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LOL Defense

pjzabo

pjzabo

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So I really do know just how bad things are talent wise (14 new players in the last week and 18 undrafted players on the roster), but I actually deluded myself into thinking we had a serviceable D that would get coached up. When the Clowney trade for Tunsil was being talked up constantly I was like "hmm maybe the D is a pass rusher and two pieces away from being half decent but I still wouldn't do it" And I watched a little pre-season and was reassured that the team seemed more prepared than under Gase where they seemed to take the first quarter and 1/2 of the second off before playing.

I knew we would lose today. I expected to lose 13-14 games this year. I was NOT prepared for the defensive "performance" today. If you told me we lost 35-3 today I would say, ok I get it. But our secondary, our entire defensive performance - especially early when they were not yet completely tanked. It was atrocious. Who the people out there that were giving Flores credit for shutting down Rams in the Superbowl? I mean given our horrible losses to the Ravens over the recent past I don't think this was epic embarrassing like everyone is saying, but I did expect more from our defense/secondary, they don't look well coached. This worries me about Flores but its one game, lets see.
 
No excuse for the defense. We know the offense just traded its most experienced receiver and its only serviceable lineman. We knew it would take them a while to adjust. We knew the defense would probably struggle some generating pass rush. Lots of defenses do. You can still manage if you cover gaps. You can still manage if you don't blow assignments.

There is no explanation for how bad it was today. Most of our secondary are returning players. Many of these guys are ones that Flores had the luxury of building on. What happened today was all on coaching. I've seen teams like 2007 where we just didn't have players to make plays even when they were in position. We still didn't have wide open guys all day, all game.

Flores is a defensive guy. I was already seriously questioning his competency after he micro-criticized Rosen's performance in preseason, even though his mistakes were the same ones that Ryan Fitzpatrick displayed in his first drive today. Flores will be just another guy who comes out of the Patriots system and doesn't know what to do when not given the Patriot's luxuries.
 
The most offensive defense I've seen in Miami.

Things should get better next week. Brady, Brown, Gordon...how could it possible be worse?
 
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Yes, we sucked, historically bad, but it wasn't unanimously bad.

Eric Rowe and Jomol Wiltz were beaten consistently like electronic drums. They simply couldn't cover.

Everyone's darling, Jerome Baker had another horrible game defending the run, except this time he didn't have Kiko Alonso to cover for him (and take all the blame somehow).

We knew going into this game/season that we had no pass rushers, and Jackson had all day to pass and picked us apart because of the lack of pass rush. I identified this early in the offseason as a way to hamstring this defense in a colossal tank job that appeared to be planned … and now is being executed. Without a pass rush, you can't look good vs. the pass, because DB's can only cover for so long.

We also have no LB's who can stop the run, no chase LB's like Kiko to cover for blown assignments, and while Raekwon McMillan is out no stout LB's to plug the run lanes, so they were wide open all day. If the RB got past the DL, it was like a matador's cape into the secondary as our LB corps simply proved they were the worst LB corps we've had ever--yes, ever.

Jackson avoided Xavien Howard for the post part, targeting Rowe, Wiltz and Fitzpatrick most of the time.

We did contain his running … everybody else ran for career games, and Jackson threw for a career high TD's, but we did contain his running, so that's a positive.

The players will be putting in their best effort this week for sure, because the coaching staff is going to be reminding them of their poor execution quite often.

Now let's use this historically bad performance to gauge our improved performance from here on out.
 
Do we have a defensive coordinator or do we just blame flores? Back when gase was coaching, everyone just blamed burke. Is the assumption that if you have a defensive minded head coach he takes the blame when the defense plays poorly and vice versa? I could see blaming gase for the offense bc he called the terrible plays.
 
Had a feeling Eric Rowe would prove why he’s on his 3rd team in just 4 seasons already. He won’t be in Miami next season.
 
Sloppy play, lazy tackling, blown calls, stupid mistakes, unnecessary penalties. Hardly surprising given that a quarter of the roster have only been in town for less than a week. I mean I stay on top of the roster pretty well but there were guys out there giving away penalties and wandering aimlessly round the end zone that I'd never heard of. This is the sort of **** that is usually ironed out in preseason so that by the time week 1 rolls around players are comfortable with each other, but that's clearly not the case here. The whole season will be one long preseason. It should be obvious that this would be the result of such severe and at times baffling roster churn so close the the opener, so the coaching team must have accepted this as part of the bigger plan (or even as part of the need to accelerate the plan). If they didn't then they are dumb as hell. I guess we still have to trust that at some point it's going to become clear that Avery Moss is a better player than Vincent Taylor or Tank Carradine, or that Jomal Wiltz learns how to play CB, but **** me it did not look like it today.

At least it gives us a marker to measure progress, any kind of coordinated effort or the briefest flash of ability will be a clear sign of improvement.
 
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Did we really think our LBs were THAT MUCH worse this year? I mean Kiko did some boneheaded things and Raekwon was out of position a lot or slow to react/adjust last season but I thought our LB crew was potentially going to be improved on last year. All around I expected the lack of a legitimate pass rush to be our biggest deficiency. This is major regression, but the Ravens have had our number for what feels like forever.
 
pjzabo said:
Did we really think our LBs were THAT MUCH worse this year? I mean Kiko did some boneheaded things and Raekwon was out of position a lot or slow to react/adjust last season but I thought our LB crew was potentially going to be improved on last year. All around I expected the lack of a legitimate pass rush to be our biggest deficiency. This is major regression, but the Ravens have had our number for what feels like forever.
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Charles Harris is part of the LB crew this year.
 
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