargers both had good run defenses with undersized ILBs, and neither has the kind of DL we do.
That's a good point. Hopefully Sean and Vontae can hold it down outside and allow Bell some opportunities to cheat down vs the run. And hopefully Shonn Greene continues be unreliable while LT continues to age.
Picking up Burnett over Crowder was done specifically for that reason. To cover the middle of the field since it is the forte of NE and the jests have a couple of receivers that like to drag the middle as well. The only thing about making this move is that we will be giving up some run stopping power as that was Crowder's best attribute. In our case, I still think it's a fair trade off, since our DL is pretty stout for run stopping...
Part of the reason why I think we at least match up with them as well as anyone is not just because of our linebacker situation, but because of the dline we can put on the field if we wanna drop max players, Odrick, Starks, Wake, JT comin while we droppin the rest is ideal, Jt can also spy a bit in that scenario and drop at the last second..
