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Sunday Divisional Games

13 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by in Gee's Thoughts, Playoffs

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Following on from Saturday’s contests, we have the Sunday Divisional games, although I have to fail at the trivia competition first:

‘First then, for the 2018 Regular Season only who scored the most touchdowns? Name, Team and Number for a max 3 points.

My second Divisional related question was triggered by the chaos which followed the Vikings TD as time expired last year.

What penalty is to be applied if a team lines up for scrimmage with fewer than 11 on the field? 2 points available here.’

There was a clarification on the first question that a quarterback running the ball would count, but not passes as we were looking for the play crossing the goal line with the ball. This immediately made me think of quarterbacks and suspected Cam Newton, but I just don’t think that quarterbacks get enough of an opportunity to lead the league in touchdowns so I’m going to jump positions on the Panthers and plump for Christian McCaffery, who had a fantastic year and I’m going for eight touchdowns.

As for the penalty, I’m not sure there is one but my guess is illegal formation as what else could it be? Well, I’ll find out later in the week!

‘Tricky questions again this week, and I feel a bit more pressure now I’m leading!

Question one I had to clarify as I was originally thinking of a Quarterback who will have thrown the most touchdowns, but apparently that doesn’t count. So I think it’ll be a running back, and I’m a bit torn between Todd Gurley and Alvin Kamara…. I think I’ll go with Saints Number 41, Alvin Kamara.

Second question I think is a bit of a trick. Obviously there’s a penalty for having too many players on the field, but I don’t think there is one for having too few. I’m just struggling to justify why that answer warrants 2 points and whether there’s another answer to go with it, but I’ll stick with that!’

LA Chargers (5th) @ New England Patriots(2nd)

Another year, another division win for the New England Patriots but this is the first time in nine seasons that they didn’t get at least twelve wins. There have been several, is he slipping moments for Tom Brady in recent seasons, which is perhaps not that surprising given that he is now forty-one, but the Patriots have not been as convincing this season as in recent years. Part of this is the relative weakness of their receiver group, which was worrying enough that the Patriots took the risk of trading for Josh Gordon. The troubled receiver did supply help on the field for a while, but even the Patriots couldn’t help Gordon off the field and it may be that the football environment may not be conducive for Gordon staying healthy. Back on the field, Rob Gronkowski has laboured all season and doesn’t look himself, but Brady has thrown for over four thousand yards and the Patriots do rank fifth in the league by DVOA so all is not terrible. They have lost some surprising games but their defence ranks better by DVOA than last year they still earned a bye week for the start of the playoffs.

This week the entertain one of the more dangerous fifth seeds of recent years in the twelve win LA Chargers. I didn’t get to watch all of the coaching tape from last week, but the Chargers played with seven defensive backs to counter the Ravens running game, reminding everyone just how good a defensive coordinator Gus Bradley is. It also helps that in Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram, Bradley has the players to get pressure on the quarterback whilst rushing four, which is the nearest anyone has found to a formula to stop Tom Brady. For all his regular season success, Philip Rivers has not had the playoff victories he wold have hoped for and has a pair of playoff losses to the Patriots from the 07/08 seasons to avenge. The Chargers have really played well this season and stand as good a chance of dethroning the Patriots as anyone has in recent years. However, winning in Foxborough is never easy and particularly not in the playoffs and so I must give the edge to the Patriots as I don’t think you can count them out until they have lost, but this is a dangerous game for them.

Philadelphia Eagles (6th) @ New Orleans Saints (1st)

The New Orleans Saints took a step forward last season with a draft that yielded the offensive and defensive rookies of the year and finally pairing a defence good enough to help the always proficient Drew Brees get back into the playoffs. They carried this momentum forward into this season and continue to make moves in an attempt to maximise the chances of getting Brees another Super Bowl in the time the veteran quarterback has left. Their offence was truly terrifying for a lot of the season, and even when it cooled off they still found ways to win and finished with only three losses all season. In securing the first seed they ensured that they got to play with their impressive home field advantage. They currently rank fourth of the elite offences through the season, and if there is a weakness in the offence it is the talent behind Alvin Kamara and Michael Thomas, although Mark Ingram did also run the ball effectively in the games he played, but the creativity of Sean Payton and Drew Brees has been more than enough to carry them through.

