BDL 2019 Week 4 - Oklahoma City EF5's @ Lancaster Werewolves

[SirA1]

BDL 2019 Week 4

Match:  Oklahoma City EF5's @ Lancaster Werewolves

Away Owner: @Whicker

Home Owner: @rackcs

Vote for who you think will win this game.

Rules:
One vote per person, duplicate accounts will be banned and action taken against those attempting to rig the results.

One vote per team involved in the match. Co-owners may vote in every match up except their own.

For members, who have been following along, and wish to vote.  Please join the conversation and maybe give a reason you voted as you did. This will alleviate any suspicions of unusual voting and will promote discussion.

Note: Players that have a (D) next to their name indicate that they are doubtful or unlikely to play. Players with (Q) are game-time decisions.

Good luck to you both

[SirA1]

Oklahoma City EF5's

QB: Matthew Stafford (Q)
RB: Joe Mixon
WR: Adam Thielen
WR: Allen Robinson
WR: Robert Woods
WR: Emmanuel Sanders
LT: David Bakhtiari
LG: Quinton Spain
C: Rodney Hudson
RG: Brandon Brooks
RT: Brian O'Neill

QB: Kyle Allen
RB: Melvin Gordon III
RB: Frank Gore
WR: D.J. Moore
TE: Mark Andrews (Q)
TE: Trey Burton (Q)
OG: D.J. Fluker
OT: Morgan Moses

 

LEO: Von Miller
DT: Cameron Heyward
NT: Steve McLendon
DE: Stephon Tuitt
SLB: Dont'a Hightower (Q)
MLB: Cory Littleton
LB/S: Adrian Amos
CB: Tre'Davious White
CB: Marcus Peters
CB: Joe Haden
FS: Jordan Poyer

LEO/SLB: Matt Judon
LEO: Ryan Kerrigan
DL: Margus Hunt
NT: Lawrence Guy
LB: Quincy Williams
CB: Pierre Desir (Q)
CB: Fabian Moreau
S: Bradley McDougald

Lancaster Werewolves

QB1: Philip Rivers
RB1: Alvin Kamara
WR1: Mike Evans
WR2: Odell Beckham Jr. 
WR3: Sterling Shepard
WR4: Willie Snead IV
LT: Trenton Brown (Q)
LG: Mike Pouncey
C: Frank Ragnow
RG: Quenton Nelson
RT: Lane Johnson

QB2: Baker Mayfield
RB2: Christopher Carson
RB3: Royce Freeman
WR5: Dante Pettis
TE1: C.J. Uzomah
TE2: Mike Gesicki
OL: Nick Martin
OL: Connor Williams - starts at RT if Brown is out with Johnson going to LT

DE: T.J. Watt
DT: Kenny Clark
DT: Ndamukong Suh
DE: Joey Bosa
WLB: Kwon Alexander
MLB: Bobby Wagner
CB1: Jalen Ramsey  INACTIVE
CB2: Jaire Alexander
SCB: James Bradberry
FS: Eddie Jackson
SS: Taylor Rapp

DE: Jabaal Sheard (Q)
DE: Emmanuel Ogbah
DE: Clelin Ferrell
INT: Christian Wilkins
LB: Fred Warner
CB: Kevin King
S: John Cyprien
S: Xavier Woods

Edited September 30, 2019 by SirA1

[SirA1]

Oklahoma City EF5's

After a monster win against Portland to claim BDL's last unbeaten title, we continue our brutal stretch of schedule with a trip to Lancaster against our former mentor and preseason favorite. With a win in this game, we will have a straight shot into the playoffs and establish ourselves as the truly dominant force in the league. Despite Lancaster's undeniable top end talent, we believe we have the talent to match and the depth to fully expose the chinks in this team's armor.

Offense:

We are going to continue the Oklahoma brand of football this week with a spread offense as we face another potentially short-handed secondary. Our goal is to utilize the short and intermediate passing game to take advantage of our good matchups.

One of the more important factors in this matchup is the status of Jalen Ramsey. If Ramsey doesn't play, then Lancaster only has 3 active corners on their roster. In this case, we will utilize 4 and 5 WR sets and use all the tricks we need to isolate the safeties or linebackers that are forced to play in place of the 4^th and 5^th corners.

Assuming Ramsey does play, we will look to avoid his and Jaire Alexander's coverage. We will accomplish this by keeping Ramsey and Alexander as the outside corners. Last week, Lancaster used a Cover-3 based defense with his top two corners playing on the outside. If they use a similar scheme this week, Ramsey and Alexander will likely stay outside. If Lancaster does move to a man coverage scheme, we suspect Ramsey and Alexander will follow Adam Thielen and Robert Woods (this is an easy swap for Allen Robinson if they choose to shadow him with Alexander instead). We will keep our shadowed receivers on the outside running vertical and seam routes.

