2 minute defense

[Guest]

Interesting discussion by PP
https://twitter.com/LukeBraunNFL/status/...21091?s=20

He likes the call.  Sez Dantzler just didn't play it right.  And that he preaches, practice how you want to play.  Seems the young guys might not be paying attention to detail.

[Guest]

Party at Zim’s place… :p 

[Guest]

Dre' was interviewed on local sports radio Wednesday. 

He made it very clear that Dantzler F'd up big on that last play. 

To paraphrase:

"Dantzler never should have backed off from the goal line"

" They train twice a week on goal-line defense and they are coached to never leave the goal-line"

" You make the wide receive run through you and make the qb throw a much more difficult fade route in that situation"

[Guest]

@"StickyBun" said:
Once Zimmer is gone, I think you'll hear a narrative and rumblings from 'inside sources' about his coaching style and shortcomings. Just a guess.

Of course, human nature, in all walks of Life.  

My rumblings are on the outside and for 2+ years prior to his departure.  

Overall, I think Zimmer was a good hire who came in and turned the defense around immediately.  Then, like with players, you expect progression and growth and it may not ever happen.  I think that is the case with Zimmer.  He is/was a good HC, more towards average then excellent that is for sure.  He was just never able to align the 4 phases of the game and coach a consistent football team from game to game.  It is a job that very few people could do at a high level.  

Hope we can find a high level/functioning HC.  I think we are a premium organization that can get anyone we want for many reasons including ownership.  The team has a lot of talent that I think a high level HC could build on and get immediate results.  This league has not been a 3-5 year rebuild, it is 2 years max.  

[Guest]

@"minny65" said:

@"StickyBun" said:
Once Zimmer is gone, I think you'll hear a narrative and rumblings from 'inside sources' about his coaching style and shortcomings. Just a guess.

Of course, human nature, in all walks of Life.  

My rumblings are on the outside and for 2+ years prior to his departure.  

Overall, I think Zimmer was a good hire who came in and turned the defense around immediately.  Then, like with players, you expect progression and growth and it may not ever happen.  I think that is the case with Zimmer.  He is/was a good HC, more towards average then excellent that is for sure.  He was just never able to align the 4 phases of the game and coach a consistent football team from game to game.  It is a job that very few people could do at a high level.  

Hope we can find a high level/functioning HC.  I think we are a premium organization that can get anyone we want for many reasons including ownership.  The team has a lot of talent that I think a high level HC could build on and get immediate results.  This league has not been a 3-5 year rebuild, it is 2 years max.  

Well said Minny! The other legacy of Zimmer is going to be "snake-bit" 

You look at the list of bad juju? It's something right out of a Game of Thrones season. 

If the Wilfs get on it early enough, they should pretty much have their choice of who they want next. The bigger question in my mind is do I trust em after the Chilly decision?

Not sure I do. 

[Guest]

@"purplefaithful" said:

@"minny65" said:

@"StickyBun" said:
Once Zimmer is gone, I think you'll hear a narrative and rumblings from 'inside sources' about his coaching style and shortcomings. Just a guess.

Of course, human nature, in all walks of Life.  

My rumblings are on the outside and for 2+ years prior to his departure.  

Overall, I think Zimmer was a good hire who came in and turned the defense around immediately.  Then, like with players, you expect progression and growth and it may not ever happen.  I think that is the case with Zimmer.  He is/was a good HC, more towards average then excellent that is for sure.  He was just never able to align the 4 phases of the game and coach a consistent football team from game to game.  It is a job that very few people could do at a high level.  

Hope we can find a high level/functioning HC.  I think we are a premium organization that can get anyone we want for many reasons including ownership.  The team has a lot of talent that I think a high level HC could build on and get immediate results.  This league has not been a 3-5 year rebuild, it is 2 years max.  

Well said Minny! The other legacy of Zimmer is going to be "snake-bit" 

You look at the list of bad juju? It's something right out of a Game of Thrones season. 

If the Wilfs get on it early enough, they should pretty much have their choice of who they want next. The bigger question in my mind is do I trust em after the Chilly decision?

Not sure I do. 

I will say it again, Zimmer's downfall was being a genius defensive coach in an offensive era.  There is minimal return when the chips are stacked against the D.  Add to that, being a successful team lead to losing our OC every year.  The offense never had consistency and sprinkle in the DeFlip and Kubiak Jr failures while the D aged.  

[Guest]

@"greediron" said:

@"purplefaithful" said:

@"minny65" said:

@"StickyBun" said:
Once Zimmer is gone, I think you'll hear a narrative and rumblings from 'inside sources' about his coaching style and shortcomings. Just a guess.

Of course, human nature, in all walks of Life.  

My rumblings are on the outside and for 2+ years prior to his departure.  

Overall, I think Zimmer was a good hire who came in and turned the defense around immediately.  Then, like with players, you expect progression and growth and it may not ever happen.  I think that is the case with Zimmer.  He is/was a good HC, more towards average then excellent that is for sure.  He was just never able to align the 4 phases of the game and coach a consistent football team from game to game.  It is a job that very few people could do at a high level.  

Hope we can find a high level/functioning HC.  I think we are a premium organization that can get anyone we want for many reasons including ownership.  The team has a lot of talent that I think a high level HC could build on and get immediate results.  This league has not been a 3-5 year rebuild, it is 2 years max.  

Well said Minny! The other legacy of Zimmer is going to be "snake-bit" 

You look at the list of bad juju? It's something right out of a Game of Thrones season. 

