A Question about Peppers and Rucker

No I totally agree. A great pass rushing D End is only going to affect 5% of plays regardless if he's double-teamed. Pep needs to get in there 5 times a game and he's had massive impact. Given there are around 60 offensive plays, that's not a huge percentage, and the calls for doubles every play just isn't warrented. That's why it is so important for Pep to shut down the run, which he is doing a great job at. He's also doing an awesome job at sniffing out screens this year (preseason) and last year. There's more to a DE than just trying to get sacks, and imo Pep has been doing an awesome job at expanding his game. This isn't even counting his "dropping into pass coverage" which he excels at due to his reflexes.

 

Unfortuneately I had to watch the game on TV. It makes it very hard to watch line play. However, there were some plays (I don't remember the number), where the TV camera showed Peppers and Brown. On those plays, JP was hit by two or three guys.

I've also heard they were doubling both Rucker and Peppers. Seem like a math problem to me if they were. Even if they were double tights or kept a back to block, that's only a 6 man protection. Two on Pep, two on Ruck, that leaves 1 for Carstens, and 1 for Buckner.

Which of course begs the question, where is the rest of the line?

The other question is how much were they running 6, or 7 man prorections?

With a 6 man, you could still send 4 receivers out. With 7 man, you could only send 3 receivers out. Plus thats 3 or 4 receivers covered by 7 men. The Saints receivers seemed too wide open for that to be the case.

 

Has anybody asked you? I may be mistaken, but I typically see you just chime in and people tell you to go away.

Anyway, I'll take the commentary of somebody who covers sports for a living over some guy who... well I dunno what you do.