BDL 2020 Week 2 - New Orleans Jazz @ Rome Eternals

[rackcs]

BDL 2020 Week 2

Match:  New Orleans Jazz @ Rome Eternals

Away Owner: @WFLukic

Home Owner: @bcb1213

   

Vote for who you think would win the 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

[rackcs]

New Orleans Jazz

Offense:

QB: Josh Allen
RB1: David Johnson
WR1: DJ Moore
WR2: Parris Campbell
TE: Zach Ertz
TE: Tyler Higbee
LT: Taylor Decker
LG: Joel Bitonio
C.: Alex Mack
RG: Justin Pugh
RT: Mitchell Schwartz

RB2: Melvin Gordon
RB3: Devin Singletary
WR3: John Brown
WR4: Kenny Stills
TE3: Mike Gesicki
TE4: Chris Herndon
OL6: Jonah Williams
OL7: Austin Blythe

Defense:

DE: Nick Bosa
DT: Jurrell Casey
DT: Jeffery Simmons
DE: Justin Houston
LB: Shaq Thompson
LB: Alexander Johnson
CB: Stephon Gilmore
CB: JC Jackson
CB: James Bradberry
SS: Micah Hyde
FS: Kevin Byard

DE3: Josh Allen
DE4: Chase Winovich
DT3: Christian Wilkins
DT4: Shelby Harris
LB3: Danny Trevathan
DB6: Kareem Jackson
DB7: Cameron Dantzler
DB8: Tre Herndon

Rome Eternals

QB Drew Brees 

RB Malcolm Brown 

WR Amari Cooper 

WR Juju Smith Schuster 

WR Will Fuller 

TE OJ Howard 

LT Andrew Whitworth 

LG Kelechi Osemele 

C Brandon Linder 

RG Chris Lindstrom 

RT Ryan Ramczyk

 

WR Scotty Miller 

WR Hunter Renfrow

OT Braden Smith 

RB DeAndre Swift 

RB Chris Thompson 

OL Ted Karras

TE Tyler Eifert 

QB/OW  Mitch Trubisky 

 

DE. Carlos Dunlap

UT Dalvin Tomlinson 

NT Michael Brockers 

DE Dante Fowler Jr 

LB Jordan Hicks

LB Devondre Campbell 

LB Alex Anzalone 

CB Marlon Humphrey 

CB William Jackson

S Duron Harmon 

S Tre Boston 

 

Edge Takk McKinley 

Edge Leonard Floyd 

INT Malcolm Brown 

INT Malik Jackson 

LB Neville Hewitt 

CB Nickel Robley Coleman 

CB Jamel Dean 

S Rayshawn Jenkins 

[rackcs]

New Orleans Jazz

Offense:

1RB-2WR-2TE Base – 45% run, 55% pass

We’re going to stick with what we opened the season in the 1RB-2WR-2TE, although at points during the match we’ll rotate into both 1RB-3TE-1WR and 1RB-3WR-1TE sets. However this week, Allen is going to be throwing the ball a fair bit more with 1 very specific target in mind – attacking Rome’s back 7 and in particular attacking them over the middle of the field.

Attack the middle:

Rome’s current defense plays perfectly into the strength of our offense. As they’re severely weakened at LB, with both Milano and Vander Esch being ruled out, requiring two new starters to come in, we see an opportunity to take advantage of this and frankly an otherwise poor back 7 by BDL standards.

Josh Allen’s strength as a passer is on the intermediate level and we plan to let him use those skills in targeting the middle of Rome’s defense given the aforementioned weaknesses. Moore and Campbell will both be used largely out of the slot, on slants and crossing routes to take advantage of their speed and ability to both separate and pick up yards after the catch.

We’ll get creative with the tight ends as well, incorporating them heavily in the option passing game and throwing in a number of TE screens, seam routes and moving them around the field to try and open up Rome’s defense and decongest the middle once they start to commit to stopping the slants and crossing routes.

Carrying on from that, an ace we have up our sleeve is Mike Gesicki and our plan is to use him quite frequently but split out wide. He has significant mismatch potential, being too athletic for Rome’s reserve linebackers or too physical for a CB Rome will cover him with outside of perhaps Marlon Humphrey (who we suspect will be tasked with DJ Moore regardless).

Should Rome commit all 11 personnel closer to the line of scrimmage, this is where we’ll start to bring John Brown into the lineup and keep them honest, with the wide receivers instructions changing to deeper routes. Should Rome not adjust, we’ll like our chances as Brown, Moore and Campbell is as fast a trio as you’ll find and even if Allen isn’t quite a good deep passer yet, he’s shown that he can throw a good one now and again and at least do enough to make you pay if you don’t respect it.

