Bucs Video Rewind

So here's what I think happened.  Jeremiah Trotter didn't really do very much on Sunday.  He didn't do anything particularly good, nor anything that was really that bad, in the sense of giving up a big play or tackling one of his teammates.  So we never really noticed him all that much.  And since the Eagles won and the defense played pretty well, Trotter must have been fine too.

Not really.

Here's another play where you can see vintage Trotter, at least in terms of how they used him:

Overall, Trotter looked like a guy who hadn't played football in a long time.  That's sort of to be expected, but he really only has about one more week to get that squared away.  The Redskins aren't beating anyone these days, but they always give us fits and we'll need our best 11 on the field that day.

As a note of comparison, here's a look at Omar Gaither:

Beats the block, gets held, still makes the play.

Gaither is quietly rounding into form in that middle position.  Remember that he came out for a bunch of snaps in that last game and check his production.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, Omar was playing on one leg at the beginning of the year.  We won't hear about it until after his season is done, but now that he's healthy, you can see him making plays again.

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Go back to that third video above and note who makes the tackle.  That is excellent work by Macho in run support.  He seems to figure out what's happening much quicker than Mikell and runs up to make a very good play.

For a cornerback-turned-safety, Macho is a suprisingly physical guy.  He lit up a tight end -- legally -- within five yards of the line of scrimmage when he had him in coverage in the flat.  He also had that unnecessary roughness penalty that, you know, you sort of don't want to see but didn't look all that bad to me. 

As he grows into an NFL body and gets more comfortable playing back there, we could be seeing some good things from him.

Now about that whole "coverage" thing.  Some issues there.  But at 5-11, he's not a great match-up against the 6-4 Kellen Winslow.  Education time for the rookie there.  (Might not be a bad idea to get him some more reps against Celek in practice.)

Here was another one:

The ol' pick play.  Good thing the young QB didn't take advantage of it (a common theme for the Bucs on Sunday).

People keep asking me about Macho.  My stock answer is that it's hard to see a lot of what he does.  But I think we're starting to learn more about him.  He's still a rookie when it comes to covering guys one-on-one, but he's better in run support than we had any right to expect and we're still waiting for him to give up his first long touchdown from the safety spot this year. 

All in all, might want to think about moving his jersey up the list.  Although customized as "MACHO" would clearly be the way to go.

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Patterson and Bunkley both got a bit more pass rush than usual.  Although whether that's due to something on their part or the permeability of the Bucs' line is unknown.

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From a big picture sense, and this will sound weird, I think we may have been a bit too aggressive on Sunday with all the blitzing.  Yes, young quarterback and all, and I'd totally buy the argument that at least some of what we were doing in the second half was running live scrimmage variations of a couple of our blitz packages to get reps in (no, I'm not joking), but still, there's aggressive and then there's a little unhinged:

That was the second play of the game.  And that wasn't one of those fancy will-they-or-won't-they scheme where we cram the line but drop some guys off.  All nine players engaged, and if not for a pretty darn good play by, again, Omar Gaither, there's a decent chance Cadillac Williams runs through that Patterson ankle tackle and doesn't get caught for awhile.

I don't know.  I like aggressive, but there comes a point when it's ok to have a couple safeties back there.  Make the Bucs drive 80 yards and try to convert a fourth down or two since they don't trust their kicker. 

Here's another one.  End of the first half, third-and-15, young QB.  It's not like draw wasn't on the table.  And yet we're doing some sort of blitz-y / stunt-y thing that opens up running lanes and the middle of the field:

The other thing to note about that clip, while I don't generally highlight great plays by the opponent, there's a wide receiver who takes out both Macho and Quintin on this play near the first down line.  And yes, Asante's covering him, and yes, Asante sort of stands there and hopes someone else makes the play before jumping on the guy and hanging on for dear life.

Speaking of Asante, we learned something else this weekend, which is that it's probably not a great idea to send a guy on a corner blitz if he can't, you know, tackle someone when he gets there.

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I realize there's a weird negativity throughout this rewind, but the truth of the matter is that Domo's day-after thesis was right:  the defense really didn't play that great against Tampa.  They made enough big plays to put things away, but if the Bucs' had been a bit smarter about kicking field goals (too bad people always avoid making their last mistakes), this really could have been a 21-16 game at half time. 

Now, with that said, we've argued for years the importance of playmakers for just this very reason.  In the NFL, you'll have weeks where things aren't clicking, that's when you need guys who can step up and give you individual efforts to turn a game.  The Eagles sure do have a lot of those right now.

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Back to the videos, here's a weird one for you.  Dmitri Patterson ... in the game ... as an on-the-line pass rusher:

It took me a long, long time to figure out what McDermott's doing here, but I think I eventually got it.  Take a look at the replay they show that gives you a better angle on the play.  Yes, Cadillac Williams makes a great blitz pick-up, but notice what McDermott's managed to do here.  He has an offensive lineman blocking a dime back and a running back one-on-one against his best interior pass rusher. 

That's friggin' brilliant.  And the best part is Dmitri can actually rush just long enough to engage the blocker before dropping into coverage.  He does that, but because Williams engages with Howard, he ends up rushing the QB again anyway.

After Patterson got hurt, Sean Jones ran this a couple times later in the game.

