people on this board try to educate you on a lot of things, but you ignore them and make straw man statements.

 

Obviously better players around you make you better. But if you look back to last season when Howard got hurt, Gase said in an interview that it was painful since he was the 2nd best player on the team. Howard was playing at this level as a rookie as well.

This season, we've played from behind and forced to play a lot more zone...which is not Howard's (or Tank's) strength. They are lock-down, 1 on 1 corners and when they play man, they've both looked fantastic. In three weeks, Howard has allowed 2 passes for 6 yards while in man....by far the best in the league. It just took Burke trusting the kid to play shutdown man coverage and letting him rebuild that confidence from 2016 pre-injury.

 

also what your not pointing out is the offense is moving the ball and scoring which lets the defense rest which is huge for the defense I think that has a lot to do with it as well. playing with the lead these guys seem to have another level

 

I don't think it's McDonald, McDonald wasn't really involved in any of the INTs and McDonald is not really a world beater in deep coverage. His strength is in the run support and underneath stuff.

I think it is more a combination of howard getting more comfortable in his technique and reading routes, the coaches playing him more press man and less zone which fits his strength, and also it seems he is finally fully healthy. He was a little banged up earlier in the year and you could see he couldn't keep up with a lot of the receivers. He looks like he is at full speed now.

 

That one interception as Gruden mentioned was as good as it gets.

 

Man...he was completely beaten...and then he wasn't. It really doesn't get any better.

 

Remember we heard Tankersley was not very bright (in handling zone responsibilities) but was very good physically? Well, you could see from his first start of his first series this year that he could cover people and had good speed to close on the ball. I think that may be the case. I also heard Howard was prone to penalties (I think he does tend to pick some up although I'm not looking it up) and that he lacked "make up speed". Well, last night did you see him make up as the ball was in the air and he was beat for a moment? I don't think the receiver had to slow down either, he just kicked it into another gear on that play.
Drake of course was awesome as everyone saw. I know Gurden liked the spin move, but I liked the cut to avoid the other tackle behind the LOS early in the game, then he popped through the hole. Very nice piece of running there. Godchaux was a force, Phillips played well, even Alonzo made tackles almost every chance. Parker is almost hilarious when we win now. He can't catch. Twice they had easy plays designed to get him involved and either he doesn't want to be involved or he just can't catch. I think that benching idea someone floated earlier this week is a good idea, because somebody must want a chance to step up. Give Parker something to think about as he heads into the off season to prepare (or not) for his contract year.