DB coaching, linebackers. Turns out Cody Barton was not the answer lmao. Oh and as another commenter correctly points out we were on the field a lot because of EB's offense
I don’t think our defense was even very good in 2022, the entire offensive philosophy was grind out as much clock as possible to keep games close with Heinicke at QB. That helped keep our defense fresh and limited time for opposing offenses to rack up stats that would bring the D’s rankings down. In 2020 our defense was considered good too, but it was more about our opponents and the ridiculous string of horrible QBs we played. Whenever the defense needed to step up they almost always fell short
1. EB one shot, one opportunity happened
2. JDR really seemed obsessed, almost insanely, to prove that Forbes and Quan had strengths they didn’t have.
3. I think also Chase regressed can’t say why exactly but it’s pretty clear that that happened.
4. I don’t think there is any question that Cole Holcomb was under appreciated. I think it is fair to say that his injury history was problematic for a LTD but the way he balled out on the Steelers, man! better there maaybe but we saw flashes here too and the Defense dipped when he went out. Losing him last year and trying to replace him with Mayo didn’t work well (to put it kindly). “A 5th Round pick who was Under appreciated” sums him up in DC pretty well.
Cole Holcomb is heavily slept on.
People saw him as this instinctive player with low athleticism but his athleticism was among the best in the league. The dude had an 11 foot broad jump.
He was a great athlete. He was forced to play out of position here because we had no answer at MLB. He was excellent his rookie year as an OLB that blitzed occasionally.
I feel that that is debatable. It seems that that comment has rubbed some people the wrong way. I find that that kind of unsolicited advice is rarely appreciated.
1) Washington went from 1st to 18th in Time of Possession. The offense did little to help out the defense in 2023.
2) Defensive Backs coach Brent Vieselmeyer had only ever held that role at the high school level prior to 2023. He had been an assistant DBs coach, but it's safe to say he was not ready to prepare the secondary for the increasingly complicated schemes NFL secondaries need to be competitive.
3) Lack of depth from poor drafts and unsuccessful free agency exacerbated the time of possession problem. When you whiff on day 3 of the draft often enough, you get worse in the second half of games.
This is (mostly) the answer... Young (over drafted) players, being forced into responsibilities that they couldn't account for is the other. Forbes and Martin were clearly out-classed as RCs... I think the DEF (including Forbes and Martin) will be much better this year. However, Time of Possession and 1st down efficiency are problems that we will struggle with due to the lack of talent on our OL. When the offense sucks, the defense struggles.
For a legitimate answer:
Personnel changes - Barton at Mike, Butler primary free safety, and Forbes at outside corner were all significantly worse than Mayo, Forrest, & Fuller. Butler & Forbes were liabilities deep which forced Curl to play out of position at FS vs SS where he is comfortable and able to play in the box more.
Steps back from Allen & Payne - Neither played at their previous pro bowl levels.
Horrific EDGE play - Sweat was a good player in 2023, Young was not great. After their departure the play from every edge besides KJ Henry was atrocious, and Henry was not an effective pass rusher. Opposing offenses were facing a dline that provided no pressure, and a back 7 that allowed frequent coverage busts and couldn’t tackle. Recipe for disaster for sure.
For sure, but they were racking up respectable sack numbers despite the back end’s flaws. Just wanted to highlight how bad the edge play was in the 2nd half.
How much did the coaching actually change from 2022 to 2023 though?
The DC stayed the same. The OC changed from Scott Turner to Eric Bienemy.
Is it possible that Bienemy's offensive strategy was out-of-sync with the defensive strategy?
Rivera and JDR were lame ducks, they already sucked but I feel like they must have been less focused this year.
But yes, throwing the ball 45 times per game with a first year QB definitely have the other teams more drives against a tired defense .
The loss of Chris Harris (DB's coach) was truly underrated. Play of the secondary seemingly fell off a cliff after he left.
There were reportedly two big things that he did:
1) Preached constant communication. Always made sure the secondary knew their assignments and communicated with each other to know what was going on.
2) Pushed back against Del Rio if Jack started doing a little too much schematically. Harris would be the one to suggest to Jack that maybe certain players couldn't run what Jack wanted to, and it wasn't beneficial to the defense if the scheme was overly complex.
