Off The Grid
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CLICK HERE to Register for a free account and login for a smoother ad-free experience. It's easy, and only takes a few moments.There was a point last night in the 3rd quarter where the offense had just committed it's 4th punt in a row (3 of which were 3 + out) and the score was 21-0. I was worried. Talib was out (injury mid 2Q I believe). The Texans are easily prolific enough to overcome a 3 score deficit with ~28 minutes of clock left.
Then:
Foster runs left 3 yards (Ninko, Deadrick)
Foster runs up the middle -2 yards (Deadrick)
Schaub completes pass to A. Johnson for 8 yards (Dennard)
Punt on 4th & 1.
So, with the opportunity ripe for a drive to make it a 2 score game with TONS of clock left, Hou used it's best offensive players and the Pats forced a 3 and out! 2 runs for 1 yard in an important drive followed by a textbook tackle short of the 1st down is a defensive stand.
The next series was the bomb to Stallworth. Game over.
Beautifully written and right on the money! So succinctly summed up I wish I had posted this........
That defensive series and the nail delivered in the Brady to Stalls bomb was the ball game..... Great post.......
Remember when we all thought 'We can't win with this defense"?
Speak for yourself, Bud. :snob:
The Patriots Defense ~ A Return To Dominance
1 ~ It's far too early to say that my much-maligned Prediction has been proven correct. We were dominant, Monday Night, against our best Opposition of the Year. But let's see how the future plays out.
2 ~ But it's not too early ~ after 3 consecutive Games of holding the Opposition under 20 Points ~ to point out that those geniuses who berated my Prediction had their heads up their @$$es!!
I don't think that "concern" about the D after not being able to get a stop in Baltimore (leaving aside questions about the officiating) and after blowing the lead in Seattle to go to 3--3 was completely unwarranted; not "panic," but "concern."
My own view always presupposed that they would win the Division but was also "concerned" that the Pats were making things way too hard on themselves for a playoff run by putting the O in the position of having to put up 30+ points per game, no matter how squirrely the opponent. While I no longer have that concern, looking back, I wouldn't change what I thought at that time.
You know mostly I agree with you, but here we have to part company.....at least to some degree.It's semantics.
No one every thought that the team would win playing soft zone coverage and BBDB defense with no pressure. That just doesn't work. The problem was, without the defensive personnel to cover effectively, anything else just resulted in huge plays. So it was a choice between death by paper cut vs. getting decapitated.
Part of the problem was injury related, part of it was youth and inexperience, part of it was changing personnel weekly, part of it was playing people out of position, part of it was just not having enough talent at the right positions. The front 7 always had the talent, but it was effectively paralyzed by the problems on the back end. Those problems have been rectified. Call it a "whole new defense" if you like, or a "new scheme", or an "adjustment", or a "fix". It's all the same thing.
I suspect that BB has wanted to play like this for a long, long time, but he hasn't had the personnel. He had some of the back end personnel in 2009 (the secondary was quite good with that year) but didn't have the personnel up front. The secondary fell apart in 2010 and last year. He's finally got the horses up front and enough talent on the back end to get creative without fear of being torn apart.
You know mostly I agree with you, but here we have to part company.....at least to some degree.
Its become very fashionable here to equate blitzing to success. That is simply not the case. Let us not forget that the old, very aggravating, but effective bend but don't break defense is what got us to the point that if any of a half dozen plays that go right, wins us the superbowl.....with some horrid but willing talent in the secondary. So before we throw away the BBDB defense like an old rag for some shiny new aggressive "blitzing" D. Lets remember that its slow and steady that wins the race
Blitzing DOES NOT equal success! HELLO, you only have to go all the way back to.....ah....Monday night to see why. Good QB play will destroy good blitzing EVERY TIME. Have you all missed the last decade of Steeler games. What defense is more aggressive than the Steelers. What team is more often in the top 10 of most defense stats.....and what team has been more consistently shredded by the Pats offense than the Steeler defense. In fact it looks just like what we saw on Monday from the latest version of serial blitzers.
How quickly we forget that the real reason for the Jets success back in the 2010 playoffs was that they DIDN'T blitz for the first time, and Brady went from laser sharp to slow and hesitant. (BTW- my sincere apologies for bring back that awful memory)
No Folks. Blitzing has its place of course. And for disclosure sake, it should be noted that I have been among the many that was calling for Matt Patricia to dial up some more blitzes. HOWEVER....being more aggressive does NOT mean BB abandoning 4 decades of his basic SUCCESSFUL defensive philosophy
There is no doubt that the talent in the back end has vastly improved, through a combination of health, experience, improved athleticism, and just plain swagger. It certainly now allows the Pats to play more man and mixed coverages and be 100 times more creative in their defensive schemes. BUT do not equate being more aggressive and playing more Man coverages to an abandonment of the BBDB defense as a staple of the Bellichick defensive principles. Its NEVER been pretty or stylish, but its ALWAYS been effective in winning games
Mayoclinic said:No one thought that the team would win playing soft zone coverage and BBDB defense with no pressure.
Mayoclinic said:I suspect that BB has wanted to play like this for a long, long time, but he hasn't had the personnel.
Of course, nothing Belichick does will transform the Patriots' defense into a great one; they don't have the talent. But coaching is about more than talent. It's about taking the talent that's available and giving it the best possible chance to succeed. And that's something Belichick does incredibly well.
