Defensive over pursuit

[Seth Griffith]

Stay with me for a second...I feel like we have an over pursuit problem, especially with R. Wilson. I’m not saying that I don’t want us getting after the QB/RB.

I just feel like I see a guy fly by a “would be sack/tackle” for loss more times than I would like to see. Now, I know that there are so many factors to how every play starts and finishes. But why am I feeling this as I think about our season so far? I will gladly sit here and color the rest of the year and just go back to only reading the forums, daily. Am I alone here?

 

[badnews]

Stay with me for a second...I feel like we have an over pursuit problem, especially with R. Wilson. I’m not saying that I don’t want us getting after the QB/RB.

I just feel like I see a guy fly by a “would be sack/tackle” for loss more times than I would like to see. Now, I know that there are so many factors to how every play starts and finishes. But why am I feeling this as I think about our season so far? I will gladly sit here and color the rest of the year and just go back to only reading the forums, daily. Am I alone here?

Our D line definitely isnt approaching Wilson the same way they did under Fisher, where they found a successful system by maintaining gap integrity while "slow rushing" Wilson, using his line to collapse his pocket and simultaneously limiting his short-QB vision issues.

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

The Rams win that game if a few DBs stick to their man instead of letting them wide open, so they can track down Wilson. Hopefully Troy and Jalen are shown the mistakes from that first game and figure out what others before them couldn't.

 

[NoCoNite]

No it was the zone coverage. And the scrambling.

If you guys have espn+ Peyton Manning does a detail of RW in the specific game, kind of showed you how he took advantage of our zones. At one point they had 4 receivers going down field and only 3 guys covering deep. But a lot of was just amazing throws from Russell.

 

[TexasRam]

I rewatched that game trying to understand how we let him loose. We usually contain Wilson real well.

A few observations:

This was one of Reeder's first games starting. Maybe his first. Wade hadn't seen Reeder in full action vs a Wilson type. Wade used Reeder as the Spy so to speak, dropping in zone in the middle, and supposedly protecting the middle vs Wilson running. This was a horrible plan. Wilson repeatedly ran through the middle exposing Reeder multiple times with ease. Critical third downs were easy money for Wilson who used this poor game plan perfectly.

Even when Reeder did rush and get in the backfield, he missed the tackles on Wilson and Carson.

Previously, Barron handled these duties and did pretty well, he has the quickness, speed and experience to know how to not over persuit, break down and take the dude down.

Rapp was also out in this game which would have been the ideal spy guy over Reeder.

Aaron Donald was steal dealing with back pain and was sitting at times in this game. Of course once they saw Donald and Fowler sitting the went deep for the TD vs former Peters who is the perfect guy to target in that situation.

We finally adjusted down the stretch in the fourth Quarter and stop them on consecutive drives but shot ourselves in the foot by false starts (Allen), dropped TD's (Woods) dropped pass leading to interception (Everett) and after all that a missed 40yd FG (GZ).

Biggest problem though was Reeder in the middle. Can't do that vs Wilson.

 

[Oregonram]

Ummmm, I’m not letting Fowler off the hook in this game. He must have run right past Wilson at least 5 times and lost gap integrity completely. RW uses the cruddy blocking to his complete advantage. It’s like he is throwing a screen pass to himself. I could excuse Fowler’s over pursuit once or twice, but he didn’t learn from RW’s consistent runs right through his vacated gap. Hopefully Wade will dust off Fishers gameplan for the midget and do a better job when birds come to LA.