Let's Take A Serious Look At This Defense

[SWFLSkins]

Yes it was delusional based on what this defense had to deal with.

 

Yeah, I said that. 

 

I wrote in another thread that this defense had four issues to deal with coming into this season.

 

1. Having to start or play several rookies and play them a lot.

 

Thought anything was an upgrade over last year. 

 

2. Several players who, like RG3, are coming back from serious injuries. Players like Orakpo, Colfield, and Merriwether, all of whom missed signifigant time last season. Not to mention Fletcher who had offseason surgery.

 

So much for the next man up? No, really I get that point, but the DL appeared to be improving last year and should have taken a step forward. 

 

3. Two players in the rotation (Jenkins and Jackson) serving four-game suspensions.

 

I think along with Carriker this was a bigger blow than we know. 

 

4. The biggest one, the cap penalty. It forced the Redskins to play rookies before they were ready and forced them to keep players they probably would've let go. They couldn't upgrade because they had no real cap space to make moves (**** you, Mara!).

 

Absolutely true, but you can't worry about what you can't control and Mara is getting his. 

 

 

Each reason standing alone, hurts, but isn't real bad. When you have all these things affecting your defense all at once, it can cause the kind of chaos and havoc we've seen.

 

Agreed. 

 

My feeling is the defense will get better and better as the rookies get more comfortable, the one-time injured players get back into the groove, and we have Jenkins and Jackson back.

 

Probably, but how much could a scheme change, adjustment have covered these weaknesses? 

 

The cap penalty one won't get better till next offseason, unfortunately. I guess we will see how things shake out.

[warskins65]

ABOUT redskins D...What do you all think? So far this year, looks like last one. really bad early, but great later in the season. We have 12 games left in the regular season,much hope for post...

 

 

HTTR

[PerryMason]

Tackling, Tackling, tackling... I hope beyond the month of September due to the rules, it improves. I mean other teams are under the same rules and don't look this bad getting guys on the ground. Technique? Strength training, just mediocre talent in the tackling department? idk..but it's bad. Has to improve.

 

 

Uhhh....what rules do you speak of?

[skinny21]

Good stuff VT, on both the OP and reply.

One question (for all). I agree with most of the criticisms of Haslett... but can you really blame the poor tackling on him? These guys have been tackling for years and years. Do people really think Haslett has to coach up Fletcher in this regard?

To be fair, he can coach gap discipline, he can put in the right guys and call (much) better games. But, bottom line, the guys are whiffing at an alarming rate - often even when they're in the right spot. Don't know how they fix it, but if they do, this defense would be much improved.

[bedlamVR]

I think it is a little bit about confusion . We on defense seem confused a lot of the time and I think things need simplfying .

 

KDawg wrote a good post in another thread about how this defense does not glue together . The front 7 are good at getting after the QB but not so good stopping the run the secondary - are not a strength but what they are asked to do does not compliement the front 7 . They need to be playing close man coverage to give the pass rush the first couple of seconds to get to the QB .

 

We saw with GB they went to the short drop passing game and because our DBs were playing so far off the line the short routes were always there .

 

We do not have the pocket crushing up the middle preseasure from the front 3 to compliement the OLBs - Kerrigan and Orakpo can both bring preassure from the edges, but the DL either provide very little pass rush (Golsten/Bowen) or good pass rush Colefield but he is more of a penetrating rusher than pocket collapser - so the QB either steps up or a RB will make a cut back through the middle of our defense .  

 

I have to agree London does not look even a shadow of himself out there - but I dont think he will be benched because he is London Fletcher - you kind of want him to play back into form .

 

S - i would be happy with Douhty starting because he knows his responisbilities and is solid - but other than that we are really hurting in that area .

 

CB I am probably one of the only people who likes DHall but I think he has been playing well - strong tackling (for him) and desent coverage . Amerson has played well too, especially for a rookie and has been more physical that I would have thought . Beyond that Wilson looks actually really slow (is he injured) and Biggers who looked great in preseason seems lost .

 

There are some holes but it should be patchable - I think the worst part of the 7 game winning streak is Hasslett managed to save his job because of it ..

[skins island connection]

 I'm glad the bye week is early. The team needs a mental re-grouping of sorts to find and solve their issues.

 

 The schedule doesn't get any easier coming off the bye, serious balling needs to take form. Dallas is the first step; they absolutely cannot come out playing like they've done in the previous games, flat and playing 100% reactive defense. They have to start dictating to the offense or it will be a long game. I fully expect Dallas to score on their opening drive, but after that it should be downhill from that point on for Dallas.

