Why "the cushion" is a great idea...

[darrelgreenie]

Since when did Cover 3 Zone/off man become 'our' defense'?

[RandyHolt]

Inquiring minds want to know, what is our defense?

 

Or, what are we most likely to run in obvious run or passing downs. 

[RG3Hunna]

I'll be more than happy to chime in on this discussion, we play 8-10 yards off because of our personnel. We do not have the personnel to play Press man consistently. Josh Wilson is too small,Crawford is too small, Deangelo Hall isn't a man corner he's a zone corner with a nose for the ball, Amerson is too young and he's not a man corner, Biggers is a zone guy, Chase can press but have we seen him cover anybody who will make a 53 man roster man to man? Why exactly would you go press man when you have a bunch of zone guys and your man coverage guys(josh wilson) are undersized?

 

We are a team who is looking to create turnovers deangelo hall and amerson are turnover machines and off zone coverage allows them to look at the QB temporarily to make a play on the ball. Once you go man the corner can't look at the QB he has to focus on the WR and we don't have any guys with good size who can accomplish that so we have to play off. 

 

An effective pass rush will allow us to play press man, the problem is if we aren't getting there with our pass rush you're putting your team in a bad position if you play press man with the redskins below average secondary lol. 

[MartinC]

There are a lot of explanations to why they do it but for the life of me it rarely works. Haslett's defense is too predictable and doesn't confue anyone. Playing 8-10 yards off the line of scrimmage is all about not giving up the big play. If that is the case then why did we give up a bomb to Victor Cruz during our first meeting against the Giants? If playing 8-10 yards of the line is to prevent that then someone forgot to tell the secondary that. It is also to keep the play in front of them to make the tackle before the reach the 1st down especially in 3rd and long. But that doesn't happen either. This team was last in amount of 3rd downs it gave up which was tied with Minnesota last year. We gave up 59 3rd and long plays. That is a lot in a season. So give all the explanations and excuses why they play that far off but it doesn't make any rhyme or reason why it is done 80% of the time. Bump and run is a lost art in the NFL. 

We gave up the big play to Cruz because in a zone defense our FS got caught looking at the intermediate receiver running a crossing route rather than running with the deepest receiver and was flat footed as Cruz ran past him. No scheme can cover for a player blowing a coverage or not doing his job.

[NoCalMike]

Yeah we didn't give up that Cruz TD because of the zone coverage, we gave it up because a busted assignment.

[darrelgreenie]

Inquiring minds want to know, what is our defense?

 

Or, what are we most likely to run in obvious run or passing downs. 

I'll take a stab.

 

Like most teams our defense is situational and has several different packages.

Too many to quantify sum by saying our defense is insert opinion here.

 

But, if you twist my arm our defense is a variant of the LeBeau/Capers 34.

In simplest terms our Base defense is an 'okie' 34 with our DL playing 2-gap.

The Base defense coverages to my eye: Cover 3 off man/Cover 1 man/ disguised Cover 2 zone that rotates from Cover 3 off man/ and the classis 2-Deep Man

 

But, we spend as much or maybe even more time playing sub-packages then anything else.

[RandyHolt]

Quality answer D Green - thanks! 

 

 

More on the <green bay> okie 

 

http://jerseyal.com/GBP/2013/06/24/packers-playbook-part-1-the-okie-base-defense/

[mitchellvii]

My original question was, what are we doing with these coverages and why.  My thanks to the experts here for answering that in great detail. :-)

 

Follow up question: What should we do instead?  As we are dead last on 3rd down conversions and next to last in overall pass defense, I think it is safe to say this isn't working.  Given our personnel, what defense should we run?

[darrelgreenie]

These coverages? You only mention part of 1 of our many coverages.

All you've done is mention the 'cushion' and wrongly equate our entire defense to the 'cushion'.

 

Also our defense was last in yards.

And when picking 1 stat (which you should never rely on) to judge a defense most savvy fans don't measure a defense based on yards, they measure a defense based on points.

Another key factor in our defense was turnovers: we had 31 total 21 interceptions and 10 fumble recoveries.

 

Last year the defense got better toward the end of the season.

Over the last 5 games they gave up 20.6 point/per game which would have been top 10.

[eljeasel]

Well, we can't get much worse than worst.

 

It seems our personnel do a fine job of stopping teams on 1st and 2nd down.  It's just on 3rd down when all the pain happens and it's 3rd down when Haslett likes to get fancy.  Coincidence?

 

You cannot be worse than last in the league, but you could have a lesser rate of success.  I do not have much faith in Jim "The Nose" Haslett.