With our two outside receivers running vertical routes, we gain the benefit of being able to keep Eddie Jackson at bay. We have the utmost respect for Jackson as a special safety and we want to keep him deep and respecting our deep routes.

With our outside receivers clearing out the coverage of the outside corners, we will heavily target our slot receivers, Mark Andrews, and our running backs in the short and intermediate areas of the field. We will utilize plenty of empty (5 WR and 4 WR 1 TE) and 11 personnel sets as well as our listed starting lineup.

Similar to last week, we want to run enough (~20% of the time) to keep the defense honest. The majority of runs will be draw plays to key off our pass heavy nature. Joe Mixon will be featured as Melvin Gordon rotates in to get his feet wet. When passing, our backs will be used as receivers as emergency options in the flats. These hot routes will largely be towards our left as we expect the majority of pressure from our right side. This will give Stafford the chance to escape away from that pressure and make easy outlet throws.

We have great faith in our offensive line. Rodney Hudson will favor helping Quinton Spain when possible as the weak link on our line. We trust Stafford and Hudson to make proper blitz adjustments.

Defense:

Lancaster has incredible top end on offense, but we believe they lack the depth to become truly unstoppable. We are going to limit their offense by shutting down their three biggest weapons and force Philip Rivers to rely on his lesser playmakers in order to outgun our offense. To accomplish this, we will be utilizing a man coverage heavy scheme out of a base 3-3-5.

We welcome Tre'Davious White to Oklahoma City with a shadow date with his former college teammate Odell Beckham Jr. Ever since we made the tough decision to let Patrick Peterson go, we've been starving for a shutdown corner, and we believe White is exactly what we needed.

Marcus Peters will cover Mike Evans when Evans is lined up as an outside WR. If Evans moves into the slot, Joe Haden will cover him. The corner not on Evans will cover their third WR.

One of the more subtle weaknesses with the Lancaster offense is the absence of a field stretching WR. Because of this, we are going to have Jordan Poyer play slightly more shallow than a typical deep zone FS (10 yards instead of 15). His primary responsibility will be to provide help to the corner that's covering Evans. We believe that playing him more shallow than normal will accomplish two things: it will allow him to provide help more quickly to his corner and give him a quicker response time during running plays. Because we don't fear the speed of Sterling Shepard or Willie Snead, we believe we can get away with this in this game.

With our shutdown corner on Beckham and a double team on Evans, we feel we can turn our attention to the biggest overall threat: Alvin Kamara. Adrian Amos will line up in the box and he and Cory Littleton will be responsible for Kamara on all plays. Although Dont'a Hightower will be responsible for the tight end in coverage, we want him lined up at the line of scrimmage often to give him better control of the left edge. Von Miller will line up outside of Trent Brown, contain the right edge, and rush the passer.

Steve McLendon will line up over center as a true nose tackle. Stephon Tuitt will line up over Lane Johnson in a 5-tech. They will both play two gaps. This will allow Cameron Heyward to work against an out of position Frank Ragnow in the B-gap.

If Kamara shifts out wide, we want out defense to shift back slightly to respect his speed and RAC ability. Hightower will move back to the second level. Littleton will move as the primary defender on Kamara with Amos shifting back to give him a wider field to work with if Littleton blows his assignment. If Kamara is out of the game, Amos will play a robber role and Littleton will continue his responsibility with the running back.

We will rotate in our defensive players as necessary. Against 2 WR sets, Quincy Williams will come on the field for Joe Haden. Against 4 WRs, Matt Judon will replace Hightower in a more dedicated rush role and Pierre Desir will come on the field for McLendon.

 

Lancaster Werewolves

Lancaster Motivation: We’re going up this week against the only undefeated team in the BDL. Most of the players believe we should and would be undefeated except for their no show week 1. They’re ready to prove that we’re at the top of the BDL, not OKC.

Lancaster Offensive Strategy: This week we’re going to be running a 4 wide. We plan on focusing on quick passes to beat OKC’s pass rush and attack their CBs. When we run we’re going to focus on running to the outside once again to avoid their front seven.

The Passing Strategy: We believe that OKC’s strength is its front 7 and its weakness is its secondary so that idea is going to the basis of our offensive game plan. We’re going with a four wide set so that once they inevitably adjust and put four CBs on the field, we’ll be able to exploit that further. Obviously Marcus Peters is very good but none of his other corners are world beaters. With our deep roster of WRs we should be able to keep the ball spread around and attack them all over the field. We’ll also be playing C.J. Uzomah and splitting him out wide plenty. We’ll also be splitting Alvin Kamara out wide fairly often as well to take advantage of his strength as a receiver. Most of our throws are going to be quick routes such as slants and flats. We want to get our guys some space to move with curls. All around just quick routes mostly with obviously some variety sprinkled in to keep them guessing. We are doing this because even though we have a strong OL, we still recognize that OKC has a very strong pass rush.

