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Wild Card (@ Philadelphia Eagles):


My Coverage Player of the Week:
Week 1: Tramon Williams
Week 2: Sam Shields
Week 3: Nick Collins
Week 4: Charles Woodson
Week 5: Tramon Williams
Week 6: Nick Collins
Week 7: Nick Collins
Week 8: Charles Woodson
Week 9: Charles Woodson/Tramon Williams
Week 11: Tramon Williams
Week 12: Charlie Peprah
Week 13: Tramon Williams
Week 14: Tramon Williams
Week 15: Charles Woodson
Week 16: AJ Hawk
Week 17: Defense
Wild Card: Tramon Williams

I'm glad this week won't be my last opportunity this season and the season recap will have to wait at least one more week. I want to see how these boys perform down the stretch. I also have been tracking one other stat, which I'll throw in as a bonus at the end of the season...nothing too exciting though, so don't get your hopes up too much.

Just by looking at the metrics this week, what's the first thing you notice? The keen observer will notice that Clay Matthews had his "worst" game in coverage and that we had 11 attempts, or nearly 1/3 of Vick's passes marked in the "Other" territory. For those that haven't followed, "Other" recognizes passes thrown in holes in the zone, spikes, throwaways, etc. Yes folks, there was a Mike Vick game plan in effect that was not utilized in Week 1 and the numbers show it. That is HEAVY zone defense. You may say we allowed a ton of yards in these zones, but look at Vick's rushing stats from the first game and if you take the difference in yardage between that and holes in the zone, it wasn't that big. We just forced Vick to complete passes rather than allow him free yards on the ground. Consequently, we saw Clay Matthews drop into coverage more with 2 of his completions allowed being given up to wide receivers. On the same token, I'm surprised not to see more of Bishop and Hawk on this stat sheet.

Talk about one helluva game for Tramon. The 55 yards don't look that great, but the completion percentage speaks for itself. He allowed one long completion to Maclin. I thought it may have been a Cover 2 with Charlie Peprah inexplicably jumping up, but I was wrong, it was a clear Cover 1 over the top. Maclin ran a nice route and used his speed to run the route at the proper depth to keep it away from Collins up top and Peprah down low. Aside from that, Tramon allowed a very tight slant to Riley Cooper on the 2nd to last play of the game. We all know how that match-up turned out the very next one.

2 throws at Woodson? It's clear the Eagles identified him as the Packers' top player in the secondary and avoided him. Though we didn't bring him off the edge nearly as much as the Bears game, it's clear we were using him to spy Vick quite a bit. As a result, he wasn't in coverage as often as he typically is. Walden was the other spy we used on Vick. I am a bit surprised Matthews didn't get that role more often.

Two other notes:
Sam Shields...baller.
Jarrett Bush...Jarrett Bush.

[EDIT] So I was watching a bit of NFL Playbook, or the segment posted on Packers.com and as they show you the 44 yard completion, which I had initially credited as a Cover 1 to Tramon Williams was rather a Cover 3 which should have probably been credited to Desmond Bishop who didn't drop deep enough. Love the angles they show on that and wish the NFL made that film accessible to the public, even at a price. The numbers should now reflect the change and show that Tramon had another OUTSTANDING game. He absolutely owned the Eagles this year.
[url=Pro_News/aid=160.html]full article[/url].

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Moral of the story: don't put Clay in coverage, keep Bush on ST, and put Williams on the best receiver.

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Aside from the first one, I agree. Clay isn't that bad in coverage and certainly has the athletic ability for it. He just needs more experience and shouldn't need to cover wide receivers when he is stuck in coverage. Besides this game, he's done a very good job all year in the very limited snaps he's spent dropping back.

We definitely saw Dom move Clay around a little more. On his sack I believe he started as the identified "MIKE" on the play. It was on a spy/delay blitz where he found an ally on the left side and attacked the crap out it...then attacked the crap out of Vick. I want to see us sending Clay on delays more often on 3rd and longs. He has the elite closing speed to connect more often than not and if you give him even half a step on a linemen, he's gonna cross his feet up.

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You've summed it up perfectly. Maybe Clay is not bad in coverage, but that's not the best use of his skills. I didn't like seeing so much of that in this last game, but it worked out in the end, so props to Dom Capers once again. It was a very unusual game plan.

Tramon was clearly the star cover guy in this game, but what a game for Sam Shields as well. A.J. Hawk was strangely invisible for most of the game, which probably just goes to show that when the Packers play heavy zone, he holds down the fort but is not expected to be a playmaker. The exception was the two-point conversion, where he got after Vick and even injured him slightly.

I think that injury to Vick affected the Eagles on that last drive, as Vick was in some pain and appeared to have lost some of his mobility. The announcers said that Vick went on the field against his teammates' wishes for that drive. Maybe they were wrong, though, because I haven't read anything about it since the game ended.

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Im wondering why bush still plays coverage ... I seem to recall many games that he blows the coverage ... was it even the play off game last year?

whats he playing anyways safety? or corner? ...

Wow, RashaanSalaami is yet another September 14, 2008 member. There sure are a lot of us. That was a red-letter day for this forum.

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Personally.. I didn't think Bush had horrible coverage on that TD catch.. more it was a nicely placed throw into a hole in the coverage.. I guess I may have to watch it again.

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That's what I was thinking. There was a small window there and Vick drilled it through. Not much you can do to stop a well timed and placed ball.

If it was on Woodson, comments would be drastically different, I think.

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+1 and complete nerdness to the one who knows where that comes from without googling.

14 september. The day we all jumped to PackersHome to register, because Z2C would take away the precious to non-registered members.

if this shows anything, it's that we should put Raji in coverage more. The 1 on 1 he had a week ago was certainly a testament to that.

You would play Half Life, Detlev. 😛

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