Why Did Fox Move To Tampa Defenses

[frash.exe]

Zone is zone, but Cover 2 is aggressive zone. The players need to be aggressive to make the system work. I think Meeks can bring the aggressiveness out of the players.

[panthers55]

which, I'm sure, people somehow remember as man defense.

We've always been zone under fox. We were zone under Seifert. We were zone under Capers. Teams just don't play that much man defense, and when they do, it's because they're sending 7 or because they're doubling a guy and don't respect any of the other options. Man just isn't something this league plays that much.

Agree that we play a lot of zone- and many times not well at all.

I also agree that many teams don't play man but that is largely due to talent level on many teams. There aren't that many shut down corners who can play man all day. Or many teams with 2 or 3 guys good in man coverage.

Teams that blitz a lot mix up zone and man coverages but have the ability to bump and slow receivers up off the line which is frankly all the time you should need for the blitz to get the quarterback while disrupting the obvious hot reads.

Our problem has already been telegraphing what we were going to do and making it easy for good quarterbacks to pick up apart.

[Mesmer]

Agree that we play a lot of zone- and many times not well at all.

I also agree that many teams don't play man but that is largely due to talent level on many teams. There aren't that many shut down corners who can play man all day. Or many teams with 2 or 3 guys good in man coverage.

Teams that blitz a lot mix up zone and man coverages but have the ability to bump and slow receivers up off the line which is frankly all the time you should need for the blitz to get the quarterback while disrupting the obvious hot reads.

Our problem has already been telegraphing what we were going to do and making it easy for good quarterbacks to pick up apart.

I think that's where the hard-on for the 3-4 comes from. You're rushing 4, it's just a question of where that 4th guy is going to come from.

You don't need to switch your schemes to be able to disguise pressure...

I just don't think our blitz's were ever really drawn up that well, and even if they were, they certainly weren't executed well. Timing is so key, and we've never really had it in that dept. The same thing could be said offensively about the ability to run a good screen that doesn't go to Steve Smith

[beastson]

All teams run zone, and some run man to man. Then some mix it up. Philly runs man to man. GB would run man to man

Only a few teams run zone ALL the time. We are starting to become one of those teams. It wasn't ALWAYS like that

That same zone Fitzgerald ran right through just by being put in the slot

[Mesmer]

All teams run zone, and some run man to man. Then some mix it up. Philly runs man to man. GB would run man to man

Only a few teams run zone ALL the time. We are starting to become one of those teams. It wasn't ALWAYS like that

That same zone Fitzgerald ran right through

Zone defense is such a broad term. Running a zone does not equal automatically sitting back on your heels in a prevent and watching the play happen.

You can apply pressure as a zone, you can zone blitz, there's flat zone coverage for corners, which helps cover hot routes..hell you can even run press coverage and still be in zone. Not to mention there's man/zone combo packages, but I don't record our games and watch them over and over again to figure out whether or not that's happening.

[beastson]

Ok... would it be if I say we run a "soft zone coverage", cause we do. That would be the name

We dont zone blitz or deal with anything involving blitzing lol, we run flat sometimes, and we never press coverage at all

[Snake]

In 06 it started to get put in place. This zone coverage and just rushing mainly 4. Yea we always had a powerful front 4, but we still blitzed from time to time. And we used to play man and bump and run. Gamble and Lucas was all over the field covering opposite teams best WR. 05 was the last year we did that

Now we play 5-10 yards off and just run a zone with everybody staying in the same place

Same thing Tampa being doing for years. Then we hired Meeks who run the same system. That just shows you, like I've said, Mike runs Fox defense. There will be no changes this season

Why??? What made Fox see the best way to go that route

Im sorry but your flat wrong on this one. For one we have not been running the Tampa 2 at all or Cover 2 that much. We have been playing mostly in the cover 3 some cover 2 but we didn't much last year cause of liability at FS. We used lots of zone blitzes and stunts but really no Tampa 2 at all. The soft zone coverage is not Tampa 2 also and if you watch the Buc's or the Bears play D that will show you there is noting soft about it. Really we could see just as much Man to Man out of the Cover 2 as we would see zones and also not just a 4-3 base but some 3-4 mixed in. There are alot of possibility with it. Hell Meeks won a SB with it so dont be so sure Fox will try to put his stamp on it.

[Mesmer]

Ok... would it be if I say we run a "soft zone coverage", cause we do. That would be the name

We dont zone blitz or deal with anything involving blitzing lol, we run flat sometimes, and we never press coverage at all

You sir, are wrong. We zone blitzed a very good bit this year. Particularly in in the first half of the season.

[beastson]

Naw not some. We ran both cover 2 and 3. Yes cover 3 more than 2. And we didnt blitz a lot, yall already know that. Rarely no linebacker blitzed when Pep(who mainly did it) dropped back. Check the N.Y game. Not gonna say never did, that would be wrong, cause we did. Not a lot

[beastson]

You sir, are wrong. We zone blitzed a very good bit this year. Particularly in in the first half of the season.

Yea I just addressed that in the message above

Just funny how I named the N.Y game, a game in the 2nd half of the season. And how Fox made his "mark" around mid season towards the end

But I'm not talking about that really. I'm talking secondary

[Snake]

Naw not some. We ran both cover 2 and 3. Yes cover 3 more than 2. And we didnt blitz a lot, yall already know that. Rarely no linebacker blitzed when Pep(who mainly did it) dropped back. Check the N.Y game. Not gonna say never did, that would be wrong, cause we did. Not a lot

The NY game is a bad example because we didnt have our DTs and that limited us to what we could do. Really it tied both hands behind our back if you really want to know the truth. I watched most of the games over last year and when we dropped Peppers or Brayton back in a zone we were blitzing our LBs. Classic zone blitz right there and we did it all season long. Really we didnt run much cover 2 if you had a chance to look over the game because of Godfrey. We did start to do it more in the second half and thats why we saw more blown coverages. We blitzed alot last season but it was at the wrong times and sometimes it looked sloppy. That dose not mean we didnt do it though.

[pantherclaw]

Simply amazing people forget how much tampa 2 we've played since John Fox was here. Even when Del Rio was our DC.