Why Haslett has to go

[Ax]

I still say we will contend for a playoff spot:eclipsee_Victoria:

I'm with you, here.

I believe in our players. I just don't think our staff has been maximizing their abilities.

 

[Bulldog]

There are a lot of excuses to be had. Lord knows Norv used hundreds to stay the coach here for 7 years.

The fact remains Haslett PLUS the front office has had 3 years to assemble a decent defense and now in 2012 it looks as if we might now be on a 5 year plan there.

Cornerbacks? Amazing how the Seahawks were able to come up with two good starting corners, one of which they found in the CFL.

Here we kept Hall for the past 3 years, acquired Wilson who is a gamer but is short and has only average speed and athleticism.

Third corners Philip Buchanon (drugs) and Cedric Griffin (age and ACL injuries in the past) have been busts here.
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[Neophyte]

Om,
Do you think our D line and linebackers have improved?
If so, do you give any credit to Haslett?

I'm genuinely curious what you think about that. Please don't mistake this as trying desperately to defend Haslett. As I've said before, if they fired him today I wouldn't be surprised nor upset.

My answers are:
Yes, I think they've improved a lot! Both in quality starters and in depth.
Yes, I give Haslett credit; I also give Allen/Shanahan credit and whoever the LB and D Line coaches are credit as well.

I'm not Om but I'm going to offer my opinion as well.

I think the defensive line and the linebackers have improved but I think that is the direct result of the position coaches working with them.

I think Haslett's scheme lacks creativity and fails to consistently put our guys in the best position to generate positive plays.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

first off , its not back patting when its correct, and elephant and I were both strong advocates of spending what you need to to get the best possible coach to make this scheme work. as for the switch, staying with something when its not working, simply because we have a coach who has a boner for the 3-4 is stupid, its now been proven beyond a doubt that we are a more effective defence out of a 4 man front. but we keep going back to 3-4 looks because haslett doesnt want to offend shanny who hired him more on his ability to be a yes man than his coaching skills.

to the people who say we have more talent in our front seven? I should friggin hope so, its only been 3 seasons worth of draft and free agency, if we didnt have a few more players by now there would be something wrong, the problem is that even after 3 offseasons, we are now effectively worse off than before the rebuild, and honestly i dont want to hear about injuries, last seasons the texans lost mario Williams and they seemed to do ok. our secondary is bad, but it hasnt been good in a long time. the problem is that we took a strength, made it a weakness then invested heavily to make it a strength again.

for the first responder, yes that was my point, the packers are a pretty good defence, we are not.

and no we cant fire Haslett now, but even if the defence gets marginally better the problems with a Haslett defence are not going away, he needs to.

 

[Rymanofthenorth]

I'm not Om but I'm going to offer my opinion as well.

I think the defensive line and the linebackers have improved but I think that is the direct result of the position coaches working with them.

I think Haslett's scheme lacks creativity and fails to consistently put our guys in the best position to generate positive plays.

absolutely. the good Dc's manage to do this, Haslett never has.

 

[Om]

I'm hoping to finish up a blog piece about Has for tomorrow, but meanwhile...

Echoing what's been said by others....I think we're absolutely better off in the front seven than we were three years ago. We're younger, faster, more athletic and deeper. As we should be. The investment has been heavy, and necessarily so.

The secondary? I'm not sure we're all that much worse than three years ago, we've just been a turnstile at safety. I think Wilson and Hall, properly deployed and supported by competent safeties, are at least serviceable corners.

But that's another disussion.

We have no way to know how much influence Haslett is given here when it comes to player acquisition, but to the extent he has any, I am happy to give him due credit for his part. That's never been my problem with him, though.

My problem has been with a history as a DC in the NFL that is average at best, and 2+ years now of watching his defenses routinely coming up short. They too often look underprepared, confused, reactionary. There is a distinct lack of crispness (witness the difference between the Saints game and last 2 weeks) from week to week, and the stong sense for 2+ years now that more often than not the other teams' OC and QB are a step ahead of our defense both coming into and then during the games.

Other than that, I actually kinda like the guy. He's got great glower.

 

[tshile]

neo:
absolutely fair point. i don't know enough about the position coaches, and obviously i'm not at practice, to know. it could be entirely caused by them and Haslett could have nothing to do with it.

ax:
i disagree. i think we got a lot out of our DL, LB's, RB's, and WR's. Now... I have no idea if thats the result of good position coaches, a good head coach, a good coordinator, a good talent evaluator, luck, or some combination of the above.

Ryman:
I think you and I have very different opinions on just how bad this team was when Allen, the Shanahi, and Haslett took over, and/or different expectations on how quickly those can be fixed.

 

[Bulldog]

Only an idiot though calls an all out blitz on second and 20 and asks the corners to man up down the field after the game they had been having.
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[tshile]

Only an idiot though calls an all out blitz on second and 20 and asks the corners to man up down the field after the game they had been having.
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I find this comment funny considering some of the criticism of Haslett i've heard over the last two weeks includes:
- not being aggressive enough
- not letting the corners play man-to-man.

I have no idea if you made the comments I refer to, I'm just trying to point out the stark difference in opinions about why Haslett sucks i've heard over the last two weeks

 

[Neophyte]

Only an idiot though calls an all out blitz on second and 20 and asks the corners to man up down the field after the game they had been having.
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I didn't have a problem with it except that they didn't tell the corners to press at the line. Free release with no safety help is a bad mix in my book.

 

[Bulldog]

No, I didn't relate to your comments, only a single remark about how you cloak a secondary that has been torched.

It might not be popular but it is to play cover zone and limit individual gains.

