Originally Posted by steelreserve
Nobody has said in this topic what you just said.
Nobody has said in this topic what you just said.
I'm still looking.
I do see it now. There is a scary amount of truth to everything you posted.
Good, seasoned QBs have shown they like Lebeau's "Sit back and pray for a T/O" defense. And just like Lebeau's defense, the middle will be open. Dalton's attack could have been a lot worse under dry conditions.
Hater = Realist
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The biggest difference, however, is that we're not playing a fireblitz defense anymore. So, we're not losing the extra two or three DBs to the blitz that left the TEs or slot receivers wide open across the middle every. freakin'. play. And again, as the field shortens, so does zone responsibility, making it even more difficult to pass across the middle.
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See, it's that definitive "yes" that confuses me based on what we've seen so far. Would I like to see better pressure? Of course, but I don't expect much more than we're getting now because we're not gameplanning for it. There's no way we can send either three or four guys and expect them to consistently get to the QB. I don't think I've seen any overload blitzes or crossing blitzes this season. In other words, we've schemed a vanilla offense up to this point for the reasons I've listed in previous posts in this thread, and it's worked. So, how can we ABSOLUTELY have a problem on defense right now?
Are there potential problems to be concerned about? Sure. Depending so much on a full-scale zone is worrisome. I prefer to see the CBs getting thrown into the fire a bit more early in the season to prepare for teams that can pick apart zone defenses. I don't want my LBs first taste of overload or crossing blitzes to come against Brady or another good QB.
But, until we come out, scheming for strong pressure and not getting it, I think it's way too quick and heavy-handed to claim "hell yes" we have problems on defense.
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It is a very long season. Enjoy the highs, endure the lows, celebrate the ring at the end.
I think the scheme itself is going to be a problem if that's what our plan is for the long term. We're playing the sit-back, which has fallen flat on its face for the entirety of the decade-plus we've seen it make appearances. So that's a concern right off the bat. We don't have to be trying a scheme and failing for it to be a problem; having a shaky gameplan and executing it to a T is just as risky. This is based on PAST EXPERIENCE watching our results with the same style of defense, not on me just not liking it because it's not exciting or something.
Personally, I think "bend but don't break" is bullshit. Just like the start of last year, it has more to do with field position and a lack of bad turnovers than anything in particular we're doing right on the defensive side of the ball. Figure the typical yardage gained by the offense on any drive follows a bell curve, with somewhere between 30-40 yards as the midpoint. Well, depending on where you place the ball to start, the high end of that is either going to fall inside or outside of scoring range a lot more often. 15 yards of field position makes a HUGE difference in that.
So we've had a ton of good special teams play with no big runbacks, and as far as turnovers, just a handful of what-the-hell interceptions that left the ball in their end of the field anyway. There's the answer to our bend-but-don't-break - we've had almost the whole field to play with most of the time, so the law of averages says that something like 75% of drives SHOULD stall well short of the end zone if you just avoid playing exceptionally bad defense. Flip it around so their average starting field position is the 40, and we're toast. THAT'S what I see in this defense.
See you Space Cowboy ...
Against the bengals,it was not the bend but don't break defense in this game....I mean,the bengals had 9 PUNTS in this game....NINE!
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To copy you . . . See, now that's an assessment I can get behind. A fairly-well laid out idea of what is possible if we keep going the way we are and why you'd like to see it change—also identifying the scheme as an issue and differences you'd like to see in it. Now, I disagree in some areas, but this is a discussion we can have where, I think we're talking about the same things. So . . .
I agree that long term, it's probably not a good plan unless we have absolute ball-hawks. Unfortunately, we don't. But, is it a bad plan right now? I would say no, again, because it's a good way to get rookies and players with little on-field experience up to speed. So, for right now, the scheme is solid enough. It will begin to be bad if we try to push the exact same scheme against the better QBs.
As far as stats go, I'd say yes, and no. While it's true that statistically, some drives should stall and some won't, I think a more important stat is our redzone stat, where we on number 1 in the NFL. Remember that stats like you quoted are averages, so all things being equal across the league and across however many seasons the stat is drawing from, xx drives will fall short, xx drive will go for so many yards. But, so far, this defense has shown that it is far ahead of the statistical mean in the redzone. There's little reason for that to change. Now, played out in real life, what you're saying is more trips to the redzone means more opportunities to put the ball in. So, right now, we're at 14.29 percent TDs allowed per redzone drive. Your argument is that for every 10 drives, there's basically 1.5 Tds, but for every 20 drives, there'll be 3 TDs, so let's keep the drives from the redzone more often. That makes sense, but . . .
I am not convinced that right now, moving to a different system will stop those drives. In fact, I'm more convinced that moving away from the zone defense consistently will open up the field for 30, 40, 50 yard TDs because of isolation against CBs that aren't ready for it. That's why I'm a lot more patient with the scheme as we're now playing it, but hoping to see a shift starting soon so our CBs can start to bear more of the weight.
In short, I think the one major change we have now from what Lebeau did was that we've adjusted the scheme to fit all the players, rather than creating a scheme and fitting it around one or two exceptional players, like we did with Troy P. and Harrison.
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There is this thing that teams do from week to week called game plan for the opponent. What we did vs the Bengals worked. Doesn't mean it works against the Eagles. May be a different game plan for the Eagles. Have to wait and see.
Additionally it needs pointed out that Butler is willing to live in personnel groupings that Lebeau avoided. Butler had his dime group on the field for 30 or more snaps last week. Maybe as much against the Skins - can't remember and far too lazy to look it up right now! Point being, Lebeau was usually unwilling to really start pulling linebackers off the field because he used them for fire-zone stuff. Butler seems to part ways on that point. He seems willing to go with more zone and far less fire.
Steelers used to get beat in zone because they would intentionally leave one defender to cover more than one reciever. That "extra" guy would then be used to rush the passer. Also, Butler seems to far less interested in isolating a LB on a TE or a WR so that a DB can rush the passer - another match-up that the good teams would exploit against previous Steelers defenses.
What I am interested in is that we sorta maybe kinda know what Butler's "cover" defensive alignments look like. Lots of nickel and dime zones with 3 man rush fronts. I think we have an idea of what his "base" alignments look like. Essentially two versions, the one with Hargraves and the one with McCullers. But what do his "pressure" alignments look like? Does he have any intention of overload blitzes - the "fire" part of the fire zone (at least in my mind)? That will be neat to see - if it ever comes out.
I am kinda viewing the defense the same way the offense was Bryant's rookie year. It looked good, but kinda odd. Then Bryant came on the field and it was AMAZING?! Well I really hope some combination of Burns, Dupree, Gilbert, and Golson can have the same impact on the defense.
The more I think about it, the more I can distill it all down to a set of related questions:
1. Can the zone blitz (trading the coverage responsibility of a DB off to a DL or LB) be effective in the pass wacky current NFL? At least out of base personnel.
2. If it can be, how do you make sure that teams can not exploit the coverage mismatch - Jarvis Jones on a WR say.
3. Can it only be effective if you have freak athletes in your base grouping (Shazier, Dupree, etc) that can do "ridiculous" things for their position - like run with a WR...
4. If the zone blitz as we are used to it can be dissected by a competent QB surrounded by good or better skill position players - how do the Steelers create pressure outside of their base 3-4? What do they do in nickel and dime alignments to create pressure aside from relying on Heyward and Tuitt to beat someone?
......and Ben's could have too.
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Thanks NFL Research. Now we know who cursed us last game.
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