Is something wrong with this defensive scheme?

[Alexander]

There's not much to make from last night when we had the majority of our projected starters out.

In totality, no.

But it did affirm that we have legitimate and serious depth concerns on the defensive side of the football.

Offense, not concerned all that much.

 

[Alexander]

I also think we're going to be scouring cuts for a 1 tech that can just play 2 gaps at an NFL level. The sole anchor on your line cannot get manhandled off the ball.

But is this not what we did all year last year? Why was that?

Oh yes. Poor planning and team building.

 

[jobberone]

That's an interesting take on the line play last night. The thing that really jumped out was the horrible gap control and like you say, "wild uncontrolled play", especially by the DT's. It looked like they totally forgot about playing the run on the way to the QB. I guess we'll see the next couple of weeks if this was by design to see who could get upfield, and they start playing with more gap control, or if that was just the best they can do.

I'm not saying any of them can play decent gap control but I do think Marinelli is more interested in finding some other pass rushers. We know what some of the guys can do but much of the depth is unknown which is scary enough. And yes we'll see. My guess is we will have little depth along the DL and I think we may end up trying to pick up a veteran DL esp a rush DE by the end of camp.

 

[jobberone]

Mainly because he's a good "try hard player" who shouldn't be on the field getting significant playing time. He should be a special team player.

I think Heath is intriguing and has a lot of physical talent. His problem is coming from a Div III school and needing to learn the game and get used to the speed. That's not saying he'll ever amount to much but they want to find out. Also he plays STs very well.

 

[CATCH17]

I think the scheme sucks and the players do as well.

 

[LatinMind]

It worked great for marinelli in Chicago. But here, receivers seem to run wide open. RB's have plenty of holes to run through.

Dallas didnt do enough this offseason to improve the defensive front seven, IMO.

I believe it comes down to the Billy's and the Joe's, not the X's and the O's, in this case. The talent level has to improve or we will see more of the same.

yes depth. everybody has to remember this defense needs alot of players especially in the front 4 to be effective. It uses speed and it needs those players to be fresh. Have to remember too, 5 starters were out. So you take those 5 players who started yesterday in place of them, and you move them back into the 2nd string, and those 2nd string who played yesterday get moved to garbage time. Its a domino effect.

I do think they need to bring in some ned DE's

 

[PJTHEDOORS]

It worked great for marinelli in Chicago. But here, receivers seem to run wide open. RB's have plenty of holes to run through.

Dallas didnt do enough this offseason to improve the defensive front seven, IMO.

I believe it comes down to the Billy's and the Joe's, not the X's and the O's, in this case. The talent level has to improve or we will see more of the same.

What do you expect when 2 of your top players SLee & DLawrence are out. Not to mention those that missed the game yesterday because of injury.

 

[AsthmaField]

Kind of hard to do when he has been sold as the man who can get more with less.

Turns out, he needs talent. He is not a miracle worker. And he has no magic wand.

This is what you call backlash. Mainly against people that dismissed the idea he needed talent.

The thought process around here was that he got street players to try hard, and that would translate differently now he had his choice of players.

Well, it looks about the same, actually.

I don't disagree with any of that, although I don't particularly remember anyone dismissing the idea that Marinelli needs talent to put together a good defense. Talent is pretty much a prerequisite for any top 10 defense, give or take some for coaching.

Now I do remember people basically saying he can do more with less, but he can't take an untalented group and make it top 10. Nobody can.

Speaking for myself, the combination of good coaching (which Marinelli undoubtedly provides) and a rather simple scheme gives me hope that he can take a group of young guys and get them to play fast and reasonably well early on.

Being critical does not mean you are jumping off a bridge.

I am sure it will get better. Because it logically has to.

San Diego did for a fact play their upper tier players against our lower tier.

Now if that is by design, agreement between Garrett and McCoy, who knows.

It is a reason to be concerned, regardless. It just points to what a lot of fears have been, our depth is not ready or simply can't play to begin with.

Yeah, and really that was my point. The defense will improve a lot from what we saw last night. It would be foolish to think last night's game an even close facsimile of what the defense will look like week 1 against SF. Even an established defense missing that many players in the first preseason game would look bad... particularly if the other team played their starters longer and seemed to put a greater emphasis on the outcome. Add in that Dallas is in the second year of trying to make the 34 to 43 conversion, has had a ****load of turnover, and is in the midst of an extreme youth movement, and what you get is what we saw.

Really, my only complaint is that I wish more would look at last night's game and pay more attention to individual performances rather than the entire defense and how many yards or points it allowed... because that is about all that can be concluded from what we saw. Did someone take a bad angle? Fine, complain about that. Did somebody miss a tackle or get blown off the ball? That is a valid complaint. But to view it like we do a regular season game and to lament what happened when so many playing won't even be on the final roster. Particularly when they're playing against so many players from San Diego that will be on their final roster.

