[CTcard]

1) With respect to the effect of the corners, Rosen was 7/11 for 77 yards in the first half... and 11/16 171 in the second. So at least for the game the dropoff was significant. Perhaps with more time to practice/gameplan Murphy/Alexander/etc. will be better. They'll need to be.

That doesn't look all that different half by half, except for having more passes in the second half.
That's a PER of 152.4 in the first half.
That's a PER of 158.5 in the second half.

2) With respect to the TE problem, Okereke seems like a plus in coverage; Barton is athletic enough; Davis is solid ... and Palma and Perez are problems. (At least by my eye.)

The two I noticed whiffing on covering Iese were Davis and Perez, with Davis the most brutal miss on a long gainer. The problem seemed to be that they initially let the TE go because their eyes were in the backfield more than any issue with speed.

I'm not sure that TEs are Akina's responsibility, in the NFL TEs are usually covered by ILBs, and the fact that we can't seem to defend TEs worth a damn this year might point to our struggles at ILB. Honestly that's probably what Hoffpauer should do, since he's too slow to be a real nickle but probably fine on most TEs (despite giving up height he'd at least be in position to tackle). Perhaps it's too late to do that transition.

Yeah, I was thinking of commenting upon that as well. However, sometimes the safeties take the TE, and I suspect that Akina has some input into overall coverage schemes, though I don't know for sure.

This Hoffpaiur cannot cover anyone theme is overblown. He's not the fastest safety we have, but his problems were mainly in the first game and were mainly centered around not making proper plays on the ball.

Was anyone else bothered by the defensive scheme on the second-to-last play? Stanford was playing Cover One (man-to-man coverage on receivers with one safety deep) on a painfully obvious deep pass play. AND they had Hoffpauir and Palma in, neither of whom are, shall we say, nimble in pass coverage. Not surprisingly, Kenneth Walker sped by the coverage and was open for a touchdown pass. If Reid had not made a great play on a desperation heave that should not have taken a great play to defend, we would have all been talking about some different things in this thread.

The play before that was somewhat troubling, as it appears nobody covered Andrews at all, and he is their leading receiver this year. That seems to have been Murphy who let him go - presumably he was more concerned about guys running further upfield. That gave them 25 yards in 10 seconds.

On the penultimate play, it was Lloyd on Walker who was run right past. Hoffpaiur was on Massington and seemed to have pretty decent coverage. Palma was in no-man's land in the middle of the field which seems a surprising assignment under the circumstances. Reid almost made a mistake, trying for the interception instead of simply knocking away the ball. Fortunately his shoulder hit the ball after he missed the INT completely - he did do a good job positioning himself as a deep center fielder on the play.

[CTcard]

1) With respect to the effect of the corners, Rosen was 7/11 for 77 yards in the first half... and 11/16 171 in the second. So at least for the game the dropoff was significant. Perhaps with more time to practice/gameplan Murphy/Alexander/etc. will be better. They'll need to be.

That doesn't look all that different half by half, except for having more passes in the second half.
That's a PER of 152.4 in the first half.
That's a PER of 158.5 in the second half.

2) With respect to the TE problem, Okereke seems like a plus in coverage; Barton is athletic enough; Davis is solid ... and Palma and Perez are problems. (At least by my eye.)

The two I noticed whiffing on covering Iese were Davis and Perez, with Davis the most brutal miss on a long gainer. The problem seemed to be that they initially let the TE go because their eyes were in the backfield more than any issue with speed.

I'm not sure that TEs are Akina's responsibility, in the NFL TEs are usually covered by ILBs, and the fact that we can't seem to defend TEs worth a damn this year might point to our struggles at ILB. Honestly that's probably what Hoffpauer should do, since he's too slow to be a real nickle but probably fine on most TEs (despite giving up height he'd at least be in position to tackle). Perhaps it's too late to do that transition.

Yeah, I was thinking of commenting upon that as well. However, sometimes the safeties take the TE, and I suspect that Akina has some input into overall coverage schemes, though I don't know for sure.

This Hoffpaiur cannot cover anyone theme is overblown. He's not the fastest safety we have, but his problems were mainly in the first game and were mainly centered around not making proper plays on the ball.

Was anyone else bothered by the defensive scheme on the second-to-last play? Stanford was playing Cover One (man-to-man coverage on receivers with one safety deep) on a painfully obvious deep pass play. AND they had Hoffpauir and Palma in, neither of whom are, shall we say, nimble in pass coverage. Not surprisingly, Kenneth Walker sped by the coverage and was open for a touchdown pass. If Reid had not made a great play on a desperation heave that should not have taken a great play to defend, we would have all been talking about some different things in this thread.

The play before that was somewhat troubling, as it appears nobody covered Andrews at all, and he is their leading receiver this year. That seems to have been Murphy who let him go - presumably he was more concerned about guys running further upfield. That gave them 25 yards in 10 seconds.

On the penultimate play, it was Lloyd on Walker who was run right past. Hoffpaiur was on Massington and seemed to have pretty decent coverage. Palma was in no-man's land in the middle of the field which seems a surprising assignment under the circumstances. Reid almost made a mistake, trying for the interception instead of simply knocking away the ball. Fortunately his shoulder hit the ball after he missed the INT completely - he did do a good job positioning himself as a deep center fielder on the play.