Deus Irae

The Patriots' defensive problems were personnel-based, not schematic in nature. The defense was able to hold teams to the 5th fewest points in the NFL last season, despite having a subpar defensive roster. That's actually a pretty good job being done by the defensive coaching staff.

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"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
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Patspsycho

This is a good point to bring up. However 2-gap has nothing to do with blitz schemes because those schemes are pre-determined, and called in the defensive huddle before the snap. You don't read and react on a stunt or scoop, for example, you just launch at the snap.

AzPatsFan

I remember the Patriots playing attack Defense... Every year Pete Carroll and company coached, we had lots of agressive, blitzing, Defense. Just look at the pile of Lombardi Trophies we have in the Pat's Trophy case, from those memorable, blitzing, Carroll years.

Aggressive Attack Defenses lead to lots of Cheap scores by opponents.

I can only think of 1 Superbowl winner of the past decade that was entirely based on its Defense, blitzing and otherwise. And that was the Ravens. I thought they were more noted for their immovable "Twin Mounds of Pounds", with Tony "Goose" Siragusa and Pat Williams(?).

The Pats Defense was in re-building mode in 2009, playing lots of rookies and second year men, and frankly having some glaring unfilled holes like at Seymour's RDE, Harrison's at SS, Bruschi's at ILB, and Vrabel's at OLB. The Pats Defense will be doing so in 2010, too. Although all of those holes now have a valid candidate, or three, to fill them, now.

Read & React isn't glamorous, but it yielded the 5th fewest points in the League. Just like it has done all decade.

Now that Jabba Wreck's blitzes have been recorded, catalogued, and counters plotted, I predict that Wreck's best Defensive play, and his prized #1 Defense will disappear without it. His whole Defensne won't work as well this season. In fact I guarantee it.

Jabba Wrecks best Defensive play was an agressive rush by RB Thomas Jones led by FB Tony Rchardson through the hole opened by LG Alan Faneca, consuming about 60s econds of the 3600 seconds of the game. And repeated many, many times.

Wrecks wrecked that greatest defensive play by himself, dumping Jones, Richardson and Faneca. And for good measure Leon Washington too.

Rob0729

There is a difference between being more aggressive and being an attack, pin your ears back and throw the kitchen sink at the QB offense. The Pats will most likely go for the former rather than the latter.

Besides, the league has changed in the last few years. The running game has become less and less important and the passing game has become more and more important. When offenses change, the defense needs to also. I don't know if past history will transend into the future. Look at the two teams in the Super Bowl last season. Both were offensive powerhouses with great passing attacks (Indy didn't even have a good running game) and with ok defenses.

BillBelichickFan79

I agree that Brady should be closer to his 03-07 form and that ACL injuries are two year injuries. That's why I've been a fan of looking into Shawne Merriman. His value is at an all time low, when healthy he is a dominant pass rusher, and I think he's primed for a big comeback year in his 2nd year back from ACL surgery. But that's neither here nor there.

The Jets blew some leads but they did get better as the season went on, showing improvement and playing big when they needed to. Also, look at what Rex had to work with. I live in NY and saw many of their games. Rhodes was a bum of a safety who was rightly benched at one point because he couldn't cover anyone and was afraid to get his jersey dirty. What did they have at corner besides Revis? Lito? Stickland? Lowery? I think he did a pretty good job considering what he had. I think our overall depth at corner was better than the Jets, and our safeties were definitely better. They basically had Revis and bunch of mediocre guys. It's scary to say, but I think that D will be even better this year with Revis and Cromartie.

Forget the Jets, I'm most concerned with the Patriots. And the fact is that they have struggled mightily to get pressure on the QB in the last couple of years. IMO, there are two ways you can go about trying to resolve this. Go out and get a stud OLB who requires double teams, or explore a change in scheme where you are more aggressive in general. I think the Patriots have the horses at corner now to be able to that.

I think it was a little bit of both. Obviously it's extremely hard to replace the Seymours, Vrabels, Burschis, Harrisons, etc., but I still felt the Patriots defense was way too passive at times. Just because they supposedly sent more than 4 rushers a lot doesn't necessarily mean they were an "aggressive" defense.

Those stats are padded by beating up on bad teams. It's like a baseball player that beats up on #4 and #5 pitchers but can't hit #1 and #2 pitchers well. Usually those players fizzle out in the playoffs and don't make much of an impact. Isn't it a similar case with the Pats? The Pats defense beat up on the teams with subpar/poor offenses like the Titans, Bucs, Bills, Jags, Jets, etc. Then when they had to play the big boys like the Colts, Saints, Ravens, etc., they were really nowhere to be found. The Saints absolutely blew their doors off, giving up 27 points to the Ravens at him is way too many, and BB went for it on 4th and 2 because, in all honesty, he didn't trust his defense to get the stop they needed. The blowout in the playoffs was the fault of the offense and the defense with the turnovers virtually putting the defense in a no-win situation, but you can't get gashed for 80 yards on the first play of the game. That set the tone.

