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Originally posted by GORO:Originally posted by jonnydel:wanted to show the crabtree TD as well:
Arizona loves to play man coverage near the goal and bring heavy pressure. That's what they're gonna do, it's an all out blitz with anyone who's man stays in pass pro is going to blitz as well. Similar to what the Ravens did to us 4th and goal in the SB. So, we're going to run a little "pick" play with Boldin and Crabs and move the launching point to help deal with the blitz.
you see how Arizona overloads the right side - as that's the side we'll run a lot of PA rollouts to. This is us expecting them to stop what they expect us to do. Kind of an "i know that you know that I know" kind of thing. So, we roll out to the left - good call.
You see how Boldin's slant brings his defender in as well and the defender on Crabs has to go around - creating separation.
You see how much extra ground the defender has to cover to stay on his man - impossible.
Lots of separation and an open Crabtree
TD crabs
The last two TD PASSES to Crabtree are starting to remind me of Jerry Rice during the dynasty years! Looks like red zone scoring will be up this year!
Originally posted by thl408:
I think ARI's 'curveball' was the amount of zone coverages they called. Whether it was zone all around the field, or just over the middle, I don't remember them playing this much zone versus the 49ers last season.
Originally posted by jonnydel:
Well that SUCKED again.
After watching the game through a few times I found myself running through a gamut of emotions: frustration, anger, exasperation, sadness and finally hope.
I was frustrated with the missed opportunities, angry at quite a few "Turrible" penalties and others that were missed, exasperated at plays that were there to be made but one guy messed up, sad that we let such a great chance to win go to waste and finally given hope that I can pull my hand back from the panic button a little bit.
First, let me address our coordinators. While the game wasn't perfectly called, I truly can't fault them in their gameplanning.
I'll start with the Defense with Fangio:
The more film I've watched on Fangio the more I've been impressed with him as a coordinator. He really does vary what he does and does a great job of the "chess match" in his calls. He's looking to set the other team up from the defensive side - which you don't see a whole lot. His scheme is rather complex and has a lot of moving parts, but he's almost always got his guys in a position to succeed - not all coordinators can say that. He's rarely beat by scheme and really makes a team play left handed. Sometimes, players make great plays and you have to tip your cap. I don't think anyone expected Drew Stanton(seriously?!?!?) to play like he did. He made some great throws, stepped up in the pocket and played ball. He blitzed a lot more than I'm used to seeing to try and take advantage of a QB who hasn't played in over 3 years.
The Cardinals were helped by some TERRIBLE calls - I 100% agree with Harbaugh when he said Willis, "saw what he was hitting". You could clearly see Willis facemask up when he went in for the hit on Stanton.(that's just one of many BAD penalties I saw).
The big plays we gave up were blown coverage - simple as that. Guys blew assignments that they've done well at in our other games. I'll show it a little later but, the first Cards TD was one of those exactly. We ran a coverage that we got an INT with the first week against Dallas - it was the same route, same defense, but we blew the coverage this time.
Offense, Greg Roman:
I know there's quite a few people who will disagree with me on this simply because you've already made up your mind about Roman but, I can't fault him for our offensive struggles in this game. He called a good game that consistently put our players in positions to succeed. Players gotta make plays - it's as simple as that. You are more than welcome to disagree with me but I couldn't find the evidence on film; of course I don't see everything, but that's what it looked like to me. We had plays to be made, guys didn't make plays. In our first 5 possessions we should've scored on all of them. But, we had 3 vital miscues that blew good opportunities that stalled drives and then had 30 yards of penalties after getting to the 5 yard line on the 5th.....(Boldin's bad one and then a stupid, bonehead clipping penalty).
To the players: First we'll start with the negative on defense:
It was hard to say, "man this guy really cost us in this game" because almost everyone on the defense blew something at some point. There were times I saw all these guys at fault on critical plays: Bethea, Cox, Reid, Culliver, Wilhiote, Ward. Overall, our defensive backfield played very poorly. Not as much in they were outplayed - but mental errors. I think this group is really trying to gel and all click together. Bear in mind, none of these guys played together last year. Cox was in a reserve roll, Culliver on IR, Bethea in INDY. So there's some growing pains going on in the secondary. Our OLB's played much better than last week, but, it wasn't good enough. Willis continues to be a stud as well as Justin Smith. We just gotta shore up and eliminate the stupid penalties and mental errors and we will be back to an elite defense.
