Defense: 5th in the NFL!

[BG]

We're still faced with some building to do. No overhaul is needed. Needs have to be met on the offensive line and one reciever should go while a new playmaker type reciever should come in. I guess I would have to say bye to Doering. He's been an adequate benchwarmer but I would put McCants on the bench and get him hungry while Thompson and Gardner line up with whomever the Skins grab in the draft or in free agency.

I really, really REALLY hope we don't rest on our Laurels when it comes to the defense. Yes we had a shakey start and Damn did we turn it on in the end stretch but we lose Darrell, possibly Bruce, Gardner if we are completely moronic and Trotter's status has yet to be posted.

I'm happy witht the way we battled through a season in which Spurrier acknowledged his greeness in regards to an NFL coaching position. I'm also impressed with the way our defense eventually responded to a coach who used us as a stepping stone to land a head coaching position for a bottom feeder which will fire him after two years.

Bottom line is that there is a solid foundation.

I'm gonna miss Darrell

[Storm]

Obviously the plays we were running were within the scheme. But, do you remember against the Niners when they just stuffed it down our throat and how we never had eight guys up to stop it? This game we rarely had fewer than eight visible on the screen. We were constantly playing single safety

You cant compare schemes for the forty niners, that have a formidable running game and an even better passing game, to that for the cowboys who dont have any starting caliber recievers, a porous O line and no QB to speak of.

Of course they didnt stack the line against the niners, if they did the niners recievers would have torched us. Against the 'girls their only weapon that killed us biannually WAS Emmitt and he had to be stopped and thats why the stacked the line. Speaking of the 'girls O line, they had one of our pathetic cast offs starting against Gardner. Not much of a matchup.

Assuming the ML just revised and negated his whole scheme that hes been preaching for fifteen weeks is rediculous. You add wrinkles for each team.

[Art]

Storm,

You wrote:

"You cant compare schemes for the forty niners, that have a formidable running game and an even better passing game, to that for the cowboys who dont have any starting caliber recievers, a porous O line and no QB to speak of."

Of course you can. A defense should be about what a defense does, not what an offense does. A defense should target something and take it away. San Francisco does have good receivers. We do have good corners. You play to your strengths if you can. We can.

"Of course they didnt stack the line against the niners, if they did the niners recievers would have torched us."

They did torch us. They ran for 250 yards or something. Further, with the game still within some doubt, we let them run 10 plays in a row without ever making a move to stop it. That's stupidity. That's different than what we did against Dallas from the first play when there was doubt about whether the pass or run would be called.

"Against the 'girls their only weapon that killed us biannually WAS Emmitt and he had to be stopped and thats why the stacked the line. Speaking of the 'girls O line, they had one of our pathetic cast offs starting against Gardner. Not much of a matchup."

Right. And, again, we TOOK something from them. We designed a game plan to attack a specific area the offense does well and stop it. We did that precisely because that's what a good defense should do. We haven't done that the rest of the year. We've allowed offensive formation to dictate our play. We haven't sold out to stop anything all year. We should sell out to stop something in every game. Against the Eagles we should sell out to stop the short passing game. If they beat us with something else, then congratulate them. Against the Niners we should have allowed ourselves to adjust to what they were able to do that day because they are balanced and hard to target a specific area to exploit. But when they show what they are planning, attack that plan. We didn't. We didn't even watching them wind the clock down.

"Assuming the ML just revised and negated his whole scheme that hes been preaching for fifteen weeks is rediculous. You add wrinkles for each team."

We haven't added wrinkles all year. Against Seattle we essentially decided they'd get tired of throwing five-yard completions so that's what we gave them and they did get tired of it and we won. But, that's hardly an encouraging sign. A defense should attack. We haven't attacked all year. And against Dallas we attacked. We dictated what they could do to us. You saw looks out of our defense you haven't seen all year. You saw varied fronts and linebacker and secondary positioning. You haven't seen that all year.

All year we've lined up and let the opposition dictate matchup by formation. This game we dictated matchups. It was wholly different from any other defensive effort we've seen here since Petitbone left. It was wholly different than any defensive effort we've seen all year by Lewis. Hell, Bailey got to cover Galloway all game. That alone is a MAJOR departure from the scheme. We actually flopped corners to a man, rather than to a side. It wasn't perfect still, but it was closer to perfect than anything we've seen here in a decade.

[Utah]

Sometimes, people start talking (or typing) and it becomes clear that some just have no idea what their talking about.

Oh well.

[Art]

Utah,

Contribute my friend. Don't take a fly by shot and leave. If you have something to add, do so. Conversation is much more interesting than a lack of it.

