Josh Wells placed on IR

[LinderFournette]

7 hours ago, Tugboat said:

I honestly think Step 2 (and 3 to an extent) are being seriously overlooked for their impact on Step 1.

Our defense has some issues with certain types of movement and play design in an offense and that's a problem.  But probably the bigger problem, is that they're really not designed to be on the field all day.  The more you stress a defense by asking them to play all the time after stalled and ineffective/catastrophic offensive drives...the more that defense is going to become prone to breakdowns.

If you want to run a physical "dominate the trenches, control the ball" sort of gameplan...you have to actually control the ******* ball.  Which our offense right now, is utterly incapable of doing for more than like a minute and a half at a time.  Fix the offense so they can at least string together some meaningful drives to give the other unit a breather, and the defense will start to look a lot better again.  Until then...no mix of man or zone is going to fix what's really broken with our defense...and that's time on the field. 

Against the Cowboys, we got thumped on time of possession by almost 20 minutes.  That's never going to work.  Part of that is the defense collapsing, but it's a vicious cycle when the offense goes out there and putters around for a few snaps before giving the ball right back to the opposing team.  You win games with this sort of team concept by actually controlling the ball.  When we out-possess or at least hit par with the other team, we win.  When we don't, we lose.  It's pretty clear.  It's not about scoring a million points a game...it's about owning the football, and we're not doing that right now at all because our offense blows.

Remember when Gus was working fairly hands on with the defense. Wash is trying to force players into a specific scheme instead of adapting the scheme to the talent we have.

Church looks like he's lost a step or he's regressed in coverage ability.  We should try Ronnie Harrison out there. See if its a church or a scheme problem.

The defense seems to play better when the corners are up in press coverage so why don't we play press coverage more. 

I get that defense shouldn't be on the field for over 35 minutes but if u get a team into a 3rd down u gotta finish the deal and get off the field.