Run-pass Option & Outside Running game:

As will always be the case with a Josh Allen quarterbacked team, our plan is to give him a number of snaps in an option look and the opportunity to make plays on his legs, pitch it to an RB or get outside the pocket and fling it down field. Given the injuries Rome has suffered and the general lack of quality in their back 7, we know there’ll be opportunities for Allen to make big gains with little injury risk as the LBs are preoccupied with their tight end assignments, or should they commit to Allen, he’ll be able to evade them and pick out the open men on the run to keep the chains moving.

In terms of the running game, we respect the running stopping ability of Rome’s interior. However we also recognise it isn’t a defensive line that offers much in terms of pass-rush outside of Dante Fowler, therefore our plan is to run it to the outside and in particular look to target Fowler to both wear him out and also take advantage of his weakness against the run. This will see a number of counters plays and pulls with the aim to get Johnson, Gordon and Singletary on the edges and able to use their footwork and ability to make people miss and hopefully make some huge gains against a deficient second level of the defense.

Defense:

With both Lindsay and Mack ruled out, we don’t feel Rome has a running game which will present us with a significant challenge as D’Andre Swift’s debut was largely underwhelming and Malcolm Brown was on the BDL streets a week ago and frankly, is not a BDL level running back. Therefore the focus will be on stopping the Rome passing game given the array of weapons they have. However, with Drew Brees starting to look his age and his arm tapering off, we feel as though we’ll be in a position where we can force errors out of him, especially given he won’t have a running game to help him out.

Even though we’re down AJ Bouye, we go deep at corner. Gilmore will erase Amari Cooper (no seriously he will, Gilmore caught more passes than Cooper last time they matched up!) while J.C. Jackson will take Smith-Schuster and Bradberry will take Will Fuller. If Rome comes out with 4WRs, we’ll substitute Kareem Jackson in for Thompson, and Jackson will draw the slot duty or if Rome opts play OJ Howard in a 3WR 1TE set more, then Thompson and Alexander Johnson will rotate on him, with the other taking the running back.

Byard and Hyde will both play at an intermediate level, taking 2 halves of the field. We want them to be in an aggressive mindset as Brees will offer plenty of opportunities for picks with his ducks over the middle and we’re not particularly scared of being beat deep given his weakening arm, although there will be a mindfulness of Fuller on deeper routes. As an extra wrinkle, we are planning on working in a few safety blitzes to catch Rome off guard. With all our CBs being competent in press and being able to avoid being beat easily, we like Byard’s or Hyde’s chances to grab a sack and perhaps force a turnover on a blitz.

On the defensive line, it will be the usual healthy rotation and ensuring that our guys are able to stay fresh and continue to get a push against the Rome offensive line which if they are without Tyron Smith, will be looking very vulnerable. Otherwise, we largely plan to keep it simple and given the injuries Rome has suffered and the talent and depth we've got on the defensive side of the ball, we can keep things pretty simple and force Rome to make extraordinary plays to beat us.

Rome Eternals

Offense 

This week we face a formidable defense coming from New Orleans.  They have a really nice pass rush in their front four and two excellent outside corners.  However, some recent injuries and players aging have left their squad vulnerable in some positions.

We open up in our base three wide with JuJu running in the slot.  With Bouye hurt, New Orleans has three corners that almost exclusively play outside coverage.  If you Gilmore is assigned Juju, insert Cooper into the slot.  One will receive a good amount of targets.  We also expect to run some five wide and attack Kareem Jackson and I don’t know who underneath with super speedster Scotty Miller and slot maching Hunter Renfrow.  Expect Miller to get work in some four wide looks as well as we feel whoever the fourth corner is for New Orleans simply doesn’t have the speed to keep up with Miller and we expect him to get 7-8 targets throughout the game moving the chains on slants and outs plus a deep shot. If they didn't decide to bring five corners we'll exploit this more. 

The other part of New Orleans we feel we can target in the passing game in the second linebacker.  Trevathain has really gone downhill and if he is the number two LB we will hit his coverage early and often.  If it is Thompson we have no problem doing the same thing.  There is a chance New Orleans will run a cover one look with hyde on a TE or RB.  If we see this there are great ways to attack it.  The first is to run combo and rub routes to get receivers open on the outside.  We will run a couple wheel routes with Fuller with whoever Gilmore is on running a drag route to cause traffic for the slot corner.  We will also run some wheel routes and corner routes with Howard and bring in Chris Thompson on long distances to go in motion out wide and do the same.  The second is with comeback routes and outs in off coverage.  We have no problem taking some shots down the field to keep the defense honest if they start cheating up.  We have the WR speed and talent to make this happen and we look to exploit a cover one in this manner.

