DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Why is Gregg Williams getting a pass?

You do realize we currently have a top 5 defense, right?

Okay. Just as the microwave society feels "now" is better, we know, just as with microwave popcorn, it's bad for you long term.

Firing coaches bi annually, getting rid of the front office almost as often, gives one a "feel good" moment. For a year. Then, it's the same thing again, over and over and over.

Rebuilding takes time, and patience, and the Browns haven't had it. Look where it got us.

Nuking your popcorn, or re-heating processed foods that are "heat and serve", save time. But they aren't good for you.

Williams' defense has been just as bad as Hue's offense up until yesterday (10/8). We have been blitzing more than anyone, but also getting less pressure than anyone. That is a deadly combination. Sometimes it looks like the opposing offense literally knows what blitz will be coming.

Gregg Williams has shown that his front 7 is good. The defense is consistently stopping the run each week. The problem is the glaring need to have guys be able to play press coverage in the secondary. He plays cover 2 a lot with his safeties deep which teams and QBs have keyed in on in the middle of the field.

After 1 draft, his defense looks pretty good. Once he shores up his secondary, I feel he will use guys like Peppers in situations hes more comfortable with inside the box and in a utilitarian role.

I realize the Browns are giving up 25.0 pts per Game.
And his great defense allowed Josh McCown to drive 90 yards with the game on the line.
I expect the defense to improve though in spite of Williams shortcomings as DC.

j/c:

The Jets' O sucks about as bad as ours does. I don't think Williams' D is playing all that well.

Kill joy.

LOL.......that made me laugh after I just read a ton of posts about how freaking horrible Hue is on a couple of other threads.

I wonder if the 5th overall stat has to do with us being good at rushing defense, but really sucking at everything else.

Just some stats:

Defensive rank overall: 5th- 304.8 yards per game
Run defense: 2nd - 2.9 yards per carry
Rushing yards per game: 6th - 76.6 yards per game
TDs given up: T-18th - 4

So our run defense has improved dramatically from last year, so far.

But then the pass defense...

Pass defense: 19th - 228.2 yards per game
Yards per pass: 27th - 7.9 per pass
Completion % - DEAD FREAKING LAST at 74%. QBs are passing on our defense like they are playing Madden on rookie difficulty.
Pass TDs: T-29th - 11
Sacks: T-11th - 12
Qb rating: DEAD LAST at 112.4

3rd down % - 23rd - 42%
Points per game: 25th- 24.8 per game

________

Our psss defense is atrocious. We can stop the run but it isn’t helping because any QB can get back there and rip us to shreds. We also suck at getting off the field, and we can’t stop teams from scoring on us.

We have improved a lot but we still have a ways to go with our pass defense.

Those are some interesting stats.

Why are the secondary stats so bad? Anybody have theories? Is it peppers playing a million miles from scrimmage? Poor lb coverage? Bad cbs?

I'll go back to what I said before the season.

--We do not have a FS. That's a tough thing to overcome. Our two safeties are similar players. They are in-the-box safeties who play well downhill and are pretty physical, but lack the agility to play well in space.

--Our corners are below average. I will admit that McCourty has played better than I predicted. I apologize for that. However, we would be a better team if we had kept Haden [and I'm not a huge Haden fan.]

--Our FO pretty much ignored the secondary in this year's draft, which was extremely strong in secondary.

--I think Peppers is playing so deep because he is slow to react to reads. I disagree w/ed and others that this guy is a true FS.

Our secondary is beyond young. We have very little experience back there, and Taylor is trashtastic.

I’m not a defensive coach so obviously take whatever I said with a grain of salt, but I hate the way he plays the safeties.

The theory that he and others keep saying is that he doesn’t want to get burned on the deep ball.

But there’s so much space in the middle of the field that it doesn’t matter anyway, because here guys are turning 10 yard slants into 20-30 yard + highlight reels.

It’s difficlut at ANY level for a player to make an open field tackle. But our safeties are being asked to do that while the catch has already been made!

At this point I rather them just get beat on a play rather than continue to watch bad angles at tackles and ankles being broken in the open field. I do not like how Williams plays our safeties.

Hard to find a bad team with a bad D, defenses are only a problem with good teams.

IMHO, our D is far from being good, or even average. Its not dominant, and they always play with the other team in the lead, which is confortable.

When we shutt down opponents or win games with D, then we may call it good, until then what I can remember are Antonio Brown, TY Hilton, Brisset,the Gio Bernard play and many other plays where our D was atrocious.

Btw-----------who the hell [in their right mind] expected the D to be dominant this year? I know some posters did, but they always say dumb stuff.

I do think that we have made a couple of good moves on the defensive side of the ball. Patience is the word of the day.

Personally, I think our biggest issue has been pass rush. We're tied 8th for sacks, but I feel like our pressure hasn't been consistent. It seems, to my eyes, that we either get a sack, or we get nowhere near the quarterback and give him all day to throw, as opposed to consistent harassment with plenty of pressure and hurries even if it doesn't lead to a sack.

To be fair, we've taken on some good quarterbacks. Ben Roethlisberger, Joe Flacco and Andy Dalton are very experienced and have very good receivers to help them out. At this stage, their experience and chemistry defeats our inexperience, especially without a consistent pass rush.

I'd also agree LB coverage has been somewhat of an issue, particularly without Collins. Teams have been able to target Schobert and Burgess a little. It hasn't been entirely awful, but it has been costly at the wrong moments.

For the most part, I put it down to a mix of inexperience and injury. With Garrett and COllins now back, hopefully our pass rush picks up and it can help our secondary.

Collins ranked dead last in coverage last year in his 8 games w/the Browns last year.

