I’m sure this has already been discussed, but here’s my two cents.
the defense isn’t that bad. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s nowhere near good and it has a lot of improvements to make, however, it’s not at all as bad as everyone is making it seem.
I rewatched the Atlanta game the other day, and I noticed a few things. For one, the run defense is fine. Not great, but not horrendous. I don’t see too many huge holes for the RB to run in.
The pass rush is absolutely horrendous though (I’ll tap into that later).
Another observation I noticed, was that we held them to 10 points in the 2nd half. Now, I understand Julio had an easy catch he could’ve easily made, but he failed to haul in, however, that simply didn’t happen. Perhaps the coverage was good enough for Julio to be slightly distracted enough to miss the ball? I’m not sure, however, that can be deemed one of the possibilities.
Back to the 10 points though, that’s really great. Amazing even. Especially considering Julio, Matt Ryan, Calvin Ridley, Hurst, and Gage Jr. are not an offensive force to be reckoned with. it didn’t look like they played good, but holding an offense like that to that score, it’s pretty darn good.
29 points in the first half— you guys have to consider how many times Dallas gave them short field. 2 failed punts, 3 fumbles. That’s ridiculous. And Atlanta scored on all of our mistakes. I understand, no matter the situation, it’s the defense’s job to make stops, however, you have to look deeper. It’s much harder as a bend but don’t break defense (which appears to be the way our defense is gonna play this year) when the team is constantly near the end zone. The 29 points (in my opinion) was mostly due to the ineptitude of the offense and ST players not being able to execute properly.
We also had, what 3 almost interceptions? I know, am almost interception sounds stupid. But it’s something we should look forward to. With Marinelli/Richard’s defense, they didn’t even turn around to attempt to catch the ball, and when they did, it was a rare occasion. This time, the players are making the efforts. At least the players are taking a step into the right direction. Diggs will be a star barring injury. Once he gets better with using his hands, he could be a ballhawk. He’s a rookie though, so I’ll cut him some slack.
20 points to the Rams. Could be better, but this was the first game, I’ll cut a little slack. 20 points isn’t a whole lot, but it’s not the best we can do either...
As for the pass rush... jeez. It’s horrible. I can’t really defend the way our pass rush looks, besides this:
New scheme. New players. New DC. Everything had changed. It’s going to take time for this defense to gel and find it’s identity. Especially compared to our high powered offense, which has stayed the same for the most part and is beginning to find its identity, the defense looks lackluster, in which it is, but it’s to be expected. We had no preseason, a short training camp, and players who likely haven’t had as much time to exercise during quarantine going on. It’s going to show. Now I know what you’re going to say: “other teams don’t have these issues and they didn’t have preseason and they had short training camps too!” How many teams got new DC’s? New Head coaches? Implemented new schemes? Not many. Washington did, but their D-line was already p-solid last year. Chase Young and Riverboat Ron did nothing but solidify that. Our defense was horrendous last year. We had nothing to build on.
tl;dr: give it time and stop giving the other team short field. That’s it.