 

 They need a shock of some form, a sense of urgency, if Haslett keeps his job til the end of the season. If he cannot get them prepared coming off the bye, there's no sense in keeping him here any longer; appoint Fletch temp DC and send Haslett packing.

[cphil006]

Kyle's play-calling is equally as bad as Haslett's... For example:  A toss sweep in the end zone??? What!?!

[markmills67]

A quick reply to a earlier post by dc9, I hope golston is released when and if carriker comes back but don't forget he has been the starter for the first 4 games, so unless baker moves up the depth chart i think unfortunately we are stuck with turnstile64.

[StephenDavis]

Tackling is not Haslett's fault.  These are supposed to be professional football players.  You learn how to tackle correctly from pee wee football through college. Haslett shouldn't have to go over tackling basics.  By the time you're in the NFL tackling should be instinctive.  We just don't have good tacklers on our defense and that blame has to go on whoever is making the personnel decisions.  On a side note.  Is Meriweather the worst safety in all of football?  I think so.  Name me someone worse. 

[pjfootballer]

I keep reading how one coach signals the defensive front 7 and Morris sends in a play to the secondary. That seems very unusual and confusing. Is that the norm? I thought one play call would be best.

[Vilandil Tasardur]

I keep reading how one coach signals the defensive front 7 and Morris sends in a play to the secondary. That seems very unusual and confusing. Is that the norm? I thought one play call would be best.

This concerns me as well. I haven't seen a source, but I've read it from other posters plenty of times now. Has any reporter actually asked if this is true and, if so, why?

[redskins55]

Tackling is not Haslett's fault.  These are supposed to be professional football players.  You learn how to tackle correctly from pee wee football through college. Haslett shouldn't have to go over tackling basics.  By the time you're in the NFL tackling should be instinctive.  We just don't have good tacklers on our defense and that blame has to go on whoever is making the personnel decisions.  On a side note.  Is Meriweather the worst safety in all of football?  I think so.  Name me someone worse. 

 

This guy Meriweather acts like he is in a bounce house when he tackles. OMG.. He just lunges head first at people!

[RedskinsInFebruary]

This guy Meriweather acts like he is in a bounce house when he tackles. OMG.. He just lunges head first at people!

 

And he's our no. 5 tackler without even playing in all the games.

[RandyHolt]

OP is right.

 

This is largely the same defense as last years that got us into the playoffs.  

 

Folks complained about Madieu all year but overlooked praising him when we won 7 straight. 

 

Sure he sucks and is gone. Point being, we won with the same D. Fletch slowing. injuries up front, questionable safety play. 

 

This is us. Us are we. We got it done last year, and have largely been getting it done this year. Its just always going to be a little ugly. Other teams get paid too. like every other team, we need our O to carry half the load. And no, not just the second half. 

[Vilandil Tasardur]

OP is right.

 

This is largely the same defense as last years that got us into the playoffs.  

 

Folks complained about Madieu all year but overlooked praising him when we won 7 straight. 

 

Sure he sucks and is gone. Point being, we won with the same D. Fletch slowing. injuries up front, questionable safety play. 

 

This is us. Us are we. We got it done last year, and have largely been getting it done this year. Its just always going to be a little ugly. Other teams get paid too. like every other team, we need our O to carry half the load. And no, not just the second half. 

Yeah man, this is how I feel. If we had a game manager QB it would be reasonable for us to expect them to stop the ) on 80% of drives. It would be reasonable for us to consider field goals a disappointment. 

 

But we're not built like the old Ravens or the Alex Smith 49ers. We're built like Dungy's Colts, almost exactly like them. We have two brilliant pass rushers who get run over in the running game. Ball hawking players in the secondary who will give up lots of yards in the hopes of getting turnovers. 

 

This kind of a defense works, but only if it complements the offense. When the offense jumps out to a 10-0 lead or more, the other team gives up on the run. When the other team gives up on the run, Orakpo and Kerrigan don't face 3 step drops, they face 5 and 7. When the offense has a two score cushion, giving up big yards is okay. You can try to go for the pick 6 all day as long as you tighten up and hold them to 3 in the redzone.

 

But when your star QB and top 5 offense go THREE WHOLE GAMES without scoring in the first half, you have a problem. You have a secondary taking huge gambles in order to get themselves off the field and spark something positive. You have two pass rushers who can't pin their ears back because they're getting run over. It just isn't fair to them. Not because they aren't bad, but because they're ALREADY bad enough that they never stood a chance against those odds. 

