*Error in Tramon's penalty yardage. Penalties at home include PI and Offensive PI
*Error in Tramon's penalty yardage. Only penalty was an illegal contact.
Cool Facts:--> The Packers passing defense gave up 105 penalty yards last year against Baltimore (115 - 10 yards for offensive PI). The Packers only gave up 116 yards all year (146 - 30 yards for offensive PI).
--> Tramon had a better YPA away than at home. However, if you remove the 85 yard TD against the Giants, his YPA was a filthy 3.49 at home.
--> If Tramon's opposition was a receiver, he would have ranked 112th in the league in receiving yards, right behind Brandon Tate and in front of Jeremy Shockey. Tate was targeted 46 times, Shockey 59, and Tramon 82. Yeah that receiver would have been cut immediately.
--> According to PFF's number's last year, Tramon's YPA was 0.7 better than Charles' and allowed nearly 3 less yards per game.
--> The Packers allowed 84 yards less through the air in 20 games than the Texans did in 16.
--> In the first half of the season, our screen defense allowed 22/25 for 208 yards and 8 1st downs on an 8.32 YPA. In the last 8 games, our screen D allowed 8/12 for 56 yards and 3 1st downs on a 4.67 YPA.
--> Woodson was targeted on only 4.9% of pass plays in the postseason in comparison to 13.5% in the regular season. Tramon was targeted on 18.2% in the postseason compared to 15.6% in the regular season.
--> We allowed 9 TDs, but has 17 INTs at home. We allowed 7 TDs, but had only 7 INTs on the road.
Coverage Player Awards:Tramon Williams: 8
Charles Woodson: 3.5
Nick Collins: 3.5
Sam Shields: 2
Charlie Peprah: 1
AJ Hawk: 1
Defense: 1
Coverage Player of the Year: Tramon WilliamsAnalysis:It's hard to measure which player had the biggest impact for our organization. Some would argue for Raji on the line who allowed us to play 2-man lines for much of the year and give us the flexibility to adequately stop the run and absolutely dominate the pass from that formation. The majority would probably say it was Clay Matthews at linebacker who supplied our defense with a lethal pass rush all while commanding attention, freeing up opportunities for others. I may go as far as to say it was Tramon Williams in the secondary. He came up with big plays at the right time and helped neutralize top targets all year. His abilities allowed our safeties to shade their attention to the other side of the field and read the quarterback's eyes.
Regardless of where you fall on our DPOY, Tramon was our best asset in the secondary and played well enough to earn a 1st All-Pro nod from me, aside Nnamdi. And really with Tramon, it begins with his athletic ability and natural ball skills. There are some that struggle out there, even while putting up some decent numbers, but not him. He's an outstanding athlete with ball skills. In the past years we've heard even from Charles that Tramon was probably picking off the most passes in practice. Now we've seen it come to fruition. He's honed his footwork and cut out all of the extraneous steps. He has the ability to run at the hip of receivers and cut as they cut based on his instincts and film study. When a receiver gets the best of him, it's usually because of a slip or because he's playing further off as not to get beat on a deep route. Tramon also excels in our zone concepts. His +22 difference in the Support/Willingness/Woodson Factor (Tackles - Catches), shows that's he's been outstanding in run support and cleaning up teammates' mess.
People will knock Woodson this year and in comparison to last year, maybe he should be. That still doesn't change the fact that he was probably still a top 7-10 corner this year. He plays the position a bit differently than Tramon does. Woodson spends more time with his eyes in the backfield and looking to fire off of his receiver and make a tackle in run support. His +55 in the Woodson Factor (as I coined it last year, for good reason) is off the chart. It's also a product of how we use him, but that's still an astonishing numbers that finishes probably at least 10 better than the next best, who this year was Ronde Barber, a Tampa 2 corner. Aside from his assistance in run support (ignoring the fact he led our team in stuffs with 7), Woodson was still damn good in coverage. If you include penalties, he allowed only 3 1st downs per game. He allowed around the same number of yards per game with nearly the same success rate as well. The only big differences between Woodson last year and this year were interceptions, penalties, and touchdowns.
I don't need to really rave about the success of Sam Shields. We've all seen it and most of us have followed his numbers from week to week. Yes, there's some inconsistency in his game, but if that's all the bad we can take away from his rookie year, I'm ecstatic. He allowed only 4 touchdowns all year and had the same number of interceptions.
Let me put his performance into perspective. If you take away Woodson and Tramon from this defense and replace their targets with Shields' averages (basically Shields as the 2 starters and nickel), here's what our pass defense would have looked like, with league ranks in parentheses:
Shields, Shields, Shields: 59.1% (12), 3839 yards (7), 7.3 YPA (T24), 21 TD (T6), 23 INT (T2), 76.5 QB Rating (6), 17.2ppg (3)
Tramon, Woodson, Shields: 56.2% (4), 3440 yards (5), 6.5 YPA (7), 16 TD (4), 24 INT (2), 67.2 QB Rating (1), 15.0ppg (2)Of course that ignores things like tackling, blitzing, etc. that we got from Woodson and Tramon, but in terms of pure coverage that's what it would have looked like. In other words, our team with a trio of Shields' starting would have probably been no worse than average, considering a lot of our metrics are still well above average even when you take away Tramon and Woods' contributions to pure pass coverage. That also takes away 1st downs which would have extended drives, etc. The difference would have been more drastic than the numbers show, but things wouldn't completely collapse.
At safety, moving forward, we have Collins penciled in as a starter. He'll never reach the level of Ed Reed or Troy Polamalu in all likelihood, but he has settled on that second tier of safeties. I want to see more consistency from him when it comes to angles and tackling, but he's always going to be the 5-7 INT guy in the back. He dropped several passes earlier in the year and that won't happen every year.
On the other hand, we have no idea what's going on with Peprah and Burnett. I don't think I'm ready to say one's better than the other moving forward, but it's hard to deny that Burnett has the better potential. He also had terrific range, ball skills, and instincts. I expect him to beat out Peprah in camp if he's completely healthy, but I also wouldn't be surprised to see the two adopt a timeshare. Of course, that's assuming Pep returns to the team. Peprah was fairly consistent and understood his responsibilities, but was our biggest weakness in deep coverage. He's definitely a much better in the box safety, so it really all depends on how we want to run our defense. Closer to the LOS, he had no real problems defending the pass.
At linebacker, the numbers show our defense improved in short zones in the second half of the season. To me, Chillar is the odd man out. He allows us to do a little more in coverage in the form of playing more man with this unit, but I don't think that's a good thing. A trio of Barnett, Hawk, and Bishop would work extremely well, but I don't know if we have the money for it, especially after the season Hawk just put together. When you look at the YPAs, Hawk was 4.41, Barnett at 4.92, Bishop 5.18, and Chillar at 7.18. Big drop-off when you go to Chillar, but that's primarily because his responsibilities were different for the most part. Still, I won't be too disappointed if he's the odd man out and we draft a linebacker to fill his spot.
Oh and for all you people, here's one added bonus, something I've been keeping track of all year, although somewhat unrelated. These numbers
DO include the playoffs.
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