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Excellent read.

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That is a good article.

I worry about this, though. I don't know if I trust the idea of getting away from bump and run, to whatever degree is planned, especially as regards Al Harris. He can SAY he will be good in zone schemes...Me, I'm not seeing it in my personal crystal ball.

That tandem has been so good in man coverage that I don't like the idea of messing with it. I feel almost like I did last year when Ted got rid of our punter (How bad a feeling is THAT, I ask you). I will put in the caveat that as good as they are in man, the scheme itself has some flaws when up against better wide receivers in this league. I have seen those guys blanket receivers to no avail, coupled with the great cost of those pass interference penalties. [Inserting reminder that we were penalized for more yards than any other team last year, please stuff that stat in FO DVOA- not saying it was all those guys because I know it was not]

It just seems that when our guys are not "on guys" they do too much bad guessing. The article kind of went after Tramon for that, but the one that I really have had problems with is Nick Collins. He may have got all those interceptions with great returns, but what I saw more often than I cared to was a safety "lost in space" ... Several of those "great" interceptions were due to him being out of position in the first place, imo. "Due to" might be overly harsh, but that is really the best way I can describe it, and I will leave all the missed tackles out of the equation (or not, lol).

I guess what I am attempting to say is that this is a new paradigm for us and could easily go either way in the success department. I do appreciate just how good this unit was and have said so repeatedly, especially in the context of a non-existent/weak pass rush.

Last year at this time our defensive unit had a swagger and a feeling of superiority over the offensive unit (remember). We were going to emphasize our defense (because we had a new quarterback, MM told us so... between pad-level statements) Remember? That swagger angers me to this day, upon reflection. Aaron Rodgers got HOSED in the casual fan perception department outside the state of Wisconsin...To this day so many think that the Pack sucked because of him, and I get to listen to the morons telling me. Thank you very much defense (amongst others)

What I am saying is NO ONE gets a pass or authorization to swagger or be complacent on a team that went 6-10 the previous year.

If it is not broken.....Why fix it?

As we have seen so many times in the past with Brett. Good Qb's and schemes can burn zone coverage.

They are messing around with one of the team's strengths.

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I have to agree. Zone seems like a passive approach to the game. There can be so many seams in a zone. (How many times have you heard a LB or DB say, "I thought HE was going to take over and cover the guy.")

How many times has GB won a game because the DBs got up in the face of the WR and stuck him when he came off the line? GB's first "real" win against the mighty 49ers back in the 90's was went they pounded Rice all day long and kept him from running his routes. Now they say that they are going to let the WRs run whatever routes they want to and GB will defend them IF they come into our area????? What's with that?

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We have to go all in though don't we. It is a domino effect, so this counts of each level from the base and back to do its job. As impressive as our secondary has been, every scheme has its vulnerabilities and we got burned and penalized many times. This situation is unique to us here because everybody this offseason is learning something together. I actually have more of a positive outlook because of that. Plus, it is not like they won't be bumping at all right? Won't they keep some of that pressure in certain situations?

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I can't say that the dumb and run hasn't worked for us, but I'm pretty confident that zone will too. Mainly because I don't think that we have any great physical CBs lining up behind our aging corners. Tramon Williams is pretty decent, but he appeared to get burned quite some times as well after failing to do a good jam. You need a certain type of corner for this, and I don't think that we have too many guys who fit that right now.

Apart from that, I can name you one guy who has worked under Capers and has been influenced by him quite a lot and I believe that that works the other way around as well. Dick LeBeau. The key here is pressure. If you see what kind of zone blitzes he dials up and how his corners can just sit back and watch the QB make a mistake, it's amazing. I think that we'll do good in a zone defense, as long as we can get some pressure on the QB.

Apart from that, the one doesn't always exclude the other. Let the CBs cover a shallow zone and have them jam the receivers the first five yards, only to release them when they leave that shallow zone and become the safety's responsibility for instance. I can also imagine that we'll play some combo defenses with LBs and S' dropping into zones while our CBs just go to man on the receivers for instance.

As for Al Harris personally, I think he might struggle as well. He's never been the fastest guy on the field and his age isn't helping him either. One good thing, he shouldn't have to run the entire sideline with a receiver anymore, but I have some doubts about him in this system.

If you are playing a 3-4 defense with lots of blitzing, you almost have to have zone coverage. If you play strictly man to man converage, there they will be able to pick a defense apart when you have extra people blitzing.

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A very wise and sophisticated observation.... Indeed.

I never even considerd that aspect.

Well done Bigby!

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This is exactly what I think, and Bigbyfan said something similar. I like press coverage, but it limits blitzing opportunities. You just can't separate those two things. That's why the entire scheme needed to be changed, even though our CB's played well in the old one.

My feeling is that zone is easier than man-to-man, so if you can play man-to-man successfully you should be able to play zone successfully. That's why most NFL defenses rely mostly on zone coverage. To the extent that Al Harris has struggled in zone coverage (I'm not sure how much truth there is to that anyway) I think it's mostly been because of lack of pass rush and zone schemes that were weak or were poorly executed by the entire defense.

I remember that Dallas game two years ago where Terrell Owens had a big day and a lot of people blamed Harris, but on several of those plays, Owens ran right out of Harris's zone and nobody picked him up. It was a horrible game plan. But I think that's where the "Harris can't play zone" thing got started.

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I think you're going to see more zone in the NFL because guys like Woodson and Harris aren't falling off the tree anymore. A press cover corner is a very difficult position to play, especially with the size of receivers nowadays.

I've always thought the press cover should be compensated much more than the zone guy, but guys like Samuel and Winfield have gotten huge contracts in the past.

Over the next 1 to 1.5 years, I think you'll see Tramon taking over for Al. Al has given us many good years and I hope he proves me wrong, but he is getting older and that's another thing going against him.

I hope the Lee kid, Blackmon, and Underwood show us a lot this training camp so we can finally unload Bush.

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