Clips from Tampa Bay (Mike Pettine Edition)

[AlexGreen#20]

I wanted to grab the longest play allowed from each drive.

+++

First Drive

Playing the 3-3 Nickel against the 12 Personnel. 

Dropping into a Cover-2. 

Lowry, Clark, Keke and Z rushing the passer.

Preston dropping to the second level along with Jackson, Savage, Barnes, and Alexander.

Sullivan and Amos playing as the back half defenders. 

--------------------------------------------------

Slip screen off to the right. Barnes is going to drop and not be able to get to the RB in time due to the lineman coming to block him. Jaire is going to come up and whiff on the tackle. Kenny Clark is going to chase this down from the back end.

While I hate playing the Cover-2 out of the 3-3 against the 2 TEs personnel, there wasn't anything from a personnel perspective here causing problems. This was a nice job only allowing 6 yards.

+++

Second Drive

Playing the 2-3 Dime against the 11 Personnel.

Playing cover-4 (I believe it's 4, Josh Jackson at the top doesn't force an inside release so it could be Cover-6)

Zadarius and Preston are going to rush.

Clark and Keke are both going to drop. I think there was a miscommunication here, and only one was supposed to drop, because they both tried to drop into the same zone.  Sullivan, Green, and Barnes are going to be the other 2nd level defenders.

Jackson, Alexander, Savage, and Amos are each responsible for a deep quarter.

--------------------------------

It really doesn't get much more easy to exploit than this setup right here. The Bucs line up their RB as the outside receiver which holds Josh Jackson to the far right side. Sullivan typically plays the right side slot against right handed QBs. That doesn't get switched here despite Mike Evans being lined up in the left slot. Jaire is going to get taken vertically on a run off route, leaving Raven Greene isolated against Mike Evans short. Evans is just going to body him to create a ton of space for a wide open out route for a first down. 

I don't know where to put the blame for this. I understand that you want to have boundary corners playing the outside zones in a Cover-4, but you're wasting Josh Jackson leaving him on a RB, and you're putting Raven Greene in a spot to get his *** kicked by leaving him up against Mike Evans. There has to be some level of flexibility and ability to adjust what is happening based on what the offense is doing. That just isn't happening here. I don't know if it's a lack of flexibility from Pettine, a ton of inexperience at the second level, or just a misguided belief that Greene is better than he is, but this is just badly planned out.

+++

Fourth Drive (3rd Drive was the Pick 6)

Playing 3-4 Base against the 12 Personnel (one of the TEs is an Extra OL)

I think this is a called Cover-4 based on Preston's 2 point stance looking like he's got to be able to drop back in a hurry. It doesn't matter post-snap that much other than that it prevents our pre-snap adjustments from making any sense. 

As the receiver goes in motion, Jackson goes from having the run fill responsibility for the gap outside of the WR to having responsibility for no gap at all. He doesn't serve a purpose in run defense, but still has to stand there because he has to play a zone on that side in case of a pass. 

Rather than filling over to discourage a run to the outside, Amos stays WAY THE HELL OUTSIDE, because they're trying to discourage the pass to Mike Evans and don't seem to care about stopping the run. 

----------------------------

We still haven't figured out how to handle motion with our base defense. It continues to elude us and at this point it should basically be a fireable offense.

The other fireable offense that continues to happen here, is the insistence on letting the Smith's make their own gap assignments. 

What are you even supposed to tell your Linebackers here? Z looks like he's taking the outside edge, so Barnes steps forward to fill the inside, only Z decides at the last minute that he wants to take the inside gap, and Barnes who has already stepped into a gap and has an OL in his face has no way of getting out there.  There's no help coming from the outside because Amos is still out there double teaming Mike Evans. Tyler Lancaster is going to get embarassed on a combo block and leave Barnes dead. 

We play the stop to pass almost exclusively in every situation. It is baffling. The inability to switch gears to a traditional run stopping defense is just criminal. Leaving a wide open running lane due to broken concepts on the goal line is just disgusting.

Somebody also needs to rip into Z and Gary about what the hell they think they're doing with these run fits. Being able to pick your gaps comes with the responsibility of not putting your second level teammates in impossible situations, and both did so several times against the Buccaneers.

+++

5th Drive

Playing 2-3 Dime against the 11 Personnel (RB split out to the top of the screen)

Cover-2 (I think, might be Cover-6, can't tell with Jaire) with another second level drop from Montravious Adams.

The goal is to try and shut down the short passing attack with this defense. They drop 6 guys into second level zones, but Gronk ends up in Adams zones and just kills him. It's better to ask Barnes to play a bigger zone here than it is to drop Adams into coverage and ask him to play over Gronk.

+++

6th Drive

Playing 2-3 Dime against the 12 Personnel.

Man to Man coverage with Cover-2 over the top. 

Z, Preston, Clark, and Keke rushing. 

Amos and Savage playing the back two safety spots.

