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LB Cover Skills

Liberty City El said:
Our fans usually turn these types of threads about Shaq, Pinck & Zach into LB bashing session.

But Pinckney had his best statistical season last year & Shaq had the most TFL's of his career, I also feel McCloud improved and had a much better season from 2017.

Now people will drag the **** out of our LB's & blame them for the bad games we had but Wisconsin, GTech & BC weren't entirely their faults. The Defensive line deserves just as much blame if not more for those terrible Run Defense performances.

Are they the Bermuda Triangle, of course not, are they on the same level as the Miami great LB's of the past, no they're not, but are they good enough for us to have one of the best Defenses in the ACC/Nation this season? I believe so.

What I'm interested to see is how Blake Baker will differentiate from Diaz, obviously at the core he'll maintain the aggressive high pressure style, but where I believe he'll do things a bit different is how much Man/Zone we use on the backend in coverage.

With the Striker becoming a more pivotal role in the Defense & having a younger more athletic secondary I believe we'll see a lot Nickel coverages which takes pressure off LB's to be solely responsible in the run game, will allow them the freedom to roam & shoot the gap coming off delayed Blitzes.

With the additions to the DLine, they need to be more stout upfront in stopping the run, the LB's have to maintain gap discipline but our interior linemen need to stop always letting RB's get to the 2nd level. To me it's about cohesion in the front 7, the DLine disrupts at the point of attack & the LB's/S's bring the pressure then cleanup, it can't all just be on the LB's all the time imo.
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Has Shaq or Pink went over 100 total tackles in a season yet? That's what's disappointing...
 
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I watched them play a lot. What really stood out to my untrained eye was the run support. Sometimes it looked like they were guessing where they should be. Shouldn’t be the case with a dominant D Line. It was feast or famine, sometimes with a lot of famine. Just what I observed.
 
SPAMM said:
The preponderance of swing passes, check downs and open passes into the flats suggest someone was missing an assignment. I was amazed by the number of passes caught by the opposition with three defenders standing around them a nary a breakup to be seen. But then, when the great minds in the NFL can't defend Edelman when he catches 10 plus passes a game continues to stun me. Am I the only one who yells, why don't you defend that guy at the TV?
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Is that the spot drops the O is exploiting.
 
They are worst against the run than the pass. Like some one else said....dIAZ finally figured out to not put 3 LBs in when the other team had 3-4 WRs on the field
 
I want to see how our defensive alignments continue to evolve with baker at the controls. The striker helps combat the spread. How will we improve vs the power Wisconsin type teams who wanna bully us ? Do we try a 5-2 alignment to get more d tackles on the field? Blitz less ? Unbalanced lines ? Baker though will definitely have chess pieces to move around.
 
Tee3000 said:
Has Shaq or Pink went over 100 total tackles in a season yet? That's what's disappointing...
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Could it be the safety getting so many tackles and the TFL’s the DL picked up as a contributing factor for them not gathering 100+ tackles apiece?
 
80701
 
Pardon my ignorance, but is the Striker just another name for a 3rd LB? Is Finley is just an undersized LB playing at 210lbs in a 4-3 or is there a difference schematically?
 
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JMG said:
Not sure we played anyone with a remotely good offense whatsoever. Defensive stats last year are very skewed and I'm definitely concerned with our LB play and DL moving forward for sure.
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It’s not like we’ll play any good offenses next year either, benefit of being in the coastal
 
Tee3000 said:
to be fair to both sides...PFF nor do we fans know exactly what coverage is called nor whose responsible for what. It is impossible for PFF to grade without knowing the play called or the responsibility of said player on the play call.
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100% Spot on.....
 
They were exposed more the year before. Las relaciones year they weren’t ask to do as much but in all fairness they did a good job especially Pinck.
 
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calleochocane said:
I watched them play a lot. What really stood out to my untrained eye was the run support. Sometimes it looked like they were guessing where they should be. Shouldn’t be the case with a dominant D Line. It was feast or famine, sometimes with a lot of famine. Just what I observed.
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Real talk...I saw the same thing.
 
SPAMM said:
The preponderance of swing passes, check downs and open passes into the flats suggest someone was missing an assignment. I was amazed by the number of passes caught by the opposition with three defenders standing around them a nary a breakup to be seen. But then, when the great minds in the NFL can't defend Edelman when he catches 10 plus passes a game continues to stun me. Am I the only one who yells, why don't you defend that guy at the TV?
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It’s probably a little harder to break up a pass to the flat or swing pass than you think. Those things are designed to happen where/when there’s no defender to stop it. You take the short or behind the line completion and count on your guy beating a defender. It’s about the QB and WR doing their jobs. The defender never has a chance to stop the pass, his job is to tackle.
 
Tee3000 said:
Real talk...I saw the same thing.
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It makes sense to be frustrated by that, but it’s often not bad angles. The D that Manny runs involves gambling on where the ball will go. It looks brilliant when they guess right, not so much when they’re wrong. But I don’t think they’re freelancing out there as much as they’re taught to make a read and go immediately. This leads to wrong choices sometimes. And sometimes it leads to a LB picking off fsu inside they’re 30.
 
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