New insite into Smith's Defense

I listened to the Richard Smith interview on 610

http://www.sportsradio610.com/The-Sports-Page-w--John-McClain---Anna-Megan-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.

barrett said:

I listened to the Richard Smith interview on 610

http://www.sportsradio610.com/The-Sports-Page-w--John-McClain---Anna-Megan-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.

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

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.

barrett said:

I listened to the Richard Smith interview on 610

http://www.sportsradio610.com/The-Sports-Page-w--John-McClain---Anna-Megan-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.
.

Click to expand...

barrett said:

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.

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

HOU-TEX said:

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

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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.

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.

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.

barrett said:

...so i don't know if having your corners play man makes it a zone defense.

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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.

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

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.”

CloakNNNdagger said:

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.”

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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.

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.

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??

thunderkyss said:

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

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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.

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.

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.....

Grid said:

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?

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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.

Grid said:

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

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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.

Grid said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

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.

thunderkyss said:

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.

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??

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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.

Gah. I've been wanting this sort of discussion for a long time and I can't get the radio interview to play. Any hints?

Texans_Chick said:

Gah. I've been wanting this sort of discussion for a long time and I can't get the radio interview to play. Any hints?

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I found it easier to use the podcast feature instead of the feed from 610.

Most of the issue (other than disguising type) seems to come from whether we are "Reactive" or "Pro-acive". It looks that in a lot ways we are reactive. Not sure how I feel about a defense that pretty much just plays off of what the offense puts out. There are pos and cons to each. Pro-active has the biggest opportunity for making a big play against the offense, but also has the possibility of having a big play against them if they get caught doing the wrong thing. The reactive seems to be the safer (Vanilla?) of the two as it would seem to lessen the chance for either to make a big play unless one or the other makes some sort of mistake.

A Vanilla look defense with smart athletic players that can churn out Neopolitan at the snap is what we are looking for. How the staff breaks that out in position and unit drills as well as in reviewing tape is where it will all shake out.

On defense I have always loved organized chaos and trust that we have the players to execute.

I hope I eat crow, but I think our defense will be bottom of the barrel until Smith is gone. Does anyone think our defense that makes backup QB's look like hall-of-famers is going to suddenly jump to above-average this coming season?

MightyTExan said:

I hope I eat crow, but I think our defense will be bottom of the barrel until Smith is gone. Does anyone think our defense that makes backup QB's look like hall-of-famers is going to suddenly jump to above-average this coming season?

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Yeah i thought he was bad from day 1.

Seems to me that it's a way for a d-coordinator to cover up his inability to decipher an offense and then tell his defense what to do to counter the offense.

He's making his players do all the heavy lifting. He's making them line up in a "We don't know what the heck to expect" formation, and then the whole defense (line, LBs, and Dbacks) has to react and decide what to do when the ball snaps? Okey dokey. That explains why we're a bend-but-don't-break defense.

You know what? This just makes me even more amazed that the man is our d-coordinator.

Go ahead and flame me. Call me a hater who only spews negativity. Our defense would do so much better with a d-coordinator who tries to DICTATE the action from start to finish.

So the offensive coordinator for the Colts must be pretty stupid too. I mean, he just lets Peyton call the plays and doesn't have to do anything. Obviously that guy can't decipher what the defense is doing so he just tells Peyton to go out there and do something to counter the defense.

buddyboy said:

So the offensive coordinator for the Colts must be pretty stupid too. I mean, he just lets Peyton call the plays and doesn't have to do anything. Obviously that guy can't decipher what the defense is doing so he just tells Peyton to go out there and do something to counter the defense.

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He can do that because his QB is. . . Peyton Manning.

GP said:

Seems to me that it's a way for a d-coordinator to cover up his inability to decipher an offense and then tell his defense what to do to counter the offense.

He's making his players do all the heavy lifting. He's making them line up in a "We don't know what the heck to expect" formation, and then the whole defense (line, LBs, and Dbacks) has to react and decide what to do when the ball snaps? Okey dokey. That explains why we're a bend-but-don't-break defense.

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This is the NFL - braun, brains, athletic ability and reacting on the fly are key attributes and competencies needed in order to play this game on defense.

Maybe you would rather watch the game from your spine melter 3000 and get your football voyeurism on via this style of play



BTW, I am not a huge fan of Smith and my statements are more about the developing personnel. They can be exclusive of one another.

barrett said:

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.

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Think of what the Colts do offensively. They generally send the same guys out on most plays, and they generally line up in a handful of formations.

ARe they going to run, or are they going to pass?? You don't know, because the package is the same. So you have to guess at what "defensive package" you're going to throw out there.

Then they show their formation, but again, they run so many plays from the same formation, you still don't know what's coming. So you have to guess again.

