How do you play defense anymore?

[dead_poet]

Really interesting read if you have the time.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10036 ... n-magazine

[LVVikingsfan]

It won't be long before any kind of defense will be a 15 yard penalty and second and third offenses will be subject to fines and suspensions.

[Mothman]

Really interesting read if you have the time.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10036 ... n-magazine

That was definitely interesting. Thanks for the link.

[Reignman]

Very interesting. And did anyone else notice everything that was mentioned is pretty much the opposite of what we do on defense?

No gap crashing, too much nickle-and-diming, no sellout blitzes (especially not on 2nd n short), and forget about the head or going low, we're lucky if we can tackle anyone, and we certainly don't do a heck of a lot of press coverage. And it's hard to double anyone anywhere when you're always in zone coverage, and forget about stunting, that's too complicated, and requires imagination. Yeah this article pretty much summed up what we've been doing wrong on defense over the past decade.

[Eli]

I wonder if the Vikings extensive use of nickel and dime formations has contributed much to their inability to contain the run this year. Tackling across the board has been abysmal, but it's especially bad among the DBs. As bad as Chad Greenway and Erin Henderson have looked at times, they're still ten times the tacklers that guys like Andrew Sendejo and Chris Cook are.