I just dont understand

Hail! Fuhrer TitanJeff

 

Tj...

This is a bit of a muncher...

Statistically, KVB is one of the top tackling DL in the league this year. Hard to believe he can do that while consistently taking himself out of the play speed rushing up the field.

Statistically, the defense is HORRIBLE. I don't believe I said all the players were playing well. But we are certainly performing at a level FAR BELOW the talent level of the players. You mention we're not winning the one on one matchups...but that is NOT what defense is all about. It's about playing as a unit which plays well with the other units which equates to playing as a team! The best OL's are not the ones with the most talent necessarily...they are almost ALWAYS the ones that can play the best as a unit. This kind of synergy is what allows the great defenses to have weaknesses because the players play well in terms of units and the players are well coordinated to cover the weaknesses and force the offense to play to the defenses strengths. Schwartz doesn't do any of that. We don't win the individual matchups because he allows the offense to dictate the matchups and they will find the biggest weaknesses if allowed to do so...and we sure allow them to do so. So under your theory of needing to win all the individual matchups, you're gonna need to spend 11 FIRST rd picks on defensive players and still end up with a mediocre defense because they still won't play together and the offenses will STILL dictate the matchups to us.

How come people always use the excuse that such and such cut this player. I don't think anyone was crying how bad Frank Wycheck was...he was cut too. Seems he turned out pretty well for us. Point is...being cut by one team doesn't mean a player can't succeed somewhere else in a different scheme. Why does that happen? Because of how the player is utilized. Smith in my opinion has been solid.

THIS is EXACTLY my point. We play as poor as the Colts run D and they aren't even trying to protect their LB's! That is based on their scheme...how come we have the same result but that isn't our scheme? Clearly it IS our scheme that is the problem. Either that or no one on our D can play....and we have quite a bit of evidence to the contrary!

One common mistake people make is to equate talent with performance. How can a Frank Wycheck be so bad to be cut by one team but be awesome for another team. Did Wycheck all of a sudden get tremendously better? No, we utilized his strengths better. If most of our players aren't playing up to snuff, you need to take a hard look at the scheme to put players into the best position to utilize their strengths.

If the Steelers were only as good as their weakest link, they'd NEVER be a top 5 defense...and yet...they are able to do that. Same with the Pats. How did they win a Super Bowl with an undrafted rookie starting at one CB and a old WR playing nickel back? How come they could beat Peyton Manning with those HUGE holes??? Same with most teams being able to hide a weakness or 2. We, on the other hand, have every weakness exposed AND exploited! That is bad coordination of our defense and there is one guy who controls that! THIS IS his job description. No one gets 11 hall of famers on defense....EVERY D has flaws. The question is, can you play to your strengths and keep offenses from exposing your flaws. This is what coaching is all about.

LaBoy gets burned on the end around....but so does everyone else we have at DE and OLB. Do they ALL stink or is there a coaching problem? Funny, even backup players on the Steelers and Pats can contain the end around most of the time whereas we look like we've never seen it before. How come? That's COACHING my friend. Pure and simple.

I'd counter that Schwartz's schemes are a problem the majority of the time and he's WAY too predictable. In back to back games we gave up TD's in similar positions on the field against the same defensive coverage (cover 2)against the same patterns. And THAT is bad. AND we can't stop the run?

I will give him credit in the Colts game. Unlike most of our games, they decided to stop the Colts from running over us using a 3 wr formation against our nickel. Instead, we played a lot of 4-3 zone to force him to march down the field and try to run on our 3 LB's when normally we matchup with 2. I felt we needed to make Manning feel more uncomfortable in that game, but his D worked fairly well until the last 2 drives. Unfortunately, at that point, he just kept running the same D over and over and Peyton made the adjustments to beat the defense. So even though his defensive design for that game was good, he couldn't make the proper adjustments in crunch time. We need better! And one game is hardly worth keeping him consiering our D has been at a Div II college level in twice that many games.