If the Wilfs get on it early enough, they should pretty much have their choice of who they want next. The bigger question in my mind is do I trust em after the Chilly decision?

Not sure I do. 

I will say it again, Zimmer's downfall was being a genius defensive coach in an offensive era.  There is minimal return when the chips are stacked against the D.  Add to that, being a successful team lead to losing our OC every year.  The offense never had consistency and sprinkle in the DeFlip and Kubiak Jr failures while the D aged.  

I think there is still room for a defensive genius in the NFL, but I do think there are some factors in the decline of the defense:

• Victims of their own success. The Vikings have developed some very good players during the Spielman/Zimmer era and they have done a good job of holding onto talent, but that success has also led to them being in cap Hell the past few years, taking FA off the table the past couple seasons.
• Because of the aforementioned cap problems, the Vikings had to reload their defense on the fly and they took the approach of hoarding mid to late round picks to take more swings on young talent. We are finally starting to see some of those young guys contribute more, but they had immediate needs and filled them with guys who would take 2-3 years to develop if at all.
• The Vikings had a good duo of CBs in Xavier Rhodes and Trae Waynes and let both players go. Rhodes has a bounce back season last year, but has been struggling again and Trae Waynes has been injured much of the past two seasons, so letting those two players go wasn't the wrong call. However, they had banked on two 1st rounders in Mike Hughes and Jeff Gladney to be their next generation of CBs. Hughes was plagued by injuries and was eventually traded away and Gladney turned out to be a pretty terrible/troubled person and was released. Then they had guys like Holton Hill who flashed ability, but couldn't stay out of trouble. Cam Dantzler who looked good as a rookie, but has not looked good in his second year. They then brought in veterans such as Patrick Peterson, Breeland, and Alexander to fill out their secondary. That seemed like a great idea, but Peterson has missed several games, Breeland has been burned frequently with the occassional big play, and Alexander has been decent enough on his return, but pretty quiet. The worst thing is that even after all of this investment at CB, it will be a top need next season. Zimmer is supposed to be a CB guru and while everyone will have some misses, they have not been able to develop replacements for Rhodes and Waynes.
• Injuries. I don't even think I need to go into this one.
• I also think there is an element that as more teams adopted the double A gap look, it lost some of its uniqueness and teams developed more counters to it. Zimmer then tried to evolve with more overload blitzes and other looks, but it was never the same.

I know there are more reasons than that, but it's a good starting point. The issues on offense are another post, but his run first mentality is maddening. It sometimes works like today, but things like always calling run-run-pass in the red zone drive me mad.

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@"medaille" said:

@"JimmyinSD" said:

@"purplefaithful" said:
Youre right Sticky...I guess it's kinda human nature too though. 

This D is harkening me back to Les Frasier, not a good thing. 

My lament is they could never stay healthy enough to realize potential. This D was pretty good earlier in the season and has just gone to hell since. 

thats been some of our complaints since early on with Zim, if he is such a great coach,  why does it take high draft picks, playing at a near flawless level,  to get his defense to play at a high level?  shouldnt a great coach be able to do good/great things with the average NFL types,  and then have a few great players really elevate the team?

I think one of the things that’s made Zimmers defense so
effective is all the games that are being played to confuse the QBs.  I think you probably need some intelligence
to play the key positions on Zimmers defense, and that either comes with
experience or innate intelligence.  You
probably can’t just take some dumb, athletic player and replace Smith or Kendricks.  You also need some amount of selflessness to
have all the players playing as a team.


But the NFL has changed. 
It’s a dumb idea to invest heavily in your defense.  You need to maximize your offense, and get
whatever you can out of your defense. 
You also need to have a ton of young players because of cap
limitations.  I don’t think you can run a
team the way Zimmer ran his defense where young players sat for a couple years
and learned.  You need schemes that you
can just plug and play guys and it still works, not complicated schemes that
are awesome if you’ve got a lot of great guys, but suck with replacement level
guys.  I also don’t think it’s really
possible to be consistently good on defense. 
It’s just too hard.  If you have
weaknesses on defense, the offense can attack those weaknesses, and it’s impossible
to be deep enough to prevent weaknesses. 
You really need a solid roster and then luck.  That doesn’t really explain the catastrophic
failures on D we’ve seen this year, and it doesn’t explain how soft we’ve been in
key situations.


We used to be an aggressive man team with heavy blitzing,
and it seems like we switched to a much more soft zone based team several years
ago and it’s never really been the same. 
I’m not sure what caused this.  I
think we all want the old aggressive blitzing defense back.  I’m curious if the rule changes make that
impractical or if he’s just gotten old and soft.


I also think he really fucked up his coordinators.  I think having so many inexperienced
coordinators is super dumb.  I imagine if
he feels like he needs to help Kubiak with the offense, now he’s delegating
more of his defense and they suffer, and if he focuses on the defense the
offense suffers.  He really needed more
guys that he can just hand off whole sections of his team to and trust they’ll
crush it.

Couple of thoughts to piggyback on this.  Zim was always a man coverage guy, but I think he realized that playing man is a losing bet in today's NFL.  Especially with the mobile QBs.  So he moved to more zone to fit in with the newer NFL, but obviously that sacrifices pressure, especially without a stud DE.

And to the coordinators, that has been my point.  Our offense changes every year to 2 years.  If they are good, the OC moves on and then it is a crap shoot again.  Biggest problem with having a defensive coach in todays NFL, your OC is constantly in flux.