Ok, so the 3rd quarter made us all sweat a bit. But the D stepped it up in the 4th quarter and shut the Ravens down. The numbers for Flacco were something like 2/8, with 2 INTs. That's how to close a game, and the offense didn't take the pedal off. We kept going for the 1st downs. Great win, and holy crap, we're 8-4.

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Yup! Already 2 more wins then last year. And we have 4 to play!
(Hopefully more, with the playoffs!)

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We are winning the games that we lost last year. Dom Capers deserves A LOT of credit for turning this defense around. Complete 180.

Yup David! The team keeps the pressure on the other team, where last year in the 4th we gave up drive after drive. Now we are going after them.

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Loved it. We where totally shutting them down, creating some turnovers in the process. Just a shame that Woodson couldn't get one, but if you get targeted just once in an entire game, I guess you've done your job. Especially if you're playing against the run like that.

That said, when we where in front, we did start sending 3 man blitzes again and playing prevent defense... If we had someone like Merriman, I wouldn't mind too much, but sending Jolly - Pickett - Jenkins, Wynn - Raji - Jenkins or Jones - Jolly - Pickett doesn't work. Just some of the combinations I saw last night.

Check out article by Matt Bowen over at NFP, where he talks about the importance of mixing our packages to keep the Ravens off-track, especially keeping Rice off-track.

Basically, sending packages where there was doubt on who'd blitz and which LB had who helped to keep Rice from hurting us.

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But my point is this.

You're on 3rd and 14. What do you do? Capers always sends the front 3 and drops 8 back deep. There's no question as to who's blitzing, it's the 3 guys on the line.

And it nearly always fails horribly.

Why don't we go with a little riskier playcall and send 5 or something, and then drop 4 back deep, with 2 playing shallow. Or something like that.

But in those situations, the opposition is rarely going to protect with more than 5 O-linemen. you can bring blitzers, but it does little good if the QB can get a dumpoff where the RB is coming out in space, and other defenders potentially having their backs turned.

I'm just going into hypothetical.... to be honest considering we've had like 30% 3rd-down conversions against us on D... whatever Capers is doing, I'm totally fine with.

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And I'm not. Lol.

Feel free to dump it off to the RB. If you're in 3rd and 15, you have the defense playing quarters, two in shallow zone and you bring 5, that play is not supposed to get you 15 yards.

And he should never be able to get the deep throw off.

It's just that, whenever we get into a 3rd and 10-, we go with a 'normal' play and stop them. When we get in 3rd and 12+, we go with some kind of prevent defense, sending just 3, giving the QB 20 seconds in the pocket and just letting him find a receiver deep, eventually.

The only time that that prevent call worked yesterday, from what I recall, was when their receiver dropped the ball.

Of course, it's great if you can get pressure with just 3, but you just see our D-linemen battling against double teams, not getting there. If you want to do this, you have to get an elite DE/OLB out there, together with a couple of pass rushing DE/DTs. Something we don't have now, apart from Jenkins.