Interesting take on the defense

[TDs3nOut]

Denver Broncos Defense Needs Less Bend - Predominantly Orange - A Denver Broncos Fan Site - News, Blogs, Opinion and more.

I don't really know enough to evaluate the merits of the argument -- that our defensive scheme has been too zone oriented and not aggressive enough these first two weeks -- advanced in that piece, but I tend to think it might be right.

I also like the way the writer acknowledges that he is merely a writer, while Del Rio has a strong track record as an NFL coach. Also think the writer is balanced in acknowledging that we have both a lot of new faces on defense are also returning a number of players who missed significant time.

 

[randymon]

Great article really and makes sense to me also. I think Denver has the talent to go man coverage and I think they would fair better especially when Trevor gets back

 

[cdumler7]

Here are my thoughts on some of this...


1) The article is right in the Broncos are running quite a few zone concepts. We did this last year and it was infuriating but it was because we had so many injuries this was designed to try and limit some of the big plays our defense would give up. Plus having very little pass rush man concepts were just playing with fire.


2) My thought of why we are doing this is because we have quite a few guys coming back from injury and this is a way to protect them a bit and hopefully put less strain on them for injury. I look at a guy like Chris Harris coming back from an ACL in this helps him have a zone to cover instead of having to twist and turn with a guy running down the field. It is how we get him on the field for 85% of the plays instead of say 70% playing man at this point. Throw in having lost Trevathan for a few games here at the beginning of the year this helps offer more help to the linebackers being asked to cover.


3) With mobile quarterbacks one of the worst ways to allow a big play is to have half the defense turn their back to the quarterback and not even see him take off running. Zone concepts allow the defense to keep facing forward watching what the quarterback is doing and react limiting their ability to beat us with their legs.


So as much as I hate the zone concept when we have such great coverage guys in the secondary I do understand a bit of protecting some of these guys the way Del Rio is. It causes us to go into a more bend and not break type defense but my guess is as the season progresses he will get more aggressive in knowing how all these players work together. Get these guys back healthier like Harris, Miller, Wolfe, Moore, and Trevathan and watch out as they go full speed.

 

[DownSetHutch]

Really good points, CD. I hope you're right that we will see the defense get less soft as the season goes on.

 

[cdumler7]

I hope I am right too. Del Rio his first year here felt like he had the pieces in place to play that aggressive defense with man coverage most of the time. This team has better pieces than that one does so I have to think Del Rio at some point will be willing to push the pedal to the medal and let these guys go to work. If we are still say week 6 of this season playing this zone coverage crap then I will really start to question Del Rio and what he is doing with this defense. The players we brought in though are all known as man coverage and aggressive style defense types so it just doesn't make sense to do that without the idea of using them that way.