First Half Grades

Cornerbacks – C

Not as bad as some people claim considering the heavy responsibilities these guys sometimes draw. But little more then adequate since the Atlanta game.

Safeties – B-

Great play from the safeties, particularly before Roman Harper got hurt. But even Stoutmire has been surprisingly (to me) solid in his place. However, they’ve had opportunities to make plays and haven’t made them (Bullocks has dropped what, 3 INT’s this season?).

There are pretty much 2 schools of thought these days in the NFL when it comes to coverages. You either run the Cover-2 or you run a Cover-1/Cover-3.

Some quick explanation – Simply put, “Cover-#” refers to the number of deep zones over the top. A Cover-2, which is what Haslett commonly ran, involves 2 Safeties playing deep zone. Since both safeties have relatively the same responsibility, they are virtually interchangeable. Hence Dwight Smith playing alongside Josh Bullocks even though both are really FS’. Cover-1/Cover-3 typically involves only 1 safety deep (the FS) and the CB’s playing either man-to-man or running deep zones themselves (to make it 1 or 3 deep zones).

The benefit of a Cover-2 is obviously it’s hard to beat you deep. The benefit of a Cover-1 scheme is that it frees up your SS to play inside the box.

Because the Saints run a multiple gap scheme with their LB’s, who are basically tasked with sort of cleaning up the trash from anything the D-line misses that comes across the line of scrimmage, the LB’s often need help. This is why Payton seemed so inordinately focused with getting a proto-typical SS. Dwight Smith wasn’t going to cut it in run defense.

And since you have the SS playing in the box, it also gives you additional blitz options, just like a 3-4 defense. The result has been a substantially more aggressive defense then we’ve seen since…well the Dome Patrol days really (this defense, however, doesn’t have anywhere near the relative talent, which is understandable).

But while this defense has really played to our strengths (at S and the D-line) and compensated for a weakness (the LB’s), it’s unfortunately exposed a somewhat mediocre area of our defense, the CB. It’s important for me to stress, our CBs haven’t necessarily played poorly except for, arguably, the Baltimore game (and maybe the Green Bay game). But they are not the “ideal” for this defense because of the pressure put on them. Specifically, being lined up man-to-man for large parts of the game. Against Atlanta it worked extremely well as they had their best game this season. But the Atlanta Wide Receivers aren’t particularly good and Vick isn’t particularly accurate. Against Philly they were somewhat exposed, but Philly is a very good team with a very good QB and for the first half of the game, the CBs played pretty good.

It was against Baltimore they showed weakness. We put Baltimore in a number of 3rd and long situations in the first half and just could not end drives, largely because of completed passes.

The fear is in manys mind (including mine) our CBs are a bit of smoke and mirrors at this point and if a team with excellent Wide Receivers really challenges our CBs, we may be in trouble.