An unpredictable offence and an aggressive defence. Now that sounds like you are talking about Calgary's offence (and defence) or Winnipeg or Montreal's defence.WestCoastJoe wrote: Mon Jun 26, 2017 12:21 am I like those quotes, Blitz.
Points well made.
The most pleasant surprise I could have this season is if Wally made the big adaptation. Modern day football. Detailed game planning, fresh, against each opponent's tendencies. Self scouting in detail. Deception. I am sure Mark and Khari can do it. Turn them loose.
Another faint hope: aggressive, attacking defence.
Another faint hope. OL that show their natural talent, intelligence and pedigree. Confidence. Not remade players in someone's design, preoccupied with minutiae of new technique, confidence gone. These guys were highly rated and successful in college for good reason. They were not, and are not, no talent bums.
A coach, or parent, can take a basketball shooter, a baseball pitcher, a boxer, a golfer, an O Lineman, and overload them to the point that they lose confidence, over-coached. If the athletes trust the coach, and if the coach tries to remake them as he wishes, the athletes can be messed up quickly.
In a discussion, Jack Nicklaus once said: "If you want to mess up a golfer, ask him where the head of his club is at the top of the backswing." Some coaches try to remake athletes. Break them down. Rebuild them in the design favoured by the coach. Many of us have seen it in sports.
Not saying it happens on the Lions, but when a series of athletes come out of college with confidence and credentials, and lose it over time in the pros, one wonders. When they seem to regress. When they seem confused. And it happens repeatedly. Different athletes respond in different ways to different coaches. What works for some might not work for others. Can we get it going? Sure. We have seen it before.
Henry Jordan of the Packers said Lombardi "treated them all the same, like dogs." But it wasn't true. Some athletes, like Jerry Kramer, could prosper under hard, verbal criticism. He certainly didn't like it, it hurt, but he needed pushing. It gave him doubts, but then praise from Lombardi would fill him up, ready to go. Others, like Bart Starr, would not do well with that approach. They got different treatment.
But so many awards, et cetera. IMO all we have to do is watch the play, with the sum total of our experience. Could anybody on here do better? Not saying that. Not saying it is easy. Can we observe and evaluate? Sure. That is a big part of pro sports. The arm chair quarterbacks watch the players and coaches, those that go for the glory, and become targets for judgment.
It is what it is, and we love the Lions.
Just IMO ...
Offensively, if I can predict the majority of plays that we will run in a game, opposing defensive coordinators, with the advantage of stop and freeze video, can really pre-scout our offence well.
In the NFL, Bill Bellchick is considered the best and perhaps the best of all time. Each season, he has a different style of offence. He changes from season to season, from a predominant power offence to a spread offences to a double tight end offence, to isolating his tight end as a wide out etc. He is always ahead of the curve rather than being a copy cat. He leads.
The New England Patriots offence is also considered the most difficult to game plan for because like Forest Gump's box of chocolates, "you never know what you are going to get".
Bill Belichick is the complete opposite of a 'plug and play' coach like Buono. He doesn't have a system in which his players must adapt to. He develops his systems to the talents of his players.
We're also a plug and play defense. The only times we weren't were when Ritchie and Stubler were here, although we mostly played zone with Stubler too.
We could have the best man defender ever (we did in Korey Banks) and he will be playing zone defense exclusively, as Banks was forced to do when he came here. We would never match up our best defender man on man or press man against a team's best receiver.
When you are talking about the Mad Scientist, there is no question that Dorazio knows how to coach individual line play. He is a micromanager when it comes to technique. In general, that is a positive, when it comes to zone blocking for the run, because zone run blocking is very specific, for example, in terms of footwork.
But Dorazio's offensive line have been notoriously bad for pass protection pickup and blitz pickup. In his first long stint with our Leos, we gave up more quarterback sacks in the CFL during a 10 year time period than any other CFL team, even though we often had mobile quarterbacks and good offensive linemen in comparison to many other CFL teams.
But compounding that problem is that, except for the 2007 season, most of the 2011 season, and the 2012 season, we've basically run the same spread offence since 2005.
Here is a question for you WCJ. Do we have to line up Manny as our inside slotback, mostly left, every single play in the five receiver set. Do we need to do the same with Burnham on the other side? We'll hear that the opposition doubled Manny or Burnham but what did we do to get them single coverage? Its much easier to double cover with a defensive halfback and a safety when they are lined up in the slot.
For example, on some plays we could isolate Manny wide on the boundary side, against a short corner, but we don't. Even Chap, in his bad days of Chap Ball, would move Simon around to try to get him away from double coverage.
