10-15-2012, 06:55 PM
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#214
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2nd Team Getting Their First Start
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 1,773
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Re: The Official B!tch about the secondary/pass coverage thread
And my grunting about the secondary after this game is much more about the coaching and situational football.
Forget everything up to the end of the game.
There's one minute left.
The other team has to score.
You put a defense in position to, number one, prevent the long pass.
You field a defense with that in mind.
You tell them, don't let anyone get behind you.
You call a defensive set that takes away the long pass.
Instead, they put Ebner in at safety. We know McCourty was called into the safety position last year when Ihedigbo and Brown struggled. We know Sterling Moore has played safety. Instead, it's another ST type, highly inexperienced rookie.
They could have had Dowling or Moore. Or Arrington. I don't care if they struggled earlier in the game. If you asked me who I would rather have on hail Mary protection, any of those corners would have been higher on the list than Ebner. This is a situation where you might even want a receiver deep in the secondary, like they used to use Moss (although granted Lloyd was on the bench injured), Brown, or Edelman.
We know the Patriots have worked on a big nickel package, but they went with the base defense.
Then the safeties bit on the run action while the corners passed the receivers off to the safeties and covered the intermediate zone.
The coaching on that play was explicitly: stop the run and short pass first. Let them try to go deep if they want. But every Patriots defender went short. With a minute left, give them the short run. Give them the middle of the field. Make the QB nervous just managing a 45 yard drive in a minute.
That was a rare failure of coaching. The defense had the wrong personnel for the situation. The defensive play call, with the corners passing off the receivers, was wrong. The reaction, with the safeties playing the run first when the corners were passing off the downfield receivers, was wrong.
I don't know exactly where the blame rests between wrong package, wrong call, and wrong reaction. But two of the three are directly coaching decisions, and the third should have been the sole coaching point of emphasis.
__________________
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- Trombley
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