On the Steelers: Clark: 'We're too predictable'

[zulater]

Safety agrees with Raiders on that, but other facets of play more significant

It's not so much that the Steelers defense is old and slow, now they are predictable?
Some Oakland Raiders made that claim Sunday, including wide receiver Derek Hagan, who credited quarterback Carson Palmer for diagramming Dick LeBeau's defense for his teammates and then picking it apart.
"They pretty much did the same thing that they did six, seven years ago when he was playing with Cincinnati," Hagan said of the former Bengals quarterback. "Obviously, they've got a legendary D-coordinator over there. He's been running certain things that other teams have seen, that we've seen. We knew their tendencies and we were able to hit them with some big plays when it really counted."
Predictable? Guilty as charged said Steelers safety Ryan Clark.
"Sometimes, when you speed up the offense, you can call the same plays and kind of get stuck in the same plays," Clark said of defending Oakland's no-huddle offense Sunday.
"We really haven't been that hard to figure out the last seven years I've been here. We've been running the same things, we call the same things. It's not about being predictable, it's about executing.
"Coach LeBeau puts us in a call, we have to execute the right way. It doesn't matter if you know what we're doing if you can stop it."
Here are the adjustments Clark suggests:
"That's what we have to get back to doing, no matter what the call is, the guys across from us, kicking his butt and getting to the ball."


Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/sports/steelers/on-the-steelers-clark-were-too-predictable-654864/#ixzz27YcDXYJD

[Steeldude]

If the opposing team knows what you are doing on defense then they will win.

[Texasteel]

I know I am homer Number 1, but I think adjustments will be made, and we will do much better from here on.

[zulater]

I know I am homer Number 1, but I think adjustments will be made, and we will do much better from here on.

They better be made or it's going to be a long season.

LeBeau has been a great coach and a better person. But right now he's not getting the job done. That has to change or this season is doomed.

And please, don't put it all on Troy and Harrison. There's no guarantee either can be an impact player anymore.

[Texasteel]

They better be made or it's going to be a long season.

LeBeau has been a great coach and a better person. But right now he's not getting the job done. That has to change or this season is doomed.

And please, don't put it all on Troy and Harrison. There's no guarantee either can be an impact player anymore.

I know they are not the players they once were, but I think their presents will still impact this defence positively. I will be glad to see them back. I think this does show that we need to find a future replacment on this team for them soon, if they are not already here.

[HollywoodSteel]

The title of this thread is misleading. Now it certainly maybe true that we are too predictable but that was not Clark's point. He never said "too." His point was that he knows they are predictable and it doesn't matter as long as you execute.

[Butch]

They better be made or it's going to be a long season.

LeBeau has been a great coach and a better person. But right now he's not getting the job done. That has to change or this season is doomed.

And please, don't put it all on Troy and Harrison. There's no guarantee either can be an impact player anymore.

Sorry Zulater not trying to make fun of your post, it just reminded me of this commercial.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmZRDUO1wGQ

Should we get FedEX to help our LeBeau???

[Texasteel]

I love it Butch.

[silver & black]

If the opposing team knows what you are doing on defense then they will win.

True..... just ask the Patr*ots. :chuckle:

[Edman]

This is on Tomlin to fix. Lebeau and his crew ain't going to do it. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. I have no faith in them that they are able recognize that the Classic Lebeau 3-4 scheme has seen it's end. This 7-Yard Cushion Read & React bullshit and hope the QB makes a mistake isn't working anymore. It's old, slow, over, and predictable.

Arizona and Seattle are running 3-4's, but their defenses are so much better than ours. Know why? Because they have schemes that get the best out of their players and they're not trotting out broken down veterans like Hampton and Keisel. We did the same shit last year with Smith and McFadden, and we got burned.

They're not chastising their D-Linemen when they get after the QB.

They're not asking their D-Line to stand up and titty fight.

They're not asking their corners to "keep the play in front of them".

They're forcing offenses to make mistakes with their pressure, and no, it's not with their Linebackers. They're letting all levels of their defenses to pressure and be aggressive. Lo and behold, they're getting turnovers and they're two of the elite defenses in the NFL. We're still stuck in 1994.

I've had it with Lebeau, personally.

[suitanim]

Coordinators rarely make monumental changes to their defense, and neither do OC's. They run the same types of things and just pull from different resources. That's a fact. I disagree with the fact that all LeBeau's blitzes are predictable, too, because he still has like 200 different ones in his pocket. Even Manning doesn't always know where they come from.

But it's EXECUTION again. There's that word that keeps popping back up. WHY CAN'T PEOPLE GRASP THIS CONCEPT? Scheme only goes so far. If you're on offense, and you send a guy in motion, and hand the ball off to him as an end-around, the play may not work, but you SHOW it to the D. Next time you send the guy in motion they'll be looking for the handoff. If you fake it and use it as play-action, the goal is, by setting the play up earlier, that it freezes the D for a half second. It's not rocket science, and it's not some kind of magic trickery from the OC, it's just setting up one play with another.

Back to that play. If I was OC, what I'd do is then look off the defense to the side the guy was in motion FROM, which should encourage the D to forget the motion man as it was obviously a fake, then I'd turn around and have HIM as my primary receiver. If the guy is wide open, and the QB overthrows him, or he drops the pass, the play technically failed because it wasn't executed. It doesn't matter that it was tricky or unpredictable, it failed because of lack of execution.

