A peak into why we struggled last year and why we are balling this year

LINK


Article Stuff:
"Struggling Dallas Cowboys cornerback Morris Claiborne admitted his confidence has taken a hit, attributing many of his issues this season to adjusting to playing primarily zone coverage."

""We're not the type of team that we were last year. We're not assigned [receivers] and you go wherever he goes, you follow him wherever he goes, and that's your man. We're not in that. We don't do that anymore.

"Now we're basically a zone team. You have to play within that zone. Everything is new to everybody. When guys come in and hit those big dig routes in between the zones, then of course the corner's there, so they're going to say, 'Oh, yeah, that's the corner.'

"It's still a transition. When we were in press, just faced up man to man, they only hit one ball on me. But overall, I think all my big plays come within the zone.""

""It goes with a lot of thinking when you're playing zone.

"When you're playing zone, you have to know where your help is, you have to know where you can push a guy to, to your help, you've got to know when you can man up and play it, all just man-to-man. You have to think about so much before the snap. You have to think of, 'We're in bail. I should be bailing. I should be off 5 yards here.' That's something I have to get used to.

"Coming from a place where I'm playing nothing but man-to-man and last year it's man-to-man, you don't have too much responsibility. Now, it's a big adjustment. It takes time to adjust to it.""

This is a great peak into a player's perspective of what happens when you change to a scheme they are not familiar with and aren't good at.

My Take:
We already know Spags' zone scheme didn't fit our players and going back to a more man look has made a drastic improvement.

It also shows Ryan was not the problem in Dallas and even Kiffin's legendary Cover 2 zone scheme cannot fix it. They are actually playing worse than they did under Ryan(pre-injuries).

A plus is that Dallas' loss is our gain and I love sticking it to "America's Team". First Payton, now Ryan.