 

I honestly don't remember being impressed by the success on 1st or 2nd down.  

 

The D gave up 4.2 yards per carry.  Unless they were running on all these 3rd and mid to longs we were allegedly seeing, those are most likely rushing yards on the first two downs.

 

This team lost Carriker and Orakpo early on.  

 

People talk about blitzes and they are right.  However, I thought The Nose got too vanilla early on and got repetitive with the play calling.  Add to that you had guys who were supposed to be depth and Special Team guys getting serious playing time.  Remember, the top 2 safeties were either suspended or hurt for most/all of the year.  (insert gif of BM colliding with Robinson)

 

So, from the start you are 4 starters down and one of your remaining starting 7 is Deangelo "I am playing at a Pro Bowl Level" Hall.  Jenkins couldnt get up field and Rob Jackson is not as good of a rusher as Orakpo.  So you just arent getting pressure period.  Problem was, you couldnt cover either.  Didn't London play hurt for a while too?  Part of me doesnt blame The Nose for not being a little more diverse with his blitzes and plays.  The other part of me thinks the solution would have been being less vanilla.  Either way, after the bye the D picked it up and started getting some takeaways and stops.  Before then I dont think they were good on any particular down.

 

Questionable personnel, Questionable D Coach, Significant injuries.  Lame duck defense.  Press, release, 4-3/3-4, Cover 0 or Cover me Badd, this team did not play good defense last year before the bye regardless of down.

 

BTW - Anyone else remember those Gregg Williams defenses playing with "the cushion?"  I know we did it in the Blatche years and that was essentially a carry over defense from the GW days.

[Puma Kane]

Our run defense is our teams worse nightmare. When our defense is in sub-packages we struggle. Maybe there's a chance that Haslett incorporates some NASCAR packages to get things heated up front, while maintaining maximum coverage on the backend.

At this point all options should be on the table.

[Shkspr]

First, on the issue of personnel, let's not forget that despite being hamstrung in both the draft and free agency, we still are going to see a turnover of 40-50% in the secondary.  More fingers to be pointed at talent level than scheme until proven otherwise, I think.

 

Next, since every other post seems to harp on how "you can't be worse than last" in Opponent's 3D Conversion Pct., let's look at what that actually means.  The Skins were at 43.86%, but the league median was about 38.5%.  That's a difference of 11.5 first downs allowed in a 215 opportunity season.  I'm more or less assuming that if we had ranked 16th or so in this stat, we wouldn't be worrying so much about the cushion, so that's really the issue - 12 drives during the season that were allowed to continue past their possible expiration date.

 

That's substantial - that probably means two or three touchdowns we could have saved on defense, and that could have led to one or two more wins.  Yay our team!

 

But it's pretty clear that the cushion is conducive to turnovers, as DBs and LBs can jump routes more easily, since they're playing towards the line as the QB is making his reads.  Last year the Redskins scored 109 points off of the third most takeaways in the league, and I have to think that if you scrapped the cushion, played closer, and maybe saved those 12 first downs, you'd lose six or seven takeaways per season, at the very least.

 

That's substantial, too - that probably means three or four touchdowns we wouldn't have scored on offense, and that could have led to two or three more losses.  Boo Mara sucks!

 

It seems reasonable to me to come to the conclusion that while playing the cushion changes the shape of our defensive profile, that doesn't necessarily make us less efficient.  Even if it does, the sample size of fewer than one more first down per game is small enough that random chance is as likely to be the cause of a poor ranking as anything else.  Finally, if the personnel changes this season lead to a higher talent level in the secondary, that is likely to have far more impact on the defense than the cushion is likely to have.

[RandyHolt]

The bigger the cushion the bigger the push'in

 

Joking half aside, maybe the thinking was, the more time the OC/QB knew he will have all day long, the more likely a feeble pass rush has a chance of actually succeeding in the rare/vanilla blitzes he would try. Teams game planned for a soft cushion. 

 

There is a reason Haslet shows a soft corner look even though our pass rush was not likely to get there. It obviously failed far too often, but we have still yet to figure out his reasoning behind it. 

 

Maybe he thought it would lead to INTs through an aggressive secondary after the snap. I never saw that. 

 

He probably had more faith in his front 7 even less 2 injured starters, than his secondary less 2 starters. But who is he kidding, Reed is basically a starter on this team one way or another. and the other safety position has been a revolving door for years. It is no reason to abandon any semblance of an aggressive approach. . Lucky for us, he abandoned his base passive approach in the bye week.