[Utah]

Sometimes, I get confused between Conversation and Intelligence. Not sure sometimes what we need more of.....

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Art]

No worries.

I like seeing your points of view, given the angle they come from. Whether they are intelligent or just conversation is of less impact .

[MRMADD]

Art:

Our receivers have done an exceptional job of catching balls this year. Over the last six weeks our offensive production lines up in the Top 6 in the league.

What? Top 6 offensive production? In yards gained, yes, they averaged 368 yards per game. But the only measure of offensive production that matters is points, so let's take a look at that:

20-17 Win over St Louis

27-20 Loss to Dallas

27-21 Loss to NY Giants

34-21 Loss to Philly

26-10 Win over Houston

20-14 Win over Dallas

So we averaged 21 points per game over the last 6 games. That's good enough for 20th in the league, not top 6. And, in fact, not all of those points were scored by the offense, so the average is lower than that (although off the top of my head I can only remember Lavar's TD against Dallas).

Art:

In terms of changes on the offensive side versus changes on the defensive side, I believe there'll be more alterations to the defense than the offense in terms of bringing in players outside the organization to fill openings.

Based on what? On defense, the only starting positions that are open are one DE, one DT, and one safety. Those are the only positions where we're likely to see any outside players to fill openings.

On offense, we could reasonable see a few new WRs, two new guards, the departure of Stephen Davis, a new fullback if Johnson leaves, and a new backup QB. That's wholesale change. The departure of Davis alone is a huge change.

How in the world do you think that there will be more changes on defense? I just don't see it. Do you fear that we'll lose Gardener? Or trade away someone like Smoot? Or Trotter's injury is worse than feared? Unless something radical like that happens, I think we're pretty set on defense.

[Storm]

Of course you can. A defense should be about what a defense does, not what an offense does. A defense should target something and take it away. San Francisco does have good receivers. We do have good corners. You play to your strengths if you can. We can

NO. We dont play in a vacuum. We play against another team. Our defense is responsible for stopping their offense. Its job is not to decide what it prefers to do that day and just do it. So lets assume we plan to stop the run and stack eight men in the box--but meanwhile the other team is coming out with five reciever formations. But guess what we stopped the running game. Its simplistic that you can just come out and run your own schemes irrelevent of what the other team does. Its almost like a chess game.

We have one good corner and one above average corner. Unfortunately most teams have more than two recievers who can catch the ball. Furthermore some recivers (Owens) needs double coverage.

Right. And, again, we TOOK something from them. We designed a game plan to attack a specific area the offense does well and stop it. We did that precisely because that's what a good defense should do. We haven't done that the rest of the year. We've allowed offensive formation to dictate our play. We haven't sold out to stop anything all year. We should sell out to stop something in every game. Against the Eagles we should sell out to stop the short passing game. If they beat us with something else, then congratulate them.

I and most redskins fans are not interested in stopping one specific part of an offense. Im interested in winning the game. That means stopping ALL facets of their attack. Its useless to celebrate stopping someones running game while you get clobbered 52-0 because of their air attack.

Defenses have to be comprehensive. they have to plan to stop the whole offense, not just notch small victories in the game. For example if Dallas had won yesterday I and most redskins fans would have been pissed as hell. However others would celebrate that we kept Emmitt from getting a thousand yards.

We haven't added wrinkles all year. Against Seattle we essentially decided they'd get tired of throwing five-yard completions so that's what we gave them and they did get tired of it and we won. But, that's hardly an encouraging sign. A defense should attack. We haven't attacked all year. And against Dallas we attacked. We dictated what they could do to us. You saw looks out of our defense you haven't seen all year. You saw varied fronts and linebacker and secondary positioning.

Of course we have wrinkles. What defense doesnt. How can you possibly think that a coordinator like ML just sends out the same vanilla defense every week. There are wrikles every week, just too subtle to your or my untrained eyes.

A defense should attack, a defense should bend not break, a defense should stand on its head....etc... it all depends on which coordinator you talk to. Buddy Ryan sent everyone after the quarterback. Others are more measured because one spectacular stop in buddys system often resulted in a big play for the offense someplace else.

We hav been attacking all year. It just looks more dramatic against a team like dallas who has a worse offensive line than we do.

[ljer]

A defense should attack. We haven't attacked all year. And against Dallas we attacked. We dictated what they could do to us. You saw looks out of our defense you haven't seen all year. You saw varied fronts and linebacker and secondary positioning. You haven't seen that all year.

I'm with you on this one Art.