 

You don't get mad at Reed Doughty when Andre Johnson out jumps him one on one in the end zone. You get mad at the coaches. Similarly, you don't get mad at the defense when they can't force 3 and outs consistently against the offenses we played. They're the Reed Doughtys and Rodgers is the Andre Johnson. They just were never going to rise to that challenge without help; help that they never received. 

[Commander PK]

This guy Meriweather acts like he is in a bounce house when he tackles. OMG.. He just lunges head first at people!

 

 

And he's our no. 5 tackler without even playing in all the games.

 

 

For me, I have watched him way too many times go for the knock out hit instead of trying to corral and wrap somebody up....but he isn't the only one.  You at least want to stop the guy's momentum or significantly slow him while you are waiting for the cavalry to arrive. 

[RandyHolt]

Good comparisons there Vila

 

My biggest complaints about Haz this year.... 

 

Opening in a base read D vs philly and got marched on. We should have been blitzing halfway through the first drive. I am not sure he ever adjusted. I can see why he wanted to see what they would do, but it became clear quick they were abusing us. 

 

Not moving up the corners once Green Bay realized we have a pass rush / Rodgers was going to get hurt, and going to 3 steps. 

 

Oakland, bummed hearing he had no game plan for Flynn, and stuck to the "prior" game plan. It worked, but they are completely different QBs. Its almost like he took the opposite approach and still prevailed lol. 

 

When you are last in the league in defense, cannot do anything right, than doing the opposite has to work, right?  

[Vilandil Tasardur]

Good comparisons there Vila

 

My biggest complaints about Haz this year.... 

 

Opening in a base read D vs philly and got marched on. We should have been blitzing halfway through the first drive. I am not sure he ever adjusted. I can see why he wanted to see what they would do, but it became clear quick they were abusing us. 

 

Not moving up the corners once Green Bay realized we have a pass rush / Rodgers was going to get hurt, and going to 3 steps. 

 

Oakland, bummed hearing he had no game plan for Flynn, and stuck to the "prior" game plan. It worked, but they are completely different QBs. Its almost like he took the opposite approach and still prevailed lol. 

 

When you are last in the league in defense, cannot do anything right, than doing the opposite has to work, right?  

I'm not so sure I wouldn't have opened in the base D myself. We had no idea what to expect but we knew we were going to face a very quick offense that was designed to confuse you and wear you down. In my opinion, the single best way to counter that is to not help them by wearing your own self down and confusing yourself. If you blitz like crazy, your guys are going to get tired. Unless they're effective on the first two blitzes, you aren't going to sub them. And against that speed, one missed tackle is 6 (as opposed to a 20 yard play). I think that the mistake against philly was playing a CB at S just because "Doughty is too slow." Doughty is the best tackler in the defensive backfield. If you were going to play a CB (and we've seen at least 3 different CBs play S over him) why waste the roster spot on him? To me, this looks like Shanny valuing the guy for his consistency and work ethic but Haslett not trusting him in the game.

 

 

Against Green Bay, I'm just not sure what to do. It's easy to sit here and say that when they transition to 3 step drops we need to play bump and run, but Nelson and Jones are no Desean Jackson. Nelson is a big body with a powerful release and I honestly don't think we have a corner on this team capable of bumping him. Wilson is solid but is never going to bump guys like Nelson (let alone CJ2K in the next game) and Hall we all know is an off corner who plays the ball, not the man. I suppose you could try bumping Nelson with the rookie, but with very suspect safety help over top I might play the kid off too (once again, a S went down and a CB went in to fill the position). 

 

Oakland, I don't even know what to think. How do you not plan for both QBs?

[No_Pressure]

It is important to your argument to supply the time of possession from our offense, not just the length of the drive in plays or the fact that we ended the drive by punting. You could have a 4 minute drive which gets taken out of FG range by a penalty and ends in a punt. If you look at it on paper you see "Offense Punts, defense does XXXXX" and you could point to that and say "See? That damn offense put a tired defense right back onto the field time and time again!" While in reality the defense was well rested from their last outing, and the fact that the offense punted shouldn't really be a consideration towards why the defense gave up a quick touchdown drive.

 

I'd also like to see our offense vs. defense 3rd down percentage. I'm willing to bet they're both absolutely horrendous, but in my opinion that statistic is the responsibility of the respective coordinators of those units. I.E. if we are failing to convert on 3rd down, especially 3rd and <5 then I'd say that has a lot to do with Kyle Shanahan's playcalling. I would be willing to bet that if our defense isn't tired from our offense constantly turning the ball over or punting after short drives, they're certainly going to be tired when time and time again they force a 3rd down and Jim Haslett doesn't put them in the right position to force a punt of their own.