On 4th and inches, when you line up with 2 (or even 3) TE's, and a FB and RB and you hand the ball up the gut, do you think that play succeeds or fails based on predictability, or on execution?

the bottom line is we lack sufficient data to make an accurate assessment of this defense, and calling out LeBeau is unfair because of it. Yelling louder about it won't change the fact that it's still unfair...calling for his dismissal, or to switch defenses after 2 of 3 bad games (the D completely stymied the Jets in the 2nd half last week) is not only ridiculous, it's actually ludicrous, especially since the defense isn't even at full strength yet!

[Chidi29]

These comments just back up the idea about executing.

Clark said we have been running the same things for the past "seven years". Has our defense looked like this the past seven years? No. So it comes down to execution. Everyone knows we're going to be running a zone blitz scheme. Anyone could have told you that.

[Psycho Ward 86]

you know your defense needs work when Derek Hagan's are running around saying its predictable

[86WARD]

Been saying it for a while now. Thanks for confirming it Ryan...

[GodfatherofSoul]

The title of this thread is misleading. Now it certainly maybe true that we are too predictable but that was not Clark's point. He never said "too." His point was that he knows they are predictable and it doesn't matter as long as you execute.


Second this. The article makes it sound like those words came out of his mouth and they never did. He never even suggests it. Big difference between poor execution and being "figured out".

[st33lersguy]

Predictable as in going soft whenever there is a 4th quarter lead

[ALLD]

Reminds me of the Super Bowl against Dallas when Randy Grossman picked off Staubach on their bread and butter play. He played it differently and got the pick.

[Psycho Ward 86]

Big difference between poor execution and being "figured out".

False. Sometimes they are part of the same thing. You think the famed 46 defense would still work in this league? Hell no. The league is evolving. Dick Lebeau ushered in a new era of the fire zone blitz to counter the West Coast offense. The west coast offense used to seem unstoppable. Then Dick Lebeau made it look like a joke. This may or may not be the beginning of the end for this style of defense. Granted, its only 3 games in, and granted, troy and harrison havent even hit the field together yet. But the seahawks especially are playing great defense because of some EXTREMELY fresh ideas on defense and creativity in personnel usage that no one has ever seen before.

Here's one of many articles on the strange, schizophrenic sort of stuff they're doing with their personnel the past two years: http://www.fieldgulls.com/2012/5/7/2999852/on-seahawks-defensive-scheme-versatility-diversity

[suitanim]

But the 3-4 with zone blitzing is working fine on other teams.

[Steelman]

False. Sometimes they are part of the same thing. You think the famed 46 defense would still work in this league? Hell no. The league is evolving. Dick Lebeau ushered in a new era of the fire zone blitz to counter the West Coast offense. The west coast offense used to seem unstoppable. Then Dick Lebeau made it look like a joke. This may or may not be the beginning of the end for this style of defense. Granted, its only 3 games in, and granted, troy and harrison havent even hit the field together yet. But the seahawks especially are playing great defense because of some EXTREMELY fresh ideas on defense and creativity in personnel usage that no one has ever seen before.

Here's one of many articles on the strange, schizophrenic sort of stuff they're doing with their personnel the past two years: http://www.fieldgulls.com/2012/5/7/2999852/on-seahawks-defensive-scheme-versatility-diversity

That's one of the best articles I've ever read. Dang, so much solid information in there.

After seeing Clark's comments, I'm wondering if that perhaps our defense is either:

1., completely tied to the combo of a Harrison outside pass rusher & Polamalu free safety, and the exclusion of one or both results in negative effectiveness,

OR 2., our current overall pool of talent (including the above combo) has grown away from the traditional 3-4 zone blitz scheme "player mold" so that we no longer have the personnel to correctly or effectively run that scheme.

So is it scheme or talent? Is the 3-4 outdated? I don't think so, it's worked, and works for other teams who've copied us. I think it's talent. I'm not saying we should ditch the 3-4, or even LeBeau, I'm saying it seems like this year's talent can't effectively run the scheme we've been running the past several years.

Seems like our defense is in a twilight zone right now. I'll be curious to see what kind of adjustments LeBeau makes over the bye week. Getting Troy and possibly James back would help tremendously, of course, but can we rely on them anymore? And does our 3-4 work without them?

[Psycho Ward 86]

i think its talent too. We need to find a way to compensate for that talent to revamp the defense instead of expecting our declining studs that used to seem invincible (Polamalu, Harrison, Hampton, even Aaron Smith for a while at the end of his career) from the past to hold the fort.

[Steeldude]

If it has only to do with execution then you can pick the same play each and every time. It's all about execution, right?

[GodfatherofSoul]

If it has only to do with execution then you can pick the same play each and every time. It's all about execution, right?

It's not black-and-white. Your goal line package won't cover a 5 receiver set.

[Steelman]

If it has only to do with execution then you can pick the same play each and every time. It's all about execution, right?

But if the guy in front of you is a better player, how far does that get you? That's like banging your head against a brick wall and expecting it to fall.

I'll give it a couple games after the break before I call for drastic action, but I'm definitely concerned.