Eric Washington Wants to “make sure our scheme fits our personnel"

[unicar15]

The amount of frustration shown by our All-Pro linebackers last year told me that our scheme didn’t quite fit the personnel. Keuchly in particular seemed legitimately pissed about quick passes sailing into open windows. 

[Cartel de Carolina]

14 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

For all the talk about how much we blitzed last year, we were top five in the league in sacks, and the vast majority of those sacks come from our defensive front four.  Would be nice to see some actual numbers, but sometimes I wonder if we really blitzed more, or if you guys just imagined it. 

people hate on wilks but that is a good stat. 

i think it was more to do with the players having brain farts missing assignments than with wilks. 

i will take an aggressive DC over a passive one any day of the week. 

[Saca312]

1 hour ago, shulasmyhero said:

Wilks blitzed too frequently but it was primarily due to the lack of pressure from the front four.  Severely missing a dominant pass rusher.  

Sure about that?

We got more pressure and sacks from just rushing four than we have blitzing.

Taking a look at the Vikings game alone, all but one sack came as a product of rushing four.

The reality is, rushing four can actually be more productive than blitzing as pass rushers have more space to exert pressure. Blitzing works when offenses don’t pick it up, but sadly Wilks never found the magic formula with our group to create blitzes that truly keep an offense on its heels as the year went on.

[Saca312]

1 hour ago, Cartel de Carolina said:

people hate on wilks but that is a good stat. 

i think it was more to do with the players having brain farts missing assignments than with wilks. 

i will take an aggressive DC over a passive one any day of the week. 

I agree, it’s just I want an aggressive DC that also knows how to adapt to personnel.

Of course blitz and remain aggressive as long as that doesn’t become so repetitive and obvious that offenses will pick up on tendencies. The way we blitz’d hurt our secondary since they couldn’t handle the high expectations Wilks had.

His scheme never worked with our personnel imo. It’ll certainly work well with the Cardinals, who have a decent front and a stout secondary with a true swiss army knife in Budda Baker he’ll pretty much make stupid good.

[JARROD]

4 hours ago, Saca312 said:

That’s not how football works.

Ummm what football are you talking about? Australian?

[Saca312]

Just now, JARROD said:

Ummm what football are you talking about? Australian?

Unless we’re talking madden, blitzing at a predictable rate generally isn’t going to help a secondary cover.

Those blitz’ get picked up and remain ineffective, leading to QBs slicing up a secondary with a tougher job of covering guys just as long as they probably would have with the team rushing four.

Blitzing is like adding salt to a meal. Too little brings little flavor, too much turns it into a hot mess. However, just the right amount can turn a meal into a masterpiece

Finding the right mix of blitzing and rushing four really create a scary good defense. Keep offenses guessing and not picking up on anything predictable while playing to the strengths of your defense is what top DCs do.

Hope Washington does that.

[JARROD]

1 hour ago, Davidson Deac II said:

For all the talk about how much we blitzed last year, we were top five in the league in sacks, and the vast majority of those sacks come from our defensive front four.  Would be nice to see some actual numbers, but sometimes I wonder if we really blitzed more, or if you guys just imagined it. 

Exactly. 

From what I saw, our front was getting there pretty fast. Whether 4 or blitzing.

our secondary is terrible. 

[TheSpecialJuan]

4 minutes ago, Saca312 said:

Blitzing is like adding salt to a meal. Too little brings little flavor, too much turns it into a hot mess. However, just the right amount can turn a meal into a masterpiece

 

Quite lovely 

[JARROD]

Just now, Saca312 said:

Unless we’re talking madden, blitzing at a predictable rate generally isn’t going to help a secondary cover.

Those blitz’ get picked up and remain ineffective, leading to QBs slicing up a secondary with a tougher job of covering guys just as long as they probably would have with the team rushing four.

Blitzing is like adding salt to a meal. Too little brings little flavor, too much turns it into a hot mess. However, just the right amount can turn a meal into a masterpiece

Finding the right mix of blitzing and rushing four really create a scary good defense. Keep offenses guessing and not picking up on anything predictable while playing to the strengths of your defense is what top DCs do.