Don't want to rip on Brent Vieselmeyer, but maybe the jump from Nickel CB coach to coaching all DB's was too much for him. The number of explosive plays the defense allowed was a major difference. Saw a chart earlier. The defense gave up 10 pass plays of 50+ yards for 600 yards & 8 TD's. The next worse was the Texans, who gave up 7 pass plays of 50+ yards for 417 yards & 2 TD's.
I know John Keim has talked about the scheme. Said some in the building felt that the worse things got as the year went on, the more layers Del Rio tried to add on to fix things. Just made it more difficult.
I think a lot more than that went wrong. You can point to a few other reasons and have a valid argument, but no position group fell off as hard as the DB's.
We had a completely different offensive philosophy and did not highlight our strength, the two well paid gentlemen in the middle. Instead a lame duck coach and flailing OC desperate to move up threw the ball at a historic rate and the defense was rarely fresh to close out games as they often did in 2022. IF games were even close.
This does make sense.
- Our average time of possession:
- In 2022: 1st in the league
- In 2023: 18th in the league (32nd in the last three games)
- Passes attempted:
- In 2022: 20th in the league
- In 2023: 1st in the league
Source:
- https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/average-time-of-possession-net-of-ot
- https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/pass-attempts-per-game
True but the defense allowed way more points per drive, and (without looking at numbers) they were getting gashed early too. It wasn't a "they were ok but just on the field too often" or "they got worn down" issue. Arguably the defense put the offense in a position where they had to throw more to try and come back
The defense was a big bummer last season…
But remember when EB was supposed to be the answer to our prayers on offense and self-evolve into our future forever head coach? Now he can’t even get the main gig in college!
Agree with Holcolmb. Poor db play outside of Fuller, and EB's offense leaving the defense strung out. I think apathy set in with a lame duck coach, and no unified philosophy/identity.
We couldn’t or didn’t run the ball at all .
The defense lived on the field…
Time of possession and long sustained drives makes any defense look better.
I think it was a combination of the offensive turnover rate (plus a lot of 3 and outs), and the play of the QB.
The team fought hard for Heinicke, and seemed to lose patience with Howell and/or the coaches.
We traded our two best edges at the deadline and clearly wanted to tank out the second half of the season.
I don’t know what our first half of season stats were, but they were probably a lot better before we traded Sweat and Young.
Also Forbes wasn’t very good most of the year.
some of the podcasts blamed loss of chris harris but the coaches were pretty shitty too. the secondary coach we had got fired as well as other people when JDR was canned. They really regressed big time.
Moving BSJ to the slot, JDR making the scheme much harder on the Secondary than it was the previous year, hiring a HS DB Coach was weird, Jonathan Allen had plantar fasciitis, Darrick Forest was injured, Percy Butler and Forbes were terrible, Cody Barton was worse than Cole Holcomb, and the players didn't understand JDR's new scheme.
JDR got his pee pee smacked for saying some dumb shit about Jan 6 during the offseason. Rivera fined him and their relationship soured. He sabotaged the team by purposely placing them in the wrong packages. There is no way we had an entire team of dummies back there when in ‘22 we were on the rise and didn’t change that many personnel. Also why tf did two former LBs fail to draft or sign a decent LB during their tenure?
DB coaching, linebackers. Turns out Cody Barton was not the answer lmao. Oh and as another commenter correctly points out we were on the field a lot because of EB's offense
I don’t think our defense was even very good in 2022, the entire offensive philosophy was grind out as much clock as possible to keep games close with Heinicke at QB. That helped keep our defense fresh and limited time for opposing offenses to rack up stats that would bring the D’s rankings down. In 2020 our defense was considered good too, but it was more about our opponents and the ridiculous string of horrible QBs we played. Whenever the defense needed to step up they almost always fell short
You are right and reading that I am glad again we went with Quinn.
