Lack of QB pressure; coaching, players or both?

[Laxpunk2006]

Bowen & Cofield don't seem to be getting as much pressure on the quarterback this year as they did last year. I know people say that it isn't the DL's job to get sacks in a 3/4 defense but it seems to me that these two guys are making way to much money not to be doing a better job of rushing the passer. If the Redskins defense is modled after the Steelers or Cowboys defense Aaron Smith(de) of the Steelers always got to the QB and Jay Ratliff(nt) of the Cowboys as well. I wish the played Arizona this year, the Rams have been teeing off on Kolb every time he goes back to pass. I don't think I ever saw a worse OL than the Cardinals are playing right now.

Aaron Smith had 44 sacks over 13 seasons. That's 3.4 (I rounded up) sacks a season. You're correct that our defense is modeled after Pittsburgh's and that Aaron Smith is the prototype DE but his role was not as a pass rusher. He opened things up for the long line of great pass rushing OLB's Pittsburgh has had.

As far as Ratliff, that is a completely different scheme. Wade Phillips runs a one gap 3-4 that is more like a 4-3 under scheme as I believe LL explained in another thread. Maybe it was NLC, can't remember.

It's talent, guys.

London is the closest thing we have to an All-Pro player, but his age shows every time he's caught in coverage by pass catching TE. We have players that are good to above average on that side of the ball, but no one that strikes the fear of God in opposing teams coaching schemes. For example: Houston runs a 3-4 just like us, but has a DE with 7.5 sacks already. It's week f'n 5...

Houston doesn't run a 3-4 "just like us." They're both 3-4's but very different schemes. One of the HTTR guys did a great piece that explained it about a week or so ago. That being said JJ Watt is a phenomenal player.

[MartinC]

Its a bit of both as others have said.

Our front 7 is the strength of our defense but even in the front 7 we dont really have an elite 'difference maker" type player especially in the down 3. Orakpo is a good rusher - but not at that elite level yet and Kerrigan is our best all round defender IMO but he is also a good but not elite pass rusher. Getting a guy at one of the DE spots who commands a double team and who can get pressure up the middle would transform our pass rush. Getting better coverage on the backend to force the QB to hold the ball would be a big help as well.

But you could say the above about just about every team in the NFL. Coaching staffs with less to work with in their front seven manage to get more consistent pressure than we do. Thats on Haslett and the whole defensive staff.

My summary would be we can certainly improve the level of talent on our defense - and in fact we have to to become a championship calibre team - but we are not getting the most of out of what we have right now IMO.

[newday]

O-sak-po used to get double teams sometimes. And a ton of rush that make the rest of the line look better. The QB had to move up right into Bowen/Cofield's arms.

The D was scary as heck until Rak went down.

'Nuff with the second guessing.

[MartinC]

If you've played football, or more specifically played in the secondary, you know allowing inside leverage on the slant in that situation is a crucial mistake, and one that I'm sure Hall regrets. Making one mistake doesn't make him a bad corner by any means, but trust me when I say Hall deserved blame for the play.

This is conjecture but based on Haslett's reaction after that play and the way Hall played it I think Williams was supposed to be providing help on that route with Jackson over the top and the inside from the get go. He seemed to get there late. Like I said though thats conjecture but if Hal was supposed to have Vincent underneath and to the outside with William's over the top and inside it would explain how Hall played it.

[Oldfan]

Don't believe everything you read, and this is being said by a staunch Hall supporter. I had him as my most underrated Redskin this offseason, and my posting history shows I think much more higher of him than most on this site. With that being said, when I read an article that blames Haslett and Williams for Vincent Jackson slant pattern at the goalline, after Hall allowed inside leverage, the source loses credibility in my opinion...

I don't blame any player for faulty execution on an occasional play. They're human. It's only when you see the same mistake made repeatedly that it reflects badly both on him and the guy who coaches him.

Hall doesn't know when to be aggressive and when to lay back. I've seen that since he's been here. As his coach, if I couldn't correct that flaw, I'd find someone else to play the position.

