Hand-cuffed!!!
I have been preaching the same thing all season... and frankly, I'm getting tired of it. This coaching staff doesn't put this defense in position to succeed against good teams. They don't take advantage of the players skill-sets. They don't even gameplan to keep players away from situations where their weakness can be exposed. That just doesn't make sense.
You have guys at both safety positions that struggle in coverage... especially deep, yet you continually play a "cover 2" where your cover corners play a short zone and hand off deep routes to these guys? Does that make sense to anyone? You would think that the inconsistancy and lack of success with this scheme would make the coaching staff (Bill Parcells) rethink their philosophy on the defensive side of the ball. I am left scratching my head with this one. We have to be the only team in the NFL that runs a passive 3-4 defense. This is just one example of how a stubborn, micro-managing head coach is hand-cuffing his players and their potential.
Look at the season to this point. They have two wins... I repeat, two wins against good teams this season. That's it. The Giants and the Colts. The Colts game, as I have mentioned, was a completely different scheme defensively. It was the players who went to Zimmer... they begged Zimmer to let them open things up a bit. The gameplan was brilliant. The result was great. So why abandon that philosophy? Then there is the Giants game. A game against a team that was wounded and looked like they were ready to pack it in. This was a game that the Cowboys won in spite of the defensive gameplan. They were really lucky that Romo and Gramatica bailed them out in the end. It was real close to being decided by a coin-toss. So how good is this team?
This one is on the the coaching staff. They were outcoached in every aspect of the game. If the philosophy on defense is not trashed immediately, this team will lose the division and can expect nothing more than a first round exit.
- S
posted by Shawn @ 9:02 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Well put, Shawn.
The 'Boys were completely handcuffed by ultra-conservative defensive scheming. Sure, it worked on the Saints first drive and kept us afloat thru the first quarter,
but when your boat starts leaking that badly you don't bail-out the water, you abandon ship.
That's precisely what halftime is for:
re-group,
re-scheme,
adopt Plan B if necessary.
What I just can't understand is this:
When Romo was given the helm the Offensive playbook immediately changed in a dramatic fashion, precisely to take advantage of his skills.
"We got us a playmaker, let's use him".
So why the hesitancy on the other side of the ball?
------
On the dim side, there is always the chance that the coaching staff will decide NOT to change anything:
"It got us this far. If it ain't broke don't fix it".
Note to Zimmer:
It's BROKE!
And if that is so obvious to a bunch of armchair quarterbacks like us then every Offensive Coordinator in the league surely sees it in glaring, ten-foot-high neon letters.
On the bright side, with three games left and a Division-lead (albeit a slim one), there is still time to make changes.
It's doubtful we'll see anything as sudden or as dramatic, especially this weekend against a team that just begs for a "contain" Defense. But one can hope the light bulb has finally lit and adjustments will be forthcoming.
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