[Vilandil Tasardur]

Whelp, I typed up a really solid post attempting to address the time of possession and my computer shut down on me twice. Today, I shall try again.

 

Once again, the following are only for the first halves of the the Philly and GB game. 

 

1) In BOTH Philly and GB games we help the ball only around 10 minutes (9:40 ish against Philly and 11:10 ish in GB). This is putrid. We held the ball around a third of those first halves.

 

2) Against Philly, we had 6 offensive possessions in the first half not counting the “end of half” possession. They were as follows:

 

1 play, 3 yards, fumble. 0:08 seconds

3 plays, 1 yard, interception. 1:39 seconds

2 plays, -5 yards, safety. 0:11 seconds

5 plays, 16 yards, punt. 3:14 seconds

4 plays, 11 yards, punt. 1:31 seconds

3 plays, 1 yard, punt. 1:59 seconds

 

2) Against GB, we had 5 offensive possessions in the first half not counting the “end of half” possession. They were as follows:

 

4 plays, 20 yards, punt. 1:49 seconds

3 plays, 3 yards, punt. 0:46 seconds

4 plays, 47 yards, punt. 2:27 seconds

4 plays, 22 yards, punt. 1:25 seconds

8 plays, 64 yards, interception. 4:11 seconds

 

So let’s put this in perspective for a moment. For starters, let’s make sure we understand a couple of things.

 

~ The offense, through two first halves in week one and two, had 11 offensive drives.

~ Not a SINGLE ONE resulted in points.

~ Only ONE drive resulted in a sustained time of possession longer than four minutes (against 2 QBs you HAVE to get off the field.

~ Of the 11 drives, 2 of them took less than 12 seconds total and 3 of them took less than a minute

~ Only 3 drives took 2 minutes or longer off the clock

~ Of the 11 drives, only about half (6 drives) even netted a first down.

~ The other 5 drives were a 3 and out (or less)

 

And now, let’s dig even a little deeper

 

~ The drives that actually accumulated over 20 yards were drives 1, 3, 4, and 5 against GB. However, these drives show amixed time of possession. Drive 5 shows sustained possession (over 4 minutes) but drives 1 and 4 are still solidly under 2 minutes. To me, this would indicate that even when we did put up yardage, it was the result of big plays and not actual sustained drives (with the exception of that last GB drive ending in a pick). The aforementioned drives 1 and 4, despite being over 20 yards, are still only 4 plays long each.

 

~ The drives in which we manage to hold the ball for 2 minutes or more still don’t seem to indicate that we actually moved the ball. Once again, the final GB drive proves to be consistent with success. We ran a high number of plays, moved the ball for yards, and held the ball. Contrast that with drive 4 in Philly. Here we hold the ball for well over 3 minutes, but only run 5 plays and move the ball 16 yards. What have we proved here, other than that we can run down the play clock before snapping the ball? Imagine how MORE skewed TOP would have been if we hadn’t done that.

 

 

In short, I still think this defense just never stood a chance. This is the kind of defense that is NEVER going to go out and win us games 17-14 with one of out TDs being defensive. We aren’t that team. We KNEW this was a defense that was designed to take risks, get after the QB, jump routes and make big hits for the turnover because other teams would be pressing to keep up with the offense.

 

Well, guess what, this offense isn’t making anyone press. If the offense does not manage to score within the first three drives, the defense can be pretty soundly beat with outside runs (block the pass rushers and make Fletcher run you down and tackle) and 3 step drops. Are they bad? Yes. But they are actually better (to me) than they were last year. They’re just not getting the help they were during that 7 game stretch.

[TheGreek1973]

Having seen the first 5 weeks of action we can conclude two things. No way we are/were good enough to beat GB in GB.  But both the Eagles and the Lions it was not so much on the D but the offense we lost those games.  

 

The Eagles game RGIII was simply totally out of it the first 2.5 quarters.  The two fumbles (one for a safety) and then the miss FG...I mean you simply can't win like that, especially since the D spotted you a TD.

 

The Lions we all saw what happened.  A drop for a TD and a fumble that simply doesn't happen in 99 out of 100 cases lost us that game.

 

The D if anything has gotten better I think and so has the offense.  This Sunday night we will know where we are.  I feel we are playing a solid team which we could beat with mistake free football if we continue improve further from our first 4 games.

 

And let me add this.  Special Teams have been a major problem.  if you look at the starting position in our loses I think they were a major contributing factor.

