The Lions just announced the hire of Jim Caldwell as their new head football coach. The hiring immediately caused me to wonder what was going on in the Lions front office for this to happen. It seems like an obviously bad hire to me, but instead of just simply saying that, I decided to look a bit into it and see if the evidence matched my perception.
No reason to waste anytime for this so let’s get right into the Defensive side of the ball.
With the end of the regular season and time being limited to do a true player breakdown in recent weeks I did an overall view of the teams in the NFL to put together my all-pro team.
In 196 attempts Nick Foles has solidified himself as the Eagles starter, likely for the long term. His bulk numbers are at a level that no second year quarterback has done in 29 years. Beyond the 19 touchdowns to no interceptions what is more impressive about Foles season is forcing Chip Kelly’s hand with Vick. Vick was having a fairly good year throwing and added a very good dimension to the rush offense. What Foles has lacked in rushing he has made up for in passing.
For the second straight week I will not be looking at a specific player for analysis but rather a team. Last week we checked out the Seahawks “Cover 3Hawk.” The Chiefs are a much different breed in their ever changing defense. Chiefs excel in showing several different defensive formations. Chiefs, with the injury to Atkins, may have the best interior line player not named JJ Watt. Continue reading
The NFL at time can be a very complex game that has many moving parts that seem to be constantly changing. We used to have John Madden giving us a very profound “BOOM” when evaluating offensive linemen and Jaws would take over a Monday Night Football broadcast by breaking down the intricacies of quarterback play. We got a taste of the zone read last year and it lead to a lot of conversation on how to stop it. The NFL is always changing and evolving.
Pete Carroll’s defensive philosophy does not have this same evolving belief. The Seahawks playoff run last year opened many eyes to cornerback Richard Sherman. Sherman has found a home with fellow CB Brandon Browner and safeties Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas. They play in what I’m referring to(with props to our EIC Nath) as the ‘Cover 3Hawk.’
The very much publicized last minute heroics of Matthew Stafford has been shown a number of times and was even NFL Replay’s game of the night last night. But what exactly happened on that last drive that left Kris Durham wide open and Calvin Johnson what may have looked like an easy catch to take him down to the one yard line?
I went into the tape for Jordan Cameron not looking for anything in particular. He is a player who has exploded onto the scene after having a huge preseason and carrying that momentum into the season. Cameron’s bulk production is way, way up from last year. He caught 20 passes for 226 yards and 1 TD then. This year, he has already caught 45 balls for 515 yards and 6 TDs.
A talking point of many analysts right now is how the Packers will rebound with the Randall Cobb injury. A major point that many analysts are keying on is the running game that the Packers may have finally found. They’ve had a 100 yard rusher in 3 of their last 4 games, all 3 games are a different running back accumulating the 100 yards. So I decided to take a look at Eddie Lacy.
One of the interesting questions of the early part of this season is “What is the problem with Cam Newton?” Â Cam is in his third season and is undoubtedly struggling. His bulk numbers are not good so far this season:
All of those numbers are worse than his past two seasons. The two eye-popping stats are Cam’s ANY/A and sack%. ANY/A is a statistic that includes a QB’s pass yards, sack yards, touchdowns, and interceptions, as well as the number of pass attempts and number of times sacked. It’s a stat meant to measure overall performance by a QB, and it’s a good starting point for looking at how a quarterback is performing. Cam’s ANY/A is subpar and a significant decline from his first two seasons.
Onto the concerns: Continue reading
Monte Kiffin was hired by the Cowboys to be their Defensive Coordinator despite some red flags: He was 73 years old, and he’d been unimpressive at his last two stops at the University of Tennessee and University of Southern California. (To be fair, head coach Lane Kiffin was probably a much bigger cause of those teams’ struggles.) The Cowboys had been one of the most recognizable 3-4 teams in the league, with their man-to-man cornerbacks and a Hall of Fame player in DeMarcus Ware at Outside Linebacker. So, understandably, the move to Kiffin’s 4-3 Tampa-2 style of defense was criticized in the offseason as being a waste of personnel talent. Maybe, though, the man who invented the Tampa-2 defense and won a Super Bowl behind it still has some tricks up his sleeve. Continue reading
The Giants have started the season in probably the worst possible way they had envisioned. First, they suffered a loss in Dallas in which they outplayed the Cowboys in every way, except for giving away touchdowns and not executing in the red zone. Against the Broncos, they were able to hang on early, but turnovers showed up again, their level of play dropped, and the game ended up becoming basically a blowout.
