First Half Grades

Defensive Line – A

Great. The real strength of the defense and the difference in the play of Will Smith, Charles Grant, and Brian Young has been partially schematic, but mostly with the presence of Hollis Thomas.

Linebackers – C+

They’ve been “solid”. They aren’t liabilities but only Fujita is someone who makes “positive” plays in the form of sacks or interceptions. The rest play within the framework of the defense adequately, never seem to be the problem, but don’t give much production beyond that.

I’ve combined the discussion of both of these positions because their play is really interlocked. I kind of wanted to talk about the scheme the front 7 is using which, as I’ve alluded too, has played to our strength (the D-line) and made only modest demands of our weakness (the LB’s) hiding one of our defensive deficiencies.

The Saints run a one-gap defense with their defensive line.
To explain – Between each offensive lineman is a “gap”. Simply put, in a 2-gap defense the player is responsible for “two-gaps”. Typically such a player would be a wide body (ala Grady Jackson, Haloti Ngata, etc) whose job is to hold his position. Teams such as the Ravens often employ this with their Defensive Tackles because it allows their Linebackers to run free. The DT’s take up space and occupy offensive linemen while Ray Lewis runs around without a body on him.

The Saints ask their d-line to take only one-gap, i.e. hit a single gap between linemen (using stunts, twists, etc to do so) and penetrate up field. The result and hope is the defensive line will disrupt whatever play there was in the backfield.

The draw back is it opens up lanes for a RB (or mobile QB) to run through up field. The responsibility of the Linebackers then, rather then to flow directly to the ball and try to make the play themselves by hitting gaps themselves, is to fill the lanes created by the defensive line and defend the line of scrimmage (multiple gap scheme).

The reason why this has worked so well to the Saints advantage is that it relies on the talents of the d-line above all else. Fast linemen (like Brian Young and our Ends) excel in getting up field, but have trouble working against multiple linemen. Asking them to get into the backfield as quickly as possible plays to their talents. By the same token the Linebackers are not asked to make plays so much as many other schemes (such as the Ravens or the Bears). Rather they are asked to be smart, disciplined, to play their own gaps and read where the plays are going.

To give you some idea of how our defense would ideally look, you have to look to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers under Dungy. The Tampa-2 scheme invented by Monte Kiffin relies heavily on one-gap defensive linemen (such as Warren Sapp). The Linebackers needed to back up such a scheme therefore need to be fast, good diagnosticians, but don’t so much need the bulk or strength of a linebacker like Adalius Thomas. Derrick Brooks is pretty much the ideal here.