Let me start off my listing the common sayings that will come up:
- It's only the first game
- Give them time
- We have new players
- We have a new coach
- (and if this was a preseason game) - We were running vanilla with candy coated sprinkles
While there is truth in most of these statements, at this moment I am not finding comfort in any of these reasons. What I will say is that the 2017 defense started off funky until KV had a team meeting and convinced the coaches to revert back to their preseason defense.
I knew coming into the game yesterday that defense would struggle to an extent because of playing Mariota and how there's not much film on him & ATL's offense just yet. However, what bothers me is not only the run defense (which we were excellent at in recent years), but the coverage that I saw from the corners. We were known for playing excellent Man to Man defense, but in most cases we were giving the corners almost 10yrds worth of space.
This reminds me a lot of what we saw in 2011. It was ok because our offense was lights out and the most we could ask is that our defense come up with a few stops. I would like to think that this was a one time thing but if I remember correctly, I saw the same in preseason.
Coming into the season we've all heard how the defense is going to be elite, our talent, etc. There's no doubt that the defense has been the MVP unit since 2017, and if we're going to have any success this year, it's going to be because of them. However, I really hope they get it together, because TB is going to easily pick apart the zone just like Mariota did.