Cmon Grid. You were in the forefront of the "this defense is better than last year's brigade", but you were the ONLY one there.
Concern about the defense was entirely warranted. No doubt about it. And frankly, if the team hadn't pulled the trigger on the Talib trade, I doubt we'd be where we are today.
OK, I probably picked the wrong post to base my rank, Mayo. I think it was more to the myriad of Pats fans who were so thrilled to see the Pats be more aggressive, that they have gone completely to the "other side".I don't recall using the word "blitz" once Ken. I've never equated blitzing with success. Nor did I use the word "aggressive". Nor did I suggest that BBDB has no place in our defensive repertoire.
I did make one very specific statements:
I'll stand by that. Whether it's via the blitz or a basic rush, if you can't get pressure and you give the receivers a pad, any decent QB is going to pick you apart in today's NFL. You'll give up huge chucks of yardage as teams march up and down the field. Which is what happened. We had no ability to stop the deep ball so we played way off receivers and gave them a huge cushion. We couldn't get enough pressure with a 4 man rush to be effective on a regular basis - though Chandler Jones did his best - and too often QBs had enough time to zip the ball to a wide open receiver. And when the tackling was sloppy, it got even uglier.
I'll stand by that statement. It's not an indictment of BBDB per se. It's an indictment of BBDB with ineffective pressure and soft coverage. It just doesn't work.
I also made one much more ambiguous statement:
What did I mean by "this"? I didn't mean blitz all the time. I didn't mean play man coverage 100% of the time. I didn't mean never play BBDB. I mean have the confidence in his coverage to be creative up front and mix things up, be able to switch coverages and front schemes around, be able to be more aggressive at times, be able to selectively take a few chances without fear of being burned. Just as the offensive line protection gives Brady and the offense to do so many things, having a level of confidence security in the back end allows the defense to get creative.
I think most people that have followed BB and the Pats understand that he is grounded in certain defensive principles that may seem outmoded to some, but to which he staunchly adheres. Edge setting. Gap control. Sound fundamentals. Avoiding the big play. He's never going to abandon all of that for a flashy bells and whistles defense just because he has some new toys. I wasn't implying that. But I think that BB has had his hands tied form being creative for a long time because of the limitations of his defensive personnel. People have complained about how "vanilla" the defense was, and wondered when we would see more of the things that we used to see from the old Pats defenses of the SB years - defenses that weren't flashy, but which were very effective. Well, I think we're going to start seeing more of them, if we can keep the key players on the field. The hemorrhaging has stopped, and now I think the confidence is starting to show.
I'm reminded about the Grantland article that came out just before last year's Super Bowl, analyzing the Pats' defensive front schemes:
Bill Belichick, Vince Wilfork, and the New England Patriots defense - Grantland
That article concluded:
With a healthy Wilfork, Jones, Mayo, Spikes, Hightower, McCourty, Talib and Dennard the Pats have a pretty darn talented core to build around, with solid role players in Ninkovich, Love and Gregory. The talent level is the best it's been in a long, long time. And I think that it's time for BB to start moving away from having his back to the wall, and starting building on that talent level.
But I'm sure BBDB will still have a role.
Talib's been the key:
Without Talib, Chung is starting with Gregory.
Without Talib, McCourty is still at corner, and Arrington is the CB2.
Without Talib, this team is still stuck playing almost exclusively zone coverage.
Without Talib, this team is not doubling its blitz percentage.
Without Talib, the linebackers would be in coverage instead of pressuring the QB.
Without Talib, we're still hoping for "gradual improvement over the course of the rest of the year".
Talib's been the key:
Without Talib, Chung is starting with Gregory.
Without Talib, McCourty is still at corner, and Arrington is the CB2.
Without Talib, this team is still stuck playing almost exclusively zone coverage.
Without Talib, this team is not doubling its blitz percentage.
Without Talib, the linebackers would be in coverage instead of pressuring the QB.
Without Talib, we're still hoping for "gradual improvement over the course of the rest of the year".
Don't forget, early on. I was among that minority that wasn't panicking about the D. I recognized how much better this D was, and that most of the problems were due to a lack of experience cohesion and health. THEN adding Talib and the move of McCourty to S took this D to another level. But it STILL needs more time and experience before we see even a near finished product. McCourty has a long way to go before he really starts to see the field and becomes more than just a Safety that doesn't give up the big play.
So don't take it personnel. Your post was pretty much accurate. It was my reaction to it that wasn't.
He is quoted as saying that he could not have anticipated that pick a month ago, but did Monday Night because he's playing with more feel for the position now. So your perception is 100% correct. He obviously is feeling more confident now that he proved his intuition to be correct on that play.McCourty is hitting his stride at safety.
It looks like the backfield shuffling has stopped (finally.) It looks like they have the guys they want at the positions they want, and they really aren't that bad. Using each guy correctly is a very big deal.
"So don't take it personnel. Your post was pretty much accurate. It was my reaction to it that wasn't."
I didn't take it personally at all. As you say, we agree much of the time. I don't think we disagree this time, either.
he didn't say "personal"...he said "personnel"....sounds like he's thinking of bringing down the axe....hope you got options, Mayo...perhaps the Lahey Clinic