Question about D

I'd love to hear some analysis from the more knowledgable football-minds in here (and there are some really good ones). I'm not as knowing on the hard-core strategy of the game, but I love learning it as I think Football is the most strategic sport in the world.

Now, what I am curious about is whether our sucky safety situation almost forces us to rush/blitz more?

My understanding is that, even though they may hit us for some short routes, in the end, we need to make 80% or more of their pass plays be under 3 seconds or so. Essentially, make the QB have to throw real quick because of our pressure. This will limit (possibly) the amount of time opposing WR's have to get open and should allow our secondary to cover them a bit better, knowing that if the QB has lots of time to throw our weakness will be exposed and we'll get taked advantage of.

I understand the limitations of a heavy blitz and how it can bite us, but I just am wondering if in our current situation that isn't a 'lesser of two evils'. Meaning, that may hurt us on a few plays, but leaving the QB time to throw against us will hurt us even more...

Your thoughts??

 

If we safety blitz and our safeties suck at blitzes, then it will really reallly really bad.

 

I was thinking about this exact point this morning . ..

if i were Fox, I would play man as tightly as possible and send one of our (shitty in coverage) safeties and one of our (shitty in coverage) LBs after Bulger on every passing down. Putting some immediate and serious heat on him should be effective. If Bulger is allowed any time at all he will be passing at will on our very loose coverage.

BLITZ & MAN UP TIGHT!

 

Questionable safety play means that you're probably less likely to blitz, if anything. Our base defense is generally in cover 3, meaning three defensive backs take a deep third each. Sometimes that's two corners and a safety, and sometimes it's a safety and two corners. In either case, we're not going to give up too many deep balls even with our safeties being garbage. The real problem is the underneath stuff, especially given that our linebackers aren't the greatest when it comes to zone or man coverage.

I do like the occasional overload blitz when we slant our defensive linemen to one side and bring an additional linebacker or corner from that side, hopefully numbering more defenders than they can block. When you do that, you have to roll the coverage to the vacated side and you obviously have fewer defenders to cover the space. When that happens, you'll generally push a safety up into that space, but doing that really puts pressure on them to limit yards after the catch if the QB is able to make the completion, so it isn't something you'd want to do often.

Ultimately we should be able to get good pressure with our front four, and we'll need those LBs and safeties to keep track of TEs and backs.

 

indeed

 

Depends on how you look at it.

 

indubitably

 

in theory, the idea would be more likely to play shorter zones, more like the C3 we play or even four deep

Blitz either means leaving a man open (dangerous), going man (dangerous with our safeties, though solid enough with everyone else), or going zone blitz, which leaves our DL out in space where you really don't want them.

I don't mind sending an extra man now and again in the right place to create pressure, and I don't mind the idea of having to play man under a 3 deep shell, but given our safeties, it doesn't improve our chances.

 

good morning good morning everybody in the news this morning good morning

and yeah, it's useful situationally. I'd like to see Davis start to excel at blitzing - he did allright at getting pressure, by the stats, but not finishing - overall we don't have the size to be good at blitzing, and somehow our high picks don't have elite speed to be exceptional there, either. But we can design a couple things to exploit weakness, and hope that if Jenkins can get upfield we won't worry about creating other pressure.

 

but isn't Davis probably our best LB in coverage?
Couldn't we blitz our biggest liabilities in coverage instead of the guys(GUY) who can actually cover a little?