Suggestion Box

Anyone have any ideas?

I didn't really want to bump 5 Questions below the fold this early in the day, but I just have to comment on today's Howard Bryant Washington Post piece on Gregg Williams so make sure you read our exchange with VanRam at Turf Show Times, and in case you missed it, the sordid history of the sale of the Redskins from the estate of Jack Kent Cooke to Dan Snyder is here.

Gregg Williams is out of ideas, and facing a public backlash. Something we've been reading about the Redskins for much of the season, in the tradmed and on the blogs has been that Gregg's stubborn insistence at sticking to the Cover-2 base defense has turned back on the team and opponents know how to exploit its weaknesses. The hot knife in this argument is Tom Friend's now-famous 'Deep Cover' piece on ESPN, which essentially says Gregg fell out with key defenders (LaVar), let others simply go (Fred Smoot, Antonio Pierce, Walt Harris, Ryan Clark), bungled the handling of assistant coaches (Steve Jackson and Jerry Gray) and is basically imperious and immune from blame as to how the Redskins defense could somehow fall from 3rd to 9th to 23rd in two seasons.

Howard's piece in the WaPo is a bit wonky on the ins and outs of cover-2, but we like that. Here's the upshot: Gregg has patterned his own variation of cover-2 that requires the defensive backs to lend a greater amount of help to stopping the run than the standard variation. The rationale is that if the safeties and cornerbacks can shut off the deep passing routes and give run support, the linebackers will have a better chance to get into cover position on the slot receivers and middle routes.

As it so happens, I have hypothesized for some time now that the Gregg Williams defense turns on good DB play, moreso than at the LB or line positions, and this piece seems to validate that hypothesis (here and here).

So why isn't it working? There are three factors, figure out for yourself the proportions:

1. the DB play has been weak all year. Shawn Springs was out with that whole abdomen-reattached-to-pelvis thing (ouch) for five games and was a liability for two after coming back. Carlos Rogers just was not ready to be the number one and spent much of the season doing his best Tom Carter imitation and blaming everyone but himself. Adam Archuleta was either a bust or a victim of Gregg Williams and it's really moot which. Arch's replacements are journeymen at this point, adding insult to injury.

2. the linebackers are inadequate, or being asked to do too much. In this system, they are supposed to cover the run and cover the center of the field, no duh that's what linebackers do. But in Gregg's scheme, or so is the inference in Howard's piece, because the safeties play further back, the linebackers have comparatively more space to cover and one linebacker is explicitly in pass coverage against the slot receiver, so that receiver is often open. This has the effect of opening that gaping hole in the center the field. So fading back in coverage and then running to stop the run has the whipsaw effect of making the linebackers not even understand what they are doing, much less what the opposing offense is doing. If Sean Taylor were not faster than a hyena, a larger number of those long passes into the soft middle would have gone for TDs.

3. the scheme is simply not working. Whether it's because of the personnel (or rather, the personnel that has been jettisoned) or the nature of the scheme itself may be moot. Opposing teams know you can run at the line and freeze the linebackers and DBs, and then after a little of that, pop one deep. I have been amazed at how open the receivers are in the middle of the field.

So Gregg finds himself down a bad road borne of theories looking good on a whiteboard but that didn't play in reality, a plan that could not be executed with the personnel allocated to the problem. Now in the face of public failure is

faced with potentially reinventing portions of his defense, since a good deal of his philosophy relies on

[ideas that don't work.] But don't worry, Gregg is listening to a variety of opinions, looking at all options for success and will present his new plan, sometime after the season ends. Sound like anyone else you know?

It's a good thing football is not played with people's lives.