If you want a DT in the draft,read this and then tell me why you do

[panther4life]

jfc did you actually say DT is a luxury position with Fua, McClain, and Edwards as the top guys?

Read the post, picking a DT in this draft before adressing the CB is absurd unless its a phenom and I dont see one at DT in this draft.

[koolkatluke]

Fua had 9 tackles in 11 games and this is the only stats he had. He didn't even scratch another catagory.

Pressly played 1 game and had 5 tackles.

[panther4life]

p4l you mention the patriots as having led the league in sacks. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you can't name a single starter from their secondary for this year. maybe one. okay, you can probably name one. the patriots also had the worst defense in the league.

now, apply that to your gripping analysis of the 2011 Panthers and.....what do you get?

I obviosuly meant eagles, since I refernced them right below that but thanks for pointing out the mistake

[Ivan The Awesome]

I agree Hardy is meh, but to say Keiser performed well than him is a bit much.

Coverage sack:

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-fantasy/09000d5d824b81a4/Panthers-defense-sack-12-yd-loss

Dude, seriously? The QB basically FELL...

How can you say Hardy is 'meh'?!

[Keep Pounding]

The worst def in league stat is so mis leading, yeah a team can give up a lot of yards, which will rank you last in DEF, but the Pats were 15th ranked in points allowed.

[Proudiddy]

P4L, you might want to consider that Hardy may have struggled because he had extra responsibilities placed on him due to our suckage at DT while the rookies were in there. Additionally, it's hard to parallel our situation with the Lions.

The Lions defense, as it appears to me, was constructed to create pressure with the front four, much like the Giants do. In doing so, they are able to hide a lot of deficiencies in their defensive backfield. Quick, name both of the Lions starting corners... Thanks. Now safeties... Yup. Nothing to brag about. Pretty much a group of castoffs. Linebackers are fairly mediocre as well.

My point in saying all of this is, the Saints picking apart the Lions is due in large part because the Saints offense is all about timing. Their offense neutralizes the Lions strengths and exposes their weaknesses because the ball is out before pressure can have any real or consistent effect. This leaves their defensive backfield exposed for what they are... Think of our defense in our Superbowl year. Reggie Howard and Terry Cousins were our corners. Why? Because our front four allowed them to be.

Now, DT is still a HUGE need for us because while a quick passing scheme with speedy players may neutralize line pressure, it certainly could still affect it. We have one of the top corners in the league. Put another quality starter opposite him with Hogan/Captain in the slot and if Godfrey/Martin get their crap together that is an awesome defense. If you don't get sacks, you still have a better chance to get pressure, and regardless, with a quality starting def. backfield, they can bail you out if your front four isn't getting it done.

And Hardy is a beast, especially in the pass rush. He's made some great plays in the run game, but has been inconsistent. I suspect if you line up a huge DT like Poe next to him, his run defense will improve greatly and his sack numbers are bound to go up as well.

My TLDR version:

DT and CB are the priorities on defense.

[panthers55]

Instead of looking at a bunch of unrelated convoluted facts woven together to appear to be some kind of cogent argument, lets look at a football site which compares defensive lines and adjusted yards surrendered, sacks, etc.

http://footballoutsiders.com/stats/dl

Detroit was ranked 15th in run defense and 18th in pass defense. They generated 42 sacks with an adjusted sack rate of 6.5%.

The Panthers were ranked 32nd in run defense and 16th in pass defense. We generated 31 sacks for a 6.7 adjusted sack rate.

Let see how we did against the run versus Detroit. Using adjusted yards they gave up 4.01 yards a play (15th) while we gave up 4.66 yards per attempt good for 32nd. Detroit was run on 387 times and we were run on 429 times. When you look at who was stout and who was weak on the line it shows that Detroit was number 1 defending runs around the left side and 7th defending runs up the middle. They were very poor defending runs over the left tackle (28th) and 30th over the right end. Meanwhile the Panthers were in the top 15th defending runs to the left side controlled by the right end and the Will linebacker. But we were awful up the middle (31th) and 32nd to the right side of the offense which was our left side on defense.

So to recap while our run defense was much worse primarily because we were awful on runs to the right side (our left side) and up the middle. What would help that? Good nose tackle play would be a great start.

So while doing the research on Football Outsiders I recognized a mistake I made which I will correct now. We were 32nd on runs over the right tackle and end which I assumed meant our right side of the line but the statistics are from the offensive point of view so they are run to the offense's right side or our left side on defense. Our DEs switch around alot so it is hard to say that it is Johnson or Hardy's side exclusively depending on whether we are in a 4-3 under or over,lined up to the weakside or the strongside. In an under scheme the nose tackle is lined up over the center's outside shoulder and the end is lined up outside the tackle with the Sam Linebacker on his outside shoulder. In an over, the nose tackle in our scheme shifts into the B gap, the under tackle shifts inside and plays the A gap on the weakside.

