I was in the car during lunch, and listened to former Giant Pro Bowl LB Carl Banks discuss the Jets' defense on WFAN. He had an interesting point... ...Banks said that the Jets/Mangini had to decide if they thought they could pressure Brady, or if they had to lay back in coverage. Banks said the Pats would max protect Brady, and therefore Mangini decided to lay back and try and stop the WR's. Banks added that Mangini's option was to try and be more aggressive on defense with blitzes and such, and play high risk reward. Now, in hindsight it looks as if Mangini picked the wrong gameplan. History shows that if you have the kind of weapons Brady does on the outside, that he'll eventually find them...and that they will get open, no matter how many men are in coverage. Brady did just that - even hitting a triple-teamed Randy Moss in coverage for a TD. History also shows that the ONLY way to get Brady off his game is to hurry him up, to hit him and push him around. Not easy, but a better chance to win than sitting back. Banks didn't feel that either gameplan would have worked yesterday - and I tend to agree with him. However, I'm always in favor of making the effort - even if you lose, rather than sitting back and giving the opponent the chance to win or lose the game. In review of the performance, it wasn't the defensive line that played so badly - it was the gameplan presented to them and implemented by the coaching staff. As Banks said, no 3-4 line is going to get to the QB against a team like the Patriots, without blitzes and schemes etc. It isn't the 3-4 that is the problem, it was the implementation or lack thereof of blitzes and stunts and plays to try and get pressure on Brady.
I couldn't agree more with this assessment. We were also too conservative on the offensive side of the ball and not going for it on 4th and short.
the pats picked up every blitz we threw at them. he constantly had 5 seconds to read and react. even if the pan was to play more coverage we should have been able to get some kind of pressure on brady. the pats did extremely well in picking up the blitz and brady read the defense like a dick and jane book.
We did blitz, and blitzed often, and it failed miserably every single time. It was the carbon copy of what knock us out of the playoffs last year. A failed blitz is even worse than a conservative defensive strategy
They did do a good job of picking up the blitz but Brady did have to get rid of the ball quicker when we did blitz. There were a lot of times we only sent 3, maybe 4 guys and that's when they got most of their big plays if I remember correctly.
It didn't work because A) We have guys that have always sucked (David Barrett) getting beat on every pass play. B) We have wastes of high draft picks (DeWayne Robertson) not getting any pressure on the QB or clogging up the running lane when they ran the ball C) They fooled everybody into thinking Moss was going to be cut and in reality he is every bit as good as he was 5 years ago. D) Maybe our defense isn't as good as we all thought it was Honestly I think C is the biggest reason for all of it, the Pats and more importantly Bellichicken played everybody here for fools.
They got rid of the ball quicker because they had plays for our blitz, and there is a difference between getting the QB choosing to get the ball out quicker and forcing the QB to rush the throw, and yesterday it was clearly shown to be option #1
Their running game wasn't really that good yesterday, and honestly I think it was more how much better the Pats offense has gotten than how good our defense is. This was the 1st game that Brady actually had a WR that was actually worth a damn
I remember years under Edwards where our D was a huge ??????? I also remember as the year progressed we did seem to get much better more often than not. We are putting way too much stock on one game.
this has nothing to do with picking the wrong gameplan or anything like that. we suck. we cant rush the passer. thats it. we sucked during the preseason and nothing has changed. we were able to rush the passer when our backups were in but our starters suck. see ellis, bryan thomas and hobson
I agree. New England put far more pressure on Pennington every play than we ever did on Brady, even when we tried to blitz. We clearly couldn't 'contain' Moss whether we blitzed or not, because Brady knew exactly what he was doing and Moss is a beast. Our secondary is decent (not barrett obviously), while our d-line is just plain bad.. in the end, it wouldn't make a huge difference.. NE would have gotten the win whether we focused our gameplan on coverage or QB pressure.
hobson has never been a pass rusher. hes more run defense than anything else. ellis has been a productive pass rusher when he wasnt double teamed every play and when he had guys on the line that were above mediocre. thomas had a good year last year, but that was what, 1 out of 5... they "rebuilt" the defense with all these edge LBs and didnt improve at all. mangini is a good coach, but hes stubborn....especially when it comes to schemes with the defense. last year we all had questions about the ability to play the 3-4 because of personnel...and this offseason we had the cap room to upgrade for the scheme or rethink the scheme. they did neither. by the end of this season the CS and FO need to either address the issue with a major overhaul on the defensive side or they will have to play to the stregnths of the players we have. those are the only 2 options...if not the defense will just regress.
and i keep seeing barrett getting killed but no mention (not really) of miller. miller looked pathetic comming off the line when he was on moss. i know moss is a great player, but jesus christ. miller was on his heels throughout the game. barrett isnt a great corner...but i think hes taking too much of a beating for what was a collectively shitty effort. i mean moss beat the corners, the safeties, the LBs...he burned every one of them. one silver lining in the game was reivis. i think he held his own for the most part.
Only thing I would disagree with is that I seem to recall more than a few people commenting on how bad Miller looked (I certainly know that I noticed it during the game). Pretty much Revis and Pennington are the only people on the team who can claim to have had anything like a good game - everyone else was pretty much awful.
Miller has had Hammy trouble and although I dont think he is a good corner @ all he was not running 100% yesterday. The Jets tried to be conservative and IMO Carl Banks is right. You cant expect to cover those kind of weapons all game, you have to get to Brady. They were max protecting him anyway and it would have been very tough to get to him even rushing 5-6 guys. The players say it was their fault for not executing properly. On special teams that was the case, but on defense you just can't expect a rookie, Barrett (average at best) and Miller (banged up and slowed down) to cover Moss, Stalworth and Welker. I would rather blitz like hell and make Maroney (who is good, but still not as proven as the other weapons) beat us running up the middle then sit back and let Brady pick us apart like he has so many times when we try to play conservative D on him. I thought that Chad did reasonably well and that cheering when he got hurt (I was there) I am still trying to figure out if it was because he was hurt (I would be pissed off) or because he got up. People need to understand this, Chad is the antithesis of Favre... He will not lose you games and he will not win you games. He manages the game well, handles the ball well and does all the little things that you dont notice. If the rest of the team is not performing, you can't expect Chad to bail you out. He is not a come-from-behind 99 yard drive in 3 bombs Elway-type. He also won't throw many ill-advised passes or fumble the ball. Chad has won for us and he has always been the kind of guy that you want as the face of your team. I think we have a good thing going here and let's put aside the pessimism and see how we respond next week.
I think the biggest problems were our injuries.... Eric Smith was inactive, he could have aided in coverage, as well as Dyson, who we missed even more. I do think Barrett can make a formidable nickel corner, but having him on Moss is just not fair, there's no way Barrett can keep up with him or out jump him. Also I don't think Miller was a full strength, Randy Moss was running right by him, I think the CS took him out because he hasn't fully recovered from the hammy.....
I'm very happy with the way we adjusted to stopping the run because it looked like we couldn't stop the run at ALL early on. However, Brady is patient enough to pick apart a secondary when there's no pass rush, and the receivers are good enough to get open when the pass rush comes in and fails miserably. They're going to be tough to stop this year. I was wrong about that.
The defensive game plan didn't work because the Pats showed up to play football on Sunday and we didn't. Nuf said.
The adjustment to stop the run was run blitzes from the defensive backfield which seemed to be happening every other play in the second quarter. The penalty for that strategy was Randy Moss and Wes Welker's unstoppability.
