Threads from our Frenemies-part 2

[CJD]

(01-18-2023, 06:52 PM)Mafioso Wrote: Awesome info.  Thank you.  What % of Man/zone do you guys play?  Iirc, I mostly see Apple playing the right side (outside of the offensive Left Tackle) and Britt on the other side, signifying lots of zone, but I could just be too high and imagining that ?  I’d love to see Diggs in one on one but can’t see much of that happening.  If I’m the opposing DC, I’m bracketing Diggs all game and make the other guys beat me.  Problem with that, it’s tough to spy on Allen if you double Diggs- so you have to pick your poison.  James Cook is the guy that we’re hoping can become that guy to make teams pay for playing the cover 2 shell.  He can be dynamic in that situation

The beauty of Lou's defense is that they run everything. Honestly, I'm not sure what percentage we play of man vs zone, but I get the sense from watching the games that we're a majority zone team that goes to man situationally (and even then, it's just guessing, as quarters coverage can look a lot like 2 man coverage if the outside receivers are running deep routes). We run a fair amount of simulated pressures where we drop the defensive ends into coverage as well. In games that we play more man coverage, it's because we're blitzing. We played a decent amount of man coverage against Baltimore because we were sending 5+ pass rushers half the time and we didn't really respect the Ravens' receivers to get open vs man coverage. Other games, we don't blitz at all (like against Mahomes). 

I have a feeling Allen will be getting closer to the Mahomes treatment than the Huntley treatment.

I'd expect Diggs to be bracketed all game, or at least a majority of the game, and I don't think our guys are going to be biting on sluggos against Allen haha.

We also do some QB spying with Hubbard on occasion. If you remember, the sack and strip by Hubbard in the AFC Championship game was a snap where he was a spy. The reason Mahomes had so much time back there was because we only rushed 3 with Hubbard as the spy. Hubbard saw an opportunity to rush in for the sack after the Oline kind of dispersed out, and he took it. I'd expect a decent number of 3 man rush + Hubbard/Wilson spy plays on Allen as well.

Our defense generally is really good against the run. Our stats are a bit skewed because of Reader's injury for half the season (even still, we're 7th in the league in rush yards allowed per game), but when he's in the game we're one of the best run defenses in the NFL (which is one of the reasons last week's game was so frustrating haha). No doubt if you guys can establish your run game, that will be a HUGE plus in your favor for the game. Our defense has been so good at making teams one dimensional and then creating turnovers off of that 1 dimension, if you all manage to keep both the run game and pass game going, I think you likely win.