That D yesterday looked totally different to me, it was obvious. And it just wasn't because they were playing for Darrell

My question is, why don't they come out that way in the first Dallas meeting?? Stop Smith and it's over...streak ends at 9.

[Art]

MM, you first.

"What? Top 6 offensive production? In yards gained, yes, they averaged 368 yards per game. But the only measure of offensive production that matters is points, so let's take a look at that:"

Are you kidding? You started a thread that we're a Top 5 defense based on yardage and it's somehow not offering up the same reasoning to provide yardage on the opposite side? If points is all that matters, than just talk about points. If it's part of what matters, bring it up as part. If it's no part of what matters, then post as you started this post here.

I don't view points allowed or scored as a sole measure to success or failure because so many other parts of the equation must come into consideration. Obviously the defense didn't give up two of the three touchdowns we gave up the last two weeks. Obviously the kicking game has left points on the board the offense may have earned. Clearly the defense gave up points because the offense made bad turnovers. Clearly the offense could have scored more points if the defense had taken advantage of turnover opportunities better. I'm surprised you'd now want to boil down production is simply a scoring thing given the fact you began this thread with how many yards the defense has given up as a sign of ultimate success.

In fact, the offense has been a Top 6 unit over the last six games by the statistical measurement you began this thread for consideration on. If you'd like to add to that measure, feel free. I won't argue because certainly I'd like more points to have been scored. I'd like for fewer points to have been surrendered. I'd like the special teams to have been better to benefit both the offense and defense.

To be honest, it's probably meaningful you've decided to ignore yardage as a positive thing demonstrated by the offense and decided to focus on points scored because if you'd apply the same logic to the defense, we'd not be having this conversation and we'd probably be saying the same thing, except for the fact that you seem to think that in order for a defense to perform it needs an offense to be great and I think that a defense should perform regardless of whether the offense is, or is not great.

If we have to hold the ball 35 minutes a game and run up 450 yards and make no mistakes on offense for the defense to do anything, then we aren't really on to anything. And, the defense showed against Dallas that it is possible to actually be good when the offense is attempting to spike itself by turning the ball over, so, really, the offense doesn't have to be good for the defense to control the game. That's what good defenses do regardless of the offense.

[MRMADD]

Art:

Are you kidding? You started a thread that we're a Top 5 defense based on yardage and it's somehow not offering up the same reasoning to provide yardage on the opposite side? If points is all that matters, than just talk about points. If it's part of what matters, bring it up as part. If it's no part of what matters, then post as you started this post here.

I did talk, at great length, about the reasons why our defense is 5th in yards allowed but 21st in points allowed. Scroll up, my friend. It's points that matter, on both sides of the ball. In our case, the fact that we gave up very few yards but lots of points tells you something: our offense turned over the ball so often (more fumbles lost than any other team) that our opponents didn't have far to go to score. Not the defenses fault, in my opinion.

In fact, the offense has been a Top 6 unit over the last six games by the statistical measurement you began this thread for consideration on. If you'd like to add to that measure, feel free. I won't argue because certainly I'd like more points to have been scored. I'd like for fewer points to have been surrendered. I'd like the special teams to have been better to benefit both the offense and defense.

Yeah, Spurrier mentioned that, too: our offense seems to march up and down the field, but can't get in the end zone. Things like the Betts fumble seem to happen every week to us. But yes, points are the only measure of success. No team got into the playoffs because of any statistical measure of success. They got in for winning, and you only win by scoring points. Our offense gains lots of yards, but doesn't score many points. Our defense is stingy with the yards, but our opponents score anyway. Neither of those are good things. And please don't mention special teams. It hurts too much.

Art:

If we have to hold the ball 35 minutes a game and run up 450 yards and make no mistakes on offense for the defense to do anything, then we aren't really on to anything. And, the defense showed against Dallas that it is possible to actually be good when the offense is attempting to spike itself by turning the ball over, so, really, the offense doesn't have to be good for the defense to control the game. That's what good defenses do regardless of the offense.

Art, that's not fair to the defense. Hell, the Texans and Cowboys scored on our offense more often than our defense! I really think we would have lost to the Cowboys without the heroics of our defense. That fumble in the end zone by Betts was pretty pathetic. And all those dropped passes? Sheesh.

No one is asking the offense to be perfect. Just mediocre would be fine -- hell, they're worst in the league at giving the ball away. You think it's the defenses fault that they don't get as many back? No one said anything about holding the ball for 34 minutes or gaining 450 yards -- how 'bout just being average?