If we see majority cover two, expect to see more drags and slants to attack the middle of the field 

The three and four wide also give us a light box.  Up front New Orleans has some horses in the pass game but they have some who struggle against the run. The interior of Casey and Simmons are quite good against the pass but we feel we can push them around a bit and especially run at the Houston/Josh Allen side.  We will rotate in Brown and Swift and while neither are game breakers (at least not yet) both are above average backs who can make the correct read and get 4-5 yards on a light front on a consistent basis behind this offensive line.  Per usual we have put two TE look with Braden Smith at fb for short yardage situations 

We are gonna take long methodical drives just doing what Drew does best and taking what the defense gives him.  We probably will just ignore gilmore but if it is a cover one, we will run his assignment directly at the deep safety if not on a combo route to make him stay there, opening up the boundaries for our other weapons

Up front, we realize that New Orleans has some great talent but we really like our tackles and feel our interior can win three vs two battles.  If we start seeing heavy blitzing, Drew can always audible to keep a RB or TE in based upon matchups

We will use motion to see if it is zone or man.  If zone we will run trips on one side and flood that zone with seams flats and out  with flood concepts.  We will also turn up the RPO screen game for heavy zone looks.  Trubisky will get two or three plays in the Tayson Hill WC qb role

 

Tl/dr: Hit the slot WR in three and four wide with wheels in cover one and slants in cover two.  Run at the Hosuton/Alllen side of the field and use our advantage there.  Take what defense gives us and don’t get greedy

 

Defense 

This week we catch a huge break with Michael Thomas being ruled out for New Orleans. It is going to allow us to focus in on the run game and stopping the tight ends as we feel we have the advantage on the outside.

We expect a fairly run heavy offense and we will have 8 in the box to stop it with Harmon serving as the 8th man.  We have a great run stopping front four with the meat wall of Brockers and Tomlinson in the middle.  Dunlap has been one of the best run stopping edges for years while Fowler has shown great improvement over his first two seasons.  Our ends are going to set the edges and make New Orleans run into the meat wall as much as possible.  We have some great instinct linebackers who are solid tacklers as well to make the stop.  We run deep on the the defensive line and will rotate Brown and Takk in when necessary with Floyd and Jackson serving as pass down specialist for Tomlinson and Dunlap.  Our first priority is to key in on the run and trust our corner talent to lead the way against a patchwork WR crew.

DJ Moore is a really nice wide receiver but Marlon Humphrey may be the best corner in football and we trust him to wipe out Moore from the picture.  Parris Campbell looked solid against whoever Jacksonville has as their second and third corner but William Jackson has really gone back to his 2018 form so far this year after an injury plagued 2019. Jackson will cover the opposite outside receiver if Campbell is in the slot or not on the field. Nickell will as always will be the nickel corner and Dean comes in for four wide.  We assume NRC will get Brown in the slot while Dean will match up with Stills..  We have some injuries of our own at the LB position but we luckily have some good depth there.   Anzalone is still healthy at the moment so he’s one of the better cover LB in the game and will draw Ertz with help from Boston in his normal centerfield spot.  Higbee will be shadowed by Jordan Hicks and we bring in Duron Harmon to take the RB out of the backfield.  In their two RB set, Harmon will get Johnson and Hicks will get the other RB.  Two RB, three wide sets, Anzalone grabs the second RB and hicks comes off the field. 

You may have noticed we have Devondre Campbell not assigned a zone or a skill player.  That because his only responsibility all game will be to run with Josh Allen.  He does not care what else is happening until he sees for certain Allen no longer has the ball.  This will keep him as a defacto underneath Robber no matter which way Allen rolls out or runs.  We anticipate a lot of option and QB runs without Thomas and this is our way of stopping it.  We are going to make Josh Allen beat us through the Air with accurate throws to tightly guarded wide receivers.  We don’t think he can do it.

Per usual, we will mix in cover 2 man, cover 2 zone and some cover three flats looks to keep the offense guessing with some occasional blitzing.

Tl/dr. Trust the corners, cover one look allows extra safety in Box.  Campbell spied Allen every play, make Josh beat us through the air.  Trust the corners

[VigilantZombie]

injuries are piling up for NOLA, they had even more occur this week which won't be relevant until next week but this week its greatly affected their weapons. I think both teams have very good defenses but I trust the offensive weapons of Rome more. They're the difference in a very close, low scoring game. 