The negatives on Offense: Martin and Boone continue to struggle gelling together. Martin played a terrible game, he missed blocks, got beat and had that stupid clipping penalty. Iupati struggled, at times, in space against Campbell; however, you do have to understand that Calais Campbell is Arizona's version of Justin Smith. He's a dominant player that is difficult for anyone to stop every time. But, Iupati does continue to show heavy feet at times.
It's hard to pinpoint what's going on with the offense because it's a lot of "little" things that can blow up plays and they're coming from almost everyone at some point. It's never the same thing over and over again. Which I think is why it's so hard to nail down what needs to be fixed because it's not like you can just say, "well we've got to make a change here".
As I was watching film it seemed, to me at least, that the biggest deficiency on that side of the ball is solid leadership to make each player better and consistently execute well. Michael Jordan made all those who played with him better and play at their best. We're not seeing that with our guys. We're seeing supremely talented players, guys who will dominate at times, have mental lapses, technique lapses and just get beat at times.
The plays are there to be made - we're just not making them.
Bright spots: Dan Skuta continues to really impress. He's very solid, sound football player. He's not going to flash on a lot of plays and he's not a guy to really highlight from film, he just does his job well and doesn't make mistakes. He's very consistent and I have a hard time seeing Ahmad Brooks around next year at a 9 mil cap figure with how Skuta has played.
Hyde shows explosiveness and a "nasty" running style.
Stevie Johnson continues to show that he's a very tough to cover in man coverage and is a nice big body in the shallow middle. He will force a lot of teams to try and stick to zone coverage. Which will open up more things down the road against different teams.
As usual, breakdowns to follow:
Originally posted by 4evrfan:I guess the question I have for everyone who has said we are failing to make halftime adjustments: What adjustments are you looking for? How are we not making them? What constitutes an adjustment?
Originally posted by jonnydel:
Well that SUCKED again.
After watching the game through a few times I found myself running through a gamut of emotions: frustration, anger, exasperation, sadness and finally hope.
I was frustrated with the missed opportunities, angry at quite a few "Turrible" penalties and others that were missed, exasperated at plays that were there to be made but one guy messed up, sad that we let such a great chance to win go to waste and finally given hope that I can pull my hand back from the panic button a little bit.
First, let me address our coordinators. While the game wasn't perfectly called, I truly can't fault them in their gameplanning.
I'll start with the Defense with Fangio:
The more film I've watched on Fangio the more I've been impressed with him as a coordinator. He really does vary what he does and does a great job of the "chess match" in his calls. He's looking to set the other team up from the defensive side - which you don't see a whole lot. His scheme is rather complex and has a lot of moving parts, but he's almost always got his guys in a position to succeed - not all coordinators can say that. He's rarely beat by scheme and really makes a team play left handed. Sometimes, players make great plays and you have to tip your cap. I don't think anyone expected Drew Stanton(seriously?!?!?) to play like he did. He made some great throws, stepped up in the pocket and played ball. He blitzed a lot more than I'm used to seeing to try and take advantage of a QB who hasn't played in over 3 years.
The Cardinals were helped by some TERRIBLE calls - I 100% agree with Harbaugh when he said Willis, "saw what he was hitting". You could clearly see Willis facemask up when he went in for the hit on Stanton.(that's just one of many BAD penalties I saw).
The big plays we gave up were blown coverage - simple as that. Guys blew assignments that they've done well at in our other games. I'll show it a little later but, the first Cards TD was one of those exactly. We ran a coverage that we got an INT with the first week against Dallas - it was the same route, same defense, but we blew the coverage this time.
