The secondary and Harrington the Great

[mgteich]

The secondary made Harrington look like one of the best passers in football. Sure he made a couple of mistakes, but he also completed lots and lots of passes. Yes, I know that Samuel played like any solid ncikel back would, taking the reeasonable risks and intercepting two passes. He deserves the game ball. But that doesn't change what Harrington was able to do.

 

[BradyisGod]

You mean how Joey racked up 45 points? Oh wait. He didn't.

I think this is silly. Each game is onto its own. The offense wasn't clicking to much today, so Miami was on the field A LOT. At some point you wear down.

 

[RayClay]

He was able to move down the field, not score and throw 2 interceptions.

You sound like T.J.

They know they can't cover us, that's why they played us like they did.

 

[PonyExpress]

Completely disagree. Harrington had a passer rating under 60, threw two INTs on his side of the field and averaged 5.6 yards per attempt. That's success in the NFL for a secondary. The reason Harrington was successful, briefly, on two 2nd Q drives was because the D-line decided to take a break. Once the behemoths picked up the intensity "Happy Feet" Harrington's failure was predictable.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Gee, I thought this was what we called bend but don't break. They gave up one costly big play late in the first half. The front 7 wasn't exactly making their job easier. Then again it's not like we had tons of film of Joey and the 'Phins to game plan around. So we stopped the run and challenged Joey to beat us. When the game was over it appeared to me the strategy worked because he didn't.

 

[BradfordPatsFan]

He got rid of the ball quickly which is the exact opposite of what Culpepper was doing lately. The Pats couldn't get pressure that way. When that happens there will be plenty of completions, short completions. However, bend don't break applies here as well. The db's tightened up when necessary. The one td came after an amazing catch by Welker and the td scored was on the ground by a pretty good back. No worries about the pass defense in this game.

 

[RhodyPatFan]

This is funny Harrington goes 26-41 for 232 and has 2 INTS, 8.9 yards per completion and people scream he tore apart our D and we made him look great.


Against Denver Brady goes 31-55 for 320 with a TD no picks and 10.3 yards per completion and he sucks, has bad body language looks disinterested in the game.

Also look at the halves by Harrington.
First half he was 17-22 for 176 yards
Second half he was 9-19 for 56 yards

Just funny how we look at things.

 

[Mike the Brit]

The defense set out to "keep the play in front of them" (as Asante or Rodney said afterwards in the locker-room) and make the receivers pay every time they caught the ball. I thought that they did just that. (By the way, it was gratifying to see Rodney hitting like the days of old, wasn't it?) Those big cushions aren't "shut-down" secondary play, but it works for me.

If anything, we should be asking why our vaunted front seven got relatively little pressure on the quarterback.

 

[jct]

Our defense is banged up right now.
Jeez we have a PS squad player Spann who is banged up on the roster.
We will get healthier and better....

 

[PonyExpress]

Does anyone here play the game "GO"? BB's defensive philosophy is like strategy in GO. I remember an interesting game where an opponent won every single individual battle, but when the territory was counted up at the end he was soundly defeated. This is similar to the Pats D.

 

[Aldogg]

I think the D played solid.

We did not hear Chambers name called that much, McMicheal is a very good pass catching tight end, and Welker reminds me a lot of Wayne Chrebet, a pesky WR who just makes plays. Also Ronnie Brown did not do much damage (39 yards.) I think the defense instead of sending massive amounts of heat to rattle Harrington, we had no problem double teaming thier biggest gun in Chambers and hitting Brown whenever he ran with the ball, we made them go to thier underneath guys and play typical Pats "Bend but don't break" defense. I think if Culpepper was in there, we might have blitzed more and got to him, but with Harrington. I think the Phins were 4/14 or something like that on third down, which to me is a very good stat to have, as we got them in third downs and got them off the field.

 

[RayClay]

I think preventing the big play is the first stage. Once we get that down, we can start gambling more and blitzing.

We didn't get anywhere near stage one until the second half of last year.

I'm confident we can really crank up the blitz as the season goes on, but i'd love to see one more defensive back.

By the way, anybody think Sanders will ever make an impact at safety? He looks small for a nickle back, to me.