17-13 Rome

Edited September 21, 2020 by wwhickok

[bcb1213]

Man I think lukic really underestimated my LB depth and Andrew Whitworth lol 

Edited September 21, 2020 by bcb1213

[WFLukic]

4 hours ago, wwhickok said:

injuries are piling up for NOLA, they had even more occur this week which won't be relevant until next week but this week its greatly affected their weapons. I think both teams have very good defenses but I trust the offensive weapons of Rome more. They're the difference in a very close, low scoring game. 

17-13 Rome

Thomas is the only injury I had on offense (a big one admittedly). Unless you count Deebo from the preseason because Campbell got injured during the game.

In any case, take Campbell out and my weapons had:

DJ Moore 8/120/0

Ertz 5/42/0

Higbee 5/54/3

Brown 4/82/1

Gesicki 8/130/1

To go with Allen putting 417 and 4 TDs. They're really not a problem. But no you're right, I really should've traded for Mohamed Sanu who's 13 snaps and 0 receptions would've been a game changer.

For the record Rome has actually lost more starters to injury last week than we did, but somehow only we're affected. 

 

[VigilantZombie]

3 minutes ago, WFLukic said:

Thomas is the only injury I had on offense (a big one admittedly). Unless you count Deebo from the preseason because Campbell got injured during the game.

In any case, take Campbell out and my weapons had:

DJ Moore 8/120/0

Ertz 5/42/0

Higbee 5/54/3

Brown 4/82/1

Gesicki 8/130/1

To go with Allen putting 417 and 4 TDs. They're really not a problem. But no you're right, I really should've traded for Mohamed Sanu who's 13 snaps and 0 receptions would've been a game changer.

For the record Rome has actually lost more starters to injury last week than we did, but somehow only we're affected. 

 

No one said anything about Mohammed Sanu. David Johnson isn't that good imo.

Josh Allen is meh. He occasionally has a big game that makes ppl think otherwise. 

Edited September 21, 2020 by wwhickok

[WFLukic]

2 hours ago, bcb1213 said:

Man I think lukic really underestimated my LB depth and Andrew Whitworth lol 

Eh not really, I just think who you've got in to replace LVE and Milano (two studs) are pretty big downgrades. Hicks is solid but Anzalone and Campbell aren't BDL level starters.

And Whitworth is fine too, just think losing Smith makes you a bit more vulnerable as there is a downgrade and it becomes a matchup Bosa would win with more regularity and would require some extra help and the interior isn't great.

[Scoundrel]

The Jazz sure have the best TE situation in the league and going 2 TE with his injuries is a good call. 

[Scoundrel]

2 hours ago, bcb1213 said:

Man I think lukic really underestimated my LB depth and Andrew Whitworth lol 

And to be fair Whitworth is playing top Offensive Tackle football the first two weeks. The guy is like an ageless wonder.

[bcb1213]

1 hour ago, WFLukic said:

Eh not really, I just think who you've got in to replace LVE and Milano (two studs) are pretty big downgrades. Hicks is solid but Anzalone and Campbell aren't BDL level starters.

And Whitworth is fine too, just think losing Smith makes you a bit more vulnerable as there is a downgrade and it becomes a matchup Bosa would win with more regularity and would require some extra help and the interior isn't great.

I know you probably haven't been watching Cardinals games but Campbell is playing better than most lb in the league and better than Thompson and trevathian for sure 

[Scoundrel]

14 minutes ago, bcb1213 said:

I know you probably haven't been watching Cardinals games but Campbell is playing better than most lb in the league and better than Thompson and trevathian for sure 

In coverage yes but in run D no according to PFF which you are a supporter of correct?

[bcb1213]

33 minutes ago, Counselor said:

In coverage yes but in run D no according to PFF which you are a supporter of correct

I mean if you're gonna use pff as a source, you should probably make sure you're telling truth from the site.  Same rating against run as Thompson and almost twice as good as trevathian 

Ps I'm using him as robber spy anyhow so his run responsibiloty are minimal 

Also, I Am a pff supporter though its not the holy Bible 

Edited September 21, 2020 by bcb1213

[WFLukic]

Haha why is my mans Danny T getting all these stray bullets? He's not playing many snaps at all against a predominantly 10 and 11 offense.

[bcb1213]

5 minutes ago, WFLukic said:

Haha why is my mans Danny T getting all these stray bullets? He's not playing many snaps at all against a predominantly 10 and 11 offense.

Shrug. I imagine he'll be in for short yardage situations