re: How Rob Ryan Has Revolutionized the Saints' Defense

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dumbness of the "worst defense ever" statement

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Meh. It doesn't really bother me. I watched that defense all year and it's one of the worst I've ever seen. If people want to call it the worst ever, that's fine. Just makes what they're doing this year all the more impressive

Sound tackling and not giving up much YAC. I think we've only given up a couple receptions that players have taken it an extra 20 yards after they caught the ball. That is a big difference maker.

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I did

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bullshite

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bullshite

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C'mon - who couldn't see an improvement coming??

I think Rob's Defensive mind is more of a chip off the old block (Father Buddy) than Rex is.

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Question: What do peeps on here have against Bleacher Report?

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Bleacher Report is called BLEACHER Report for a reason, it is all written by fans, not reporters, not football experts, not x players, just people like you and me. In fact go look you can write your own article. That's why nobody likes Bleacher Report.


Anyway you are right about Ryan having to play with crappy offenses and that makes all the difference in the world. If people cant see that they are stupid. Playing with CSP and Drew on the offensive side of the ball makes him be able to take more chances on the defensive side of the ball. These chances he takes usually become either sacks or turnovers. Last year before half his starters got hurt Dallas had the #3 overall defense.

Couple of things:

-I was firmly in the group that thought Ryan was a terrible hire. I can already say I was absolutely wrong on that account. He's been a great fit with the players and paired with the offense we have.

-Some of those blitzes are a thing of beauty. People think drawing up these exotic blitzes is how you outscheme an offense when in reality that's maybe a quarter of the equation at most.

The real secret is in the execution. Blitzes like those are all about timing. Bringing LBs and DBs (playes who are nowhere near the true passrushers of a DL) is all about getting OL moving and guessing. So far this season we've been masterful at that.

-Having said all of this, I'm going to be very curious to see how our D does against New England this week. While we have been exceptional so far, we haven't played an elite QB from a presnap standpoint nor one who makes a living off distributing the ball quickly.

I like Ryan, but I think his freedom at the LOS outside of the 2 minute drill is overstated. The majority of the offenses we've played so far have either relied heavily on downfield passing attacks or don't give as much flexibility to their QBs.

Take the first Chicago play in that article for example. Without even scrolling down to the Gif, just from presnap shot you can see they have us outleveraged to the nearside. How Cutler didn't check to a quick bubble screen is beyond me. The up WR crashes down on our DB who's already aligned inside and the back WR runs a little flare. He's got 5 yards before our ILB or S are up to make the tackle.

Now Brady is without a ton of weapons this year, but he will still be making those kinds of checks. It will be an awesome chess match to watch.

-O and that bullrush by Hicks was faptastic.

hope we have a year like greg williams had his first year.

LINK

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According to ESPN Stats & Information, the Saints are actually blitzing less often than they did a year ago: from 30 percent of snaps down to 28 percent. But when they do blitz, it’s actually working. On plays when New Orleans sent five or more rushers last year, they got sacks only 5 percent of the time (27th in the league). This year, it’s 14 percent — good for third in the league.

If we’re trying to figure out why more of those blitzes are getting home, there are two likely explanations. The first is timing. Last year, New Orleans blitzed on 37 percent of third-down dropbacks. This year, it’s only 27 percent, which makes the Saints the sixth-most conservative defense in the league. For anyone familiar with what Ryan did in Dallas, this shouldn’t be surprising. He loves flooding the secondary with bodies in passing situations, often rushing only three guys when it’s clear the other team needs to throw. Where Ryan’s using most of his pressure is actually on second down, blitzing on 37 percent of dropbacks. It’s this type of move that’s allowed Ryan to keep opposing offenses constantly on their heels.

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How Cutler didn't check to a quick bubble screen is beyond me.

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You think guys can just check to a bubble screen at any point? It's not that simple. Being that Trestman studied with SP for a whole offseason and Kromer is their O Coordinator, they are running many if the same concepts as the Saints. Chances are Cutler didn't recognize the alignment and neither did the OLine or they would have called it. Probably, the Saints had never blitzed out of that formation before. There could be a number of factors that made that work.