DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Williams defense a full go..? no excuses interesting lil article

Glad to see you posting again. Keep in mind that some of these guys utilize every chance they get to criticize Hue.

Thanks Vers. Glad to be back.

I know there are a lot of strong opinions on here. DawgTalkers is not for the faint of heart, LOL

For sure, my man.

I hope our Browns play well enough for you to stick for the entire season. I know it gets frustrating watching them play when you are so passionate.

I have a good friend at work who is a Lion's fan. He once told me that when the losses pile up it makes him depressed. I told him I knew how he felt because the Monday after another Browns' loss just makes me feel beat down.

Hey, read the PM I sent you.

I'm a pretty passionate fan myself. I'm loving on the Cavs and it kills me to read all the negative BS about a team that has reached the Finals for 4 straight years. We have a poster who calls them "trash" and "garbage" and a lot of other posters back him up. Disgusting.

The Browns.......? It's hard for me to keep being disappointed every game, thus I have kind of come to expect losing so it doesn't hurt so bad. I hope this team gives us all real reasons to cheer in the near future.

And I read and replied to your PM. Thanks again.

For the Cavs, just win the next game. No reason we can't. We have a good team.

Win one. One game at a time.

What did I miss? Where'd he say this?

I think he meant 'starting' as in beginning to practice there first (at MLB) before working in the other spots.

https://twitter.com/DanPizzuta/status/1029063818859700224

it's like in basketball: unless a team is REALLY good defensively, we LOVE it when they just play half court man-to-man (the most basic defense).

So, lets see if I have this straight in cfrs' football mind. Hue was dumb if we threw on first down against other team's base package and other teams are smart if they throw against our base package on first down.

Those genius analyses ignore the REASONS.

Most teams avoid spending time in base because they don't have the personnel to respond to threats equally in base, thus they spend lots of time guessing what the opponent is going to do and shifting to an alignment that helps cover their deficiencies.


However, if you DO have the personnel to respond to most all attacks from base, then you can increase the amount of time you spend there and greatly simplify your life. You DON'T need to scheme and stunt like crazy to try to remain effective; you can just go out there and do your thing.

That’s the point though. Playing three linebackers makes it, basically, impossible to have good coverage because the league has evolved in such a way that players that linebackers traditionally used to cover, they can’t do it anymore.

and when, in a press-man defense, would you ever have a LB on a WR?

Obviously, if they trot out 3, 4, or 5 WR, you're gonna go nickle or dime, but aside from that, there is zero reason to shift from base unless you are covering up a deficiency.

Also, if you can get tons of pressure FAST, you don't have to cover long, and then you CAN cover a slot WR with a LB. Pittsburgh made a living off of just that concept for a few decades.

Good to hear. Twice.

First, we have more of what he wants for his scheme of choice. Second, we turn our back on all the miserable we saw on D last year with the O force-feeding turnovers all season to make it even worse (conceptually impossible, but proven true.

Go after all of them this year. An O that can capitalize on turnovers to a D that can make them and get itself off the field, well, we call that football, my friend, right here in Cleveland -city!
OK, it ain't the Music Man, but maybe it works a little.

That’s the point though. Last we year we didn’t go nickel or dime.

He's reaching because he loves to slam the coaching staff. All teams use LBers in coverage. Most of the time they have zone responsibility.

I think it comes down to this. Williams wants to put his best football players on the field. He ran very different defenses when he was at other places. In fact, cfrs kept telling us over and over and over again last year that the Browns were only going to run their base defense 5 percent of the time. He got that percentage by charting what Williams did w/the Rams in the previous year.

We often read of people complaining about coaches forcing their personnel into their own schemes and not playing to their strengths. Yet, those same people complain just as heartily when the coaches try to adjust the schemes to fit the personnel.

I don't like Gregg Williams. I was opposed to hiring him. But, to question his knowledge of Xs and Os is asinine. His football IQ is highly regarded. And a few posters on a message board who almost certainly never played the game are not more qualified to pretend they know more about running an NFL defense than Williams does. The guy's issues are w/his personality and perhaps even his character. His football intelligence is not a question mark.