Hope Washington does that.

Blitzing is generally done because your front 4 are not getting there fast enough, but that in itself is caused many times by a terrible secondary.

just like a good secondary can cause a lot of coverage sacks and mask a bad defensive line, a bad secondary can’t hold down receivers worth a flip and can make your front 7 look bad.

Our secondary sucks,.. it just does. I think Wilks did the best he could do to mask what he had for as long as he could.

blitzing a lot is a way to do that. Had he not, We would have had a mid 20s defense trying to play bend not break all season.

Because he did, ours was a top 10 overall.

[BrianS]

It's really a trade off, you know?

The blitz callers say that you don't have to cover as long when you blitz, because you get home faster.  Ok, I can see that.  It's probably true.

The flip side of the coin is that when you don't blitz, you give your rush more time to get home because you're . . . you know . . . covering.

Peppers . . . Star . . . Kawaan . . . Addison . . . . I'm thinking those guys have a pretty good shot getting there.  Not sure why we felt the need to "help" a front four like that.

[JARROD]

6 minutes ago, BrianS said:

It's really a trade off, you know?

The blitz callers say that you don't have to cover as long when you blitz, because you get home faster.  Ok, I can see that.  It's probably true.

The flip side of the coin is that when you don't blitz, you give your rush more time to get home because you're . . . you know . . . covering.

Peppers . . . Star . . . Kawaan . . . Addison . . . . I'm thinking those guys have a pretty good shot getting there.  Not sure why we felt the need to "help" a front four like that.

That would be true is you had even average secondary but we don’t. 

Notice even our 2016 defense was a far cry from 2015 because of the drop off and that was McDermott 

I think the model would be phili. They collapse the pocket from the middle and keep a Qb from stepping up and crush the outside with their front 4, but have pretty decent corners to slow everyone down.

it all works hand in hand. If your front 4 are not getting there, most teams resort to blitzing. 

Now the camouflaging of the blitzes and where they are coming from are very important, and I want to see how Washington does a better job.

[Cartel de Carolina]

average pass rush will take 3-4 seconds to get through. 

effective blitzing should make it 2 seconds. 

 

[iamhubby1]

1 hour ago, Davidson Deac II said:

For all the talk about how much we blitzed last year, we were top five in the league in sacks, and the vast majority of those sacks come from our defensive front four.  Would be nice to see some actual numbers, but sometimes I wonder if we really blitzed more, or if you guys just imagined it. 

 

    I am pretty sure we wound up leading the league in blitz's. And I am also pretty sure most folks probably think that is one stat that may not be in our best interest. Mainly because of the extra stress it puts on your Defense to be perfect. Defense is tough enough to play, without adding to the difficulty by blitzing your butt off.

 

    Now, as you said, we were top shelf in sacks. But I have no data on if they came from our front four, or were the result of all those blitz's. I do believe as the year went by, our front four was getting less pressure. Which could be why we were blitzing more towards the end of the year.

 

    Which is why this off-season is going to be interesting. I know Rivera loves Hall, and is excited about Obada. So I could see us not really adding much at DE, and just going with those two kids. OR, maybe they hedge their bet and add another one? Could tell us what they think about all this. Are we good? Or do we need to add a piece? 

 

   

[Saca312]

52 minutes ago, JARROD said:

ust like a good secondary can cause a lot of coverage sacks and mask a bad defensive line, a bad secondary can’t hold down receivers worth a flip and can make your front 7 look bad.

The issue is when Wilks tried turning our zone corners into man corners. Clearly not a fit for them despite what Wilks thinks.

Our secondary was average. Wasn’t the NFL’s worst, wasn’t the NFL’s best. Wilks treated them like we had the Prime Legion of Boom back there.

And as far as blitzing because of our secondary, I’d argue we’ve been far better in coverage when we rush four rather than blitz. Most chunk plays come from a vacated zone or area of the field where offenses exploit because a person that could be protecting it isn’t since that person came down to blitz.

Blitzing stresses the secondary when the pressure doesn’t hit home, which it rarely did.