Defense: Your Thoughts

Originally posted by Joecool:

Originally posted by BadgerHawk:
We can dance around the issue; the Ravens went after Cully and Whitner. The two weakest links in our secondary. That's football.

Whitner was the main guy they went after, especially in the first half when they scored most of their points and moved the ball. Cully was not picked on. He was covering their best WR and the QB always goes to his best guy when he is in trouble. Boldin just ended up winning most of those. Cully did make one mistake on the deep post.

Being picked on is not what happened to Cully. He just had a bad game. The Ravens literally picked on Whitner throwing to any target who Whitner was responsible for in that first half.

I'm still concerned about the Whitner in 2013. Cully will be fine.

Agreed! The FO still has NOT addressed this unless they envision Dahl beating him out. Could he really give up more TD's than Whitner last year esp. with a projected better pass rush and rotation? They were saying on NFL Network that the biggest weakness we had with the S position was that they were so used to playing back and then playing down hill (got used to the pass rush) that they were very susceptible to the double-move. This was even an issue in the RZ (where Whitner has been pwned for the last 2 years in). The other issue was a complex scheme and miscommunication. They felt Reid, as intelligent as he is, should end up being an better FS than Goldson. I agree.

Side note: Anyone else watch NFL Network religiously like I do (albeit 95% is on the same East Coast teams and stories). But has anyone else noticed that every single Niner replay is of Whitner getting burned for a TD? I, literally, think they covered all 14 TD's he gave up last year. Every. SIngle. One!

One of the questions I have had is that in both the Atlanta game and in the Super Bowl we looked horrible on defense in the first half and then tightened things up in the second half and both games ended up being too close. In both games if we had played both halfs like the second half it would not have been blose. So what was the problem? Was it coaching or was it just nerves, or was it all Whitner and Cowboy? What happened and what is it that needs to be corrected?

Originally posted by Ninefan56:
One of the questions I have had is that in both the Atlanta game and in the Super Bowl we looked horrible on defense in the first half and then tightened things up in the second half and both games ended up being too close. In both games if we had played both halfs like the second half it would not have been blose. So what was the problem? Was it coaching or was it just nerves, or was it all Whitner and Cowboy? What happened and what is it that needs to be corrected?

Atlanta came out throwing the ball against us, Ryan was flawless. In the second half they ran the ball more and made a couple mistakes, (INT, fumbled snap). That was the difference in that game.

Very similar in the Super Bowl. They threw the ball up for grabs and Boldin came down with it. That's actually the way the Ravens won all of their playoff games. They ran more in the second half, and our team's nerves were settled down a bit.

Originally posted by Ninefan56:

One of the questions I have had is that in both the Atlanta game and in the Super Bowl we looked horrible on defense in the first half and then tightened things up in the second half and both games ended up being too close. In both games if we had played both halfs like the second half it would not have been blose. So what was the problem? Was it coaching or was it just nerves, or was it all Whitner and Cowboy? What happened and what is it that needs to be corrected?

to the bold. That's the real problem, they don't game-plan as good as they make half time adjustments. If their game planning abilities can catch up to their halftime adjustments abilities, the rest of the league better look the h3!! out.