If our offense was just average in turnovers and TOP, we'd be in the playoffs. I chalk up three losses to offensive miscues -- that's not good. I don't blame Ramsey, though -- he's played very well. He doesn't have much of a supporting cast, though. His receivers are below average. His TEs, below average. His running backs, below average. His OL, below average. Yes, their have produced a lot of yards in the last six weeks, but if you don't get in the end zone they don't put in on the scoreboard.

So no, I'm not being inconsistent. The best measure of an offense is how many points they score. The best measure of a defense is how many points they allow. But it's telling that our defense doesn't allow many yards but does allow a lot of points -- that says it's not the defenses fault. Because you can't score points without gaining yards, unless you've been given the ball in the end zone to start with, right?

[Art]

Storm,

"NO. We dont play in a vacuum. We play against another team. Our defense is responsible for stopping their offense. Its job is not to decide what it prefers to do that day and just do it. So lets assume we plan to stop the run and stack eight men in the box--but meanwhile the other team is coming out with five reciever formations. But guess what we stopped the running game. Its simplistic that you can just come out and run your own schemes irrelevent of what the other team does. Its almost like a chess game."

I agree it's like a chess game. And, remember chess played by Richie Petitbone. Remember the NFC Championship game against Detroit. Remember the Lions shredding us with simple slants all first half. Remember after the game how the quote from the defense and the coaches was they weren't going to complete another of those passes again. If they could win another way, then great. So, we put backers in those zones and Detroit had no ability to answer.

What we're talking about here though is largely philosophy. I believe strongly that the defense should dictate to the offense what it must do to win. I believe the defense, as it did against Dallas, should sell out to stop whatever it deems the opposition's strongest area is. And if Dallas responds with five receivers, then the defense must adjust itself. But, you can't start the chess match until you've made the first move. You seem to enjoy a philosophy that allows them to make the first move. I prefer to make it myself. Ultimately there've been successful formulas using both types of general beliefs. Lewis won with his. Buddy Ryan won with his. I prefer aggression to reaction.

"I and most redskins fans are not interested in stopping one specific part of an offense. Im interested in winning the game. That means stopping ALL facets of their attack. Its useless to celebrate stopping someones running game while you get clobbered 52-0 because of their air attack."

And, as San Francisco showed, it's useless to stop their air attack when you get clobbered by 250 rushing yards against you. Of course, we may not have stopped their passing attack so much as we didn't make it necessary for them to bother. I would simply say to this statement you've made that it's impossible to stop all facets of the opponents attack until you stop one. You can't stop everything until you've stopped something. Our defense is designed to read and key off the offense. Almost by design it's not designed to stop anything. It's designed to stop everything. And, if you can do that, then the world rejoices. If you can't, then you stop something and see if the rest follows. But, again, we're talking mostly philosophical belief right now.

"Defenses have to be comprehensive. they have to plan to stop the whole offense, not just notch small victories in the game. For example if Dallas had won yesterday I and most redskins fans would have been pissed as hell. However others would celebrate that we kept Emmitt from getting a thousand yards."

We did win, though, because Emmitt didn't get his yards. We won because we took from them what they have done to us so many times in a row. These were the same teams that met on Thanksgiving. Then we let them dictate. Now, we did. In both cases we could have won. It just so happened that victory came in the game in which we sold out to stop a specific thing. That's pleasing to me. And, yeah, it would have been pleasing even had we lost.

"Of course we have wrinkles. What defense doesnt. How can you possibly think that a coordinator like ML just sends out the same vanilla defense every week."

Because that's what Marvin Lewis is. That's who he is. That's what he does. His defense isn't complex in terms of how it is intended to function. It's simple. It's somewhat complex because it requires players to take keys from the offense, but, in application it's a vanilla scheme. It's a fundamentally sound scheme. It works. It'll work here over time whether I like it or not. But, when Philadelphia spoke about the opening play against us in the second game, they spoke about knowing what defense we were in. Teams know this because they know how we are keying and how to exploit matchups against Lewis' defense.

And teams would use formation and motion to create mistakes against us early in the year because we weren't sound enough mentally to play fundamentally soundly within the scheme. But, make no mistake. Lewis isn't Belichek. He, like Rhodes, is very vanilla on the field. Not quite as much as last year's defense became, but pretty close to the same.

"There are wrikles every week, just too subtle to your or my untrained eyes."

There is no doubt we have different blitz packages each week. Different stunts. But, my eyes, untrained or no, understand the difference between what they saw Sunday and what they saw the rest of the year. And, that's what we're talking about. It's YOUR untrained eyes that have said nothing was done differently.

