Quote:
Originally Posted by Joshua
paine and barrett,
Thanks for the response to my questions. While I would be the first to admit that I'm no expert on D line schemes, I guess I had a different idea of what a more aggressive D versus a read-and-react one would look like. While being more aggressive does have the tradeoff that you will run yourself out of plays sometimes, I had never envisioned it as being a scheme where our linemen simply charge blindly upfield regardless of down and distance. Perhaps wrongly, I assumed that there would still be some recognition of the likelihood of pass versus run and the aggressiveness of their charge would be dictated accordingly. Clearly, this is nothing more than guesswork much of the time, but other teams seem to be able to do it. I guess my assumption was wrong, but I assumed that our more agressive approach was one reserved primarily for plays when we anticipated a pass, rather than our default mode in all scenarios.
Also, while I was at the game and haven't had the opportunity to rewatch it. I distinctly remember several running plays where Okoye and Okam just got walked backward completely out of the play. They didn't run past the play because of their aggression and stellar pass rush. Instead, I saw 2 guys who just got worked over at the point of attack. While it is too early to draw any major conclusions, I'm at least slightly concerned and I think our interior line play warrants a close eye. In this regard we're lucky, they won't get a better test than the one coming in Monday night.
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I don't think we are really disagreeing all that much. I don't think the DL played a great game, I just think they did a large part of what they were asked. I think they were in the backfield often.
As for diagnosing when a play is a run or a pass, this is the strength of a read and react DL scheme. If you are firing off you are not doing much diagnosing. So we had gaps and lanes. And we have no LBs or Safetys whose strength is filling a whole. This makes the DL look very bad. As for other teams doing it, the only team I know of who plays with 2 DTs penetrating is the colts. And they get gouged by the run, but they play with the lead most of the time so it is not a big deal. And of course they have Bob Sanders in the box and they lose when they don't.
Most teams have at least one DT anchoring and eating blockers. We don't have that guy. Travis Johnson is far and away our best at it, and he is average (and missing). Okam, for all his size, is better at penetrating than at holding ground. deljuan shoots gaps. okoye shoots gaps. Cody shoots gaps.
We don't have a DT that plays the run. So I am not going to blame DL play but rather Bush or Rick Smith. More aggressive is not always better. I said this over and over last year when people wanted aggressive. You have to have the players for aggressive. Otherwise every D-coordinator in the NFL would be bringing pressure on every play. We don't have the players for it. Our LBs are too small to play unprotected. Demeco is great when protected by the DT and awful when the OL gets to him. Diles is small at SLB. And our Safeties are no force in the run game. And we did nothing at DT or at Safety this offseason.
We need to hope TJ and Cushing make a big impact, or we may be even worse on D than last year.