Then they snap the ball.. regardless what anyone else might tell you, they are a very good play action team. They run the ball effectively, and Peyton does the same thing almost flawlessly until he hands the ball off, or loads up to throw, you don't know, until it's too late. So again, you have to guess.

By that time, you've stacked up three, maybe four guesses, and they may all be wrong..... you're beat, and you're beat bad, if that's the case.

Now, one thing Peyton does, is "stare" at a player until he throws the ball. Many folks think he is staring down his reciever, like that theiv'n SOB David Carr used to do... But Peyton was looking at our player. A safety, or a LB.. He knew where his player was going to be where he's supposed to be, just like he's been all week in practice.

Many of their plays target a specific player, a LB, or a safety. & Peyton would stare him down, until he makes a decision. Didn't matter to Peyton which way he chose, if he went high, Peyton threw low, if he went low, Peyton threw high.

That had absolutely nothing to do with our talk about defense, I just wanted to take another shot at YKW.

But if we always look the same, what's Peyton going to audible too??

barrett said:

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.

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Simply put, if our main focus is to pressure the QB, and we "refuse" to blitz... That tells me we're so bad behind the defensive line(whether your DL is good or bad doesn't matter at this point), that our M.O. is going to be to play it safe for a while.

buddyboy said:

So the offensive coordinator for the Colts must be pretty stupid too. I mean, he just lets Peyton call the plays and doesn't have to do anything. Obviously that guy can't decipher what the defense is doing so he just tells Peyton to go out there and do something to counter the defense.

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Did Peyton Manning just walk in and create the Colts offense? "Hi, I'm Peyton Manning and I would like to show you my 5-inch thick notebook of plays that's going to turn this franchise around...now, everybody gather 'round and looka' here for a second..."

Jeez...it takes a system, and then it takes the players to work the system.

Anybody who defends Richard Smith and thinks he's going to work wonders in Year 3 is yet again a hopeless romantic. Give it up already. I will go out on a limb and say that the raw athleticism of Mario, DeMeco, and Amobi...coupled with D-Rob in the backfield...has been the defense's saving grace thus far. It's definitely not the creative wizadry of Richard Smith's philosophy.

We have a d-coordinator problem. I hope this is his last year.

It's just my opinion and preference, but I like a defense that wants to go out and hurt and destroy something. Screw the waiting for something to happen, let's just light'em up. That has the propensity to get burned at times, but I like the "Tude". Probably just me and how I think.

I too prefer an aggressive defense that doesn't let the plays come to them, they dictate how the plays are run with their ruthless tenacity.

GP said:

Seems to me that it's a way for a d-coordinator to cover up his inability to decipher an offense and then tell his defense what to do to counter the offense.

He's making his players do all the heavy lifting. He's making them line up in a "We don't know what the heck to expect" formation,

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I really think you totally missed the point of what the defense is doing. They line up the same every down but they play a different defense every down. It is not a read and react defense it is a normal defense presented in brown paper. You have no idea what it coming at you till it is unwrapped.

As for the playcalling, this is not greatly effected by how we line up in my opinion it is a philosophy of boom or bust vs. bend not break.

I am a bend not break supporter but obviously people here want us to go all out on attack, lets get Buddy Ryan back in here and fire up the '46' defense and get us some big plays....

I love the cartoon of buzzards sitiing inthe tree. "screw it, let's go kill something". My kind of folks.

I'm going to be honest here, I have no idea if Smith is a good co-ordinator or not. I know though you can't make chicken soup out of chicken sh....

Our defense has been down on talent in the back half for a while now, we are starting to turn the corner on that.

I like the concept of what Smith wants to do, I trust Smithiak's judgement, so I am going to give him a chance to build something great.

Something I think we are too short sighted and too reactionary, and need to give things time to grow and develop.

Signed,

A guy that was a Carr supporter for far too long.

kiwitexansfan said:

I'm going to be honest here, I have no idea if Smith is a good co-ordinator or not. I know though you can't make chicken soup out of chicken sh....

Our defense has been down on talent in the back half for a while now, we are starting to turn the corner on that.

I like the concept of what Smith wants to do, I trust Smithiak's judgement, so I am going to give him a chance to build something great.

Something I think we are too short sighted and too reactionary, and need to give things time to grow and develop.

Signed,

A guy that was a Carr supporter for far too long.

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We gave Carr time to grow and develop and look where that got us..j/k

We just don't have all the pieces yet to field a dominant defense.

cuppacoffee said:

We just don't have all the pieces yet to field a dominant defense.

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I think with Molden, Adibi and Okam on board we are getting close though.... A lot of this is on Demps turning a pro bowl alternate season into a pro bowl level season.