Jackson ends up on Mike Evans after the cross. Jaire gets matched up on Godwin. Greene ends up matched up on Brate. Gronk and Jones both stay into block holding Barnes and Sullivan.

Jaire's just going to get beat here. Nothing more complex to it.

+++

7th Drive

Three consecutive incompletions on this drive. Great drive for the defense.

Cover-1 Man across the board.

Z, Clark, Keke, and Preston rush. Barnes blitzes. 

+++

8th Drive

Don't know what the hell is even happening here and apparently neither did the Packers because Keke couldn't get off the field in time and got flagged for 12 men on the field. 

2-4 Nickel against the 11 Personnel. 

Cover-1 Man across the board. 

Preston, Lowry, Adams, and Gary on the line. Zadarius is playing the stand up middle linebacker and is going to pick the A gap he blitzes for. Barnes is going to get the other A gap. 

Rashan Gary is going to blow this. He has to pick a gap so that Adrian Amos filling in behind him can take the other gap. Instead Gary gets locked up by Gronk, Amos guesses the inside gap and Jones takes the outside gap for a huge gain. 

Once again, letting the OLBs pick their own gaps is coming back to bite us in run defense.

1-4 Dime against 11 Personnel. 

Cover-1 Man across the board. 

Z, Preston, Gary, Clark, are rushing with Barnes on the blitz. 

Josh Jackson is going to get beat here, but it wasn't a horrendous play. He did the right thing when you get beat, but Brady ended up underthrowing it and he blindly runs through the WR. This happens, but it's a bad look for Jackson. 

3-3 Nickel against 12 Personnel. 

Cover-1 Man across the board. 

Preston, Lowry, Adams, Keke, and Z on the rush. 

Gronk is going to run a pretty good route off the line. Raven Greene isn't going to have terrible coverage, but Brady is going to land it beautifully. 

+++

9th Drive

3-4 Base against the 12 Personnel (Extra OL as the 2nd TE)

Looks like it was a going to be a Cover-3. 

Gronkowski is going to go in motion and this time we're going to be smart enough to bring a safety down into the box to fill that gap. We do everything right when it comes to scheme here. And it's not gonna do a damn bit of good because Montravious Adams is going to get reached and embarrassed at the point of attack. This is brutal. 

+++

10th, 11th, and 12th Drives were just surrender ball. 

+++

I actually don't even remember where this was in the game. I don't really even care at this point. 

2-3 Dime against 02 Personnel. 

Cover-1 Man across the board.

Burks is just going to lose Gronk as he goes from his blitzing stance to his drop back. 

Edited October 22, 2020 by AlexGreen#20

[AlexGreen#20]

Thoughts on Pettine go here

[incognito_man]

that goal-line run defense where Z picks the inside gap is super super gross

[PACKRULE]

Nice work AG our video break downs and effort are always tremendous.

Lots of that stuff is as Incog put it gross. I just don't get allot of what we do defensively in consideration of our talent. I get the cover 2 and 6 stuff and the shorter zones but when we drop DL into zone coverage why are we not sending blitzes or something.

2 years ago when we had nothing to work with Pettine seemed to do more and be a bit more aggressive. Just isn't really creative or anything these days.

As incog said...........just gross.

[MantyWrestler]

Can we just stop dropping our IDL into coverage for a while? OMG, they’re bad enough at rushing the QB who expects them to be better at dropping into coverage. It’s got to be a once in a blue moon thing to fool a veteran QB. IMO. 

[AlexGreen#20]

3 minutes ago, MantyWrestler said:

Can we just stop dropping our IDL into coverage for a while? OMG, they’re bad enough at rushing the QB who expects them to be better at dropping into coverage. It’s got to be a once in a blue moon thing to fool a veteran QB. IMO. 

It happened 3 time and only hurt us once for like 14 yards. 

There's much bigger problems.

[PACKRULE]

1 hour ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

It happened 3 time and only hurt us once for like 14 yards. 

There's much bigger problems.

AG you're well established with your knowledge of the defense and schemes. You mentioned there are bigger problems. I feel we are way to passive but in a scheme way what do you feel are our 3-4 biggest problems and do you think they are player or coaching issues?

Thanks again hell of a write lots of time put into this and really for this board not near enough conversations on it?

[MrBobGray]

@AlexGreen#20 Question for you, on top of the ten others already asked in this thread: I haven't had a real chance to take a significant look at All-22 film this year due to time constraints, but does this team ever run cover-3?  Because just looking at the personnel, I don't understand why they don't run a fair portion of cover-3 with Savage playing about 12 off.  King is at his best pressing with his eyes to the QB anyway, Savage is basically your ideal FS for C-3, and it may give Josh J and Burks real chances to turn their career around.  Seems like they play a bunch of cover-4/6, which I feel personally wastes Alexander, Savage and King and just ends up giving QBs easy shots short and mid against our worst coverage guys.  I have a lot more thoughts on this excellent post but I gotta put a pin in until I have time to write em out.