This week they welcome the Philadelphia Eagles and the supposed playoff mojo of Nick Foles. There is not a large enough sample size to declare that Foles is especially effective in the playoffs, but he has certainly done brilliantly for a backup over last season and this. Still, we shouldn’t forget how effective the Eagles defensive line was against the Chicago Bears last week. Still, the Saints at home are a different prospect and Fletcher Cox and the rest of the defence will need to get pressure up the middle to disrupt Brees. It is possible as the Cowboys demonstrated earlier this season, but right now the Saints are my tip for the Super Bowl. Brees may have thrown for under four thousand yards for the first time in fourteen years, but he also has the highest completion percentage of his career and the lowest number of interceptions. The route to the Super Bowl runs through New Orleans and I don’t see the Eagles disrupting that this week, although of course all things are possible.

AAF: Cowboys’ Defence

09 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by in Amateur Adventures in Film

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It was only in part to avoid watching the Tennessee Titans defence for a third week in a row that I decided to watch the Dallas Cowboys defence limit the New Orleans Saints to ten points in their Thursday night win. Mostly I wanted to see how they had managed to tame one of the three elite offences that have so dominated the season so far.

Well it has to be said that the answer to this question was not born out of some complex scheme twist but rather solid play and execution, whilst exploiting one of the traits of the Saints’ offence.

I’ll start with what it was about the Saints’ offence that allowed the Cowboys to match up to them in a relatively straight forward manner, which is that the Saints have one excellent receiver in Michael Thomas, but otherwise the Saints really rely on the abilities of their all-star running backs Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara and a raft of other players but their second receiving threat is probably Kamara.

The Cowboy therefore matched up to the Saints with a mixture of their base 4-3 defence and their nickel sub package, occasionally playing some dime on long third downs.. They generally only rushed four or five players against the pass and rarely used any exotic blitzes, although late in the fourth quarter they did get a sack from corner Anthony Brown who was blitzing alongside Jaylon Smith as Dorance Armstrong dropped into coverage. However, their success was mostly playing man coverage behind a four or five man pass rush and the ability of their linebackers. Now there were some strong moments individually from the linemen and rushing the passer but when facing a quarterback like Drew Brees it is perhaps not surprising that they only sacked him twice and got a couple more quarterback hits. What they did manage was to make him uncomfortable in the pocket and so the Saints couldn’t quite get in rhythm and Brees missed a couple of throws or had them disrupted. There were still moments where Michael Thomas could run a route and Brees would find him but sustaining drives was hard and I don’t remember seeing as many three and outs from the Saints as we did in the first half of this game.

The players that really jumped out at me were the fore mentioned linebackers and in particular rookie Leighton Vander Esch and Jaylon Smith. For years it has felt like the presence or absence of Sean Lee has defined the ability of the Cowboys’ defence to remain competitive, but that is no longer the case. It looks like Jaylon Smith is finally fit enough to show that he can really play in the league after the knee injury that he sustained in his final college game dropped him out of the first round and some were worried he might never be the same given the nerve damage he suffered and the resultant drop foot. He might not have reached the heights of the player he was in college, but he was on the field for every snap in this game and clearly was a vital part in the communication of the defence. Playing next to him is Vander Esh whose range and ability as a tackler meant that the Cowboys defence was able to contain Alvin Karma to only seventy-two yards of offence, which is no mean feat given the way he has torn through defences this season.