[skins island connection]

 If there is any qualified possible DCs out there, the Redskins might wanna begin prelims on him; something tells me Atlanta will be on search mode.

 

 And I doubt Rex will be leaving NY after their stand against the Falcons, when no one on earth [ except a handful of Jets fans ] gave them a snowballs chance...

[kjames35]

My main concern is obviously our secondary. We replaced Madieu with a 6th round pick (Rambo) that seems to be just as bad. I'm not even sure about our 4th rounder, Phillip Thomas (when he returns) being the answer. 

 

The fact is, we were strapped for cash and was unable to upgrade that position properly. My guess is, we're trying to work around it this year in hopes that somehow we "mesh" later on in the season. I do know one thing, Rambo and maybe even Phillip Thomas will be a career special teamer - much like the Dejon Gomes and Chris Horton's of the league. I don't believe Rambo's confidence and skills will ever get to where it needs to be to play at this level. Phillip Thomas will probably struggle next year on two fronts - thinking about where to be on defense and thinking about the injury. He's more than likely a goner or a special teamer next year as well.

 

So what's the plan?

 

Remember next year, we give up our first round pick for the RGIII selection. So we're looking at maybe a second round Safety next year if we decide to draft that way. There's going to be a fairly large amount of DB/Safeties in next year's free agent class including Brandon Merriweather and DeAngelo. So my guess is we'll use our money on our secondary and we'll probably go the free agent route.

 

Me personally, I don't like rookie safeties. They are so used to QB's staring down receivers in the college ranks, that they get burned frequently by NFL QBs. Not to mention the Redskins DB play with their eyes in the backfield. To me, they're set up for disaster!!!!

[Skins Wingman]

I just looked up espn stats to see how bad our safeties are. none of them have a pass defended, int, or forced fumble. so not only can they not cover, they can't lay the wood either. these guys need to step up and get involved in the game.

[Vilandil Tasardur]

Here we go again.

 

First Quarter

Dallas drives 80 yards for a TD --> Dal 6:08

Skins drive 78 yards for a FG --> Was 7:14

 

Second Quarter

Defense Intercepts Romo sits to pee --> Dal 4:24

Offense Punts --> Was 2:48

Defense forces punt --> Dal 3:00

Offense Punts --> Was 3:37

Dallas returns punt for TD

Offense gets FG --> Was 2:26

 

So here we enter the half, down 14 to 6, having given up 7 on special teams. As far as I see it, this D had one horrible opening drive, getting gouged for time, yards, and 7. Then proceeded to get an INT on the next drive (which we did nothing with), then forced a punt and allowed only another 3 minutes of TOP the rest of the half.

 

We go into halftime with the TOP in our favor despite giving up a 6 minute drive right out of the gate. Much of this can be attributed  the special teams touchdown. Nevertheless, at this point the offense has had the ball and moved it well enough that 6 points against a team that put up 48 last week is just not going to get it done. In the second half we have more of the same.

 

 

Third Quarter

Was drives, Field Goal

HUGE kick return, Dallas punches it in, TD

Was Punts

Dallas 3 and out, punt

Was Drives, TD

Dallas Punts

 

Fourth Quarter

Was drives, missed FG

Dallas drives, FG

RG3 fumbles in our own redzone

Dallas scores, TD

Was drives, interception

Dallas punts

Turn over on downs

Dallas punts

End of game

 

 

Looking at the second half, nothing matters after that RG3 fumble. That's the one that broke us. Objectively, we look at the defense and say they gave up 10 points. 10 out of 31. The other 21 are entirely on the special teams and on RG3. Sure, maybe the D could have held them to 3 after the kick return or the fumble, but you certainly can't blame them for not making it happen. Wilson had awful contain on Romo sits to pee's TD throw and their RB made an excellent second effort play to get into the end zone. And just like that, a 14 point swing off of plays bad situational football, before the D even has a chance.

 

Last night I saw a D that can confuse the QB, can minimize the huge plays, and can create turn overs. I also saw a defense that can really do something if they can stop the run. This is consistent with our success when Mcfadden went out and when Bush didn't play. If we can make a one dimensional opponent, we can really manage our deficiencies back there to cause turnovers. 

 

But this offense went well into the 3rd quarter before they scored a touchdown AGAIN! They failed to move the ball at all after a turnover. In the third quarter, the D forced TWO 3 and outs. Not just stops, but out right 3 and outs. On these drives, the Cowboys gained 0 and -5 yards. That's not just stopping the opponent, that is doing your job outright. Short of a turnover, winning the field position battle is all this D can do.