In most cases runs to the offense's right and to our left side are controlled by the nose tackle, left end and SAM linebacker. So contrary to popular thought, it wasn't One guy who sucked but runs to the Sam side of the field. For the most part the outside lineebackers and middle linebacker have to fill the running lanes over the tackle and up the middle.

So does our defense need better DTs? absolutely!!!

If our DTs were as good as Detroit's would it help our defense alot?? Absolutely!!!

Does the OP have a point? Not really.

Could we use better linebacker play?? Absolutely.

[Fiz]

I obviosuly meant eagles, since I refernced them right below that but thanks for pointing out the mistake

No you didn't obviously mean something because your post is a rambling incoherent mess.

I'm assuming your central thesis is the Panthers need to address the corner back position more than the defensive tackle position in the draft.

This assumes:

1. the draft is the only means of improving a team (it's not)

2. there's nothing to consider regarding the relative value of a player signed through free agency to plug a hole v. drafting one to have long term (which there is)

You're clearly incompetent (more on that below) so you're wrong about the first and didn't do the second.

Now, let's just randomly cut and paste some words you wrote and take a look now shall we?

For comparison Rushing TD'S to the left occured 7 times(over the same time period) with 2 of them going for 19 yards and another for 17 yards. (Hardy and Munnerlyn played on that side of the field). Runs to Charles Johnsons side with Gamble in run support only happened twice in the same time span.

Charles Johnson doesn't have a side. No one does in the NFL anymore. Players line up all over the damn place to exploit match ups. Johnson plays in the middle when they go to three down lineman sets. Do runs up the middle count against him now?

Gamble is a fuging man corner who follows his dude all over the field.

In our worst defensive perfromance of the year we gave up 49 points. 5 Touchdowns were thrown by Stafford. Intersting fact, none went to Calvin Johnson who was matched up against Gamble. In the only other game where we gave up 40 plus points (last game of year against the bounty hunters) the rookie DT's were on I.R.

Breaking down an entire defensive performance based on the production of one player without taking anything else into consideration. Hey I can do that let's try this one!

Taking over as the Lions' feature back, Kevin Smith exploded for 140 yards and two touchdowns on 16 carries and 61 yards and another score on four receptions to lead the Lions to a 49-35 victory over the Panthers in Week 11.

It was a career game for a player unsigned three weeks ago due to multiple shoulder and knee surgeries. Smith showed rookie-season form, taking over as the feature back after a series of impressive tackle-breaking gains on the ground and after the catch. While the Panthers' soft defense is a caveat, Smith adds a much-needed extra dimension to the Lions offense. Jahvid Best (concussion) remains without a timetable for a return, leaving Smith as the top waiver pickup for Week 12 against the Packers.

Keep in mind he didn't break fifty yards in a game the rest of the year.

[Fiz]

there really should only be like 4 people on this site allowed to make threads.

[Moose87Banks]

Yeah me, myself, Moose87Banks, and I.

[panthers55]

Read the post, picking a DT in this draft before adressing the CB is absurd unless its a phenom and I dont see one at DT in this draft.

That assumes that Hogan is not capable of starting which may or may not be true. We might already have our number 2 corner on the roster. He didn't play enough to tell us much. I am pretty sure our nose tackle is here for 1 maybe 2 years max. Is his backup here? Based on last year it is hard to say yes. in any case we could definitely use a 3 technique 1 gap penetrator much like Kris Jenkins.

[frash.exe]

Read the post, picking a DT in this draft before adressing the CB is absurd unless its a phenom and I dont see one at DT in this draft.

Football outsiders says out of 391 run attempts against the panthers, about 50% of them were run up the middle or off guard at 4.53 yards per carry. 4.53 x 196 = 888 rushing yards.

compare this with the yards Munnerlyn gave up. I don't have it off hand but PFF has a list of the ten corners that gave up the most yardage in 2011 and he isn't even on it

http://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2012/01/12/cornerbacks-a-glance-at-the-2011-numbers/

so basically teams picked on our interior line worse than they picked on munnerlyn

[Keep Pounding]

there really should only be like 4 people on this site allowed to make threads.

My 1st attempt at making a new thread almost crashed the server! LOL,

It was titled "Thomas Davis to the Saints", yeah I was a dumb ass, my 1st and only ever thread.......

I learned the hard way.

[Cat'sGrowl]

Soooo.....gif approved?