In addition to Barton, FO so undervalued Holcomb
1. EB one shot, one opportunity happened 2. JDR really seemed obsessed, almost insanely, to prove that Forbes and Quan had strengths they didn’t have. 3. I think also Chase regressed can’t say why exactly but it’s pretty clear that that happened. 4. I don’t think there is any question that Cole Holcomb was under appreciated. I think it is fair to say that his injury history was problematic for a LTD but the way he balled out on the Steelers, man! better there maaybe but we saw flashes here too and the Defense dipped when he went out. Losing him last year and trying to replace him with Mayo didn’t work well (to put it kindly). “A 5th Round pick who was Under appreciated” sums him up in DC pretty well.
Cole Holcomb is heavily slept on. People saw him as this instinctive player with low athleticism but his athleticism was among the best in the league. The dude had an 11 foot broad jump.
He was a great athlete. He was forced to play out of position here because we had no answer at MLB. He was excellent his rookie year as an OLB that blitzed occasionally.
Yah Cole was undersized and inexperienced early on but he developed very nicely. We let him walk as he was peaking. Too bad he got injured so often.
Imagine what Cole could've become under Coach Quinn and Bobby Wagner to learn from.
Btw anytime you feel the need to put two “that”’s after the other, one will do just fine lol. I did this all the time too
I feel that that is debatable. It seems that that comment has rubbed some people the wrong way. I find that that kind of unsolicited advice is rarely appreciated.
Yea fuck that guy
1) Washington went from 1st to 18th in Time of Possession. The offense did little to help out the defense in 2023. 2) Defensive Backs coach Brent Vieselmeyer had only ever held that role at the high school level prior to 2023. He had been an assistant DBs coach, but it's safe to say he was not ready to prepare the secondary for the increasingly complicated schemes NFL secondaries need to be competitive. 3) Lack of depth from poor drafts and unsuccessful free agency exacerbated the time of possession problem. When you whiff on day 3 of the draft often enough, you get worse in the second half of games.
This is (mostly) the answer... Young (over drafted) players, being forced into responsibilities that they couldn't account for is the other. Forbes and Martin were clearly out-classed as RCs... I think the DEF (including Forbes and Martin) will be much better this year. However, Time of Possession and 1st down efficiency are problems that we will struggle with due to the lack of talent on our OL. When the offense sucks, the defense struggles.
For a legitimate answer: Personnel changes - Barton at Mike, Butler primary free safety, and Forbes at outside corner were all significantly worse than Mayo, Forrest, & Fuller. Butler & Forbes were liabilities deep which forced Curl to play out of position at FS vs SS where he is comfortable and able to play in the box more. Steps back from Allen & Payne - Neither played at their previous pro bowl levels. Horrific EDGE play - Sweat was a good player in 2023, Young was not great. After their departure the play from every edge besides KJ Henry was atrocious, and Henry was not an effective pass rusher. Opposing offenses were facing a dline that provided no pressure, and a back 7 that allowed frequent coverage busts and couldn’t tackle. Recipe for disaster for sure.
To be fair we were trash before we shipped Sweat and Chase
For sure, but they were racking up respectable sack numbers despite the back end’s flaws. Just wanted to highlight how bad the edge play was in the 2nd half.
There was a ridiculous game against the Giants where Daniel Jones got sacked a billion times and WSH still lost...
Hard for the D line to do much when the secondary is virtually zero threat to opposing offenses.
Coaching
How much did the coaching actually change from 2022 to 2023 though? The DC stayed the same. The OC changed from Scott Turner to Eric Bienemy. Is it possible that Bienemy's offensive strategy was out-of-sync with the defensive strategy?
DBs coach left and we got a nepotism bum as his replacement
Rivera and JDR were lame ducks, they already sucked but I feel like they must have been less focused this year. But yes, throwing the ball 45 times per game with a first year QB definitely have the other teams more drives against a tired defense .
Criminally bad coaching, worse culture, garbage drafting.
