NFL Network: Safety play bad today
exactly, pain linke fence, read my post right above yours. it is because harber is a strong safety which is almost like a linebacker ... i.e. they don't cover the deep balls. That is the free safety's job.
That's what is great about Harper.
Even though he's a good SS, we can put him deep in a cover 2 with confidence.
It's pretty quick to drop to a cover 3 from that set, and blitz the SS or put him in the box; his athleticism allows for that.
They tried a blitz with Stoutmire today and he just bounced off Rudi.:0030:
I don't remember seeing him deep at all though.
The thing that bothers me is this is the worst our safeties have played since the "gold jersey" game against Minnesota.
We ran a cover two, but much of the time Knight and Bellamy were so far apart it was more like having two sets of two deep coverage.
On the "Hodge on Moss" TD, our safeties were actually at the sidelines near the endzone.
On that one play, Venturi thought Hodge could keep covering Moss, Thomas could tackle Culpepper on a blitz, and that both Knight and Bellamy would be fast enough to recover to the center of the endzone.
Thank God things aren't that bad anymore.
That said, there's way to much biting in the secondary, and the message of "pass first" either isn't being said or isn't getting heard.