[Momma There Goes That Man]

We have the personnel to run the 3-4. Not having Orakpo hurts, because Jackson isn't good enough to replace him. Our front seven is one of the best in the league. The weakness of our D is the secondary, not the scheme. Gomes and Doughty are good depth players, but they shouldn't be full-time starters.

In our 3-4, we don't really need the DL to get pressure per se. We need them to get a push up front, and not allow Ryan to climb the pocket.

Then how come we don't generate a pass rush like one of the best front sevens in the league?

Our blitzes are horribly, woefully ineffective. There is rearely if ever anything creative about them that causes the OL to think and react or confuse them and let somebody slip through clean.

In today's NFL, defense is about QB pressure/sacks and turnovers. Yardage and even points for that matter aren't nearly as important the way the game favors offenses.

We have the players for it by all accounts (though I still believe we need an ELITE linemen) so the coaching has to get better. Period.

---------- Post added October-5th-2012 at 10:05 AM ----------

Its a bit of both as others have said.

Our front 7 is the strength of our defense but even in the front 7 we dont really have an elite 'difference maker" type player especially in the down 3. Orakpo is a good rusher - but not at that elite level yet and Kerrigan is our best all round defender IMO but he is also a good but not elite pass rusher. Getting a guy at one of the DE spots who commands a double team and who can get pressure up the middle would transform our pass rush. Getting better coverage on the backend to force the QB to hold the ball would be a big help as well.

But you could say the above about just about every team in the NFL. Coaching staffs with less to work with in their front seven manage to get more consistent pressure than we do. Thats on Haslett and the whole defensive staff.

My summary would be we can certainly improve the level of talent on our defense - and in fact we have to to become a championship calibre team - but we are not getting the most of out of what we have right now IMO.

I agree with this. Teams that have dominant 3-4 defenses have at least one elite down linemen. I dont think we do.

---------- Post added October-5th-2012 at 10:09 AM ----------

What we need to do is root against the Jets every week and pray that Ryan gets fired. He might try to latch on as our DC if we throw enough money at him and for the chance to be the DC for RG3s up and coming offense.

Doubtful but that would be amazing.

[The Robert Griffin Experience]

Problem 1: Haslett sucks. As others have said, his blitzes are predictable and horribly designed. LeBeau and Ryan play 2 gap 3-4s where the 3 down linemen occupy the rush, the OLBs get the outside pressure and they use creative zone blitz schemes to generate pressure. Now that Haslett doesn't have Rak on the other side, he doesn't have the creativity to scheme up blitzes to compensate.

Problem 2: Jenkins is not 100%, and Carriker is not there to generate pocket push. Cofield and Bowen have played well, but we're missing a LOT of depth up front (don't forget about Chris Neild, though not sure how Chris Baker has done).

I think we do need to bring in an experienced 3-4 coach at some point - though we could have had Romeo Crennel...

[PlayAction]

"Lack of QB pressure" - perhaps Carriker was better than most fans gave him credit AND Jenkins has not performed up to his preseason hype from a year ago. Since the blitzes aren't working often enough perhaps the Skins need to dial back their frequency and go back to a variation of the soft defenses that we had under Blache. They couldn't stop anyone when they needed to but they prevented the big gains during most of the game. That was a losing proposition when the Skins offense couldn't manage more than 14-18pts per game. But the offense is much better now.

[Oldfan]

"Lack of QB pressure" - perhaps Carriker was better than most fans gave him credit AND Jenkins has not performed up to his preseason hype from a year ago. Since the blitzes aren't working often enough perhaps the Skins need to dial back their frequency and go back to a variation of the soft defenses that we had under Blache. They couldn't stop anyone when they needed to but they prevented the big gains during most of the game. That was a losing proposition when the Skins offense couldn't manage more than 14-18pts per game. But the offense is much better now.

You missed something.

Playing bend-but-don't-break makes it easy for the opponent to play ball control. When they play ball control, they keep your offense off the field. Blache's strategy is one of the reasons that the Skins offense averaged 18 points a game.

I think bend-but-don-t break makes sense when we have a two-score lead to protect.