Yeah, I'm not sure that happened a lot last year, though.

Defensive Personnel Frequency

CLEVELAND
Base 66% NFL Rank #1
Nickel 31% NFL Rank #29
Dime 1% NFL Rank #27

Cleveland was the polar opposite to New England, in so many ways. The Browns stuck in their base defense 66 percent of the time, which insane in the modern NFL. You might think that this is what happens when you are constantly facing opponents running out the clock on your way to 0-16. Except that the Browns were doing this from the very start of the game! In the first half, the Browns were in base defense 66 percent of the time. When the score was tied or the Browns actually had a lead, the Browns were in base defense... the same number, 66 percent of the time.

Cleveland was the only team in the last four seasons to even hit 60 percent. This may go part of the way to explaining why they were fourth in rushing defense and 26th in passing defense; if you never go into nickel or dime packages, you're going to have trouble stopping receivers in the modern NFL! Cleveland had 245 snaps where their base defense was matched up against 11 personnel; only the Panthers and Rams joined them above 100. To put it another way, roughly one-sixth of all 11-versus-base snaps in the NFL were played by the Browns defense. At least they were unique!

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2018/2017-defensive-personnel-analysis

This doesn't tell the complete story but it is a big chunk. It would be interesting to see how often they were in a base defense compared to certain offensive formations.

One of the comments of the article:



Hate that song....

I've been saying the same thing, but I don't think some people want to hear it. Williams has adjusted his schemes to his talent over the years. That's pretty obvious. And I think that tells more about the story than anything else.

Last year we didn't didn't have guys to play in the secondary that were any better than our LBs, so there wasn't much point. Pick your poison, we were screwed no matter what.

I don't necessarily disagree with that. But we're doing it again? We signed several people in the secondary and drafted Ward. Have a healthy Kindred and BBC coming back. At some point, if we aim to play more outside of the base D, you gotta just freaking do it.

Are you suggesting that you know more about NFL defenses and the Brown's defensive personnel than Gregg Williams?

Yes. Yes, that's precisely what I'm saying.

Here is what I'm saying. Williams has run all kinds of looks over the years. He has never been married to one system. Thus, it's safe to assume that he will adjust his schemes to best fit his personnel and gives our defense a chance to compete.

I think we were hurting in the talent department on defense, and Williams made a calculated guess to just put his best players out there, which meant 3 LBs. My hope is that he can start opening up the playbook and the alignments now that he's got some more to work with, and continue to open up that playbbook as the young talent becomes accustomed to the NFL game.

At worst, playing in base as much as they did was a sort of temper tantrum by Williams. Sorta like, "this is what you gave me, so this is what you get" kinda move. I doubt this is the case, though.

Could some defensive line reinforcement be on the way for the Browns? The team is scheduled to work out free agent tackle Johnathan Hankins later this week, per a report from Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com.

Hankins has been bounced by both the Giants and the Colts in a little over a year and has received very little attention on a sparse free agent market. The one-time Ohio State standout was a second-round pick by New York in 2013. Indianapolis released him just one year into a three-year, $30 million contract. He has 12 career sacks.

https://brownswire.usatoday.com/2018/08/...kins-this-week/

SCREAMS LAZY. NO THANKS.

I agree about last year. Hopefully things change this year now that we have some new players.

What are you talking about? Hankins is a very good DT.

We have Brantley at DT, who is one of the laziest players I have EVER watched in college.........and you are calling Hankins lazy? LMAO man.

Thank you for reminding me of his name. I was kicking myself trying to remember Caleb Brantley.

This dude is starting to establish himself as a premier talent at what he does (skating by). Nobody has turned so much raw potential into real performance.

There's always something with this dude. Hang nails, bad bruises, all kinds of stuff that keep him from full go, it seems.

I think it was Predator who posted this video of Brantley against Alabama in the Draft forum a couple of years ago. It's freaking hysterical.

Wow. Good flick and breakdown. Keeps me wondering why BigMoney 2.0.

Very interesting.

Thanks, but I think it was Predator who first posted it before the 2017 draft. I thought it was both revealing and hysterical at the same time.