Josh Wilson scares me!

[thesubmittedone]

Last season, Josh Wilson was one of the best corners in the league according to Football Outsiders. That, along with how hampered we were this offseason (as Jumbo has mentioned and as has been mentioned about a billion times) is enough for me to assume his play isn't a regression, but more of a side effect of an overall weakened secondary. When teams pass as much as teams do against us because they can it's just going to make you look bad at times. We need to remind ourselves of Sean Taylor's play in 2006. Great players can have bad seasons, to little fault of their own. Football is too much a team sport.

Furthermore, Dez has been embarrassing opposing DBs the last few weeks. He's clearly on a roll. Josh Wilson was brought in to be our no. 2 CB, but he's essentially on the no. 1 WR of opposing teams every play because of that cap penalty.

[emor09]

Wilson is awful. Dez had that other ball caught in the end zone as well until Madieu saved the day by knocking it out. I don't know the numbers but from where I was sitting it seemed like 3/4 of Romo's 4 hunderd and some odd yards were against Wilson. At this point, why anyone would even bother to run against us is beyond me.

Wasn't Griffin the defender on that near-TD?

[jfriedenthal]

Wasn't Griffin the defender on that near-TD?

Yes... and Madieu Williams made his second play of the year, knocking the ball out.

[MintHillSkinsFan]

Wasn't Griffin the defender on that near-TD?

I stand corrected.

[Skinz4Life12]

josh wilson is terrible most of the time. he gets burnt regularly and never turns to look and see where the ball is

[sempre_victrix]

josh wilson is terrible most of the time. he gets burnt regularly and never turns to look and see where the ball is

Exactly. If he is not out of position, he is committing pass interference.

Granted, he got pushed off on the second TD, not called (of course) by either official staring at the play.

[thesubmittedone]

Exactly. If he is not out of position, he is committing pass interference.

Granted, he got pushed off on the second TD, not called (of course) by either official staring at the play.

Cowboy WRs wearing the number 88 are allowed to push off. Check the rules dude don't be so stupid.

[MartinC]

Threads like this make me wonder what games some posters are watching.

First it's extremely hard to grade the play of defensive backs without knowing what the coverage responsibilities on any given play are - just because a guy is the closest defender to a receiver when he makes a catch or is chasing him into the end zone does not always mean he's the guy who just got beat. Then you factor in that every corner who ever played the game gets beaten - and they get beaten much more regularly if they don't have pressure on the QB. Finally corners are very reliant on good safety play to provide support and we have had precious little of that this year.

This year our pass rush has been inconsistent at best - we even made the Dallas line of backups and scrubs look semi competent yesterday. Without pass rush and with some very average at best safety play Hall and Wilson have been exposed as would 99% of all corners in the NFL in the same circumstances. Wilson has played good football this year - he does have some technique issues he needs to work on like getting his head around to avoid those PI calls for face guarding, but he has been the most consistent player in our secondary for me this year.

Not that it means that much but Wilson is currently one of the starting corners in the All NFC East team on the ESPN NFC East blog.

[Hubbs]

Jimoh

Why... why would you mention that name?

[TE#80]

Please. This topic is a stretch. Wilson has been hung out to dry by our safety play. Oh not to mention being put into position to play Man defense with no safety over the top. Add in the fact the quarterback is getting four to five seconds to throw. Hmm, am I mistaken that Dez Bryant has top 10 talent when he decides to put it all together? And we want to put it all on Wilson? Are you Kidding Me?

[nfl guru]

Wilson is a below average player. Been a few plays where hes clearly out of position and some where he cant even stand up and get a hand on the receiver (i.e. Armon Binns td). I attribute lack of depth to the cap hits in part so hopefully Wilson is one of the first guys replaced this offseason

[J-bomb]

Wilson allowed 7 rec for 166yds 2 tds on 10 targets 1 ff....Hall allowed 5 rec 36yds on 8 targets 1 int

[elkabong82]

Wilson allowed 7 rec for 166yds 2 tds on 10 targets 1 ff....Hall allowed 5 rec 36yds on 8 targets 1 int

to be fair to Wilson both the safeties over the top screwed him on the long TD. Wilson didn't get burned, he allowed a catch in front of him off a poor readjustment when Dez cut across, and he had a good catch-up angle but decided to try and play hero and go for the INT instead of just knocking it down or allowing the catch to happen and making the tackle since we were up by so much and could allow underneath stuff. Then one safety took a horrible angle and the other was held by #17 on offense and that hold also interfered with Wilson catching back up. So Wilson wasn't burned there, like some are exaggerating with the always burned comments, but he shouldn't have gone for the INT.

Most catches he allows happen in front of him because defenders shake him on cuts. That is his bad trend and he needs to work on sticking closer to his man a reading the body language so he can react better. It's more than the simplistic go-to criticism of CBs people use of "gets burned all the time," which really isn't the truth. It's a case where people just want to assign blame rather than try to actually dissect what is going on. The fact we have poor safety play in many games screws the CBs as well. Madieu was bad again, save for the 1 play of knocking the ball out of Dez's hands in the endzone. Gomes, though, seems to have stepped his game up.

[RedskinsInFebruary]

Sheesh, a dump-on-Josh-Wilson thread, right after beating the Girls in their house? Ok, well I think our D needs to play riskier to offset the talent deficiency, and to better complement our O. I think that's why Shanahan emphasizes turnovers with them, and there're examples of success out there with this mindset.

Being up by a couple scores or more with the time left, I think Josh took a calculated risk. You could see he knew he blew it by his immediate reaction. Anyway, I think our safety play and anemic pass rush are bigger problems than JW or DHall, putting those two in more difficult positions.

[elkabong82]

Good point RIF. You guys notice that we had a good pass rush in the first half and we were putting Romo in the ground, but in the 2nd half it was very noticeable that we had eased up and were playing deeper coverages because Dallas was in the position where they had to go for more big plays being behind by so much. The CBs were also playing farther off, and this along with less QB pressure allowed Dez more catches.

In fact, the long TD was a gaffe by several defenders, not just Wilson. After that the next Dez TD he got away with a push off, and Wilson still played it well.

I think if not for the untimely RG3 INT that let Dallas get another TD then the score doesn't get as close as it did and we don't even see this thread. I'm not blaming RG3, he's phenomenal of course, but I am pointing out that the defense was screwed on one score at the most inopportune time and therefor looked even worse. Basically Wilson isn't as bad as some are making him out to be, and in fact was fine through the first half when pressure on the QB was there and the CBs were playing up on the WRs. But, we were exposed when we let up, and maybe we should have waited longer to let up, but you do have to to prevent the quick score teams are desperately trying for at that point, and the long Dez one was a screw up that was the fault of several players not just Wilson.