New insite into Smith's Defense
 

I listened to the Richard Smith interview on 610

http://www.sportsradio610.com/The-Sp...-Raley/1616945

He described in some detail about how they are setup.

It's designed to be a vanilla "look" where every time the quarterback lines up and reads the defense it looks the same. There are two safeties over the top (no SS, no FS) big athletic corners are in press dedicated to a specific side (not dedicated to specific receivers) LB's are in the same neutral position (no Sam, no Will) and the four down linemen are as we've seen them, rotating.

now all of that info wasn't in the interview. i'm paraphrasing from the discussions and observations we've had recently in TC's thread: http://texanstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49255

but i think we're narrowing in on what Smiths Defense is supposed to look like.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

So in other words......Zone?

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

well smith said that they like for the corners to play man and press at the line because it seems to be easier for them. so i don't know if having your corners play man makes it a zone defense.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

Does this not sound like a form of a zone coverage?

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

It SOUNDS like it would be set up for zone. It sounds like it's set up for a 2-deep zone.

But I imagine that the coverage shifts based on the reads. If the opponent lines up a certain way, they go to zone; if they line up another way, they go to man. The idea is to make it so that the QB can't determine what they're going to do just be alignment.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

right. so i don't know if that defines what type of defense we run other than it's hard to read and based on the defense reading the offense and adjusting after the snap. i realize that pretty vague but it's info none the less.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

I remember reading a couple post game quotes from players of the opposite team. IIRC, one of them was Winslow Jr. I remember him saying that our defense was very "vanilla" and easy to find open space. There was another game that someone made similar remarks about our defense, but I can't remember who.

Either way, it has to improve because it's not very good. Whether it be personel, coaching or scheme, they were far from impressive.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

It's called a man-under coverage, where the CBs are in man vs. WRs, the LBs in man vs the RBs & TE, with safeties in a 2 deep zone. Not that different that a Tampa 2 defense, except the man-under is more susceptible to crossing routes & picks. That's a base defense coverage, when the offense lines up in the standard 2 WR - TE - FB - RB.

But as Smith says, they're just trying to show a man under coverage. After the snap, they could go into any other type of defense. Including a blitz. They just haven't done that very often.

Thanks for the link. :)

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

thats a different scenario because we had been decimated by injuries and smith had already said that he had to "dumb it down" so that the younger backup players could handle the scheme. we were discussing earlier about what his scheme is suppsed to be if he has the right players in place. by the time we played cleavland it was like a base defense.


edit: in reference to the winslow quote

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

A defense that is designed to appear vanilla, i.e., the same on each play, cannot run the same way on each play. If you look vanilla and stay vanilla, the results will be vanilla.......ala the Texans last year. As the offense is supposed to be “unprepared” for a vanilla same-appearing defense, this strongly depends on the defense not being predictable (vanilla) on their responses, i.e., who will rush, who will fall back, who will switch assignments/player coverage. All this depends on a strong and consistent DL.......and a smart set of Lbs, DBs and Cbs who can read and instinctively react. All of this is quite personel sensitive. Unfortunately, thus far, Smith had not compiled the “proper” personel through last year.........and has apparently thus far been teaching only remedial “reading.”

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

Took the words out of my mouth. You need a very smart group of very talented players to run a D like that and right now, we might have 5 or 6 guys who could play D like that. I also think you would need a very smart DC to send in the right calls to keep the O off balance. So far, those calls have been sorely lacking. Very, very talented safeties would be needed too. You would need two safeties big enough for run support and fast and agile enough to cover WRs' on any given play. All things considered, I don't think I like this as a defensive scheme. I'm more of a "this is what we do, see if you can stop us" guy. All the cutesy, gimmicky stuff doesn't work out well over the long haul. Just line up and smash the other guy in the mouth harder than he smashes you in the mouth.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

I appreciate the report on the interview.

I think that the defense is a good idea, it offers versatility, and hopefully gives nothing away, causing the offense to worker harder.

