HawkShack.com

Football 101: Your front seven is responsible for all of the gaps and lanes across the of scrimmage. When a play gets past the Defensive Line the Linebackers the Secondary is by definition "the last line of defense", it's on them to limit the damage, to prevent an otherwise successful play for the opposition from becoming a TD.

Yesterday our supposedly (formerly?) best in the game Secondary failed to do that on at least 3 occasions and it cost us the game. I'm not accustomed to seeing us give up big plays in bunches ... Legion of Who?

Legion of 3 fouls on one play.

I will add the piss poor handling of the clock before the half. Pete does this stuff all the time and basically it cost us the win because of the 7 points that were a direct result of it.

SIX first downs awarded to Tenn by PENALTY.

Speaking of them...11 for 98 yards, an entire football field of yardage.

We ended up with more yards, and TOP. Incredible ineptness, what a frustrating game this was.

I will also add that our vaunted "best in the league" d-line got a whopping TWO pressures on Tenn.

Maybe Pete and the Hawks should have spent a little more time preparing for the game and a little less preparing for a protest. Staying in the locker room...cowardly BS. Looks like that vaunted "D" never came out of the locker room. If they are that dedicated to the cause then forgo your million dollar paychecks, go to D.C. and protest at the Whitehouse.

Losing a game in the NFL is never the result of exclusively ONE factor. It is always a combination of things.

But yes, the secondary let us down today. I don't even like the moniker Legion of Boom anymore - that was the unit we had 3-4 years ago. It doesn't really fit anymore.

Another alarming trend that we saw last season: Lack of turnovers by the corners and safeties. Kam had a pick, but it got overturned by the Sherman Trifecta of Silly. Three games, and only a DT and a LB have a pick.

Speaking of turnovers, they come from pressure. We had ZERO sacks yesterday, and very little pressure. How can a line with Bennett, Avril, Richardson, and Clark not generate pressure? Kudos to the Titans O line, which is damn good. But still... we have a lot of resources invested in that D line and they shrunk yesterday.

The offense sputtering all the time is not helping the defense, I know that. Especially on a hot day, you want your offense to stay on the field more. The TOP got better in the second half, but this needing a half of football to get the offense moving thing is really wearing thin.

Irish Greg 2.0 wrote:Losing a game in the NFL is never the result of exclusively ONE factor. It is always a combination of things.

True, that's why it truly is a team game. On the other hand in any close game there is always predominant factors that can be singled out (call em coaching points) of which can be said "if not for this, we would have won this game", for this game, while there are a few, this is chief among them. IMO of course.

SIX first downs via penalties is the game right there. Nothing else needs to be discussed. Except 11 total penalties for 98 yards in other words two yards short of an entire football field. We actually had more first downs by the end of the game but the six we gave up by penalties is the tale of the tape.

We got killed by the run game. I tend to blame the whole defense when then run defense breaks down as badly as it did yesterday. If they had not broken those big runs, we win. I don't consider it the main reason we lost, but it is one of the biggest factors. I can only attribute it to the heat and time on the field. They wore down and Tennessee started to run on us.

Aseahawkfan wrote:We got killed by the run game. I tend to blame the whole defense when then run defense breaks down as badly as it did yesterday. If they had not broken those big runs, we win. I don't consider it the main reason we lost, but it is one of the biggest factors. I can only attribute it to the heat and time on the field. They wore down and Tennessee started to run on us.

No,read my post. 6 first downs by penalties on defense
Do you not compute that? Those penalties extended drives. They scored points on all of them.

Irish Greg 2.0 wrote:Losing a game in the NFL is never the result of exclusively ONE factor. It is always a combination of things.

But yes, the secondary let us down today. I don't even like the moniker Legion of Boom anymore - that was the unit we had 3-4 years ago. It doesn't really fit anymore.

Another alarming trend that we saw last season: Lack of turnovers by the corners and safeties. Kam had a pick, but it got overturned by the Sherman Trifecta of Silly. Three games, and only a DT and a LB have a pick.

Speaking of turnovers, they come from pressure. We had ZERO sacks yesterday, and very little pressure. How can a line with Bennett, Avril, Richardson, and Clark not generate pressure? Kudos to the Titans O line, which is damn good. But still... we have a lot of resources invested in that D line and they shrunk yesterday.

The offense sputtering all the time is not helping the defense, I know that. Especially on a hot day, you want your offense to stay on the field more. The TOP got better in the second half, but this needing a half of football to get the offense moving thing is really wearing thin.

Agree that the Legion of Boom was a few years ago. Been a while since I've seen Kam blow someone up. Thomas is still hitting hard, Sherm never really was a big hitter but no one has replaced Browner in that regards. So yeah, Legion of Boom is no longer appropriate when the smallest guy on the team is the biggest hitter for the Legion.

Lack of turnovers period is a big problem.

The real key to the loss this past Sunday... Kris Richard didn't adjust for the weekside runs off tackle. There was one quick WR pass to that side that went for a TD also. If you think about the SF game, that too with Hyde was a weak side run off tackle. So here's the key to an explosive play against our D. Put one WR out wide left, No TE on that side and have a FB lead the RB off their LT and boom. 20+ yards. Clark or Bennett over there can't get any push on the LT drive blocking and KJ is easily taken out by the FB leaving Griffin on the RB but he's way down the field with the WR running a go route.

Go back and watch the past few games and I think you'll be shocked at what you see.

Last in the league in rush defense right now. Murray was even questionable with a hamstring last Sunday.

We've had a number of big runs against us. If they were stopped say for 4 yards, how would our Defense rank?
I ask this because those explosive plays can be fixed and it's not like teams are continually grinding out yards on the ground.
We're not (generally speaking) easy to run against.

NorthHawk wrote:We've had a number of big runs against us. If they were stopped say for 4 yards, how would our Defense rank?
I ask this because those explosive plays can be fixed and it's not like teams are continually grinding out yards on the ground.
We're not (generally speaking) easy to run against.

Great point, what's wrong with this team really can still be fixed! At least well enough to still expect to reach and advance in the playoffs ... we may not fix the O-line, but there is enough talent on this team to still do some very good things this season, which why 1-2 really isn't a disaster.

Largent80 wrote:No,read my post. 6 first downs by penalties on defense
Do you not compute that? Those penalties extended drives. They scored points on all of them.

No. I don't. That did not kill us like the big runs. We've had plenty of penalties on defense before and three of them came on one drive. We never had trouble stopping a team with defensive penalties before. We've been heavily penalized on defense for years.

Do you not compute that? You must not be a long time Hawks fans not to know that this defense gets penalties all the time and still wins. See how that works.

By giving free conversions, you stay on the field longer (see long runs) does THAT help?