The Dallas Cowboys defence now ranks seventh in the league by DVOA, very much helped by this game with saw them leap up from thirteenth but it seems to have found its way with its linebackers and defensive line rotation . What also helps has been the way the Cowboys have been playing complimentary football as their ability to sustain drives and keep the Saints offence off the field for long stretches of this game kept their defence fresh and able to either contain or at times dominate the Saints offence. I will be interested to see how the Cowboys fare in the coming weeks but if feels they have the momentum to win the division if they can beat the Eagles this week and this season they have the defence to do it.

Saints @ Panthers

20 Sunday Nov 2016

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Carolina Panthers 23
New Orleans Saints 20

This was as good a Thursday night game as we have had in a while in that what started off as a very one sided game ended up with an exciting finish thanks to a late surge by the Saints and the Panthers struggling towards the end of the game.

The Panthers offence was up and down for most of the game as they struggled to make any headway in the run game and so were often forced to pass the ball with mixed success. The run game was particularly bad as Cam Newton, Jonathan Steward, and Ted Ginn all had runs of ten yards or more, and yet the Panthers managed a paltry fifty yards in total. Jonathan Stewart’s eighteen carries for thirty-one yards looks particularly anaemic, although these numbers will have been hurt by a dangerous attempt to run out the clock that nearly cost the Panthers the game in the fourth quarter. Cam Newton managed not to turn the ball over, but he completed less that fifty percent of his passes, but did manage to connect up with Ted Ginn for a forty yard touchdown thanks to a great catch at the back of the end zone at the end of the second quarter. This game could have been won a lot more easily if the Panthers had kept playing offence into the fourth quarter, but the offensive line struggled a lot throughout the game and the attempts to run out the clock just did not work.

The Saints defence played better than I was expecting, and whilst I knew it had taken some steps forward since the start of the season, I was not expecting them to cause as many problems for the Panthers as they did. The real star of the show was the Saints front seven who effectively shut down the Panthers running game, as well as getting two sacks and seven quarterback hits. In fact they hurried Newton several times, with Dannell Ellerbe coming up with four tackles, a sack, and two quarterback hits. The Panthers’ struggles in the passing game were as much to do with Cam Newton’s accuracy as coverage, but the pressure he was under was surely a factor and re-enforces the old maxim that good coverage helps create pass rush, and pass rush helps create good coverage.

The Saints offence had a harder time scoring than the Panthers for much of the game, but they actually out-gained the Panthers by nearly one hundred and fifty yards. That said, part of that seemed to be that their running game improved when Mark Ingram went out of the game in the third quarter and Tim Hightower came into the game. Hightower amassed sixty-nine yards on just twelve carries including a long of twenty-seven yards. The Panthers were able to pressure Drew Brees who was sacked three times and hit a further four times, but he threw for over two hundred and fifty yards and two touchdowns with only one interceptions. Rookie receiver Michael Thomas led the team with five catches for sixty-eight yards, but Brees had nine different players catch balls as he distributed the ball with characteristic skill, but in the end it wasn’t enough.

The Panthers defence has been better since the bye, the front seven coming back to form as their very young secondary came together. They struggled later in this game, with 6ft 6 Brandon Coleman catching the Saints’ first touchdown over 5ft 9 Robert McClain with Leonard Johnson having gone out of the game. However, the real worry for the Panthers will be Luke Kuechly who left the game sobbing in the fourth quarter and who is once more in the concussion protocol. Their leading tackler missed three games last season to a concussion, and whilst Friday’s Instagram picture with a smiling Kuechly may give hope to some, you have to be worry about how much more football he should play. As fantastic a player as Kuechly is, and I have been very bullish on my praise in the past, the troublesome nature of head injuries in football and the position he plays means it may be time for him to seriously consider his career.

This was a tight game that should have been a highlight of the Thursday night schedule, but with two players now in the concussion protocol the gloss has come off the game. As much as I love football, we cannot and should not ignore what can happen to players, and I just hope that both players make a full recovery and listen to their doctors.