Cleveland's run preferences vs our defense's strengths and weaknesses

[Davidson Deac II]

5 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

It's a look at where they run vs where we defend the best/worst.

But if you feel like you can defend the idea that we had a good run defense last year, be my guest

Our poorest performances irt run defense were generally against teams balanced teams, teams that can beat you with the run or pass.  For example, Dallas abused us in the run game, while we shut down the Eagles run game, even though statistically last year, the Eagles were a better running team than the Cowgals.  Of course, we still lost to the Eagles due to three picks from our offense. 

Fortunately, Cleveland may be one dimensional.  

[Mr. Scot]

1 minute ago, Davidson Deac II said:

Our poorest performances irt run defense were generally against teams balanced teams, teams that can beat you with the run or pass.  For example, Dallas abused us in the run game, while we shut down the Eagles run game, even though statistically last year, the Eagles were a better running team than the Cowgals.  Of course, we still lost to the Eagles due to three picks from our offense. 

Fortunately, Cleveland may be one dimensional.  

We only held against Philly till they started using Hurts.

[CRA]

52 minutes ago, t96 said:

I wouldn’t make that assumption, statistically. I’m not gonna take the time to look at every team’s schedule and compare but just the numbers you provided don’t stand out to me as being particularly easy, statistically. The only way to make sense of and take anything away from it would be to compare across all teams and the full schedule.

I mean SOS exists.  And you can break that down further and talk about specifics about opponents.  Some years teams get slated to defend brutal pass attacks.  While some simply don’t get that schedule.  Lot just comes down to what year it is, what conference and division you get.  Luck of the draw. 

we had a schedule last season IMO that made Sam look better than he was early and one that overall likely inflated how good our defense was. 

look at the QBs we faced last year.  Lot of teams had it way worse and we had tons and tons of gifts.  We had a great ratio of bad QBs  vs good.  You don’t get it like that every year. 

[Mr. Scot]

12 minutes ago, Panthers Rhule said:

If I'm not mistaken, teams started running against us when Horn went down. We stuffed the Saints run but when we lost horn we had to change. I don't expect us to have as much trouble this season and we have added or promoted players   to help there as well. 

So last year was last year, this year we'll see soon enough but I won't look for reasons to expect failure. 

Losing a DB would have been more likely to hurt us against the pass than the run.

[Mr. Scot]

23 minutes ago, ellis said:

Actually, I took it down because it was from the NFL comms stats hub, and they're not big fans of folks screencapping that data. Judgement call to avoid getting someone in their comms dept up my rear end about it.

I was wondering...

[CRA]

22 minutes ago, Panthers Rhule said:

If I'm not mistaken, teams started running against us when Horn went down. We stuffed the Saints run but when we lost horn we had to change. I don't expect us to have as much trouble this season and we have added or promoted players   to help there as well. 

So last year was last year, this year we'll see soon enough but I won't look for reasons to expect failure. 

Issue with using Horn as a metric is he was only with his for 3 weeks vs slop opponents. 

[Davidson Deac II]

6 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

We only held against Philly till they started using Hurts.

They had one long drive, the rest of their scores came after turnovers.  The winning drive was a 26-yard drive that occurred after a blocked punt.  Hurts had one run of 14 yards.   And even when adding that one long run in, he averaged 3 ypc in that game.  The defense shut down the Eagles running game.  But no matter how well the defense plays, if the offense and special teams force it to constantly play with its back against the wall, the 85 bears would struggle.

Of course, the defense certainly crapped out against other teams.  The Vikings game was terrible. And by the end of the season, both the offense and defense had pretty much given up.  

[Davidson Deac II]

10 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

Losing a DB would have been more likely to hurt us against the pass than the run.

It hurts passing game more, but it hurts both.  The defense has to adjust to cover a banged up secondary, which hurts other parts of the defense.

[Mr. Scot]

2 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

It hurts passing game more, but it hurts both.  The defense has to adjust to cover a banged up secondary, which hurts other parts of the defense.

I get that, but I seriously doubt you can attribute how bad our run defense became to the loss of Horn.

[Davidson Deac II]

8 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

I get that, but I seriously doubt you can attribute how bad our run defense became to the loss of Horn.

I agree, one man certainly won't cause that much of an impact. 

 

That being said, I think we look at our run defense thru a prism, especially us older guys.  We look at the way we think it should look instead of how it looks compared to the rest of the NFL.  Reality is that there aren't that many great run defenses that can stop team's week in and week out.  Because most defenses are designed to stop the pass.  

If you compare us to run defenses from the 80's, we weren't good.  If you compare us to the rest of the NFL last year, we were probably overall middle of the pack.  Not great, not bad. 

The Saints had the best run defense in the league last year, and they still got abused in several games.  The aforementioned Eagles ran all over them, averaging over 6 ypc with about 200 yards.  

Edited September 8, 2022 by Davidson Deac II

[CRA]

31 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

Our poorest performances irt run defense were generally against teams balanced teams, teams that can beat you with the run or pass.  For example, Dallas abused us in the run game, while we shut down the Eagles run game, even though statistically last year, the Eagles were a better running team than the Cowgals.  Of course, we still lost to the Eagles due to three picks from our offense. 

Fortunately, Cleveland may be one dimensional.  

Eagles also have a non traditional run game.  Hurts lead them in rushing.  

I think we struggle with teams that have the talent to line up and run at you for whatever that is worth.   

[Mr. Scot]

8 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

That being said, I think we look at our run defense thru a prism, especially us older guys.  We look at the way we think it should look instead of how it looks compared to the rest of the NFL.  Reality is that there aren't that many great run defenses that can stop team's week in and week out.  Because most defenses are designed to stop the pass.  

If you compare us to run defenses from the 80's, we weren't good.  If you compare us to the rest of the NFL last year, we were probably overall middle of the pack.  Not great, not bad. 

The Saints had the best run defense in the league last year, and they still got abused in several games.  The aforementioned Eagles ran all over them, averaging over 6 ypc with about 200 yards.  

It's definitely changed. Back when I was young, coaches were apoplectic if you were giving up more than three yards a play. Now the league best (Saints) are giving up nearly four.

[Davidson Deac II]

21 minutes ago, CRA said:

Eagles also have a non traditional run game.  Hurts lead them in rushing.  

I think we struggle with teams that have the talent to line up and run at you for whatever that is worth.   

Certainly, some truth to that.  

But I would venture that most teams struggled against those types of offenses.  

I don't think we had a great defense; I just don't think it was as bad as some do.  

Edited September 8, 2022 by Davidson Deac II

[CRA]

2 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

Certainly, some truth to that.  

But I would venture that most teams struggled against those types of defenses.  

I don't think we had a great defense; I just don't think it was as bad as some do.  

I don’t think it is bad.  I think when people start leaning on that “2nd ranked D” narrative that it has to be discussed that it would be very hard to call us the 2nd best defense in the NFL.   It’s one of those the stats aren’t telling the truth scenarios IMO. 

I think the D did very well given the cards dealt against them last year.  And Sam Darnold is the worst thing a coach could do for a defense.  I also think there are concerns going into this year that we can talk about.  

Instead of the run defense, I’m probably more concerned about how we overly rely on the blitz for pressure and lost our best pass rusher from last year.    We are a Burns injury away from being in potentially big trouble.