What I question is what happens we aren't in a classic 4-3 and go to Nickel, Dime etc. Do we still play the same vanilla look just lined up differently?

As has been said it would be a scheme that demands a high degree of intelligence by the player, but the Texans value that and draft for that so it will hopefully come together.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

I think all this "what kind of defense do we run" stuff is just a bunch of blah-blah-blah for bored fans in the offseason.

It's a freak'n 4-3, period.

No, it's not a Tampa 2, which is just always playing your safeties deep. It's not a big deal, it's nothing special...... it's really pretty vanilla.

We want to generate pressure with our front four..... we want both safeties to play the run as well as the pass(i.e. no true FS, & no true SS, regardless what the depth chart says, they're safeties).

Our corners line up to their side, and they're generally in press coverage....

I think we're overthinking this whole defense thing. Second guessing our coaches and what not.

do you think the guys in New York are wondering what kind of defense they're running?? I could be wrong, but I don't think their looking for any kind of description other than 4-3.

sure, they know they're going to get after the QB, with relentless pressure. But who isn't trying to do that?? can you call that your identity??

We're a bend but don't break defense.

It's a freak'n 4-3, why do we need to define it further than that??

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

Because as fans we want to understand what makes OUR team tick, we want to know every little bit of info we can.

And because we want to believe in our defense andbuy into the vision of what is happening because last year the defense wasn't good and we need to understand why it wasn't and how it will become good based on what we are trying to do.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

from a "logical" point of view (and I use that term lightly).. wouldnt this mean that we are kind of making it easy on the opponent?

If we line up in a vanilla defense every time..we are not forcing them to play to our strengths..we are telling them "run whatever play you want to".

Im not saying that this is an altogether bad thing.. but it seems like we need to do more than just mask our defense.

I mean..if we are going to make the opponent unable to read what our defense is doing, then we need to capitalize on that by causing turnovers. That is the only benefit we can really get from playing a vanilla look...

Seems we need to be a bit more fiendish with our coverages.

OR i might be tired.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

That's fine, and I understand that. But they've been telling us what we've been trying to do on defense from day one, but because it doesn't have a cool name, like West Coast offense, or tampa 2, it seems some fans are at a lost for what we are trying to do.

What would you call Baltimore's defense?? I mean other than a 3-4...... what are you going to call it??

We want to get pressure on the QB. We want to stop the run. We want to stop the other team from catching the ball.....

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

No becuase most offenses will take what the defense gives them, adjust to take advantage of the weakness they see. If you show nothing they can't adjust to it. This means they can't change to a play that will make the most of defense 'X' they just need to take a punt.

The defense does more than just mask the defense, from within this 'vanilla' look we have all the schemes (I presume) that other defenses run, it just doesn't comminicate this to the opposition or to the casual observer. Down side of this is that it must make it hard to get the hang of.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

We're not making things easy on the opponent.

We line up vanilla but that doesn't mean we necessarily play the same thing every time. I mean, that's the point. We line up the same way and then based on the call and the reads, we change the coverages. Sometimes we play a 2-deep zone, sometimes we play man-under, sometimes we play other zones, sometimes we play straight man, sometimes we blitz, sometimes we zone blitz. The idea is to not give away what coverage you're using.

Other teams try to disguise their defense by showing all sorts of different movement. We try to disguise our defense MAINLY by not showing our blitzes or our coverages via our alignment although we do fake blitzes as well.

But the players have to make the plays. They have to really disguise the defense. And it would really help if we got more pressure up front.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

i'm sure for the most part it's all designed to beat the colts. after all, thats the basis of peyton's offense. he walks up to the line, looks at the defense and calls the play accordingly. it's not called in the huddle. it's a read and react offense. it wont do well when it can't read and it wont do well when it gets pressure from the front four. in theory of course. it's done well against us for years.

Re: New insite into Smith's Defense
 

for the record, and i think kiwi said it best, i'm not looking for a name or some stupid thing to yell out at the games. i want to understand what my team is trying to accomplish. i want to know what they are thinking.