"A defense should attack, a defense should bend not break, a defense should stand on its head....etc... it all depends on which coordinator you talk to."

We are in complete agreement here. And, I don't like what our coordinator says if you were speaking to him.

"Buddy Ryan sent everyone after the quarterback. Others are more measured because one spectacular stop in buddys system often resulted in a big play for the offense someplace else. "

Indeed. We're saying precisely the same thing.

"We hav been attacking all year. It just looks more dramatic against a team like dallas who has a worse offensive line than we do."

Storm, we've not been attacking at all, all year. This is the same Dallas team that gutted us in the first game. We had the same players, if maybe even better ones then. They haven't changed. It wasn't them that was different. It was us. And it was a beautiful thing.

[Art]

Madd,

"I did talk, at great length, about the reasons why our defense is 5th in yards allowed but 21st in points allowed. Scroll up, my friend. It's points that matter, on both sides of the ball. In our case, the fact that we gave up very few yards but lots of points tells you something: our offense turned over the ball so often (more fumbles lost than any other team) that our opponents didn't have far to go to score. Not the defenses fault, in my opinion."

Let's get something clear. Anytime the defense allows points, it's the defenses fault. Obviously, there can be mitigating factors. But, last year we fumbled almost as much. We had the most three and outs in the league. We had an offense that was consistently turning the ball over punting. We had more overall turnovers -- changes of possession -- last year than this. Yet, our defense was able to limit points. It's a matter of degree. The defense can't be entirely blamed for some of the lopsided scores we've seen. But, the defense we had last year had to deal with an offense far worse to play with.

Later you wrote....

"Art, that's not fair to the defense. Hell, the Texans and Cowboys scored on our offense more often than our defense! I really think we would have lost to the Cowboys without the heroics of our defense. That fumble in the end zone by Betts was pretty pathetic. And all those dropped passes? Sheesh."

Madd, I don't disagree. The defense won the Cowboy game. Absolutely it did. That's what we bargained for when we started this team. But, you know what was also pathetic? Giving up a touchdown to Bryant on fourth and forever. That was pathetic. You know what else? The defense running onto the field negating a touchdown by the special teams. That was pathetic. You know what else? Powell sacking Hutchinson and doing a sommersault while the ball is laying on the ground. May not have been a fumble, but, it's pretty pathetic in the final game that we are so dimly aware that the ball may be loose that we dance about a mild success rather than dancing about a greater one.

But, again, the defense won that game. No doubt. It was beautiful. Against Houston the offense essentially won it, and it was beautiful, and the defense benefitted. I'd like more beauty. Especially from the unit with the greater capacity to create it. And that's the defense.

"No one is asking the offense to be perfect. Just mediocre would be fine -- hell, they're worst in the league at giving the ball away."

As mentioned above, we gave the ball away more last year. We punted 26 more times or some such. We were able to overcome the constant change of possession last year because we stopped people from scoring a touchdown on any occasion something bad happened. Early this year we did too little of that.

"You think it's the defenses fault that they don't get as many back? No one said anything about holding the ball for 34 minutes or gaining 450 yards -- how 'bout just being average?"

We've been well above average since the offense started to demonstrate execution. The defense was below average during four of those six games. And, yes, it's the defenses fault for not getting the ball back. We had 12 more turnovers this year compared to last. We had eight fewer takeaways this year as compared to last. It works both ways.

"If our offense was just average in turnovers and TOP, we'd be in the playoffs."

We were average in time of possession. Look it up. And, if our defense was average instead of below average in takeaways we'd be in the playoffs as well. Well, perhaps not with our special teams .

"I chalk up three losses to offensive miscues -- that's not good. I don't blame Ramsey, though -- he's played very well. He doesn't have much of a supporting cast, though. His receivers are below average. His TEs, below average. His running backs, below average. His OL, below average. Yes, their have produced a lot of yards in the last six weeks, but if you don't get in the end zone they don't put in on the scoreboard."

Ramsey has plenty of supporting cast, and, as you saw, the offense improved by in large with him, and to a lesser extent Wuerffel running it.

"So no, I'm not being inconsistent."

This is all we really need to say then. It all boils down to this simple admission. I'm attempting to debate a consistent point and you are debating an inconsistent one.

"The best measure of an offense is how many points they score. The best measure of a defense is how many points they allow. But it's telling that our defense doesn't allow many yards but does allow a lot of points -- that says it's not the defenses fault. Because you can't score points without gaining yards, unless you've been given the ball in the end zone to start with, right?"

Or in field goal range I guess.