Week 1 
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Week 3 
Week 4 + Season 
Week 5 
Week 6 
Week 7 
Week 8 + Season 
Week 9 
Week 11 
Week 12 
Week 13 
Week 14 + Season 
Week 15 
Week 16 
Week 17 
Wild Card 

Divisional Round (@ Atlanta Falcons):


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
Divisional: Tramon Williams

You know how many quarterbacks completed more than 65% of their passes on us this season? 1. His name is Matt Ryan, twice. This says something about his style of quarterbacking. Ryan's a smart quarterback who can get the ball out quickly and on time. He does a nice job of hitting his hot reads once he recognizes the defensive look. However, by continually doing this, he makes sacrifices in pushing the ball down the field and that's why he passed for less than 200 yards on both occasions on only a 6.7 YPA, only 0.2 above our regular season average. This shows a lot about how bendable our defense is and how well Capers can gameplan for opposing quarterbacks. He's able to get the same results every week regardless of how opponents want to attack this defense. He forces them to dictate how they'll play us and that is objective number one for every defense in the league.

The other big number to look at is 11 for 116...Roddy White's totals in the 2 games we played them this season. It had been 7 games since White went over the 100 yard mark in a game, but limiting a receiver of his caliber twice is still pretty impressive. Of course the primary reason for it is Tramon Williams who shadowed White as much as we have with any other top receiver this year. Not only did he make White a non-factor, but he was responsible for probably a 13 point swing. No defensive play was bigger than the pick 6 at the end of the half, which allowed us to turn a 7 point lead into a 21 point lead. Terrific read and heads up play by Tramon to realize the down, distance, and situation then an even better play to not only eliminate the field goal attempt, but to make the cutback to the end zone. The other pick will probably be talked as a poor throw by Matt Ryan on a play where Tramon was beat. That's only half true. Yes the throw was poor. Ryan was late on the pass (possibly his only one in our two games) and put a little too much air under it. Tramon on the other hand was never beat. With a Cover 2 shell over the top, he sunk underneath the receiver, which with help over the top would have needed a perfect throw to get 6. When the ball hung, he capitalized on the opportunity. The touchdown was in zone coverage. Hard to see what should have happened ideally, but he had a flat zone as Shields had on the other side. There was no one approaching his zone and by the time he reacted, White found a little ally and took it in for 6. It was an uncharacteristic drive by this entire defense allowing the opposition to punch it in that quickly.

By the looks of it, Shields didn't have a terrific game, which he didn't. However, it wasn't terrible as we've experienced from our sub-package defensive backs in the past. He's always in great position and is never "burned". The fact that his first penalty of the season was this late in the year is remarkable. Truth be told, the penalty wasn't even that bad. He made a play on the ball based on the receivers eyes and moves, but never turned around. I'm absolutely excited to watch his progression through the years. Corner is one of the hardest positions to learn as a rookie and Shields has played as well as anyone could have expected from him. He's a dependable nickel.

Collins had a great game in coverage. Hawk did a terrific job underneath helping force two big stops on his completions. Bishop still looks a bit stiff out there in coverage and still needs to improve his fundamentals and discipline in run defense. This should come with experience and further coaching. For now, we can live with the bad for a lot of good.

The astute observer should notice two things missing from this week's chart. One which was also nonexistent in our last meeting with the Falcons. Looks like they respect the discipline of this defense. [url=Pro_News/aid=161.html]full article[/url].

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I think what's missing are the "screen" and "other" categories.

What I don't understand is why Ryan's QB rating is lower than it is for every defender except for Nick Collins, and the two attempts against him were not nearly enough to drag the rating down that far. So there has to be a mistake in calculating the number, right? It has to be way higher than 69.0, which happens to be his completion percentage.

I watched the game again and Shields looked better than he did the first time around. One of the catches against him, I think it was by Jenkins, was a one-hander against great coverage.

The Falcons dink and dunk and run the ball a lot, which means that they have a limited ability to come back once they get down by a couple of scores. The Packers really exposed that deficiency.

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You're right on the "Other" and "Screen". It's kinda surprising the Falcons didn't even have one attempt in 2 games against us on screen passes. The "Other" is probably just an anomaly.

Anyways, I had to double check the QB Rating thing, but if you go to ESPN, it has him as a 69.0 as well. I didn't notice it until you brought it up, but it is very odd. If you remove Collins' 2 targets from the equation, it bumps up to a 74.0. QB Rating is a complicated figure, but it has something to do with the TD% and the INT%, most likely the latter. INTs are weighed pretty heavily in the Rating I believe so while there are 0 picks for all of the players (except Tramon), when you add them altogether, the INT% is still very poor, which is why it hurts the QB Rating. The YPA isn't particularly high either. Still, a very interesting observation to which I'd definitely like the answer, but just don't want to put in the effort in discovering it for myself.

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http://www.primecomputing.com/ 

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Thanks for the link, Zero. I used it to compute Ryan's overall rating and his ratings against Tramon and Shields, and they matched the numbers on this page. Just when I thought I was beginning to understand QB rating, THIS happens. How can a bunch of numbers not average out to the overall number? I hate math.

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