lol Pittsburgh let up more yds and as many touchdowns in the passing game as we did. they struggled all year vs the pass, and that is with an experienced player like Polamalu back there, and another great coach in Lebeau calling the D. poor example. you said there was nothing wrong with our personnel, which is flat out wrong. it was obvious the passing game was our achilles heel on D, and changing out players and trying different coverage schemes was not enough to mask that problem. one corner wasn't going to change our offense, or make us a playoff team. but it certainly would have helped our defense, and allowed our coach the flexibility to play the defense which he has a long track record of success in. fast forward to this year.. should we leave Bowles in the same situation? of course not.. we need to improve the secondary. and of course, we need a QB and Oline help, but that is another topic altogether.
Before the season nobody thought the Jets were making the playoffs. But no one thought we had 4-12 talent. Most people said 7-9 or 8-8. As for the Steelers Polomalu missed games due to injury. And they had other secondary injuries but they made the playoffs. In 2014 the Jets played below their talent level.
well the Steelers were light years ahead of us on offense. no argument there. aren't we specifically discussing D here?
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap30...eaking-new-york?campaign=Facebook_atn_Sessler "I'm definitely trying to keep him here," Peterson said of Cromartie, per ESPN.com. "It's going to be tough, especially with Todd being in New York and (Cromartie) loves (New York)." Said Peterson: "That's all he talks about is freaking New York. I'm definitely trying to get him to stay and we'll see what happens."
You seem to be misusing the bend but don't break philosophy. That mostly refers to a defensive scheme that plays a lot of coverage and doesn't give up big plays i.e. Belichick's recent New England defenses prior to this year and even somewhat this year. Two safeties over the top, not a lot of heavy blitzing. In terms of corners, what's the constant? Walls and Allen played the majority of the snaps with Wilson in the slot. It's unlikely that either of them will be playing much if at all on the outside. Go back and look at the snap counts: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/snapcounts Walls played 73.8% of the snaps, Allen 50.4%, Kyle Wilson 30.3% (slot), Philip Adams 30.1%. That leaves the majority of our playing time given to 4 players, 3 of which may not be on the 2015 roster (Adams, Walls, Wilson; probably retain one of the three). It's no wonder that our pass defense improved once we started playing Marcus Williams and playing more cover 2 because we don't have the man corners. The hope is that Bowles (unlike Rex) recognizes that we don't have man to man corners. It took Rex 10 weeks to stop blitzing the hell out of defenses and leaving his corner on an island. One would think that this new head coach will recognize that a bit quicker. Therefore I'm saying the mosh of corners will work better especially considering it will essentially be a whole new group with McDougal, Milliner, Cromartie, Williams and another lower level signing. I just don't think it's smart to go spend $16 million in corners this offseason. Give Cro $4-5 million and sign another lower end guy like Buster Skrine for around $3 million rather than try to sign two top end players and cripple resigning Mo this year and Sheldon in the upcoming years.
I wouldn't mind bringing Cro back. But he will be far from the answer at CB. We would also need to sign/draft another. I personally think Milliner will be healthy and good to go and possibly be our number 1. I am a fan of Flowers and would like to bring him in as well, though I didn't watch him closely this season. Maxwell is a no brainer, IMO. Most QBs didn't want to throw to Sherman's side, so they went after Maxwell, who did a great job with that defense.
Part of the problem with the defense was the offense. I don't think though the only reason they gave up so many big plays was because of weaknesses in the secondary namely poor play by the corners. It was part of the problem but a problem a lot of teams had. Let's see what Bowles wants in the D backfield. He knows that position as well as anyone.
you are advocating taking a coach with a successful scheme, who blitzed more than any coach in the league, and asking him to change that scheme in lieu of improving the secondary. that is last year all over again.. it makes no sense.
I think Milliner will be pretty good. He was actually coached pretty well by Rex and Thurmond. Benching him helped him out a lot and brought in accountability. He played a lot better after that.
