Purple Reign wrote:
Just to clarify myself a little bit more, I see that comment being pretty much similar to saying something like "We've determined that the problem with us losing is that the other team scores more points than we do, but the next week the other team still scores more points than we did" which to me is a bit ridiculous. Obviously knowing what the problem is and being able to do something to correct it are 2 different things. While identifying giving up 3rd down conversions is a problem, it's over simplistic to think it would be easy to fix since I'm sure there are many different defensive coverages that are used depending on the yardage and not a problem with just a single 3rd down defensive strategy.
I can tell you've been thinking a lot about this. But, I don't think those two things are as similar as you think. Let's look at it logically - winning and losing is an end result - an outcome. Third down defense is but a small part of the overall end result, a means to an end, if you will. Even then, it is somewhat broad, considering the complexities of football, but certainly more narrow than simply looking at the score. You have to look at the various
reasons for the final outcome, in order to improve that outcome. As it were, on drives that ended in a poor outcome, defensively, the last two weeks, third down conversions played a large part in those poor outcomes. You can narrow the scope even further, by looking at all those third down plays, and attempting to find a common thread (or common threadS), that may have been contributing to the more broad outcome of failure on third down, and that in turn, will hopefully work its way allllll the way up the ladder to the end result of the game. Clearly, the coaching staff is going to go deeper than just saying "we need to score more points than the other team"! As you alluded to, it's much more complex than one single 'third down strategy'.
I don't think anyone implied it would be easy to fix that one specific problem (that being, third down defense). However, I think it's reasonable (week to week) to continue to look at that small piece of winning/losing, and determine what improvements have been been made in those situations, and whether it affected the overall goal of playing better on third down. Rome wasn't built in a day, so I doubt they will "fix" it this week, or probably next week, or the week after. That said, I don't believe it's unreasonable to ask for some improvement, considering it's a problem that has clearly been identified, and presumably being worked on.
The article was written in such a way, that it points out, that the above steps should be in the works, considering one of the Vikings defensive players alluded to third down defense as a problem, last week. Essentially what I take from it, is despite that process, the third down defense has not yet improved (fixed?, that may be a bite over zealous) after one week. Clearly, it is something that will be monitored, week-to-week. As with in any industry, one would hope incremental improvement will be made in the time after a problem has been identified.