[MartinC]

I think bend-but-don-t break makes sense when we have a two-score lead to protect.

Entering the last 10 minutes of the game - IMO playing prevent (or some variation of soft coverage) earlier burns you as often as it works for you.

[PortisBetts]

And if he makes that adjustment and teams start eating us alive with short passes, or even worse the blitz gets picked up as it has so many times this year, and teams beat us deep, then what are you going to say? You going to come back here and talk about how Haslett is too aggressive?

The problem with the arguments against Haslett is so many contradict one another.

One poster says he's too aggressive, another says he sits back too much.

One posted says we should play a lot more man, we do that, and another poster says we don't mix up the coverages enough.

To judge whether or not a DC is to blame and not the players we should be asking ourselves a few questions:

Was this play executed properly by the players, but still had a bad outcome? If so was that outcome, just a ridiculous play? For example I'm not going to blame a DC, if Megatron out jumps triple coverage to make a play.

If the play was not executed properly the blame probably shouldn't fall on the DC. Unless, that DC is putting players in positions where they routinely fail. For example Gomes is bad at blitzing, if we blitz him once every couple of games I don't think we can put blame on Haslett, he does have to mix things up. However if Has blitzes Gomes multiple times a game each week, than the problem is probably with him.

Blaming Haslett just seems like the "in" thing to do on ES right now. People do it any chance they get, and create scenarios to blame him, when he isn't the person to blame.

I have constantly given Haslett the benefit of the doubt until this year. You adjust. You blitz because we havent done it. It will be unexpected. Then when they start throwing short passes, adjust. Or better yet, change it before the offesne adjusts. Dont wait for them to do it, try to be a step ahead and know, "hey, we have been pressing the blitz and they are probably going to try going short soon, lets start to play some man under, or zone under or something they wont expect" or disguise better.

I dont like the safety blitzes with Gomes becuase he clearly isnt a good blitzer. Why put him in a position to fail? My gripe with Haslett is that he doesnt seem to put the players ina position to succeed and play to their strenghts. Gomes is not Meriweather. He should be more of a backend safety out of the box from what i have seen, but instead, we blitzed him multiple times and when he didnt get there, we acted surprised. The defense needs to not only make adjustments, but they also need to change things up and not get bland which they have a huge tendancy of doing. It is what they did against Tampa and they let up 21 second half points. It was atrocious in the second half. Once Freeman got comfortable, he started making plays. And we got lucky with a couple terrible throws by Freeman in the first half that had nothing to do with pressure or our defense. We should have come out in the second half attacking him because they were on their heels and had to make big plays. And when i say attack, i dont mean bring 8 guys and leave everyone on an island everytime, which seems to be Hasletts favorite play. I mean bring 5 one play, 6 another, then 4, 5, 3, 7 and come from differnet spots. Dont blitz the same guy every time. Have a lineman drop into a hook zone. When was the last time we saw that? They may not be good at it, but the offense wont expect it and it will cause maybe a second of delay in the qb decision making process. We dont seem to do adjustments or unexpected. We seem very easily picked apart by quarterbacks and it is not the sole fault of the backs, even though they have played a large part. If we cant make pressure with our line, we need to find ways to create pressure because that is when our defense will thrive. We thrive on turnovers. Thats what they are good at. They cause fumbles, they are catching interceptions. Now we just need to get to the quarterback and keep them guessing.

And why i dont think it will happen is because i dont believe Haslett has the ability to adjust or the creativity to keep the offense guessing. Good coaches find a way to hide deficenices. Shanahan has done a spectacular job with our offensive line, which no one in the beginning of the season would ahve said would be any good, but has in fact played very well.

How many plays has it been where it was something like Megatron out jumping triple coverage? I dont recall any except for the perfect bomb to VJax, where there was still no safety help for Hall. And you say its the "in thing to do" but you have no argument to say it isnt him.

