All Twenty-Tuesday

The Minnesota Vikings’ offensive game plan countered the Tampa Bay Buccaneers perfectly. It was a combination of attacking their schematic flaws along with attacking the areas of the players who were missing due to injury.

Now it’s time to get to how that was done.

During the game, I had plenty of people mentioning myself and @PewterReport on Twitter, talking about how bad the coverage was, how bad Vernon Hargreaves was, how bad Ryan Smith was, how bad the pass rush was, etc.

It’s time to get to the bottom of it. Why did Mike Smith’s defense fail the way it did on Sunday, and are they vulnerable to a future Keenum-like beatdown by other quarterbacks, especially with New York’s Eli Manning and New England’s Tom Brady on deck?

Hard Day For Hargreaves

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Let’s tackle the elephant in the room first: Hargreaves.

Now, let’s get this out in the open. I am a Florida grad. I love my Florida Gators. But, I don’t let that get in the way of me criticizing a player if it’s warranted.

Many people have been negative on Hargreaves because of how “poorly” he played as a rookie. He was the most targeted corner, gave up the most catches and the most yards. Anytime those stats get thrown around, people aren’t happy. But, you have to take things in context. Hargreaves was learning two different position last year – slot and outside corner. He was going up against some of the best in the NFL every week, and the guy on the other side was a former Pro Bowler. Who do you think teams were going to target?

Being a rookie cornerback in the NFL is like trying to drink water through a fire hose because you’re learning so much while taking everything in at such a fast pace. Hargreaves may not be the all-world corner people thought he would be, but he certainly also doesn’t deserve condemnation – at least not yet.

The play above is that first big pass that set up the whole game plan for Minnesota. As you can see, Hargreaves was playing in that “off coverage.” He plays it well, but just miss-timed his swim of Thielen’s arm which allowed for the catch. However, to me, the important detail was when he had to flip his hips and start running to catch Thielen.

When you play off coverage, you have to have elite acceleration and recovery speed to force contested catches and get turnovers. If you’re stiff in any area, that can be the difference between a catch or not. Hargreaves has very quick feet, and can flip his hips well, but here it wasn’t enough – perhaps that was due to any lack of help from the safeties, which we’ll get to.

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Here’s an example of something the Bucs don’t run a bunch of and that is tight man coverage instead of off coverage.

Hargreaves was down to the right of the screen, and as you can see, almost every defender did a good job in their assignment, there was just a well called crossing route that confused the linebackers and there was a late switch.

For Hargreaves, in particular, he seems to be much more aggressive this year, and depending on the defender, this style of coverage could be the play more than say an off coverage Cover 3 or Cover 4 – or at least be called more than it is now.

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In the play above, we again saw Hargreaves in off coverage – very deep now, almost 11 yards.

Why? Well, watch the safeties.

There was a lot of talk this training camp about safeties and how Mike Smith likes to have both of his safeties be able to play strong and free safety roles at any time. The reason for that was seen above. It’s because Tampa Bay likes to use one or even both of their safeties to help the middle linebackers as sort of a “robber” player in the middle and up the seam rather than help the corners deep. The safety in the above play rolled to his left to help Smith, who was getting his first NFL start in Minnesota.

So, think about the chain reaction this causes. If your cornerbacks are basically getting zero help deep, since none of the Bucs safeties are enough of a difference-maker down the field to warrant no-throws like Earl Thomas or Ha Ha Clinton-Dix are as single-high safeties, and you’re playing the corners in off coverage, you’re telling them to cover half the dang field, including everything in front of them and behind them, while not giving the opportunity to force a receiver off their route at all in any kind of press coverage.

You’re literally a sitting duck. Every play.

Now, Hargreaves even slips in the play above, which didn’t help. Yet watch the play as it unfolded and how he was expected to cover Sefon Diggs on half the field, both deep and short, knowing that getting beat deep meant six points, so he HAD TO make sure that didn’t happen.

Hence the space to make the catch.

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Here’s another play, one that should have been completed for a touchdown.

Watch the safeties; both of them are at one point even with the cornerbacks who are retreating, and neither of the safeties are dropping back any further than where they started. If that’s by design, fine, it might have been, but who are they helping? It looks like the linebackers and slot corner middle of the field rather than the outside.

To me, it just looked like two guys in no-man’s land who were positioned in a way that made it feel like the Vikings were playing 11-on-10.

If the Bucs were playing a team like the Patriots or the Chiefs with Rob Gronkowski or Travis Kelce, tight ends that can really hurt them up the seams, I would more understand why the safeties’ first priority would be helping the linebackers over the middle. But, by the way they treated their safeties, it seemed like the Bucs thought Kyle Rudolph was somehow more of a threat than Thielen and Diggs were on the sidelines.

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Here’s the last play of this nature I’ll show.

Once the Bucs realized they couldn’t get pressure with just four defensive linemen, they knew they had to blitz to help. But, when they did that, they continued to play off coverage.

(Whispers) That doesn’t work.

Every single assignment on this play was open – all of them. Keenum could have gone anywhere with the ball for a completion, and the blitz was adequately picked up. Keenum had a clean pocket with a perfect passing lane.

If you blitz, you can’t play off coverage like that. The whole point of blitzing is to get the quarterback to release the ball early. If your cornerbacks and safeties don’t start at the snap close to their assignments, and, in fact, retreat with their first step, the receivers are going to be open no matter how fast you get to the quarterback.