And the bottom line is that we improved the TALENT on this defense with Hope, Thornton and Finnegan (not to mention the younger players are supposed to have improved from last year, right?) and yet the defense is WORSE?!?!?!?

That CAN'T happen...even with the offense struggling and Haynesworth out for 5 games. It's not like Pac has been out for 6 games. Hope and Thornton are arguably 2 of the top 5 players on the defense....so how can we be worse?

The answer is coaching TJ. Even without Haynesworth, we have at least AVG talent on this D which means we should be around 16th. OK, so the offense is bad so maybe that drops us to about 20. Even so, our points shouldn't take THAT much of a hit because if you play a bend don't break D - like we do - the D should stiffen closer to the endzone. But we don't even do that right!

Gut

 

I feel your pain.

To be honest, when I see our D suck consistently, and then hold Manning to 14 points in a 1-point game, and then suck miserably again, I can't help but feel that it's sheer dumb luck that a good game occurred. I don't beleive that Schwartz came up with a great scheme that day and said "Hey, that was great! Let's not do it any more!"

I still think that there's talent being underutilized. Even if you are the worst player in the NFL, you're still among the best of the best footballers anywhere. What are the chances that eleven of the worst would wind up on the same team?

 

Jeff, no offence, but I think you're mixing talented and skilled together. Talent is a natural ability but it doesn't mean you're perfect. To have a good player you need both talent and skill. But no question our D is loaded on talent, but lacking in skill.

 

Guys...

I think what you mean is what TJ is also saying. Just because you have talent (defined by stats, physical measureables, college production) DOESN'T mean you'll become a good or even great player. The Ryan Leafs of the world have talent but can't put it together...so they don't succeed.

However, the better your coaching staff is (and GM), the better chance you can still make a guy who can't put it all together into a productive player. QB's bust so much because you can't do anything else with them unless they physically can play WR (Hines Ward, Randle-El, Drew Bennett). But right now, we're talking defense.

Outside of the LB position and possibly S, players bust more on D because of physical limitations or they can't adjust to the speed of the NFL. It is highly unlikely that several players on our D forget repeatedly how to defend the bootleg. Let's be clear, we're not talking HS football where THIS exact thing is drilled and drilled and drilled into the players. We're talking the NFL. To stop the bootleg, 3 things must happen. First, you have to be in the right defensive formation. Second, the scheme must be sound. Third, the player needs to execute the scheme.

It is hard to believe that LaBoy, Odom and Bulluck all don't remember that they have the bootleg. More likely the scheme is the problem. While the Steelers got beat by an end around because of a superior play by Javon Walker, they didn't get fooled by any of the bootlegs or end arounds. Why, they adjusted their scheme so they always had a free rusher who would take QB first. This is not rocket science and it's hard to believe that this is all the players faults and it keeps happening over and over again.

Also, there was the admission by Fisher that the D isn't good enough to go in with a balanced attack and they had to pick their poison. That tells me that they are trying to attack specific things which leave them (scheme-wise) vulnerable to other things. This is what I think is going on. Cause if it was ONLY LaBoy doing it it'd be one thing, but when it's LaBoy, Odom AND Bulluck...that is a coaching problem.

When I say we have talented players, I mean we have guys with the talent to succeed given good coaching, a good scheme, and someone who will call the plays effectively. This is NOT happening. I think there are some players on this D who are not better than backup material at this point (like LT), but MOST of this D is avg starting quality or better. And with a better DC, we'd be able to hide our weaknesses better instead of having them exposed over and over again.

Gut

 

More interesting would be to look at how many players on our D WOULDN'T be starters on other teams. Here's my list:
KVB = starter
LaBoy = ?
Robaire = starter
Haynesworth = starter
Bulluck = starter
Thornton = starter
Sirmon = backup
Pacman = starter
Hill = backup
Hope = starter
Thompson = waterboy