What Were OCs Seeing?
July 20th, 2015
Why did opposing offenses run so many two-back sets against Leslie Frazier’s defense?
Yes, in the salad days leading up to training camp, Joe is scouring for Bucs news in places where there is no Bucs news. This is one of those cases.
Joe doesn’t think it is a shock to anyone that the rush defense last year was, well, not good. No. 19 in the NFL, to be precise. Not awful, but in the bottom half of the league.
Now spreadsheeter Sterling Xie of Football Outsiders has a piece of information that makes you go, “Hhhmmm… ?” Per Xie, no team faced two-back sets more than the Bucs. Again, per Xie, the Bucs defense, on running plays, faced two-back sets 53 percent of the time.
Apparently, opposing offensive coordinators either noticed something they could exploit, or possibly this is just a fluke coincidence that the Bucs faced a high percentage of opponents that ordinarily run two-back sets.
Could it be that offensive coordinators thought the Bucs defense was confused on assignments and putting in a two-back set would only add to the confusion, perhaps resulting in a big play?
Joe isn’t sure what to think. At the end of the day, it worked. The Bucs lost 14 games.
July 20th, 2015 at 10:35 am
Thinking of last year and the way we played and what this year is going to be is like Joe thinking of last year he dated Phyllis Diller and this year he is going to date Rachel.
No comparison but what else are we going to talk about until one week from Saturday?
July 20th, 2015 at 10:37 am
Well, it could be that the D-line was manhandled up front, And the LB being a below average group gave the Running games and dump passes free reign!
July 20th, 2015 at 10:48 am
I’m not an OC, I just play one on tv. Maybe the 2 back sets were used to draw Foster in and give the TE room. I remember Foster and Fletcher gettin burned last year.
July 20th, 2015 at 10:55 am
Probably saw our LBs are small. Added an full back and rammed it down our throats. FB 101.
July 20th, 2015 at 11:02 am
@Dewey Selmon
You’re dead on about drawing Foster in brother, time after time, if u could get just a step on Foster, he’d never catch u…Foster was NEVER a quick twitch guy. Honestly though, it wasn’t just to draw Foster in, Bucs LB’s #54 included have been TERRIBLE the past few seasons at biting on play action fakes. In LVD’s defense however, once he learned and started playing his role in Lovie’s D last season, that ended up being corrected.
July 20th, 2015 at 11:02 am
Well they definitely weren’t in there to block our pass rush that’s for sure.
July 20th, 2015 at 11:17 am
How absurd. They didn’t lode games because of two back sets. They lost games because they didn’t make plays when they were presented to them.
Fashion Goldson, INT chance vs. Panthers.
Johnathon Banks, INT chance vs. Vikings.
Sub WR, deflected pass off his hands vs. Saints for INT thank god.
Blocked punt and FG vs. Rams.
12 men on the field vs. Bengals.
Josh McCown INTS and fumbles throughout the year but especially against the Bears.
None of these hey gaffes have anything to do with a two back set or even coaching for that matter.
they have more to do with players ability and their mental capacity to concentrate and do their jobs?
July 20th, 2015 at 11:27 am
They needed an extra blocker bc it take 3 guys to block gmc on every play. Rotf. I crack myself up.
July 20th, 2015 at 11:27 am
Read the same article Joe, and thought the bottom line was this:
” … they had the 24th-ranked run defense against two backs while their one-back run defense was ranked second in the NFL.”
Huge difference there, and one that OC’s certainly exploited time and time again. Agree with Kalind … they just “rammed it down our throats”. I liked Foster, but it seemed like he was caught out of position too often.
In years past I thought the Bucs blitzed more in situations like that also. Not sure, but it seems like Ronde in particular used to make a lot of plays in the backfield on the RB while the FB was hitting the line.
July 20th, 2015 at 11:32 am
LMFAO! ^^^^^^^^^^^
July 20th, 2015 at 11:49 am
or the Tampa D is smaller, so if you pound them harder, they’ll break later in the game.
or, they were up so much that they literally just needed to kill clock.
Probably both of those.
July 20th, 2015 at 12:11 pm
One thing for certain when you run the weapons we’ll be sending out on the field this year on offenSe running the ball down our throat may prove to be a bit more problematic. I expect us to go into fourth quarters leading a lot of games this season. Difference is this new trigger man won’t squander leads.
July 20th, 2015 at 12:23 pm
Koeter played this Defense twice, hope they are asking him what he saw.
July 20th, 2015 at 12:29 pm
87 and 99, LOL!!!!
July 20th, 2015 at 1:26 pm
It had nothing to do with what they were seeing from our defense. It was our offense, who couldn’t score in a women’s prison, that gave every opposing offense the opportunity to run very vanilla game plans and not risk anything happening to any of their key guys because the knew if they scored 21 points they where gonna win by a touchdown.. Why pull out the Farari when you can win with the Ford pick up….
July 20th, 2015 at 8:20 pm
The Mason Foster element you guys brought up makes about as much sense as anything. Foster was very slow to drop back into coverage, which is why he is no longer here. A two-back set would have Foster leaning in, not back.
Good analysis!