tayloner
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 461
- Reaction score
- 316
Corner - 5 players played all 58 snaps on defense last night - Trevon Diggs, Malik Hooker, DeMarvion Overshown, Eric Kendricks and.......Amani Oruwariye. Andrew Booth didn't play a single snap, and Jourdan Lewis played 34. Amani took every single snap at LCB, while JLew stayed exclusively inside and came off the field in 2-CB sets. Now, that's not to say he played amazing (Amani I mean), he didn't grade out overly well from PFF (whereas Lewis had one of the highest-graded games of his career). That being said, I don't think I really noticed Amani at all in the game last night, which is generally a good thing for a CB IMO. He's clearly supplanted Booth as the next boundary corner after Diggs and Bland. Looks to be the clear #4 CB once everyone is healthy. Nice development - he's not a young player at 28 years old, but I assume he'll get elevated to the active roster at some point this year and potentially be under team control for another year or two. Nice cheap depth piece to offset the potentially massive money we'll have committed to CB (if they also pay Bland).
Safety - Markquese Bell didn't play a single snap on defense, was confined to 15 special teams snaps (I'm sure part of this was health-related coming back from injury). And Thomas and Mukuamu only played 3 each. Hooker and Wilson played almost every safety snap, and we're not in the Dan Quinn "3 or 4 safeties on the field at a time" world anymore, so we're starting to see more "normal" usage of our safeties. Guessing the "more-linebackers-less-safeties" thing was probably a contributing factor to our run defense success last night.
Linebacker - although active, Damone Clark did not play a single snap on defense. Nor did Buddy Johnson or Nick Vigil (although less unexpected with those two). It was Overshown and Kendricks for 100% of snaps, and Liufau played 24 snaps (aka probably the exact 24 snaps Jourdan Lewis DIDN'T play, since he played 34 of 58).
Line - the injuries here are going to keep us with some weird usage stats for the next couple of months in all likelihood, plus we'll likely have to add another player depending on Kneeland's health, but overall I was glad to see Chauncey Gholston play a solid 52 of 58 total snaps. We'll need it from him, he's sort of the last guy left. And I thought overall he played well (and graded out well too).
Not saying it'll continue, but I think we're starting to really get our best players playing the most plays. At some spots, injuries are basically forcing our hand, but thus far it's turned out ok. Sounds simple, but this team has struggled with getting the best players the most opportunities in the recent past IMO, so hopefully this is a sign of things to come (and hopefully we get a little luck with our health issues).
Safety - Markquese Bell didn't play a single snap on defense, was confined to 15 special teams snaps (I'm sure part of this was health-related coming back from injury). And Thomas and Mukuamu only played 3 each. Hooker and Wilson played almost every safety snap, and we're not in the Dan Quinn "3 or 4 safeties on the field at a time" world anymore, so we're starting to see more "normal" usage of our safeties. Guessing the "more-linebackers-less-safeties" thing was probably a contributing factor to our run defense success last night.
Linebacker - although active, Damone Clark did not play a single snap on defense. Nor did Buddy Johnson or Nick Vigil (although less unexpected with those two). It was Overshown and Kendricks for 100% of snaps, and Liufau played 24 snaps (aka probably the exact 24 snaps Jourdan Lewis DIDN'T play, since he played 34 of 58).
Line - the injuries here are going to keep us with some weird usage stats for the next couple of months in all likelihood, plus we'll likely have to add another player depending on Kneeland's health, but overall I was glad to see Chauncey Gholston play a solid 52 of 58 total snaps. We'll need it from him, he's sort of the last guy left. And I thought overall he played well (and graded out well too).
Not saying it'll continue, but I think we're starting to really get our best players playing the most plays. At some spots, injuries are basically forcing our hand, but thus far it's turned out ok. Sounds simple, but this team has struggled with getting the best players the most opportunities in the recent past IMO, so hopefully this is a sign of things to come (and hopefully we get a little luck with our health issues).