Burgess has been playing very, very well. Our LBers are not the problem. It's that our safeties suck in coverage.

Collins was off last year, but midseason trades tend to do that to a player. He's not awful in coverage, and is an incredible blitzer/pass rusher who gives us much better options in terms of rotating in heavy DB sets.

I'm not bias against Burgess but I'm not holding my breath on Jamie Collins being benched any time soon. To each his own. I'm happy Jamie is back.

I don't think our safeties suck. I think Peppers and Kindred are a talented young duo who are still in the process of learning, and it's resulting in the occasional mistake.

I disagree on the linebackers not having issues in coverage. They've given up quite a few touchdowns this year in coverage.

2 names-Garret and Collins. And below average CB's.

It's OBVIOUS to me as to why Williams has Peppers playing FS and why he's so damn deep. We don't have a TRUE FS on this team and we're trying to cover for a lack of talent at CB.

This is EASILY fixable with getting Wilson back next year along with a TOP FA signing and another draft pick in the Top 40. We need to find a Solid FS.

Williams knows this.

The one thing that I wanted to see this year was an improvement in RUN DEFENSE. It's been outstanding. We're ALOT closer than many people think.

You guys who think Williams is clueless aren't seeing the big picture.

We need another Draft and FA period. And the 2nd year in Williams Defense will go a long way in making this D even better.

I don't think he is getting a pass.. It's seems however that Hue is taking the brunt of the noise.,

He's the head coach.

I honestly think our defensive struggles are a product of our offensive struggles. The difference in the team when Hogan came in this last game was night and day. I don't know if the players gave up on kizer (knowing he wasn't getting it done) or what, but there was a huge difference on both sides of the ball when Hogan came in IMHO.

This is a better defense than it was last year. (especially against the run)

Every position group on defense is better than it was last year including the DB's.

Now all they need is time and a couple of more pieces.

I don't think our secondary is better. They may become better, but I don't think they're better right now.

Opinions...

Maybe not, but with as bad as it was last year, it doesn't really matter much. It's still bottom-of-the-league bad.

I think the play of Kindred alone makes it better ... hes way better this year against the run and tackling ... no clue on the coverage ... its to hard to tell on most plays ...

I agree with U and oooob ... its pretty irrelivent ... the overall play is HORRIFICK ...

Hopefully MG will get healthy and the blitzes become more affective and we can mask some of that bad play ...

Our DB are not better, we lost Haden, regardless if you feel he was worth 11 mil or not, he was better than any CB we have now.

the def had given up less than 80 yards I believe before the half, they were playing great with Kizer.

the difference I think in defense was the fact that we were more aggressive than we have been, and Peppers was actually playing on the field other than 40 yards off the LOS

McCourty is playing much much better than Haden. Anyone thinking that Haden was a huge loss is thinking of a few years ago and not last year or even this year.

Taylor is playing better than Tramon Williams did.

Peppers is actually playing better than every other numbnut we tried at FS last year.

Kindred is immensely better than anyone that played SS last year.

That said, I still think we need more at DB, but it is better than last year.

Your points are logical and fair. However, a word of caution.

Thus far, we've played:

Pittsburgh: Very good passing team and we did a pretty good job, but AB killed us.

Baltimore: Their passing game has been pretty dreadful the last two years.

Indy: Really bad passing game w/an inexperienced qb.

Bengals: Inconsistent passing game. They were terrible in the first 3 games and then they played us. They pretty much lit us up early and often and backed off in the second half.

Jets: LOL........their passing game rivals ours as one of the worst in the league.

My thinking is that it is a little early to say this secondary is playing well or better than last year's. I agree that that particular secondary sucked, but I think this one is similar in that it is one of the worst in the league. I could be wrong. We'll see...

Taylor and Tramon are a wash. Taylor is hot garbage poo on a summer day with 100% humidity. Mc is playing better than haden did last year....ehhhhhh haden was hurt last year. he is playing decent with the steelers thus far. At best that's a wash. Haden regardless of your assumptions of last year, would still be the best CB on our roster. plain and simple.

IMO Haden can't hold a candle to McCourty and is no better than Taylor but with much less speed. BBC is a better 3rd corner. Joe is d-o-n-e...done. He's been his usual-lately pedestrian self in Pittsburgh.

If we've ever had a guy who could talk-the-talk and not walk-the-walk it would be Haden...since about 2014.

U guys worry this much about who the toughest smurf is? ... *L* ....

Haden is day old dog poop with flies covering it ....
Taylor is day old dog poop with maggots covering it ....
McCourtny is day old dog poop with ... i got nuttin to cover it with but who cares ... its poop ... *L* ..

Thats what u guys are discussing right now ...

Haden isn't much better, if at all, than any CB we currently have on the team.

Yep, that's why Pittsburgh signed him within minutes of being cut.....

cause you know, what does their FO know about winning football compared to Sashi

And like I said, Haden isn't much better, if at all, than any CB we currently have on the roster.

Does anyone have access to the PFF analysis? I'd be interested in Haden's grades so far this year.

Swish, am I remembering wrong or are we not usually a defense ranked in the bottom 2-3 most seasons? aren't we the team that can never stop the run? aren't we the team that never gets any pressure on the qb??

and yet here we are the #5 overall defense, stopping the run wonderfully at #5 and #8 or 11 in sacks and half our fans can only complain and deride our D.C. I am sure he wants to upgrade our db's next offseason and we will be better yet. and I am equally certain some folks will still be complaining.

This.

Teams are effectively dropping back to pass and are able to move the ball.
So why run the ball 35 times a Game when you can complete 8 yard curls and 17 yard outs all day?
Browns are ranked 26th in scoring defense
So things haven't really changed defensively for the Browns