[AlexGreen#20]

3 minutes ago, MrBobGray said:

@AlexGreen#20 Question for you, on top of the ten others already asked in this thread: I haven't had a real chance to take a significant look at All-22 film this year due to time constraints, but does this team ever run cover-3?  Because just looking at the personnel, I don't understand why they don't run a fair portion of cover-3 with Savage playing about 12 off.  King is at his best pressing with his eyes to the QB anyway, Savage is basically your ideal FS for C-3, and it may give Josh J and Burks real chances to turn their career around.  Seems like they play a bunch of cover-4/6, which I feel personally wastes Alexander, Savage and King and just ends up giving QBs easy shots short and mid against our worst coverage guys.  I have a lot more thoughts on this excellent post but I gotta put a pin in until I have time to write em out.

No, if we're not blitzing there's two high every time. We're a Cover-2/Cover-4 defense all day long. 

[MrBobGray]

54 minutes ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

No, if we're not blitzing there's two high every time. We're a Cover-2/Cover-4 defense all day long. 

Interesting, interesting....we play a significant amount of 3-3.....with a cover-2/4/6 shell......

So is this line where I pick up my "Fire Pettine" pitchfork, torch and complimentary T-shirt, or is there another line for that?

Edited October 23, 2020 by MrBobGray

[MacReady]

There isn’t enough Pettine dislike in this.

 

[MrBobGray]

I feel increasingly like Pettine is stuck in the early 10's, and hasn't been able to keep up in terms of updating his concepts to handle changes in NFL offense strategy.  That's probably too broad a statement given my lack of research, but whatever this is a message board not a doctoral thesis.   He seems to play defense from the deep ball forward regardless of personnel on either side of the ball, and it keeps resulting in games where teams are more than happy to just eat the defense alive with the run game and the short-mid range passing game.  Cover-4 is fine in certain situations, but it's a passive defense that strips mid-level defense. 

And actually, as I'm typing, I'm just growing more confused by his concepts.  C2/C4 removes a mid-level defender to reduce the chance of a deep shot, which is increasingly less useful the better your pass rush is.  You don't really need to flood the deep zones if the QB is constantly being moved off the spot.  Calling so much C4 with a good pass rush group just pits your strengths against each other; the rush can't get home because there's always an outlet for the ball with good value, and your high end coverage guys are wasted because they're defending a small zone 15 yards downfield.  And that's on top of dropping your second best outside rusher so that you can rush two NTs instead.  

What even is this defense?  What is it trying to do well?  Does Pettine really feel that just taking the deep ball away and giving up everything else is a winning strategy in a league where the best teams dominate in the short area?

[MantyWrestler]

5 hours ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

It happened 3 time and only hurt us once for like 14 yards. 

There's much bigger problems.

It’s happened more that that this year. We don’t have the athletes at DL to pull this off anyway. Between that, 2 down lineman all the time which makes us very small up front I just can’t stand to watch. Way too much talent for the performance so far. 

[PACKRULE]

32 minutes ago, MrBobGray said:

I feel increasingly like Pettine is stuck in the early 10's, and hasn't been able to keep up in terms of updating his concepts to handle changes in NFL offense strategy.  That's probably too broad a statement given my lack of research, but whatever this is a message board not a doctoral thesis.   He seems to play defense from the deep ball forward regardless of personnel on either side of the ball, and it keeps resulting in games where teams are more than happy to just eat the defense alive with the run game and the short-mid range passing game.  Cover-4 is fine in certain situations, but it's a passive defense that strips mid-level defense. 

And actually, as I'm typing, I'm just growing more confused by his concepts.  C2/C4 removes a mid-level defender to reduce the chance of a deep shot, which is increasingly less useful the better your pass rush is.  You don't really need to flood the deep zones if the QB is constantly being moved off the spot.  Calling so much C4 with a good pass rush group just pits your strengths against each other; the rush can't get home because there's always an outlet for the ball with good value, and your high end coverage guys are wasted because they're defending a small zone 15 yards downfield.  And that's on top of dropping your second best outside rusher so that you can rush two NTs instead.  

What even is this defense?  What is it trying to do well?  Does Pettine really feel that just taking the deep ball away and giving up everything else is a winning strategy in a league where the best teams dominate in the short area?

I can't really answer your question Bob but it sure seems like it.

Well stated though we do not seem to be playing to our strengths. Pettine did more in year 1 with less then he did in year 2 and 3 with more.

[PACKRULE]

2 hours ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

No, if we're not blitzing there's two high every time. We're a Cover-2/Cover-4 defense all day long. 

That is so counter intuitive to having a King and Alexander on our roster. We draft guys to cover and play soft zone. Pettine did not learn that from Sexy Rexy that's for sure he loved to leave his corners on an island.