The questions I keep seeing come up are of this nature: The Giants have this tremendous passing game, due to their three WRs and a good pass catching TE, so why are the problems David Wilson is having even important? (The Brandon Jacobs signing actually made Giant fans happy, when just an offseason before, many were happy to see him go.) With the run game troubles the Giants have had early on, some fans are even asking for the Giants to become like the Detroit Lions of 2011-2012 and have Eli drop back 50 times a game. With the way they can pass, why does the running game matter?
Back in early April, the 49ers signed former shutdown corner Nnamdi Asomugha to a 1-year, 1.3 million dollar contract. Nnamdi had a brutal two years trying to fit into the Eagles scheme. He is two years older than when he left Oakland and is very much not the cornerback he was in 2008. At age 32, though, the 49ers are likely not expecting him to be an elite corner who can cut off half the field– instead they are likely looking for a cheap veteran signing who could be a solid starter.
Needle here. I thought it was only appropriate that for a blog called Zone Reads, I write an analysis of the Zone Read play, and how teams use it and defend against it.
So I’ve finally gotten to spend some time sitting back and enjoying the spectacle that was Robert Griffin III of 2012. After watching the film, I came to a surprising conclusion: Despite all of the greatness that RG3 showed, the biggest surprise I saw was other teams’ inability to adapt to the zone read.
I, for one, believe in the importance of scheme, and have a lot of praise for coaches who can adjust rather quickly and find weaknesses in certain schemes. For example, the Dolphins rocked the Patriots with the pseudo-single wing scheme that is known as the Wildcat. That kind of team performance had yet to be repeated– until last year, when the new breed of QBs brought the zone read to the NFL. Though I put the Wildcat single-wing and the Spread Offense Zone Read into two separate categories, the concept of using scheme to gain a man advantage in the running game is the same. With that said, I want to look at three teams’ attempts to stop this scheme.
Quick note: While I have watched Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson run their offense, I’m focusing solely on Griffin, as I want to keep this analysis consistent and to the point.
OK, I’m going to break a rule of mine with this post, and I’m going to write about my home team, the Jacksonville Jaguars. (This probably won’t be the last time I break it.) With that said, this draft really excited me. I feel a number of teams found some incredible value last weekend, and I’ll take a look at several of them coming up. But I have to start off with my team.
I’ve never known enough information about how teams choose selections to do a true mock draft. (ed. note– that never stops the rest of us!) I leave that for others. Instead, I like to rank the players in the order I’d put them on my Big Board if I was in the draft room. So, this is my “Big Board” for tonight’s draft. I’ve only done my top 40, plus noted where I ranked a couple of guys many people once considered first-rounders.
With the draft just a few hours away, I’ve got some more film review of prospects for our readers to look over. Today we have a couple of guys who have been slowly creeping up the board and are now likely first-round picks.
In this post, we’ll be looking at two potential first-round picks on defense, Missouri DT Sheldon Richardson and Kansas State LB Arthur Brown.
In these next few posts, I’ve looked at some college tape on draft prospects and recorded my thoughts and commentary. Watch the videos and read a bit of my commentary at the end.
We’re going to start with two of the top-ranked defensive prospects in this draft, Alabama cornerback Dee Milliner and BYU defensive end Ezekiel “Ziggy” Ansah, as well as an offensive lineman who has a chance to leap to the top of his position, North Carolina guard Jonathan Cooper.
For this entry in my series, I’ve decided, by request from a reader, to look at Cordy Glenn. He wanted to know if the Bills hit a home run with a left tackle chosen in the second round. Well… why don’t we check it out?
Zone Reads 