Greg Blache Defensive Scheme!!

[GTripp0012]

But when you get right down to defense, and you ask: how many points per drive do you guys give up, the Redskins finished 6th in that measure last year (9th in yards per drive). Even though that doesn't consider turnovers, that's the very high water mark for determining how strong of a defense we are. If anyone was wondering, the five teams I listed as "undeniably better" finished 1-5 in pts per drive. They all created more turnovers and opportunities for the offense than ours did, and that's why I wouldn't even rank us as high as No. 6 based on last years results.

It's all mental masturbation anyhow. Our defense set the tone for the entire season, playing better than .500 ball at the beginning of the year, and worse than .500 in the end of the year. The overall product was almost perfectly average. I, too, hope to see more contributions from the offense this year, but the FO was correct to invest the help on the defensive side.

[The Goat]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

But when you get right down to defense, and you ask: how many points per drive do you guys give up, the Redskins finished 6th in that measure last year (9th in yards per drive). Even though that doesn't consider turnovers, that's the very high water mark for determining how strong of a defense we are. If anyone was wondering, the five teams I listed as "undeniably better" finished 1-5 in pts per drive. They all created more turnovers and opportunities for the offense than ours did, and that's why I wouldn't even rank us as high as No. 6 based on last years results.

It's all mental masturbation anyhow. Our defense set the tone for the entire season, playing better than .500 ball at the beginning of the year, and worse than .500 in the end of the year. The overall product was almost perfectly average. I, too, hope to see more contributions from the offense this year, but the FO was correct to invest the help on the defensive side.

GT curious what you think was behind that 2nd half (of the season) dip in defense? Looking at injuries Marcus was out the most...we went 7-4 when he played and 1-4 when he didn't overall i believe. Springs was there off and on too but IMO his performance late in season was pretty paltry. Anyway i'm sure there was more too it than injuries so curious what you think.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by The Goat

GT curious what you think was behind that 2nd half (of the season) dip in defense? Looking at injuries Marcus was out the most...we went 7-4 when he played and 1-4 when he didn't overall i believe. Springs was there off and on too but IMO his performance late in season was pretty paltry. Anyway i'm sure there was more too it than injuries so curious what you think.

Statistically, I can say the biggest decliners were:

1) Horton
1a) Horton
2) McIntosh
3) Evans
4) Carter (mostly due to injury, some regression to mean)

And then there was some regression to mean from Rogers, who was other-worldly in the first six games.

The rest of the decline was Blache being overtly dumb.

But then of course there were the other culprits who we're disappointing the whole year:

1) Smoot
2) Landry
3) Jason Taylor, to an extent

I thought Blache called a pretty good first half of the season, but maybe that was just the schedule. A lot of inexperienced offensive lines and poor passing offenses made all the blitzing not-ineffective. But then when we saw that Dallas' and New York's of the world, it was pretty embarassing to watch.

And for the record, I thought Blache called strong games against the Seahawks and Ravens (and an excellent one against Philly). But the decline was in full swing by that point. This suggests, to me at least, that while Blache was hardly at all responsible for the decline, he simply became part of the problem in the second half of the season.