Vonnie Holliday on WQAM

Porter can't fight through blockers... as evidenced by him being invisible when he'd put his hand in the dirt and go heads-up on a Tackle. He excels in space, or coming off an open edge standing up. That was his bread and butter and I dont think it has changed since he arrived here.

Jason, recall, started as a 4-3 defensive end for us, and did very well fighting through blocks, though he also excels at rushing off the weakside, and playing in a bit of space too (very versatile, that JT).

I'd rather have Jason dealing with the tight end than Porter... otherwaise you essentially have 10 men out there.

now, many will point out that TEs effectively blocked JT early last year, and they're right... but that was NOT the norm for jason. He came into the season unprepared (thanks Cam for the soft camp and all the rest you gave him so he could last through the 1-15 season). in previous years, and hopefully this year, he will show up in better shape fro day one, ready to get physical with TEs.

hopefully Porters knee will be stronger this year too and we'll see a more dynamic rush, better fluidity and leverage and directional change out of those legs of his.

Bpk

 

I've posted many times how I believe JT will come in from DWTS in the best shape of his life, but there's one thing that worries me: is he keeping up his weight strength training? I worry about that because you need to have strong arms and hands to fend off tight ends and OL in the scheme JT is going to be playing in, and I hope he has not been neglecting this important area of strength training.

 

i would love to be able to put Porter back to the WOLB he excelled at in Pittsburgh instead of the SOLB spot hes been playing here... but generally the SOLB in a 3-4 gets more coverage assignments and id rather have Porter covering a TE than JT...

 

It will be crazy having Porter and Taylor opposite one another on the defensive front. They are going to wreak havoic all year long.

 

I am really not thrilled by the idea of having either Taylor or Porter playing the strong side. I have a feeling one of them wont be here through the entire offseason though, leaving probabaly Quentin Moses the strongside guy.

It was pretty crazy last year when they did it. Unfortunately, the extent of their havoc was what they inflicted on our run defense while getting throttled by tight ends.

 

That would mean that Saban was a better DC then Capers, I would tend to agree, Capers showed -0- last year, and IMO that was a huge problem with our Defense.

I think we will see two new starters at Safety, notice Vonnie mentioned those two, but not Jason Allen? As the scheme grows more complex, Allen is just behind the learning curve right now.

I believe that Traning Camp will sort out the Will and Sam Lb's, I'd prefer JT as the strongside backer and JP as the weakside, JT has more experience fighting through blocks to stop the run, and "if" we have Vet Safeties who can help JT on coverages we will see an improved defense.

We can easily flip JT and JP during a game anyway..

 

I dont think that's a realistic assumption you can make. What was there for Capers to solve scheme-wise? I've asked that a half dozen times, and have yet to get an answer that makes any sense, especially not in consideration of promoting the contributions of a long time NFL DC to a guy who spent 2 years as a HC.

 

Saban squeezed production out of players that Capers could not do a thing with, guys like Roth and Daniels were productive with Saban's "D", and did -0- with Caper's "D", that to me is the difference between the two coaches and their schemes.

 

Its safe to say that neither of them were utilized properly last year.

Putting Porter at DE was ******ed seeing as hes been a pass rusher his whole career and doesnt have the size to play that position. And JT was just used sparringly at one position due to our summer vacation camp and our players being soft.

Now, bring back a D like Saban had and let JT go back to being used in the "jack" role and add Porter as a LB and we would definitely be on the right track. I'm anxious to see the result of all the depth we've added to our front 7 in the draft and FA as well.

 

I don't think the DL played the same under Capers as they did under Saban. I don't remeber the stunts and movement that we saw from Saban under Capers. Capers seemed content to try to confuse the O-line by bringing blitzes from different places. Only other than JT we didn't have any LBs that blitzed very well. With Saban I don't think the O-line new where the end/takle infront of him was going, much less where the blitze was coming from. This is just my impression and I don't get to see all of the games so...

 

Saban is a defensive genius, he was also a very good coach. I know he screwed us over but its hard to imagine we would have been 1-15 last season with him here.

All and all Im glad we have who we have now....no harm no foul.

 

Sometimes you have to be absolutely horrible (1-15) to eventually get back to greatness. If we were just mediocre/****ty (6-10), then we still might have Cameron here. In a way, being absolutely awful and enduring last year will make us better in the long run since we now have a much better Front Office imo and have seen some nice roster moves and a much better draft.

Only one way we can go from here right?

 

Correlation does not imply causation, especially in the absence of a concrete reason for it. Capers ran Saban's defense. Roth and Daniels essentially had the exact same responsibilities as they did the previous year. If anything, Capers preference for 1-gap, blitz heavy defensive schemes would have provided reasoning for better individual performances for both of those players. The difference is they both had injury problems, and they both were effected by the loss of the overall pass rush.

Joey Porter has been playing DE his entire career. He was a DE in college, and since that time, he's been often lined up in 3-point stances as a DE in 4-man nickel and dime packages in Pittsburgh. Besides basically Bill Belichick, and ironically enough Dom Capers, virtually every team that runs a base 3-4 defense in the league primarily also uses a 4-man defensive lines on passing downs, with one, or sometimes both starting OLBs as DEs.