Let's say we had beaten Baltimore. Did you honestly have that much confidence in this team to go into SD and be able to shut down that offense?

Personnel definitely played a role, but scheme did too.

My mistake. It just seems that when the Patriots bring an extra rusher they do the same thing way too often. They have their 3 big lineman try to tie up a bunch of offensive lineman, which frees up two guys on the outside with one on one matchups. But these guys weren't even able to win those one on one matchups most of the time. That's where if you have a stud OLB like Ware or Merriman when he was healthy, you can win those one on one matchups a good chunk of the time and force them to double you, which, in turn, opens things up for the other guys.

Since the Pats don't have one of those types of guys, I think they need to rely on more penetration and stunting with the DL for when they aren't blitzing. I like the idea of trying to get into the backfield and blowing the play up before it even has time to develop. It's more effective, especially on a passing play, than having to first engage your blocker, read pass, and then try to get to the QB. And it obviously works pretty well against the run too with the way the Ravens had been so good against the run with Rex's scheme. No RB had a 100+ yard game on them for a few years. Pretty ridiculous.

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MIAMI HURRICANES
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS
John Wall, Demarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe, & Patrick Patterson

Deus Irae

Most people who aren't really looking at what's happening think their favorite team is being too passive. It's the way of things. People who aren't really focused on the play miss the subtleties. The same thing happens in basketball and hockey. One can be aggressive while playing in a 2-gap system. It's simply that the aggression is channeled differently.

You are absolutely correct here, which is my point about personnel rather than scheme. When personnel sucks ass, scheme can still get you wins against inferior opponents. Once you start playing the big boys, though, lack of talent gets exposed. It wasn't scheme that had players falling down and running into each other. It was players and their inability to execute.

You've got the wrong guy here. I was talking about the team pissing away the season pretty much from the moment of the Seymour trade. Again, though, that was about personnel, not scheme.

Is it possible that Pees failed to maximize the abilities of the players? Sure.

Is it possible that BB's help (and he was clearly working with the defense) was insufficient in its attempt to maximize the abilities of the players? Sure.

However, given that Pees had been able to get pretty good play out of the defenses before, and given that BB is arguably the best defensive coach in the history of the game, isn't it more likely that the biggest problem was simply that losing players like Bruschi, Vrabel, Seymour, Seau and Harrison, and Mayo coming down with an injury, left the cupboard pretty bare, since the replacements were lesser players and/or rookies facing the expected learning curve?

__________________
"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
- Marcus Aurelius

spacecrime

Sounds pretty dumb to me.

Braylon Edwards sits on the bench between plays, checks out Madden, and becomes fearful of going over the middle? "Ooo, watch out, Santonio. Meriweather's Madden Swagger is 89! Maybe you better not run that in-cut."

BB: "Sorry, Jerod. I know you've started every game you've played in for us, and you do a good job, but your Madden Swagger is lower than Spikes, so you will be inactive for the rest of they year."

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“When we look at the board, based on everything we want in a football player at that particular time, we evaluate them and take the player that fits best for our football team. That’s what we always do, and I think the last nine years we’ve put a pretty competitive team out there on the field every year. I think that’s how you do it – you get good football players. Sometimes they are not always at the No. 1 position, but I don’t think you pass up good football players to get the guys who aren’t as good just because they’re at a position that somebody feels you need.”
BB on his draft philosophy, April 2010

spacecrime

When you only score 14 points, it's hard to blame the defense.

It wasn't the defense or defensive coordinator who made zero in-game or second-half adjustments, abandoned the running game, and did't use any screens to slow the pass rush.

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“When we look at the board, based on everything we want in a football player at that particular time, we evaluate them and take the player that fits best for our football team. That’s what we always do, and I think the last nine years we’ve put a pretty competitive team out there on the field every year. I think that’s how you do it – you get good football players. Sometimes they are not always at the No. 1 position, but I don’t think you pass up good football players to get the guys who aren’t as good just because they’re at a position that somebody feels you need.”
BB on his draft philosophy, April 2010

patsfan-1982

seymour, was replaced by green,

tedy bruschi, was replaced by guyton,

vrabel, was replaced by burgess,

harrison, was replaced by mcgowan,

hobbs, was replaced by a rookie.


i think they did ok for with they had to work with. the only one knock i have is on the front office for not drafting any OLB's other then crable, who they have put on IR for the last 2 years and woods who is a ST player.


Clay Matthews, Connor Barwin, and tully banta-cain, sounds a lot better then.

Derrick Burgess, Rob Ninkovich, and tully banta-cain, but oh will i still have hope for crable, and i wanna see with Cunningham, can do

Rob0729

And it wasn't the Pats offense or offensive coordinator who did that either. The Pats did make offensive adjustment and they did run screens. People need to stop believing the BS rumor that McDaniels refused to change the gameplan one bit. The Pats were out played and outcoached and it wasn't just the offense's fault and especially not all McDaniels' fault.