This is just my opinion, but I've often watched Manning and many other QBs pick apart Ds by watching how they line up and calling audibles all day long. Why show them what you are going to do? I like the idea of not showing them. Whether somebody (like the DC) should go ahead and call a D play beforehand or the players should somehow react to what the O does, I won't get into all of that; but, I like the premise of not just showing our cards and hoping the other guy can't find a way to beat them.

For those saying they don't like all the cutesy stuff and let's just go out there and be manly men and knock everybody on their butts, why do you think the Patriots cheated? Strategy is a huge part of the game, and that's not going to change. It's a big part of any kind of game that's worth watching.

I don't know if Smith is worth keeping at DC, but I like this idea. There has to be something good about him or he wouldn't be here; so maybe this "vanilla" business is it.

Another thing that strikes me about this is that it is a D that may make bad or inexperienced players look worse; BUT, it could be a great help in putting us over the top if we ever go on a SUPER BOWL run. It sounds like something that makes bad players look worse and makes good players even better.

The main drawback from my point of view is that I don't like not having a true FS on the field; but, if I had known this is what we were really doing, I wouldn't have complained so much.

There's probably been a thread on this already, but I'll ask again; do you guys reeeeally think Ray Rhodes' job is just to coach up the DBs?? Or is he a defacto assistant DC?

Me thinks that some of you are also forgetting that the reason the D didnt blitz much the first year was because they were just transitioning from a 3-4 and still trying to get the system down. Last year the secondary was so beat up that they couldnt afford to rush LB's and leave bigger holes in coverage.

Even so, dont expect much blitzing from this team no matter who the DC is. Kubiak wants most of the pressure to come from the front 4 with an occasional blitz.

ObsiWan said:

There's probably been a thread on this already, but I'll ask again; do you guys reeeeally think Ray Rhodes' job is just to coach up the DBs?? Or is he a defacto assistant DC?

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I said it before when Rhodes was hired- I hope he's in the booth on gameday making Smith sweat....................

kravix said:

Me thinks that some of you are also forgetting that the reason the D didnt blitz much the first year was because they were just transitioning from a 3-4 and still trying to get the system down. Last year the secondary was so beat up that they couldnt afford to rush LB's and leave bigger holes in coverage.

Even so, dont expect much blitzing from this team no matter who the DC is. Kubiak wants most of the pressure to come from the front 4 with an occasional blitz.

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That's a good point about the transition from 3-4 to 4-3 the first year.

And you're right that Kubes wants a D where we can get pressure from the front 4. He's said that many times. The first couple of games last year, we only blitzed on a few rare occasions. As the year went on, we blitzed more and more and we played less and less zone as the year went on.

I was really looking forward to our defense last year because over the last 13 games of the previous year, the defense had really performed pretty well for the most part. The injuries really killed us. But ultimately, injuries or not, we just didn't get it done last year.

You jackass thunderkiss. the thing that manning does is get rid of the ball in 2.5 seconds.

Looks like another serf falling on his sword for the franchise & the king. We're running Petie Faggins back there in the back seven, we ain't blitzing. I fuggered that one out.

ObsiWan said:

There's probably been a thread on this already, but I'll ask again; do you guys reeeeally think Ray Rhodes' job is just to coach up the DBs?? Or is he a defacto assistant DC?

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Given Ray's health issues, I doubt he is a DC in waiting. However, he will have a lot of influence due to his level of experience as a DC which is what Smith is lacking. I see Rhodes as a support system for Smith, but not his replacement.

edo783 said:

Given Ray's health issues, I doubt he is a DC in waiting. However, he will have a lot of influence due to his level of experience as a DC which is what Smith is lacking. I see Rhodes as a support system for Smith, but not his replacement.

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That works for me.
Is anyone besides me worried that Richard Smith will be the one talking to DeMeco on the field? Please let it be Rhodes and not Smith.

ObsiWan said:

That works for me.
Is anyone besides me worried that Richard Smith will be the one talking to DeMeco on the field? Please let it be Rhodes and not Smith.

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Its just gonna come in as interference....those mics dont pic up screaming very well.

TheRealJoker said:

I too prefer an aggressive defense that doesn't let the plays come to them, they dictate how the plays are run with their ruthless tenacity.

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really?! im a fan of a conservative, passive defence myself

Not saying.


http://www.nfl.com/draft/story?id=09000d5d808186c7&template=with-video&confirm=true

['Big Nickel' is getting bigger
Speaking of Tyrell Johnson, there is a growing desire in the NFL for defenses to play more "Big Nickel" defense. You often hear about teams substituting a corner for a linebacker when their opponent sends in an extra wide receiver. Nickel defense is still a very critical part of any NFL defense, but -- with the large influx of athletic tight ends that present a vertical threat in the passing game but also handle a 5-foot-9, 190-pound nickel corner in the running game -- teams are looking to develop a three-safety package.

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just saying. We carry lot of SS types.