|
Geez, I hate Whitlock. But I don't see much to fault in this article.
He wants to run a DL-dependent scheme, and use a deep rotation to compensate for all the time they'll spend on the field. So instead of keeping it simple, he runs a plethora of stunts that take a LOT of unit cohesion/chemistry to pull off, which runs counter to the interchangeable parts philosophy and breaks down totally when a starter goes down AND increases the probability that a starter WILL go down, because the D is taking so many snaps. The years Denver DID win championships with Robinson calling the D, they sat their best DLs, Alfred Williams and Neil Smith with arm/shoulder injuries until the last part of the season.
Whitlock's comments about Bartee and Warfield are right on. By now, these two, if they had it in 'em, would've developed into solid bump-and-run (press) corners if their training had been aimed in that direction. But they've been trained as man-off/zone corners, which doesn't play to their size, power and closing speed advantages (over most corner duos in the league), but magnifies their relative lack of quickness and decision-making-in-space skills.
I thought that Gunther's crew did a pretty good job of looking ahead when they went for guys like Wesley, Bartee, Warfield and Atkins, but (and this goes back to Kurt Schottenheimer) the style of D they've used the last several years has run counter to their pattern of talent acquisition.
|