Offense, Greg Roman:
I know there's quite a few people who will disagree with me on this simply because you've already made up your mind about Roman but, I can't fault him for our offensive struggles in this game. He called a good game that consistently put our players in positions to succeed. Players gotta make plays - it's as simple as that. You are more than welcome to disagree with me but I couldn't find the evidence on film; of course I don't see everything, but that's what it looked like to me. We had plays to be made, guys didn't make plays. In our first 5 possessions we should've scored on all of them. But, we had 3 vital miscues that blew good opportunities that stalled drives and then had 30 yards of penalties after getting to the 5 yard line on the 5th.....(Boldin's bad one and then a stupid, bonehead clipping penalty).
To the players: First we'll start with the negative on defense:
It was hard to say, "man this guy really cost us in this game" because almost everyone on the defense blew something at some point. There were times I saw all these guys at fault on critical plays: Bethea, Cox, Reid, Culliver, Wilhiote, Ward. Overall, our defensive backfield played very poorly. Not as much in they were outplayed - but mental errors. I think this group is really trying to gel and all click together. Bear in mind, none of these guys played together last year. Cox was in a reserve roll, Culliver on IR, Bethea in INDY. So there's some growing pains going on in the secondary. Our OLB's played much better than last week, but, it wasn't good enough. Willis continues to be a stud as well as Justin Smith. We just gotta shore up and eliminate the stupid penalties and mental errors and we will be back to an elite defense.
The negatives on Offense: Martin and Boone continue to struggle gelling together. Martin played a terrible game, he missed blocks, got beat and had that stupid clipping penalty. Iupati struggled, at times, in space against Campbell; however, you do have to understand that Calais Campbell is Arizona's version of Justin Smith. He's a dominant player that is difficult for anyone to stop every time. But, Iupati does continue to show heavy feet at times.
It's hard to pinpoint what's going on with the offense because it's a lot of "little" things that can blow up plays and they're coming from almost everyone at some point. It's never the same thing over and over again. Which I think is why it's so hard to nail down what needs to be fixed because it's not like you can just say, "well we've got to make a change here".
As I was watching film it seemed, to me at least, that the biggest deficiency on that side of the ball is solid leadership to make each player better and consistently execute well. Michael Jordan made all those who played with him better and play at their best. We're not seeing that with our guys. We're seeing supremely talented players, guys who will dominate at times, have mental lapses, technique lapses and just get beat at times.
The plays are there to be made - we're just not making them.
Bright spots: Dan Skuta continues to really impress. He's very solid, sound football player. He's not going to flash on a lot of plays and he's not a guy to really highlight from film, he just does his job well and doesn't make mistakes. He's very consistent and I have a hard time seeing Ahmad Brooks around next year at a 9 mil cap figure with how Skuta has played.
Hyde shows explosiveness and a "nasty" running style.
Stevie Johnson continues to show that he's a very tough to cover in man coverage and is a nice big body in the shallow middle. He will force a lot of teams to try and stick to zone coverage. Which will open up more things down the road against different teams.
As usual, breakdowns to follow:
You make a very plausible argument and I agree with much of what you say. However, it doesn't take into account the personality of the team last year when we had most of our personnel parts in place, yet still more often than not, failed to put 4, or even 3, good quarters together, letting teams back into the game in the second half. rather than extend or pad a lead, we went into conservative mode, or simply failed to make adjustments after the half. I just don't believe it was a series of players not executing a sound game plan that would otherwise have worked. Now, your football knowledge and in-depth analysis of game film certainly counts for a lot, and most definitely exceeds my meager grasp of the game, but sometimes, too much analysis or knowledge makes the obvious more complicated than it actually is. Anotherwords, sometimes if it walks and quacks like a duck.................JMHO
Originally posted by jonnydel:
Even after everything, we still had a shot at 3rd and 20 at the end, we just missed it:
We're just going to run double deep comeback routes. Funny thing is, we win on these plays. Arizona plays a very aggressive defense for this situation. They're going to come with almost an identical defense as the previous play. They run a stunt up the middle with a blitzer - this time we pick it up.
You see the heavy pressure coming.
Ck's got a clean pocket to step up into, but he hops around a couple times with some ancy feet.
You see Ck in his windup. He's got to know that the deep comeback is a "smart" route. It's to get just beyond the sticks so that when the receiver turns around it'll be one yard past the sticks. He's throwing to the side with the chains so he has a great target to aim for.