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Other defensive notes:

• Overall this wasn't a great game for covering or tackling.  I was especially surprised by a couple plays Quintin didn't make.  On one Josh Johnson scramble, Q just stood there, not covering anyone, not rushing up to make a tackle, then he sort of lunged at him and missed after he crossed the line of scrimmage.  That was odd.
• On that play where Trotter ran 31 yards to help make a tackle, yes, that showed impressive knee health, but his read on the play might have been even more impressive.  All the other linebackers were crashing on the play action and somehow he read much earlier that this would be a pass.  Experience counts for something, that's for sure.
• In the "too aggressive" category, the other issue with blitzing every play is that you really open up the middle of the field.  It's a little easier for a young QB to throw those slants and seam routes if he knows he doesn't have to worry about anyone cutting underneath.  We saw that a couple times, including a nice pass play on the 20 on the Bucs' first touchdown.
• Oh, and someone should really study Reid's use of timeouts at the end of the first half.  He jacked it up again this week, although it ended up not costing any points because of the dumb interception at the end.  If you're up 21-7, there's 1:12 left, and you get the ball back at the start of the next quarter, I get why you might call a timeout, but if it never seems to work ...
• Yeeaaaah, so "zone dog" and "zone blitz" are different things that have highly specific numeric meanings.  Anyone ever heard that one before?  I hadn't, and neither had Google.  Those announcers were annoying.
• Chris Gocong played MLB on those last couple plays leading up to the safety.
• Lastly, and I should say this every week, but Trent Cole is ridiculously impressive.  He's so obviously the Eagles' best defensive player and he's so obviously only going to make the Pro Bowl if one metric -- the sack number -- is right.  That doesn't seem fair.

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Ah, the weekly special teams tidbit.  A few observations:

1. Sean Jones wasn't the only one offsides on that kickoff.  The guy next to him (number unknown) was as well.
2. On field goals and extra points, Winston Justice goes to LT and Jamaal Jackson goes to RT.  Just thought that was interesting.
3. The penalties are once again ridiculous, but we're still in the Daisher grace period on that stuff, but ...
4. How do you not have the hands team on the field for that final kickoff?  Pretty sure we can't blame the holdover players for that one, coach.

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Let's take it as read that the passing offense was pretty darn efficient last week.  In retrospect, the most impressive thing about Maclin really isn't his speed -- it's his body control and the way he adjusts to the ball when it's in the air.  He may not have quite the pure hands Avant does, but he does an amazing job getting his body and hands into a position where they can make a catch.  Watching some of those catches in slow motion ... geez, it's impressive.

But anyway, the passing offense worked so well it was a little boring.  I'd note only that:

• The DeSean PI call was terrible (again);
• That play they tried to fit the ball into DeSean in the Cover-Two hole would have worked better if Weaver had run his route a little deeper to get some more pressure on that CB (given the down and distance); and,
• The Bucs were not remotely fooled when we tried to screen Westbrook.  Teams pay so much attention to Westbrook, I almost wonder if we wouldn't have more success screening McCoy instead?  (Semi-relatedly, this is an interesting read in terms of how we use the screen game in this offense.)

So, putting the passing attack aside, why didn't the run game work very well? 

Unfortunately, I still don't know.  There's definitely no silver bullet answer.  There were maybe a couple plays like this one where you could say, "Ok, that dude pretty much destroyed that other dude":

But for the most part, it wasn't like that: 

• I think Westbrook should have hit one run up inside that he bounced (but then, we don't have the end zone view and he's Brian Westbrook and I'm not). 
• There's another play where Cole and Justice didn't make great blocks, but if the ball carrier had been Westbrook or Shady instead of Weaver, it still would have been a nice gain, since they would have taken the obvious cutback lane. 
• One of the Wildcat runs didn't really work because Weaver came across the formation the way we've seen a million times and tried to cut the end, who got right back up and made the play.
• The Vick option was just a bad call against the alignment and proved once again he needs to be able to audible out of those looks.
• Stacy Andrews blew another block when he showed up late.
• Lastly, the Vick QB draw is really just tough to run when opposing defenses treat you as a runner first and passer second, even when you're running the base offense.

I don't know.  It's kind of like last year all over again.  You can watch a play a dozen times and just sort of not see anything other than that it didn't really work.  Sometimes the defense wins, I guess.

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As this week's lone Wildcat segment, here's a play I think just really isn't designed all that well:

Obviously the big problem was Celek blowing the block on the linebacker.  But you've already got the defense on that side of the field on the alert because they're worried about Vick flowing that way, so even if Celek makes his block, you really need to figure out a way to get that end to crash inside.  And if Vick isn't going to run the fake dive, that's probably not going to happen. 

Of course, you'd like to see how it worked if they'd run it right, but even if Celek blocks the LB and Vick can distract the DE, you still have a S sitting there to make the tackle.  Just seems like a lot of bad things can happen on that play without enough of an advantage in your favor.

But yes, if it goes for a touchdown later this year, I'll happily post that video.

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And just so you don't think I'm picking on Celek, he solo-blocked the end on Maclin's first big TD.

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That's sort of it this week.  I'd say I can't wait for the real games to start, but let's be honest, a boring victory beats a thrilling defeat aaannnyyy time.