In the past I would agree with those that called this 'slow death' but my argument against the Blatche system was that I thought we DID have the players then to pressure and cover better than this.
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[Ax]

I didn't have a problem with it except that they didn't tell the corners to press at the line. Free release with no safety help is a bad mix in my book.

Agreed. Dalton got blasted just after releasing the ball. Knocking his receivers of their route, disrupting the timing may, that is, MAY, have produced a better result for us.

 

[Neophyte]

Certainly could not have produced worse results.

 

[Cycleans]

There is at least one thing we can all agree with...The Skins won't win many games giving up 30+ pts. a game. The optimist side of me says that the Steelers defense has traditionally been alot better when Troy Polamalu is on the field. The same thing can be said of Bob Sanders when he was on the field with the Colts.
The Skins have whom playing at the Safety position? Gomes? and....? A bunch of...backups imho. I'm not even picking on just one of the safety positions be it FS or SS. There isn't much there guys... Not alot of alternatives in free agency at this time of the season. There is still hope however for improvement.
That being said it's going to be rough sailing for awhile....

 

[Goaldeje]

Interesting look here at the 3-4 D, and Zone Blitzes in particular. I posted it here because it seems to me that perhaps this is what Shanny wants our D to look like?

Down 17 points early in the fourth quarter of their Week 2 game against Houston, the Jaguars were pushed to desperation. Hoping to start a comeback, Jacksonville lined up with four wide receivers for second-year quarterback Blaine Gabbert. The Texans defense, orchestrated by longtime NFL head coach Wade Phillips, countered by bringing a blitz. Linebacker Bradie James joined the Texans' front in its pursuit of Gabbert, and as Houston's line twisted and slanted their way to the quarterback, the extra rusher allowed defensive end J.J. Watt to get free and bring Gabbert to the ground.

The sack, like most outcomes in football, was a product of some other, often unnoticed factor. Watt gets the credit, but without James's disruption, he would not have been able to bring down Gabbert. And the ripples go further than that. The other reason for Jacksonville's faltering has nothing to do with rushers. Despite having four wide receivers running routes, no one was open. Phillips had called for a blitz, and although Gabbert was surrounded by Texans, it was the coverage that sealed his fate.

The word "blitz" is maybe the most exciting word in football. Like a football Mexican standoff, it conjures up the ultimate him-or-me scenario — a mass of defenders in single-minded, blind pursuit of the quarterback, and an offense that knows it might be only a missed tackle away from a long touchdown. Former Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden once gave a clinic lecture about the blitz aptly (and neutrally) titled, "Hang Loose — One of Us Is Fixin' to Score." A blitz is the closest thing we have to football bedlam.

Phillips's call wasn't quite bedlam. The "zone blitz" Houston brought combines the do-or-die nature of a traditional man-to-man blitz with a more conservative zone coverage behind it. Zone blitzes are not particularly new, but while the "blitz" element continues to receive the most attention, it's the continuing changes in the coverage behind it that make zone blitzes the most important defensive tactic in modern football.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8428129/dick-lebeau-evolution-coverage-tactics-zone-blitz

 

[servumtuum]

Excellent article, G.. One paragraph caught my eye.

You can play coverages in three ways. You can play zone, man, or pattern-match man. Pattern-match man is a coverage that plays the pattern after the pattern distribution. That means you pick up in man coverage after the receivers make their initial breaks and cuts. We number receivers from the outside going inside. If the number-one receiver crosses with the number-two receiver, we do not pick up the man coverage until they define where they are going.

The part in bold is where I think we have a "system failure" at some point

 

[Bulldog]

Part of the failure though is personnel. And that is not going to get fixed before the offseason at the earliest.

I don't know that Hall, Wilson, Gomes and Williams isn't the worst secondary in the NFC East and one of the most limited in the conference.

If that's the case then yes Haslett can make some cosmetic changes to put lipstick on the pig, but it's still going to grunt

The answer is to put legitimate NFL defensive backs on the field and then see what the staff does with them.

 

[Ax]

The answer is to put legitimate NFL defensive backs on the field and then see what the staff does with them.

Seems like the only way this staff could operate at a high level. We need to field more players that are too good for them to screw up. These guys have no clue of how to make, lemonade.

 

[Bulldog]

There is no magic bullet in the NFL. This league is too competitive. If a guy like Belichick doesn't have the horses on defense he can try all the tricks he wants as he did in 2011 and his unit still finishes #30.

Compare that to his teams when he had Richard Seymour, Ty Law, Asante Samuel, etc.

Haslett may not be a great DC, but I can't think of anyone right now that could come in here and turn this unit around without changes to the personnel.

EVERY player other than Gomes in the secondary has been released by someone else and allowed to walk. Hall, Wilson, Williams, Meriweather, etc.

That means someone else thought they had better or could do better.

You put a backfield together like that and you really have to count on a NUMBER of other GMs and coaches having made mistakes in their evaluations.

 

[Om]

Thing is....Haslett has NEVER been a top-flight DC. His record is average at best, pretty crappy at worst. We hear more and more comments, suggestions and hints from other teams all the time about our predictability defensively. We watch every single week as opposing OC's and QB's seem to be one step ahead of our play calling and adjustments.

With few expections since he's been here, Haslett's D has pretty much been what Haslett D's have always been....underachievers.

Again, I don't think he's getting the max out of what he DOES have. Wilson and Hall are hardly shutdown corners, and Gomes and Williams are just average safeties. But is this secondary as bad as the numbers would seem to indicate? Is it more about their physical skills than it is about how they are being deployed?

Personally, I don't think so. I've seen enough of Jim Haslett, here and elsewhere, to have pretty much made up my mind he's in over his head. I think 2013 sees a new DC and Haslett looking for work .... somewhere. I vote Dallas.