Donald and Suh to blame for poor run defense?

Marcas Peters constantly watching for interceptions instead of playing his man doesn’t help with the pass defense either.

In all the years of watching football at the NFL, college, college intramural, high school, jr high flag, sandlot tackle, two hand touch street, Tudor Electric football, TECMO et el, I don’t recall ever seeing consistent blown wide open coverage like last week in Seattle.

Peters was unbelievable…… can Hekker play corner?

nittany ram wrote:

I wonder if the main issue with the Rams run defense is a tendency for Donald and Suh to abandon their gap responsibilities in an effort to get to the passer? As a result teams are seeing this tendency and are running into the gaps that they voided.

The one player who has openly stated he himself was doing that, is Brockers.

.http://theramshuddle.com/topic/going-into-week-6-what-are-the-problems-on-d/#post-92151

“Personally for me. I feel like I was just trying to get out there and get to the quarterback or make plays in the back field, stopping the running stuff. Just doing way too much when I could’ve just been doing my job and everything would’ve handled itself.”

So Brockers openly says he himself WAS doing what you say Donald and Suh were doing.

Remember the Dallas game last year? The D was getting pushed all over the field in the first half and then in the 2nd half, that stopped. After the game Barwin came out and said the problem was that in the first half, everyone was free-lancing too much and not playing the D the way it was drawn up.

That has been a tendency of Wade’s Rams D all along. It goes in and out of playing like a disciplined unit.

Right now the Rams YPC on running plays (ranked 29th) (and last year 28th) is the worst it has been since 2011 (when they were also 28th).

nittany ram wrote:

Hmmm, well I’ll need to verify the legitimacy of that source.

I’ve never heard of this “LA Times”.

And the name ‘Gary Klein’ sounds made-up to me.

Yeah sorry the link takes you to the wrong post. It’s the post before the one the link prefers (ie. it’s the one before the Klein article post).

That post contains IMO the best analysis of what’s wrong with the D we’ve seen yet. Here’s the key line, from VB: “Their fourth-quarter defensive play shows what they are capable of when they lock down on their assignments and play disciplined.”

And…screw the link, here’s the whole post:

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from Rams Q&A recap: Vinny Bonsignore

My personal feeling is Peters isn’t totally healthy, and some of what he usually can do from an athletic standpoint he just isn’t able to do right now. I think he might have to make an adjustment to compensate – which I believe he has to some extent. But if I’m a fan, I remain patient. When it’s all said and done he’s going to be fine

The defensive struggles against the Seahawks, I felt, was related to honoring Russell Wilson and dealing with him and some guys trying to do too much. They got burned in the counter game as a result. Once they started playing more disciplined and focusing on their individual assignments it got better. That said they have to do a better job tackling. They were attacking much too high on runners I felt

They need to play the full game the way they play the fourth. They’ve only given up three points in the fourth quarter over the last three games. Only six all together.

No question the Seahawks were taking advantage of the Rams aggressive rush.

This is what Michael Brockers told me when I asked him basically about that very thing:

“Definitely got to have great assignment on your end because it’s like we have to squeeze a box on him. I said it before you have to kind of collapse on him and if you don’t collapse on him you leave that open and he’ll take advantage of it. His guys do a great job of doing the scramble drill and you know, getting open when he gets to moving around. It’s definitely a strategic way to rush Russell Wilson.”

“Yeah, because we got everything together. We got on the sideline, came together, and just talked about how we needed to improve as a defense and do better for our offense. Our offense did a hell of a job today and we just wanted to step up for those guys most importantly. It’s just about playing defense. Executing the defense, the way we should. Everybody tries to play the game within the game and I think that was a big deal with me today is trying to read what I’ve got and play off of it and stuff like that. As long as we do what we practiced and win our gaps, execute, and just dominate, I think we’ll be fine.”

“Personally for me. I feel like I was just trying to get out there and get to the quarterback or make plays in the back field, stopping the running stuff. Just doing way too much when I could’ve just been doing my job and everything would’ve handled itself.”

Their fourth-quarter defensive play shows what they are capable of when they lock down on their assignments and play disciplined. They just need to get off to better starts

VB: Their fourth-quarter defensive play shows what they are capable of when they lock down on their assignments and play disciplined.

More on this:

Coach Sean McVay’s staff is reminding the defensive front seven to stick with their gap assignments, although McVay identified at least one big Seahawks run in which the coaches put the players in a poor defensive scheme for the situation.

“What we’re encouraged about as you watch it as a staff are they’re very fixable things,” McVay said. “I think our players will respond the right way.”

link: https://www.kentucky.com/sports/article219834435.html#storylink=cpy

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nittany ram wrote:

I wonder if the main issue with the Rams run defense is a tendency for Donald and Suh to abandon their gap responsibilities in an effort to get to the passer?

Well as stuff in this thread shows it’s the front 7 in general. But yeah lack of gap discipline.

We’ll see if that’s the story. It’s simple If it is they will be better just by fixing that. If they’re not better than that’s not the major culprit.

nittany ram wrote:

I wonder if the main issue with the Rams run defense is a tendency for Donald and Suh to abandon their gap responsibilities in an effort to get to the passer?

This turned out to be a big topic in Ramsdom because the Rams addressed it during the game and then VB took it up as an issue. The whole gap discipline thing.

So, how significant is it? Denver is 3rd in rushing yards and 1st in yards per carry. They’re playing at home against a leaky run defense. In the snow.

If the Rams can make any progress with this kind of thing, now’s the time to start. Otherwise we’re looking at another 2000. This time with a Dream Team defense.

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InvaderRam wrote:

i’m not sold yet.

Hi. What are you not sold on? That it was all gap stuff? Or are you not sold that they will fix the gap stuff? (I don’t have an answer, just curious what you are saying.)

I think they didn’t have to address it before because before, the opposing teams were forced to abandon the run. Plus the Vikes can’t run against anyone. Seattle was the one game so far where the other team came out and said we will run at you the whole game and keep it close.

zn wrote:

Hi. What are you not sold on? That it was all gap stuff? Or are you not sold that they will fix the gap stuff?

i’m not sold that they will actually fix it. i believe them when they say that’s the problem. i’m skeptical that it can be fixed this season.

my guess. and it’s only a guess. is that they are abandoning gaps in order to overcome some other shortcoming. if they stay gap disciplined, who’s to say that the opposing offenses won’t shred them in the air? there’s no outside pass rush, and talib is out. my guess is they will have to concede something either way. and if they come across a more balanced team, it’s just not going to work – as in the playoffs.

i don’t think it can be fixed this season. unless ogbo is just what they need and talib comes back and peters gets healthy. just too many variables at this point.