Well it’s a Yankee concept where the QB is literally starting at the FS (Lucas), letting him make the decision for him. If he drives on the crosser, you take the shot on the post. If he stays on top of the post, Tannehill hits the crosser (which was wide open).

Pass rush has to help there.
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Perfect example of how delusional you are, Spags is noticeably better than Sutton.

And coaches typically hire other coaches they have history with, because they have history with them. Just like in all other jobs.
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He doesn’t have to find a new team to do that. He just needs to tell Clark it’s time to move on if you want me to stay here.
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And Clark will do whatever he asks because, if Patrick Mahomes were to leave the Chiefs in his prime, then you might as well just fold the franchise. There would be no coming back from that.
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mahomes loves andy

he isnt going to rock the boat

not in his nature
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Best answer I have here is that he was reading the QB and maybe saw that Claiborne was beaten pretty badly on the underneath route. A decent throw there goes for 25-30 yards before Ward's able to get down and make the tackle.

But that's just another example of how so many guys on this team just will not quit trying to do other guy's jobs. Claiborne was beat - it happens. Defenses are designed in a way that you mitigate the damage if someone gets beat on a play. That ball gets completed underneath and you still have Claiborne in trail and Ward closing down with Lucas able to come in late to clean up if need be. It's not a good outcome at all, but it's just what happens if you're playing man and your boundary corner loses his matchup.

What the safety can absolutely NOT do is compound that problem by freelancing to cover for Claiborne. And we see it all the time with this defense. The LBs over-pursuing instead of filling. The DLs trying to shoot a gap or crash down to protect someone else's on the assumption that their teammate will fail and they'll just have to do it themselves.

Then because they abandon their gap, they reinforce the belief with OTHER players that their teammates won't be gap sound and they start doing it even worse. It turns into a vicious cycle where everyone's abandoned play design in favor of trying to do 3 jobs at once.

For all the talk about how 'soft' the defense is - that's not what's killing them. What's killing them is that these !@#$ing guys will just not do their jobs because they're too busy trying to do everyone else's. Jumping the underneath route because you see Claiborne trailing is as obvious an example as you can have, but virtually every one of these big plays can get right back to a similar diagnosis. Guys just trying to do too friggen much.
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So what you're saying is....they can fix it.

Chargers will be a get right game. Book it.
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Yeah, pass rush needs to be able to get more heat if you're gonna match up in man on the outside like that. These guys can't cover for 6 seconds downfield; just too much green.

That said, as I watch it more closely, I think I'm giving Lucas too much credit. He's crashing down before Claiborne is clearly beat and Tannehill is already loading up to go deep with it. I think he saw Lucas get square and start to drive on that underneath route (just as he was coming out of his break and before he'd really started to dust Claiborne) so he let it fly.

He let Lucas make the call for him, yes. But Lucas !@#$ed up to make it easy for him.
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Did you happen to see NE get blown the hell out by the Titans exactly a year ago? Not by pissing away a game that they dominated with botched FG snaps. Outplayed. BLOWN OUT.

Did you happen to catch them also getting blown out by a bad Lions team? How 'bout when they were blown out by Jacksonville?

No?

Well, maybe you saw their late-season loss to the same mediocre QB we just lost to, who led a bad Dolphins team that was destroyed in every subsequent game.

Nah. A disciplined team like the Patriots couldn't possibly have choked that game away by way of a double lateral going the length of the field in the last 16 seconds.....could they?
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Of course they can - at least temporarily. They largely did in the Minnesota game and kinda did in the GB game, but needed that assist from Spags for making matchup changes to deal with the RB in the flat.

And then they completely went backwards the moment Mahomes stepped on the field. Everything fell apart.

When Tebow was drafted they talked about how much different his mechanics looked in practice and how he was going to be an NFL passer soon. I completely ignored it because when the shit hits the fan at full speed, you're going to default to your ingrained biomechanics and throw how you've always thrown. What a shocker - Tebow's 'gains' never took. Because of course they didn't. If you could just fix a guy, everyone would.

My concern isn't that they can't get where they need to be here and there. It's that A) they get overconfident or B) the wheels start to wobble - they default to their nature as a pack of freelancers and start fucking up.

And when that will happen under scenario A and B up there - what's that leave in the middle? There's not a lot of space there between 'confident' and 'nervous' now is there?

I just feel more and more like this team is setting us up to shit the bed just like they did Sunday when the lights are the brightest. Can you really see a scenario where they get through 3 playoff games and a SB without having one of 'those' games on defense? If so - why? How?

They just keep defaulting to this same butt-fuckery. They may keep things intact for a game or two, but not 4. It's the mirror image of the Alex Smith years when we thought Alex could maybe string a game or 2 together but he was never putting up 4 'SB Caliber Quarterback' games in the post-season. At some point in that stretch, he'd shit the bed and we'd lose.

That's where I am with this defense. It's the Alex Smith of defenses - at times it's gonna impress you in a 'man, they're better than I thought' sort of way but when you really need them to demonstrate consistent excellence, they'll fuck it up.
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My initial reaction to the game was "overconfidence" on everyone's part. Coaches ... players ... fans ... everybody.

That's what it "felt" like and, upon reflection, I think that was the underlying problem. We expected the Tacks to fold under our greatness and they knifed us in the carotid artery instead.

To me, the hallmark of an undisciplined team is their innate ability to lose games they're supposed to win. That's why I'm not particularly surprised we took a step back last weekend.

As usual ... penalties, turnovers, and amateurish mistakes in critical moments are the keys to losses.

FAX
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Assuming our offense is healthy, why would we need consistent excellence from the D?

Do you expect the offense to average 13 ppg in the playoffs?
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Who was the KC announcer that used to say when you throw the ball 3 things can happen and 2 of them are bad? I could have lived with option 1 or 2 or 3 above. A screen to the backup TE was beyond dumb. You really had 2 plays to get 2 yards if you just bang it up the middle. Too bad Marty lost so many big games being too conservative running the football. So now when you mention running the ball everyone that doesn't know any better screams and yells. 2 dives up the middle wins that game Sunday. The end.
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How many people did you see say we didn't need MAhomes to beat the Titans and to let him sit to be safe? A shit load.
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We’ll see where they go from here.

We can find a little comfort in knowing that they are capable of being a decent defense. We’ve saw this over that stretch against Denver, GB, and Minnesota. That defense, in combination with the offense, can beat anyone anywhere.

We’ve gotta hope like hell that our offensive personnel is locked and loaded for a playoff run, with optimal health along the offensive line and skill positions. It’d be a damn amazing thing to have Fisher/Wylie/Reiter/LDT/Schwartz play together for about a month leading up to the tournament.

If they are so fortunate to be in that position, it’s probably going to take 31+ points to have a shot at beating Kansas City. And yes, the defense is clearly capable of surrendering that output to about anyone. But if they play up to their potential? They can be good enough. They were damn close last year, and I still think this defense is quite a bit better than the 2018 version.

Little things, like simply putting Mike Pennel’s big ass into the football game or using Jones at DE more, will make a noticeable difference moving forward. I hope.
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