You see Loyd does a great job of creating separation off his comeback route - he got the corner turned around.
He was right where he was supposed to be, with separation on the defender when the ball arrived - CK just threw it WAY too high.
Only thing I could see is that his front foot is pointed a bit off, shouldn't affect his throw THIS much though. He misses the target by about 6 or 7 feet. I think the pressure from the previous play got to him. But, this is a throw he's gotta make. The play, surprisingly, is there to be made - we just don't make it.
The ball is just past the receiver at this point - that's off by a significant distance, especially when you've got the sticks there to judge exactly where you're going to throw it.
Originally posted by jonnydel:
Originally posted by 4evrfan:I guess the question I have for everyone who has said we are failing to make halftime adjustments: What adjustments are you looking for? How are we not making them? What constitutes an adjustment?
Originally posted by jonnydel:
Well that SUCKED again.
After watching the game through a few times I found myself running through a gamut of emotions: frustration, anger, exasperation, sadness and finally hope.
I was frustrated with the missed opportunities, angry at quite a few "Turrible" penalties and others that were missed, exasperated at plays that were there to be made but one guy messed up, sad that we let such a great chance to win go to waste and finally given hope that I can pull my hand back from the panic button a little bit.
First, let me address our coordinators. While the game wasn't perfectly called, I truly can't fault them in their gameplanning.
I'll start with the Defense with Fangio:
The more film I've watched on Fangio the more I've been impressed with him as a coordinator. He really does vary what he does and does a great job of the "chess match" in his calls. He's looking to set the other team up from the defensive side - which you don't see a whole lot. His scheme is rather complex and has a lot of moving parts, but he's almost always got his guys in a position to succeed - not all coordinators can say that. He's rarely beat by scheme and really makes a team play left handed. Sometimes, players make great plays and you have to tip your cap. I don't think anyone expected Drew Stanton(seriously?!?!?) to play like he did. He made some great throws, stepped up in the pocket and played ball. He blitzed a lot more than I'm used to seeing to try and take advantage of a QB who hasn't played in over 3 years.
The Cardinals were helped by some TERRIBLE calls - I 100% agree with Harbaugh when he said Willis, "saw what he was hitting". You could clearly see Willis facemask up when he went in for the hit on Stanton.(that's just one of many BAD penalties I saw).
The big plays we gave up were blown coverage - simple as that. Guys blew assignments that they've done well at in our other games. I'll show it a little later but, the first Cards TD was one of those exactly. We ran a coverage that we got an INT with the first week against Dallas - it was the same route, same defense, but we blew the coverage this time.
Offense, Greg Roman:
I know there's quite a few people who will disagree with me on this simply because you've already made up your mind about Roman but, I can't fault him for our offensive struggles in this game. He called a good game that consistently put our players in positions to succeed. Players gotta make plays - it's as simple as that. You are more than welcome to disagree with me but I couldn't find the evidence on film; of course I don't see everything, but that's what it looked like to me. We had plays to be made, guys didn't make plays. In our first 5 possessions we should've scored on all of them. But, we had 3 vital miscues that blew good opportunities that stalled drives and then had 30 yards of penalties after getting to the 5 yard line on the 5th.....(Boldin's bad one and then a stupid, bonehead clipping penalty).
To the players: First we'll start with the negative on defense:
It was hard to say, "man this guy really cost us in this game" because almost everyone on the defense blew something at some point. There were times I saw all these guys at fault on critical plays: Bethea, Cox, Reid, Culliver, Wilhiote, Ward. Overall, our defensive backfield played very poorly. Not as much in they were outplayed - but mental errors. I think this group is really trying to gel and all click together. Bear in mind, none of these guys played together last year. Cox was in a reserve roll, Culliver on IR, Bethea in INDY. So there's some growing pains going on in the secondary. Our OLB's played much better than last week, but, it wasn't good enough. Willis continues to be a stud as well as Justin Smith. We just gotta shore up and eliminate the stupid penalties and mental errors and we will be back to an elite defense.