Normally, you see blitzes paired with press coverage, so as the blitz gets to the quarterback, the time allowed for a receiver to possibly separate is less. This can force the QB to hold the ball, and creates riskier throws and even turnovers. Sometimes it can backfire with bigger gains because of one-on-one coverage, but most of the time, even if that’s the case, the cornerback will be there and physical at the catch point and it’s just the receiver making a great play.

The whole point of defense is to make things difficult for the offense, and for whatever reason, Tampa Bay’s scheme and lack of adjustments made things way too easy for Minnesota. Hargreaves had his struggles, and midway through the game you could tell his confidence was taking a hit playing that far off in coverage. But, even though he could have played better, his team’s game plan let him down.

Ryan Smith Evaluation

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“Hey Trev, who had a worse day: Ryan Smith or Vern?”

Well…

From what I explained above in the section that was suppose to be about Hargreaves which then morphed into an explanation of safety play (everything in football is connected), it wasn’t entirely the outside cornerbacks’ faults on Sunday.

However, there are things about Smith that I noticed that I want to point out, even outside of the scheme letting him down.

Smith just might not be an off coverage outside cornerback.

Normally the body type of a soft coverage outside cornerback reads like: under 6-foot, compact frame, elite acceleration and recovery speed, quick feet, explosive hips. Some of those traits have to exist in all cornerbacks, but a few of them are more important here.

You ever watch the feet of Hargreaves and Grimes? These are two guys who are both barely 5-foot-10, who have a compact frames, and because of it, they can chop their feet with the best of them. This also allows for them to be able to flip their hips and change direction fast, simply because there’s less body to swing and their feet hit the ground sooner.

Smith is built different, and not in a bad way – just in a not ideal way. You like having long cornerbacks because they allow you to match up against bigger wide receivers. Smith has more length than any other Bucs corner, as he is just over 6-foot and has great straight-line speed, but he doesn’t have some of those “small guy” traits that help when playing the kind of coverage the Bucs do.

Take the clip above for example. Smith was play in off coverage, and got worked on a in-and-out route because, one, he was so far off his guy with no help, and two because he just can’t chop his feet and flip his hips like, say, Grimes can. Because of that, he panicked and lost balance.

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In the clip above, Smith was lined up at the top of the screen. Though Diggs did make the catch on him, there was some push off there that created the separation. Outside of that, Smith was with the speedy Diggs and was able to get his hands on him, as he was playing close to the line of scrimmage.

Smith is very fast, he might be the fastest guy on the team, but his speed isn’t in recovery speed, it’s more in straight line speed – not that the two are mutually exclusive, but there is a difference. When you allow Smith to play up with receivers in press coverage, you allow him to play to his strengths. You get his length involved right away, you allow him to get a little physical with his assignment, and if they were to run long routes, you’re not asking Smith to flip his hips 15 yards down the field flat-footed and expect him to keep up with a receiver who is now at full speed. Instead, he can go stride-for-stride with the receiver the whole time.

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Much like the first clip we showed of Smith, when he’s playing in off coverage, you just notice that his feet aren’t as quick, and when he’s asked to flip and run, it’s not as smooth as say Hargreaves or Grimes, which is to be expected with a bigger body.

I like Smith as a cornerback prospect much more than I do him as a safety, but I don’t like how he was used on Sunday – I didn’t like much at all from how the secondary was used on Sunday.

I thought I was going to go into this Cover 3 study hampering mostly on the Bucs’ inability to generate pressure on the pocket. That certainly was a problem, but even when the Bucs did get pressure, I noticed that they were playing so soft in the secondary that it didn’t matter. Both need work, but one hurt them more than the other. You have to have a pass rush to make off coverage work (mainly getting into throwing lanes), but you also have to be more assertive, whether that’s moving safeties to better positions to allow outside corners to attack more or what.

I also think it has to do with knowing your opponent better. Tampa Bay seemed to plan for things down the middle when the real threat was always Diggs and Thielen on the sideline. Tight end Kyle Rudolph had one catch for four yards. Those are the areas that needed help. I’m sure the safeties were in the middle to help stop the run, too – again, it was just a really good game by Minnesota – but at some point you have to stop the run with minimal help. If not, you’re cooked anyways.

Bucs CB Ryan Smith – Photo by: Getty Images

The lack of starters also hurt this team in my All-22 watch more than I initially thought it did during the broadcast. For the way the Buccaneers play defense, chemistry is everything. They play a lot of quarters and zone, and rookie linebacker Kendell Beckwith played worse than I initially thought. Not like a, “he sucks” kind of worse, just that I saw on a handful of occasions the entire defense have its zones locked down only for the chemistry between Beckwith and someone else to be the reason why a catch was made. It was his first start ever at middle linebacker in the NFL and he was playing in his second NFL game.

Now, I’ll end by saying this: I don’t know exactly what’s going on. All I am is someone with a little bit of football knowledge who is watching some coaches film. I don’t know exactly what the assignments are, but I think I can get a pretty good idea from looking at the All-22. From what I saw, the scheme failed the Buccaneers on Sunday. Whether it was exactly what Keenum thought he was going to see or not, the design of the defense never put them in a position to win that game – especially without any semblance of a pass rush.

So what has to get better? Well, health, first and foremost. If linebackers Lavonte David and Kwon Alexander continue to miss time, that would make it hard for this coverage unit to be more aggressive. But, at some point, it needs to be. Sunday was too soft – end of story. The Giants are a huge wild card, but if they play that soft against the Pats, Brady will win the game without a grass stain on his uniform.

Gotta get aggressive somewhere.

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