With the pre-season in the tank and the many bright spots being discussed and praised someone needs to point out what other teams will take advantage of, and that is our inability to open field tackle or react / read a screen. Tampa and Dallas both ran screens and play action passes out of the backfield on us for major gains as we were caught out of position and sleeping. I know this is only preseason but this needs to stop. If we step in the ring against the Patriots and these wrinkles aren't ironed out we could be in big trouble. How would you address and solve this issue?
people just have to stay in their assignments... on the Blount catch and run either no one manned up on him, or someone in that area of the zone cheated back... just have to keep to your assignment and play disciplined... with the screen pass, linemen and LBs just have to be aware of that and diagnose the play before it happens... our more experienced starting Dlinemen/LBs will probably be able to handle that a bit better than we saw last night... dont think its a huge issue
I have to agree with the sentiment that this is a flaw in the defense. It's not only the one Blount catch and run, there were a number of short passes by the Bucs against our first teamers that picked them up 7, 8 yards without being touched. There were also a few that went incomplete b/c Freeman just missed the throws. He looked really bad against us missing many wide open WR's. I'm a little nervous about this come Monday night. I'm sure Nolan will try to hide the deficiency in some way (dropping a usual pass rusher back in short coverage) or putting major pressure on Brady and cheating the safeties up. Hopefully we don't get burned by the dink and dunk b/c we know Brady loves to get every single option he has involved.
Anything over the middle! Seriously! Another issue is our corners giving way to much buffer to opposing receivers. How about we punish them for trying to catch a ball!
Nobody sniffs out the screen like JT. Hopefully he can get these guys to recognize the screen like he does.
One fatal flaw that did get fixed (at least last night) was the QB sneak at the goal line. Last night wast the 1st time in forever that it was unsuccessful against us.
Nolan is nobody's fool and he sees this. Whether he has the talent on the field to do what he wants is another story. We have made vast improvements in many areas but this issue has been around for a while. I expect Brady to play the shell game with our Safety's all night long. It will be interesting to see how we make our adjustments to handle this.
For all his flaws, Channing was really good at reading screens also. You might see screen plays be big plays against us because of that. CK made a good point in that what you gain in athleticism and play making ability in Kevin Burnett, you lose in awareness and leadership in Crowder. That may be the trade off we have to accept. It's only the preseason though, adjustments to players' speed lack of game planning etc. all need to be taken into account. Jason Taylor, Randy Starks, Paul Soliai, and Karlos Dansby always seem to do a fine job of blowing up those plays too.
What these offenses are really doing with these screens and play action passes is taking advantage of the over penetration of our D line and our DB's falling into full coverage which leaves the middle of our defense open for huge yardage. The fact that we can't make an open field tackle is just an added benefit of the play call. The part that really concerns me is that the Cowboys did this to us within the first five minutes of the 1st quarter when our starters were all in the game. This is a serious reason to be concerned.
i haven't seen the cowboys game yet but iirc most of these types of plays are on a delay. Did that happen against them too? Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk
Other than Misi, most of the starters had the night off- our backups vs. their backups. Any way it was a lot better than last year's 4th preseason game where our starters looked like $hit vs. their backups!
You do have a point, but the same problem happened in the Tampa game, but I can't remember when in the game that happened.
We do have problems back there. This type of DB junk has been happening ever since Karl Dorrell has been our secondary coach. He splits his job coaching the secondary with being the assistant HC. Maybe it's time that our DB's get a real full time coach. If you were Dorrell which job would you work harder at?? It would be asst HC to try and better his tenure in the NFL, that means neglecting coaching the secondary, which he is and it shows.