All-Twenty Tuesday: Complimentary Football

To start the article I brought up the Bucs run defense and how well it played, at least for a little bit, against a few of the teams they faced but has recently fallen off.

We’re going to circle back around to how safety play gets involved here, but I want to point a few other things out when it comes to why the Buccaneers are struggling to stop the run.

Much of that topic involves defensive line work, something we know the Bucs aren’t getting much production from. So, in order to get a more fair look at that, I did some collaborative film watching with a guy who knows way more about trench play that I do, Jon Ledyard over at FanRag Sports.

Here’s what we saw.

Everything in football starts in the trenches. For the Bucs and stopping the run, their problem might start with Chris Baker. Now, when I say that, I’m not here to attack him being lazy or some other things the fans have said about him. What I’m questioning is whether or not he was actually the player they thought they were getting. Not even in talent or perhaps effort, if that is true, but more so in style.

Baker is a 6-foot-2, 320-pound defensive lineman that the Bucs got from Washington’s 3-4 system. Seeing those body numbers and seeing his body frame in person, one would naturally think he would be an anchor-type player coming form a 3-4. But he’s really not, or he hasn’t been yet. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for Baker, but it is bad for the Bucs.

We all assumed the Bucs were signing Baker to play nose tackle next to Gerald McCoy to get a player who could take up blocks and even rush the passer better than anyone they had there previously. But, if you’ll watch in the play above, Baker gets bullied pretty easily on double teams. He makes the tackle on that particular play, but that was kind of just luck of the running back going right at him. He still got knocked back and off balance. You don’t want that with your nose tackle.

Most defensive linemen will be neutralized with double teams, but you still want your nose tackle to put up a better fight at the point of attack. On the play above, Bills QB Tyrod Taylor ended up keeping the ball, but if he would have handed it off, Baker was pushed so far back by a double team that running back LeSean McCoy probably would have scored.

From Ledyard, Baker seems more of a 3-technique player than a nose tackle, bulldozer-like guy the Bucs want him to be. When defensive coordinator Mike Smith said that Baker was a “rotational player” earlier this week, I think that’s because they might be having this realization.

But, I don’t want to be too hard on Baker, because if he’s being misused it’s not his fault. If he isn’t this bulldozer, earth-mover anchor-type defensive linemen, it’s unfair to think he should be.

Take the play above, for example. Ledyard noted that Baker is more a 3-tech player than anything else, and flashes like the one above hint to that. In defending a zone run, Baker was quick to try to catch the backside of a hole in the zone and almost made the tackle for loss in the backfield. That’s a much better flash than most of what we’ve seen from him as a run defender.

If Baker just isn’t this kind of player, I can’t blame him that much. At that point, it’s either the coaches using him wrong or the scouting and front office department for improperly signing a player they may have missed on.

It’s too early to confirm anything yet, I’m just pointing things out of what may come to prove as truth – or may not. If you don’t have a stout nose tackle, then not only are you wasting Baker, you’re wasting McCoy next to him.

So, if your linemen are constantly getting double teamed, what do you have to do? Get the linebackers involved. You somehow have to get more hats (players) into gaps to make sure that you have each gap covered to ensure that a massive hole won’t be opened due to bad spacing or a double team.

The Bucs have tried that, but in the wrong ways. It’s difficult for a team that likes to run out of the 4-2-5 formation most of the time and not something heavier on the line.

Take the play above, for example. The Bills are a power running team. They have massive offensive linemen who are true “earth movers” (guys who can really push you and re-direct you). As you can see, the Bucs go to counter the Bills 12 personnel with linebackers closer to the line of scrimmage. But, for whatever reason, Lavonte David is told to crash inside and it completely blows contain to the outside – either that or David just blew it himself, we’ll never know.

Why?

And better yet, why did they throw a linebacker to the weak side when there were clearly three extra blockers (gaps) to the right side? Even though help was sent, it just didn’t make sense.

Note: See how the Bucs didn’t really move either of their safeties towards the line of scrimmage, even though it was an obvious run play? The explosive plays theory. Why not send help? You’re telling me your corners and one deep safety can’t handle just two wide receivers on a team that is known for running?

The Bucs were desperate to try to get some kind of pass rush. But, instead of moving a safety down to help them in the box to aid in pure run support, they instead to took a down linemen off the field and kept three linebackers in in a 3-3-5 scheme (we assume because they like linebacker Kendell Beckwith on the field more than Clinton McDonald or Sealver Siliga, who was inactive for the Bills game).