Another example of adapting an offence to personell in the future, on first down, would be to have both Jeremiah Johnson and Rainey in the game. We could line up both Rainey and Chris Wiliams on the left and Manny and Burnham and Iannuzzi right and the defence could pick their poison but its unlikely we will ever see that.
Another example of offensive predictability is that, in our last game, every time that Lumbala was in the game and lined up in a single back formation we passed the football on first down. They Eskimos knew and I know that Lumbala would not be running the football. He would be pass blocking. Therefore the Edmonton defensive line could tee off for their pass rush without having to worry about the run and the linebackers could focus on pass coverage or a blitz without a concern that we would have called a running play. Its mind boggling that we do some of the things that we do.
When you look at most CFL defenses these days, they are not in zone exclusively. There was a time in the CFL that you could get away with that but not anymore. Most CFL quarterbacks these days were developed in spread offences in college. Give them time to throw and they can pick apart most zone defenses.
Most receivers have also been developed in college in spread offences. They know how to find the gaps and seams in zones and also how to sit down in zone areas rather than just keep running into the next zone.
Most CFL coordinators run combination man/zone coverages and they also switch up from zone to man and back, depending on game situations. You'll sometimes see press man coverage as well as dropping nine into coverage as well as numerous disguised blitzes.
We went into the West Division Final last season mostly playing straight up zone, as the Stamps knew we would, and Bo Levi Mitchell, well prepared by Huff and Dickenson and with time to throw, sliced our defence up like he was cutting a tomato. They also knew that Manny and Burnham would be in the tight slots and they double covered the favored deep dig intermediate routes we like to throw to them. Game over, almost before it started and no amount of execution by our players was going to change the outcome.
Yesterday Ricky Ray came out against a talented Hamilton defense and picked them apart for the most yardage he has ever thrown in his career. Did Ricky Ray just suddenly improve his 'execution' over previous seasons. Nope! He was in Mark Trestmann's modified West Coast offence he's used successfully in the CFL, that adapts to its personnel, uses multiple formations, favors quicker throws, and can take advantage of certain coverages.
When we are talking about aggressive defense, one factor for successful defense that has become essential for defensive success is an inside pass rush and penetration against the spread offence. However, most of the focus, for 2017, for our defensive line, has been who will line up at defensive end.
The reality is that most CFL quarterbacks these days and for quite a long while now are mostly throwing from the pocket. You don't see the bootlegs and semi-boots and sprint outs like the 'good ol days'. Therefore, getting an inside pass rush from the tackle position is critical. You have to use formation and stunts inside at times to help get that inside penetration but we just play our defensive tackles and defensive ends mostly straight up and also don't often blitz inside.
Sometimes Buono's thinkin baffles me. II heard Buono say that he wanted to go with his best athletes on defense for the home opener and he also wanted to reward the training camp play of Chandler Fenner.
But you don't move Purifoy to safety with one week of practice when Purifoy had only played spot duty there in one formation last season. You don't move Thompson to corner with only a week of training camp practice and playing part of an exhibition game, when he has not played the position.
But when Wally gets something in his head it can be hard to change. Other example of this type of thinking includes trying to make a defensive end out of Westerman and a defensive tackle out of Roh.
It seems more logical to me that Buono would start Parker at corner, Purifoy at nickel, Clarke at safety, and use Fenner as a dime back to reward his training camp play for the home opener.
He could have rotated in Thompson at corner and given Purifoy more practice time at safety before he made that move, if that was the way he wanted to go. Winning the home opener is important. You want to excite the crowd, increase fan interest, and get the team off to a good start to the season.
But the defensive changes we made for our first game (which may prove to be positive in the longer run ...or not) were not only the reason we lost.
The major reason we lost is that we basically did the same things as we did last season, both on offence and defence. Therefore we were easier to defend and more exploitable on defence.
Predictablility has been called 'the cousin of death". Our Leos, as well as the Stamps, during Buono's tenure have often died slow psychological deaths in the playoffs. Buono has won the West 13 times as a Head Coach and most often those teams were rated the best in the CFL. Yet more often than not, by a wide margin, those teams lost in the playoffs.
Buono's predictablility is about fear...fear of change and its also about comfort with the past and stuckness rather than innovation. Leaders are innovative. They are risk takers. Managers are conservative and status quo types.
If Buono wants to win it all in his very last season as a Head Coach he needs to step out of his old paradign. This team is too talented to be stuck in a plug and play system that enables opposition teams, with less talent, to be advantaged due to our own lack of imagination on offence and our conservatism on defense.
Hopefully there will be some changes in thinking for the Toronto game.
A couple of holds from a usually errorless front four could have made a huge difference in the outcome of this Sat night game!
