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Belichick pass coverage philosophy

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borg

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From Rapoport article in Herald:

“What you want to do is you want to be closing in on the quarterback and force him to throw the ball when you have the receivers covered,” Belichick said. “That’s the timing of your coverage. You don’t need to cover the receivers when the quarterback is on his way back into his drop, you need to cover the receivers once the quarterback gets to the end of his drop and he’s ready to release the ball.”

There are so many different ways to read into this article and the match the on field reality vs this stated philosophy. The attempt is to time when the pass rush forces the QB to release ball and that should be when the DB has the WR/TE/RB blanketed.

So how do we read the fact that BB rarely press covers and in fact drops the CBs 8 yds from the onset? One could argue that BB understands that the pass rush won't force the quick pass and....verses a guy like Big Ben who loves to let patterns develop, often extending the play with a scramble... the secondary is coached to react. This philosophy seems vulnerable to an offense where a QB can extend a play from say 3 seconds to 5 seconds. Owning a secondary that has difficulty working man coverage becomes a nightmare if a Big Ben extends the play. No wonder they have gone zone.
Unfortunately, that 8 yd cushion leads to quck passes as well. Compound the poor tackling we have seen the last two games and the D is in a damned if you do, damned if you don't mode.
The more I think about the secondary issues, the more I believe that safety play has let the defense down the most. McCourty was getting habitually burned down the sidelines without any sight of a safety. And the awful tackling, with Cowboy WRs just running over would be tacklers. I can easily see BB going the free agent route this offseason and finding that savy veteran. It is a passing league and our boys are confused back there. Hopefully this coming draft has more quality S players than the 2011 did.
 
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