The results sucked.

Take the play above, for example. What were they thinking Beckwith was going to do on this play exactly? If Tyrod Taylor doesn’t stand like a tree for at least four or five seconds, Beckwith doesn’t even get in his area. I just don’t know what they’re thinking on these plays. Koetter talked about pluses and minuses in every scheme, and that’s true, but think of everything that has to happen for this play to be a plus.

If I see the Bucs play 3-3-5 again in the red zone, I’m going to scream. I don’t know who ultimately comes up with the defensive line schemes whether it’s Smith or defensive line coach Jay Hayes, but whoever it is, the way they aligned their defensive linemen was almost a fireable offense from just that one game.

Look at the play above. How is that alignment even in the playbook? The Bucs go 3-3-5 in the red zone against a run-heavy team with a strong interior offensive line. I mean, for goodness’ sake, you don’t even have a single player lined up in front of either guard or center. That’s unthinkable for that situation.

Koetter said earlier this week that “alignments and fronts don’t win and lose games.” What he was trying to say, I think, was that execution and effort are what wins and loses games, and he didn’t necessarily believe what he actually said. Because, if he did, he’s fooling himself in the worst way. The Bucs lost because of missed tackles and effort, yes. But you better believe they also lost in Buffalo because of how they lined up. That’s poor scheme, poor play design and poor coaching.

My final point is that Smith’s “We don’t have 11 starters, we have 14 or 15 starters” along with the element of trying to create mystery for an offense is actually killing this defense’s productivity.

If you watched the Eagles-Redskins game on Monday, you saw two defenses that play definitive, aggressive football on the defensive side. Their safeties don’t sub out, they’re not moving pieces in and out – they’re moving players – and that helps the entire unit know what everyone else is doing. What they basically tell a defense is: you mostly know what we’re doing, but we think we’re better than you.

The Bucs don’t seem to do that at all. They want all this fluidity and mystery, and it’s just not working. It worked last year when teams, I’m assuming, didn’t know what was coming. But now, with tape and adjustments, they do, and the Bucs are getting carved up because of it. If you put a certain safety in because he’s better in zone coverage, an opposing offense knows from their scouting that the Bucs will likely be in zone defense and can attack it a favorable way.

Can you believe that a 27-yard catch given up on third-and-5 was actually my favorite play from the Buccaneers defense last Sunday?

Because it was.

This looked like a real defense. Third-and-5 and the Bucs brought pressure with close coverage in the secondary and a single high safety. You know what happened? They got to Taylor, knocked him to the ground and were only punished for it because of a perfect pass. Heck, if Brent Grimes wouldn’t have slipped, and if rookie safety Justin Evans read the play better – and if Deonte Thompson was any less fast – that might have been a pick. If this was what they did constantly, Evans in single-high, T.J. Ward in the box or in man coverage, the corners in press and the linebackers as a real threat to blitz, I could live with mistakes because I think practicing that and the growing pains with it would still be the defense getting to a higher ceiling of potential than what they’re working towards now.

In that kind of defensive style, you give your guys a chance. Whatever the majority of the Bucs’ alignment is now right doesn’t give them a chance. When Tampa Bay play its secondary so scared to beat deep that it won’t help in the box, it gets gashed in the run game and can’t send help when it has bad defensive line play. When the Bucs play their secondary so even to keep everything in front of them with no risk, they get carved up by giving up shorter stuff and too much space.

When you play aggressive, blitz with the linebackers and actually give definitive help with the safeties, you force a perfect pass to beat you. That’s complimentary football. That’s what the Eagles do. That’s what the Seahawks do. That’s what the Steelers do. If you force a perfect pass to beat you and it does? Tip the cap; they were better. But if you don’t even make a quarterback have to throw a perfect pass to beat you on a given play, you’ve already lost. In the NFL, most of these quarterbacks are too good to not beat you if they have time to throw.

It has to change for Tampa Bay. The scheme and the emphasis. Maybe it all runs deeper than this. Maybe it goes into the scouting department and which players they prioritize, but whatever it is, they have to switch up what they do fundamentally to give the help necessary for this team to even have a chance against playoff quarterbacks or even get there. If that ultimately means an assistant coach change or a coordinator change, so be it.

Click to the next page for this week’s read-option.