The Running Strategy: Running a 4 wide set should have OKC adjusting by adding to their secondary and removing guys from their front seven. This should help us when we do decide to run. Once again we just don’t even want to have to bother with their front seven if we don’t have to. Luckily we don’t think we will. Kamara is a great outside runner so we’ll be looking to get him outside, pulling guards to get some good blocking out there.

Carolina Defensive Strategy: We respect OKC’s passing game more than their running game so that is going to be our focus this week. Obviously we won’t be ignoring the run game but we’re going to put most of the focus on stopping their passing game. We also want to put pressure in Stafford’s face and force him to make mistakes.

The Pass Defense Strategy: We’ll be going back to man coverage again this week. We expect OKC to run with 3 WRs and then Mark Andrews at WR/TE. Because of this we’ll be in a 4-2-5 nickel defense. If OKC goes with 4 WRs and keeps Andrews out of the starting lineup then we’ll bring Kevin King into the starting lineup in place of Wagner. If they run their offense like we expect, we’ll have Jalen Ramsey on Adam Thielen, Alexander will cover Woods, and Bradberry will cover Robinson. Kwon Alexander will be covering Mark Andrews. Eddie Jackson will be playing a deep zone to prevent deep passes. Taylor Rapp will be playing up in the box and covering any RBs that go out for passes. Bobby Wagner will be helping cover Andrews and also blitzing often. We want to bring the heat against Stafford to throw him off and force him into mistakes. We think we’ll be able to get plenty of pressure just with our starting 4 DL and especially so with Wagner blitzing fairly regularly. We have a pretty deep roster of DEs even if Sheard doesn’t play. We will sometimes also switch things up and have Wagner cover Andrews and have Alexander blitz. We may also have Rapp blitzing. Sometimes a combo of them. The point is we want to bring pressure on Stafford.

The Run Defense Strategy: Mixon is a talented RB but he has struggled so far this year as have OKC’s stable. We can’t count them out because they are talented but we have a good DL and strong LBs as well as Taylor Rapp playing in the box and focusing on the RBs. All of this we feel will help contain the running game if it does pop off.

Edited September 29, 2019 by SirA1

[rackcs]

Well ******* Jalen Ramsey didn't play today. Now I really wish I hadn't forgotten to put in my waiver claim this week. **** me.

[Whicker]

No respect for Tre White

[rackcs]

10 minutes ago, Whicker said:

No respect for Tre White

Forgot that you traded for him tbh lol doesn't matter much though. With only 3 active CBs against 4 WRs, I'm pretty screwed. Really wish I hadn't forgotten my waiver claim but it is what it is.

Edited September 30, 2019 by rackcs

[Whicker]

Dont’a Hightower inactive for me. 

[VigilantZombie]

You thought Portland and Gotham scored a bunch of points?

These two rosters, this might actually be the best game of the week. Some of the players haven't played yet, but I have my opinions on what they might do. This one is gonna be a shootout of epic proportions. 

45-42 Lancaster.

[Jlash]

What.a.matchup.

I wasn't sure if we'd see a team with the defensive talent to match up with Lancaster and now it looks like OKC has it. Like other games this week, this is an absolute shootout and OKC has more bullets. 

[Xmad]

Went OKC for their ability to pull through on defense/hold up in the redzone better IMO. 

[The Orca]

The offensive fire power of Lancaster is matched by OKC due to the shorthanded secondary.  In a shootout it comes down to who can make the last stop and Haden on Beckham who has a bad week comes out on top

35-31 OKC

[TedLavie]

Shame Lancaster couldn't field more active corners. I'll be honest, I don't remember seeing teams as good as this Lancaster squad in BDL. Maybe Dublin back in the days.

I think Whicker hit Lancaster weakness perfectly. Cyprien is Lancaster #1 backup S as I see that lineup. Him vs Sanders or DJ Moore will be a bloodbath. Quick passing should at least limit that pass rush. Only thing I'd say is I'd probably try to run a bit more. I think Stafford is more successful when he doesn't have to throw 50 times a game. 

I know they're still providing help on Evans. But not counting him as a field stretcher is a mistake I think. He's averaging 20+ yards per catch this year. Rams had a safety deep on every man coverage play vs him, except maybe one where Evans caught a deep bomb. White vs ODB is interesting. I love White, don't know if he's capable of taking care of ODB 1vs1 in man. Allocating two resources to Evans and Kamara will open up things for Shepard and Snead, and I think they can benefit from it.

Huge offensive output. I think the difference is, when it's 3rd&5, I have more faith in Stafford hitting Sanders vs Cyprien on a quick slant than I have Rivers connecting with one of his weapons against a functioning NFL CB. 45-35 OKC

[Pickle Rick]

Most others have echoed my thoughts.  This game would be a Lancaster win if Ramsey had played.  Without him OKC wins in a shootout 41-35

[RuskieTitan]

God I hate the OKC name. But I have them winning this matchup.

[pheltzbahr]

Lack of depth at CB sinks Lancaster here as Okie Cty takes advantage.