So, in the end, we don't know any more than we did before the game about if Dallas will have a good, bad, or ugly defense this year. We do know that Dixon looked good. We know that Heath still takes poor angles. We know that Bishop can move for a big guy and that he's not afraid to horsecollar the **** out of somebody. We know that #41 sucks to high heaven and that Hitchens looks like he can play.

Overall though, it was just a lot of fun but not real informative.

 

[Chuck 54]

No Romo, no Dez, no Witten, no Murray on offense.
No Melton, no Spencer, no McClain, no Carr, no Scandrick....not much of anything on defense.

I'll reserve any panic until later in preseason.

I'm sure the coaches wanted to see more from the bums who played, but realistically, those guys will be allowed to run in and play 4-5 play sets at 100% speed as rotation guys in the regular season. They won't be expected to hold the fort all game.

 

[links18]

Bad players can make good schemes look bad. Good players can make bad schemes workable. When you have bad players and bad schemes you get the historibad defense we had last year.

 

[Clove]

Dallas didnt do enough this offseason to improve the defensive front seven, IMO.
.

Yes he did, he sent a hall of fame packing, and got into it with Ratliff. Super Bowl

 

[ConstantReboot]

They function hand in hand. This scheme requires elite talent, specialized talent in certain positions, to truly click.

In other words, we had no business going all in on the scheme without the same equal commitment from the front office to get the players to make it work.

Instead we have been victims of circumstance and trying to take a very simple scheme and think we can have mediocre talent that does not fit in it, work.

Once we let Ware hit the streets and sign with Denver we had the chance to get Jared Allen here. I knew that if we didn't have him here, this defense is just not going to work. We need someone that can consistently bring pressure to the QB. If not, we are doomed.

 

[TimHortons]

Mannings offenses avgs 14ppg in his post season losses.

Fair enough. All I'm saying is that I wouldn't use Indianapolis' defense as a shining example for how to Tampa 2 is a success.

 

[SportsGuru80]

Talent...

 

[TimHortons]

I never said it was a vaunted defense. But they year they won it all, the defense played outstanding. Manning played very poorly.

That's true, they played well that post season. But all I'm saying is that during Dungy's years, I wouldn't say that the Colts defense was good enough to warrant using them as an example of how the Tampa 2 is a great scheme.

 

[Beast_from_East]

It was not a great scheme in Chicago until he got Julius Peppers. Otherwise it was a bunch of "rushmen" who did not do all that great.

If the DL is not sound and very talented, good luck. It has worked in Indianapolis and Tampa Bay because of outstanding DL personnel.

Excellent points....................Marinelli's scheme is dependent on having a great front 4.

If your front 4 blows, this scheme is total trash...............................we were not 32nd in defense just by accident.

 

[Bullflop]

This defense has too many strangers who will be obliged to adjust to teammates they're unaccustomed to playing with. There's also the dilemma of adjusting to a defensive system that not everyone is currently familiar with. The talent level is another factor that isn't satisfactorily resolved as yet. Now, if that's not enough to give any defense fits, then I surely don't know what would be.

 

[Zekeats]

The scheme sucks especially if they stick with playing the ******* zone coverages. The players suck even more. We have nobody on defense. We lost our 3 best defenders from last season, Lee, Ware and Hatcher. Now we have another 2 for one draft pick who is hurt. We have NOOOOO pass rush at all. Where are the legendary Crawford and Bass? This team is a mess, especially on defense. This team has been a mess for 20+ years though, we haven't really done a dam thing but what we do have is the greatest marketing GM in the world that continues to get us suckers to care, watch and believe.
Bill Parcells "consider yourselves sucked"

 

[Dodger12]

Really, my only complaint is that I wish more would look at last night's game and pay more attention to individual performances rather than the entire defense and how many yards or points it allowed... because that is about all that can be concluded from what we saw. Did someone take a bad angle? Fine, complain about that. Did somebody miss a tackle or get blown off the ball? That is a valid complaint. But to view it like we do a regular season game and to lament what happened when so many playing won't even be on the final roster.

What makes you think that people didn't pay attention to individual performances? I haven't read a post that lamented how many points or total yards we gave up. That's just a straw man you're building. We didn't allow an incompletion until the 4th quarter. I don't think we sniffed the QB. I'm not sure anyone really stood out on the line with the exception of Bishop for the horsecollar tackle. And only around here can we take a player who committed a 15 yard penalty and find some positive in that. That's indicative of how bad things have gotten and how we've lowered our expectations.

We only scored 7 points on offense but overall posters were pretty satisfied with what they saw from OL, RB's, and Weeden. That's the irony of your argument; you can't have it both ways. People know what they saw on D. We lack depth for a scheme that is predicated on depth to rotate the DL. One pre-season game won't definitively define our season. But people should be very concerned about what we saw the other night from the D, especially the DL.

 

[Stash]

Personally, I hate the fact that they changed over from the 3-4 to this Football 101 defense.

I think it's an old scheme whose time has passed.

At least the way these guys are coaching it.

And the current lack of talent definitely exacerbates it.