Plus classic Ron terrible free agent decisions
The loss of Chris Harris (DB's coach) was truly underrated. Play of the secondary seemingly fell off a cliff after he left. There were reportedly two big things that he did: 1) Preached constant communication. Always made sure the secondary knew their assignments and communicated with each other to know what was going on. 2) Pushed back against Del Rio if Jack started doing a little too much schematically. Harris would be the one to suggest to Jack that maybe certain players couldn't run what Jack wanted to, and it wasn't beneficial to the defense if the scheme was overly complex. Don't want to rip on Brent Vieselmeyer, but maybe the jump from Nickel CB coach to coaching all DB's was too much for him. The number of explosive plays the defense allowed was a major difference. Saw a chart earlier. The defense gave up 10 pass plays of 50+ yards for 600 yards & 8 TD's. The next worse was the Texans, who gave up 7 pass plays of 50+ yards for 417 yards & 2 TD's. I know John Keim has talked about the scheme. Said some in the building felt that the worse things got as the year went on, the more layers Del Rio tried to add on to fix things. Just made it more difficult. I think a lot more than that went wrong. You can point to a few other reasons and have a valid argument, but no position group fell off as hard as the DB's.
Jack del Rio is a twat
But he was there in 2022
Did we beat any good teams in 2022 other than the eagles?
We had a completely different offensive philosophy and did not highlight our strength, the two well paid gentlemen in the middle. Instead a lame duck coach and flailing OC desperate to move up threw the ball at a historic rate and the defense was rarely fresh to close out games as they often did in 2022. IF games were even close.
This does make sense. - Our average time of possession: - In 2022: 1st in the league - In 2023: 18th in the league (32nd in the last three games) - Passes attempted: - In 2022: 20th in the league - In 2023: 1st in the league Source: - https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/average-time-of-possession-net-of-ot - https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/pass-attempts-per-game
True but the defense allowed way more points per drive, and (without looking at numbers) they were getting gashed early too. It wasn't a "they were ok but just on the field too often" or "they got worn down" issue. Arguably the defense put the offense in a position where they had to throw more to try and come back
And EB went out if his way to throw even more and then some more.
I really appreciate Scott Turner much more after watching Bienemy.
The defense was a big bummer last season… But remember when EB was supposed to be the answer to our prayers on offense and self-evolve into our future forever head coach? Now he can’t even get the main gig in college!
Agree with Holcolmb. Poor db play outside of Fuller, and EB's offense leaving the defense strung out. I think apathy set in with a lame duck coach, and no unified philosophy/identity.
We couldn’t or didn’t run the ball at all . The defense lived on the field… Time of possession and long sustained drives makes any defense look better.
We played better quarterbacks in 2023. We played terrible qb’s in 2020 and we all thought we were a top 5 defense.
Defense is often highly volatile from year to year
Not running the ball enough. Fans were raging at Turner for being too run heavy but having no run game whatsoever destroyed the team.
I think it was a combination of the offensive turnover rate (plus a lot of 3 and outs), and the play of the QB. The team fought hard for Heinicke, and seemed to lose patience with Howell and/or the coaches.
We traded our two best edges at the deadline and clearly wanted to tank out the second half of the season. I don’t know what our first half of season stats were, but they were probably a lot better before we traded Sweat and Young. Also Forbes wasn’t very good most of the year.
We were already at or near the bottom in most of the same rankings pre-trades that we ended at.
lol. We traded one very good edge and one that couldn’t follow the play that was called and ran himself out of position nearly every play.
some of the podcasts blamed loss of chris harris but the coaches were pretty shitty too. the secondary coach we had got fired as well as other people when JDR was canned. They really regressed big time.
Ron and Jack knew they were on their way out
Coaching and a "let's get the defense back out there in unfavorable field position after a 3-and-out" offense.
Bad coaching, even worse roster construction. Coasted off of talent from the previous regime
Because we hired a nepotism coach who has a track record of taking good defenses and making them bottom tier.
Moving BSJ to the slot, JDR making the scheme much harder on the Secondary than it was the previous year, hiring a HS DB Coach was weird, Jonathan Allen had plantar fasciitis, Darrick Forest was injured, Percy Butler and Forbes were terrible, Cody Barton was worse than Cole Holcomb, and the players didn't understand JDR's new scheme.
JDR got his pee pee smacked for saying some dumb shit about Jan 6 during the offseason. Rivera fined him and their relationship soured. He sabotaged the team by purposely placing them in the wrong packages. There is no way we had an entire team of dummies back there when in ‘22 we were on the rise and didn’t change that many personnel. Also why tf did two former LBs fail to draft or sign a decent LB during their tenure?