The negatives on Offense: Martin and Boone continue to struggle gelling together. Martin played a terrible game, he missed blocks, got beat and had that stupid clipping penalty. Iupati struggled, at times, in space against Campbell; however, you do have to understand that Calais Campbell is Arizona's version of Justin Smith. He's a dominant player that is difficult for anyone to stop every time. But, Iupati does continue to show heavy feet at times.
It's hard to pinpoint what's going on with the offense because it's a lot of "little" things that can blow up plays and they're coming from almost everyone at some point. It's never the same thing over and over again. Which I think is why it's so hard to nail down what needs to be fixed because it's not like you can just say, "well we've got to make a change here".
As I was watching film it seemed, to me at least, that the biggest deficiency on that side of the ball is solid leadership to make each player better and consistently execute well. Michael Jordan made all those who played with him better and play at their best. We're not seeing that with our guys. We're seeing supremely talented players, guys who will dominate at times, have mental lapses, technique lapses and just get beat at times.
The plays are there to be made - we're just not making them.
Bright spots: Dan Skuta continues to really impress. He's very solid, sound football player. He's not going to flash on a lot of plays and he's not a guy to really highlight from film, he just does his job well and doesn't make mistakes. He's very consistent and I have a hard time seeing Ahmad Brooks around next year at a 9 mil cap figure with how Skuta has played.
Hyde shows explosiveness and a "nasty" running style.
Stevie Johnson continues to show that he's a very tough to cover in man coverage and is a nice big body in the shallow middle. He will force a lot of teams to try and stick to zone coverage. Which will open up more things down the road against different teams.
As usual, breakdowns to follow:
You make a very plausible argument and I agree with much of what you say. However, it doesn't take into account the personality of the team last year when we had most of our personnel parts in place, yet still more often than not, failed to put 4, or even 3, good quarters together, letting teams back into the game in the second half. rather than extend or pad a lead, we went into conservative mode, or simply failed to make adjustments after the half. I just don't believe it was a series of players not executing a sound game plan that would otherwise have worked. Now, your football knowledge and in-depth analysis of game film certainly counts for a lot, and most definitely exceeds my meager grasp of the game, but sometimes, too much analysis or knowledge makes the obvious more complicated than it actually is. Anotherwords, sometimes if it walks and quacks like a duck.................JMHO
Just because we're not scoring doesn't mean we haven't made any adjustments - in Greg Roman's case, sometimes it was because of making too many adjustments.
It sounds like everyone has latched on to this phrase, "not making halftime adjustments" as if it's a concrete truth. Like we're coming out and running the exact same plays the second half that we are in the first and the other team is running completely different defenses. I see that when a team continues in it's defense, we have continued to call the kinds of plays that have been successful in the game against that defense. Then, when they do new things or "make adjustments" we have tried other things.
The chicago wasn't anything like that, Chicago ran the same defense almost the entire game - we just stopped executing in the 2nd half - it really was that simple. Chicago ran cover 3 zone all game - there are no adjustments to be made to your gameplan when going against that. You simply execute the plays as they are called - there is no chess match, it's just execute.
Originally posted by jonnydel:
This was perhaps the biggest play defensively for the Cardinals all game. Sack on CK near the end of the game. It was a good design by Arizona, but, not impossible for us to complete.
Arizona shows heavy pressure with 7 guys at the LOS. They only bring 5 though and back out. This is to confuse the lineman and make it harder to identify the blitzers and who's going to block who.
You see the OLB's drop in pass coverage and they bring a double "Dog" cross blitz with the inside LB's
We end up with 3 on 2 on both sides, leaving the delayed cross blitzer coming in. Boone has a shot, but, it is tough duty to pick up a small guy like that. However, he does want to be paid like a top 5 guard - a top 5 guard will make this play.
He tries to throw his shoulder into the guy and instead whiffs on the block. We have Carrier who's going to come open for the check down for Ck too.
You see Boone hit the deck after his whiff and at the same time Ck moves to his check down to Carrier the blitzer is in his face. He has no where to step up to, no where to go with a guy running full speed at him.
They only brought 5 against 6 and still had a pretty much free runner at the QB. It's a complicated thing to pick up in real time, but, again, these guys are expected to be able to handle this. There are worse O-line's in the league that can handle these type of blitzes. It was just a really bad time to lose the protection.