[Brotherz]

This idea that we have a top 10 front 7 seems nuts to me. Its simply untrue. We do not generate the pass rush we need in this scheme. There are alot of very succesful 3-4 schemes that are completely premised on getting to the QB as opposed to holding up for a long time in the secondary. We don't need a top flight secondary to run this scheme - we do need a serious pass rush however if we don't have a top flight secondary. You can have a secondary that can hold up for several seconds to give the pass rushers time to get home OR you can have a front 7 that by design and skill can get home quickly leading to errant throws, sacks, predictable 3rd and long situations, which all helps the secondary who should theoretically only have to jam the recievers and hango with them for a few seconds. Truth be told, even against premier WR's life White and Jones this weekend, if we had a pass rush our corners could actually hang. What you cannot have is a pass utterly failing to get there and these corners and safeties having to stay with Julio Jones on a 50 yard pass route. That is a recipe for disaster and a recipe for exactly what we have been seeing week in and week out with this team.

Its easy to blame the secondary because they really aren't very good but I question whether that was actually a conscious decision by this staff. The plan very well could have been to sink our limited (and unfortunately 18 million more limited than anticipated) resources into a dominant front 7 and give up some skill on the back end hoping that we could hold up by throwing off timing routes, getting those 3rd and longs, and making the QB make very quick decisions and throws.

Our front 7 is simply not nearly as good as advertised. I think Carriker is a big loss. Orakpo too I'm sure but I am at the point where he is just a dissappointment all the way around. He needed to be Ware-like. He isn't. Not only that, he simply can't stay healthy. I think the Orakpo experiment will be over soon. Sad but do any of us have confidence this guy is going to become the premier pass rusher we drafted him to be?

I like Bowen and Jenkins alot. I think Fletcher is amazing but he is really long in the tooth now and a new hole will be developing on this defense at his spot. I really like Riley and I think Kerrigan is probably the best draft pick outside of RG3 in this regime's stint. Our OLB depth really isn't very good and the Wilson/Jackson/ thing is an enormous pass-rushing liability now.

I like Cofield alot but he's still really not a prototypical Ngata-Type nosetackle for this scheme.

To echo some of the others sentiments - we not only lack premiere pass rushing TALENT but our blitz packages are vanilla and completely lack creativity. You can get to these QB's by speed, strength and athleticism or you can get to him by confusing blitz packages. With the 3-4 you can drop some, send others etc each time and theoretically it is practically impossible for the line to really know where its coming from. That is one of the most enormous advantages of this scheme. We do it very poorly. If you watch these games you can see the blitz coming from a mile away - well guess what - so do our opponents. Ideally you would have both - super athletic and talented pass rushers that can stay healthy for more than two games a season and a scheme that sends different guys from every conceivable angle in every conceivable situation. We have neither unfortunately and its making a secondary designed to hold up for 3 seconds hold up for 7.

[Oldfan]

Entering the last 10 minutes of the game - IMO playing prevent (or some variation of soft coverage) earlier burns you as often as it works for you.

I don't think so Martin. I think the problem is that the memory of burned strategies stays with us longer.

Let's say my team jumps out to a ten-point lead in the first five minutes of the first quarter. I look at this situation like I am game-planning for a 55-minute game in which I was handed a ten-point edge over the opponent. I would play ball control to milk the clock and make it easy for the opponent to play ball control to milk the clock. I would take no risks and let my opponent take as many as he likes. I would play very conservative football.

This approach wouldn't win all the time, but it would win most of the time.

[MartinC]

I don't think so Martin. I think the problem is that the memory of burned strategies stays with us longer.

Let's say my team jumps out to a ten-point lead in the first five minutes of the first quarter. I look at this situation like I am game-planning for a 55-minute game in which I was handed a ten-point edge over the opponent. I would play ball control to milk the clock and make it easy for the opponent to play ball control to milk the clock. I would take no risks and let my opponent take as many as he likes. I would play very conservative football.

This approach wouldn't win all the time, but it would win most of the time.

You might be right but it would be interesting to see a study of the relative success of taking the conservative approach you advocate versus continuing to play 'normal' football. I certainly would not take my foot off the gas on either side of the ball with a 10 point lead after 5 minutes.

[planter]

Players...players....players.

Pass rushers are born that way :-)