I'm not asking him to change his scheme in lieu of improving the secondary. I'm asking him to change his scheme in lieu of improving the entire defense. If the secondary can't handle playing man to man across the board why force it? There are only a couple secondaries in the entire league that can do this and that includes Arizona, New England, and Seattle. We are not one of them. I don't expect Bowles to force the blitz if we can manufacture a pass rush good enough to have him mix up coverages. I expect him to adjust the scheme to fit the personnel. You can't force a scheme on a team that isn't equipped to run it like Rex did. We have enough playmakers in our front to the point where we shouldn't have to send 7 or 8 every play. If you watched Arizona at all, they have a high blitz percentage but it was usually 5 or 6 guys rushing the passer. Not send the house blitzes that Rex drove into the ground until we were 1-8.
first off, you are flat wrong about Rex not mixing up personnel or coverages while looking for an answer. i already showed you all the combinations of DB's we were running. Short of making a trade, what else could we do? we were already rotating 6 different corners, 3 of which weren't even on the team opening day. the send the house blitz looks were a mirage this year, and we ended up sending 4 the majority of the time. Bowles blitzed way more than Rex did last year......that's a fact. we played cover 2, cover 3, all sorts of coverage zones throughout the year.....and with little success against top QB's. we simply did not have the horses regardless of coverage scheme, and you cannot mask that many deficiencies in your secondary. the only thing that improved our pass D as the season went on was playing less effective passing teams. but here's the main point. why would you possibly want Bowles to change something that he has proven works for him? he has stated he can do more when he has good Corners, and run an overall more flexible and aggressive D. why take away what he does best, when we have the resources to provide better alternatives at the position?
Rex didn't have the horses last year, but I'm unsure as to what different coverages you thought he was running? Maybe we were watching different games. He didn't start running that many different coverages until we were almost eliminated. He's spoken out against playing zone. Great corners make any defense better regardless of scheme, as it obviously helps with flexibility. I'm saying that I really don't foresee us going and getting Cromartie and another top free agent corner, nor do I think it bodes well in resigning our hogs up front.
serious question, what defense didn't we try running last season? against the Chargers, we ran a lot of Big Nickel, with Allen sliding in as the 3rd safety (Gates killed him all game). we tried playing coverage, and got picked apart. then we tried blitzing, and also got picked apart. against Denver, the next week, we rushed only 3, and dropped 8 into coverage the entire game. it was a great game plan, but unfortunately opened up the run for Denver, and we still couldn't stop Manning from throwing TD's. we ran a Cover 2 for most of the season. while Rex may not like playing zone, he ran it more than he ever did, while blitzing less than ever. we also were noticeably not running the 46. Rex was not able to run the defenses which he's had a lot of success with in the past. Let's not do the exact same thing to Bowles. signing Cro alone won't be enough imo. in that scenario, are you envisioning Milliner covering the top receivers, while McDougle starts in the slot? that's a huge leap of faith.....not one we can depend on. they are both coming off serious injuries, have extensive injury histories, and have never proved any level of consistency in this league. can't hand them the starting roles w/o viable competition, and we need depth.
Why can't people wrap their heads around the fact that Cromartie had one bad year where he played through injury? In all of the other years that he played for us or the Cardinals he played lights out. The first year we had him, Peyton Manning avoided Revis and targeted Cromartie's WRs and got nowhere as Cro shut them down. When Revis went down Cromartie did just fine as our #1 CB. If we get Cromartie (which will not be cheap) our CB situation would improve considerably.
Have you actually went back and rewatched the games? I have and I'm not going to keep arguing with you about something that I would have to show you on tape. Rex started mixing up the coverages and defenses once we were in a huge hole, but for the most part stuck with his bread and butter of man defense especially against that string of good quarterbacks. Argue it all you want or go back and watch the games your choice. Not every great defense has good corners, or great corners like these Patriot and Seahawks teams have had. Look at some successful teams and pass rushing based defenses in the 9ers, Ravens, Giants, Steelers, Bears, Broncos and to even a lesser extent the Colts, Saints and Cardinals. Most all of these teams have had serviceable middle of the pack secondaries with elite players in the box and on the edge. It's a flavor of the week thing to try to spend $20 million on cornerbacks. Look at how many DTs were drafted in the 2003 draft following the Buccaneers Superbowl win. Everyone tried to emulate Warren Sapp which is why it was something like 6 or 7 defensive tackles went in the first round and 4 in the top 10. This cornerback fad will blow over when people realize there aren't nearly enough good cover guys out there to try to build from the back end which is why the NFL remains constant in that you need to pressure the quarterback and stop the run. Do you really think that if you paired the Seahawks secondary with the Falcons pass rush they would be nearly as good?