Capers was essentially forced out of his preferred 3-man front Nickel and Dime packages because of awful depth. He had no rotation from whom to draw the required players for it. The teams contingent of bigger DEs and pass rushing DTs was awful. Kevin Carter was gone, Jeff Zgonina was gone, and the overwhelming bulk of the season saw either Matt Roth or Vonnie Holliday injured. Rodrique Wright was essentially a rookie. Chase Page had no game experience to my knowledge, neither did Robinson or whomever whose name escapes me now.

Hell, in fact, the depth that that position was so bad that for the middle part of the season, the team was essentially forced into lining two of Traylor/Soliai/Fifita up next to each other, or playing them on passing downs, neither of which are parts of Capers or Sabans defense or the least bit desirable.

The majority of Jason Taylor's "creative" use came out of shifting between 3 and 4-man lines, and the bulk of his use as a linebacker came out of 3-3 nickel and 3-2 dime fronts in Saban's scheme.

Capers preferred defense utilizes all 1-gap players, and is even more blitz and shift happy than Saban's. The defense that Capers helped pioneer, the zone blitz, is one of the most aggressive and most innovative out there.

Not only that, but characterizing Saban as that aggressive doesnt really strike me as correct relative to Capers. In base defensive formations, Saban still had a 2-gap "bubble" where the strongside DE and NT were playing conservative, run-first responsibilities.

Capers cant really be blamed for the players he was given.

 

No, Capers tried to run Lil' Nicky's defense, who was much better at disguising coverages and blitzes then Capers was, and Dom also refused to start Jason Allen until there literally was no other option, ditto Rod Wright or even Quentin Moses.

 

I dont think you can realistically say a guy who helped invent the zone blitz defense is much better at disguising coverages than anyone. That's kind of the exact operative factor of a defense Capers had at an elite level on different stops.

Also, the defensive coordinator does not have sole disgression to start players. That's the head coaches decision.

Also, Rodrique Wright got on the field week 4, hardly terrible for essentially a rookie player. Quentin Moses was on the field the second game played after he was signed, and even then the first game he missed was the Giants game, and he was signed two days before.

 

Right, but the question was what did he do last year. Did you see as much going on with the D-line last year as when Saban ran it? I don't mean that Saban was more aggressive in a bringing fun and unusual blitzes type of way; I mean he was trickier in a Sun Tzu type of way. I think it was a lot harder to look at our D pre snap and know what was going to happen across the board. It was more than not knowing exactly where the blitz was coming from. Some times they did run a two gap, some times from the exact same formation they ran one gap slants, or stunts. That is what I think was missing last year.

And yes I think Capers gets some of the blame for personell. I have no inside information, and could be totally wrong about this, but I cannot believe that Mueller didn't get Capers opinion on Bowens or Carter before he dumped them. I don't think that Capers knew what was going to happen with our D. I think he thought he had the right guys just like we all did. Remeber how good our D line depth looked in the preseason?

 

I am not ano authority, obviously, on the defensive co-ordinator postion... but even early in the season, before we were decimated by injuries, it was bovious in sevral games that:

1) Capers continued to play Porter with his hand in the dirt way way wayyyy longer than he should have. It was obvious that Porter sucked as a down lineman and was a non-factor on almost every play. Capers was absolutely mis-using him, even WITH Joey not being 100% from injury and not fully conditioned, apers put him in a poistion that is NOT given to Porter's strageths, and made it even harder for him to be productive. then Capers kept doing it, as if he couldn;t see the obvious.


2) A lot of where you see coaches earn their money is in their halftime adjustments. I saw Capers' defenses getting hurt in 1st halves, often because of coverages or schemes being victimize by a consistent offensive strategy... like a certain area of the field that was being attacked, or a certain player being used against us a lot... and Capers would send us out in the second half with no adjustment, no answer to that. He either didn;t see what was happening, had no answer, or thought no change was necessary. All three would be wrong, as those teams continued to beat our unadjusted defense with the the same strategy in the second half. sometimes he would adjust halfway into the fourth quarter, pissing me off even more, as it proved he was ABLE to think of and implement an adjustment but was waiting until we'd already lost the game before doing anything about it.


Rant done.

And, by the way, since his arrival in houston his defenses lacked the punch they had in previous years. Perhaps he was a great 3-4 innovator in his Pittsburgh/Carolina.. maybe even Jax days.. but something along the line got obsolete or too comfortable, I guess.

 

Porter has put his hand on the ground his entire career, and there was no real reason he could not be successful doing it. The problem was, teams were running on those passing down formations, and it wasnt nearly just Porter- It was Taylor, and it was the lack of guys we had who could play DT in those situations.

He didnt have the depth to put a speed rusher other than Porter on the field, nor did they have the depth to put 3 "bigger" guys on the field in passing situations.

An absence of success is not an absence of adjustments.