After two games (and last season), it's time to retire the canard of Bears as Tampa-2 team. With the departure of Tony Dungy from Indy and Monty Kiffin from Tampa Bay, there are no teams that run the Tampa-2 as an all-encompasing system, but the Bears were actually mostly out of this system last year.

The Bears led the NFL last year- by a wide margin- in percentage of plays with blitzes. This drives me crazy, but it's also the antithesis of everything that Lovie Smith's defense is accused of being- passive, "bend-but-don't-break", etc. It is quite clear that the defensive staff does not trust the pass rush, but they also do not trust their DBs (outside of Tillman) in man-on-man coverage, so they're playing a strange 4-3 zone blitzing scheme which attempts to force pressure while retaining the skeleton of the Tampa-2. And, to be sure, they still play cover-2 in some plays, but that's true of every team in the league.

The Cover-2 is dead. I have some ideas on what killed it, but I'll let those percolate for a while.

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Fire Phil Emery

The problem is they weren't successful at what they were doing last year.

Curious as to your thoughts on the death of the Tampa 2, IB. You seem to be extremely knowledgeable about the game, so I'm hoping to educate myself a bit.

I'm assuming in some degree it has to do with the transition to a pass first league. With offenses being built to be very proficient in the pass, teams can now make those 7-10 yard passes much easier than than could a decade+ ago? Hopefully that's some of it, but I won't pretend to know/guess more than that.

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Team Cutler.

The switch was much quicker than that. The Bears were running a straight Tampa 2 through 2005 and most of 2006. I think it has much more to do with the rare confluence of talents you need to run the system in its purest form than in any systemic deficiency (there are deficiencies, but no more so than any scheme).

In order to run the Tampa 2 well, the following are requisites:

2 above average pass rushing DEs and/or one outstanding 3-technique DT
An MLB of well above average speed
A sure-tackling WLB that would probably be better suited for MLB in most systems.
Physical corners that can tackle

The Bears, at the zenith of the defense, had all four. Tampa did as to in the early part of the decade. Indy got by with two of the four for most of their run, but they were probably the least effective of the group. Minnesota runs the purest system today; they have half of the first, the WLB, and the physical corners.

The problem is that there's a higher premium in this system for those particular skills than there is in the "ordinary" (however defined) system. Cover 2 defenses- true Tampa 2- are usually either really good or awful. We saw a bunch of copycats in the middle of the decade, such as St. Louis (especially post-Smith) that didn't have anything close to the personnel and failed miserably; they would have been bad on defense anyway, but it was a complete disaster to try to implement the Tampa system. Also, when a system comes into vogue, resources become scarse: there are only a handful of players in the NFL at any given time that meet the descriptions of the above.

To be sure, all teams are looking for good pass-rushing DEs. But not all are looking for physical corners, or very fast MLBs, or even WLBs with above-average size. Some systems have no use for what is termed a "3-technique" tackle. But as the number of the teams grows that are looking for those resources, those resources get spread out. As discussed above, the system can't be effectively half-assed; you're either going to be good at it, or terrible. I think most D-coordinators saw the writing on the wall and decided that they simply no longer had the pieces in place.

Also, running up the middle will always be a weakness of the system. Various teams have found ways to get around that, but there's always a tradeoff (the Vikings have no pass rush from the interior, for example). It also doesn't lend itself well to particularly good skill players on offense; the defense is, of necessity, a balanced defense that has trouble taking account of a Steve Smith, for one notorious example.

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Fire Phil Emery

Playing that way does make it harder to run against them, which makes the opposing team's offense a little more predictable. It does allow an element of a bend but don't break though if the pressure generated forces a QB to either throw quickly, or to throw to an area that was vacated by the blitz, generally a shorter pass.

How do you think the defense looks with Hillenmeyer in there? I noticed him playing closer to the ilne of scrimmage at times, and, obviously not as fast in getting back down the field.

I thought he did pretty OK. Without looking at the numbers, I don't think the Pittsburgh TEs or RBs did all that well in the passing game, which would usually be his responsibility. He doesn't blitz well, but neither does Urlacher. My biggest problem with the defense isn't that it's unsound, but that its coming from a position of weakness (we need to compensate for our bad DE play) than a position of strength (our LBs are great pass-rushers).

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Fire Phil Emery

Irish,
I think Hillenmeyer blitzes MUCH better then Urlacher! I'm just going by what I see on TV. I saw Urlacher get blocked by a HB in week1 in GB. Urlacher never runs through a block and would rather "dance" with his blocker. I think Hunter seems to be more agressive.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

I am entirely tired of the T-2. It infuriates me to no end, to watch teams simply make a living 5-15yds out. It keeps your D on the field longer, and yeah, the Bears never really have had the proper talent in the secondary. The teams who have ultimately been successful running this scheme, have one thing above all else that the Bears have not, and that is at least one, true impact player, at safety.

Coaches very much took to heart, what they saw in Super Bowl XLI. You saw a HC, completely dissect the Bears defense, to the point he was dictating what the Bears would do. That took all the polish off the T-2, and teams jumped ship.

I absolutely think it is a dead system. I absolutely think teams lick their chops when they play the Bears. There is arguably no other scheme that has inherent, exploitable holes, to the extent the this scheme does. You can run the same play 10 times, and 9 times it will work. A deep route to clear out the MLB, and the middle of the field is yours.

But the saving grace is that the Bears have followed others teams, and are not running the T-2 as pure as in the past.

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"Mattress technology has come a long way"

- Dan Bernstein, 2016

I have a question for IB or really anybody else reading this. What exactly is a 3 technique tackle. I hear the term all the time but I do not know that I have ever heard a quality explanation of the term or what sets these players apart from a regular DT/NT. And if I have heard such an explanation I have forgotton it. Thanks in advance I will hang up and listen for my answer.

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Shorter version: the 3-Technique has one gap responsibility- usually the gap between the guard and tackle- and is looking to penetrate into the backfield and get pressure. Larger DTs, or nose tackles, have two-gap responsibilities; rather than penetrate, they are responsible for reading the offense and making takles to both their left and their right. "3" in 3-technique simply refers to the 3 gap.

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Fire Phil Emery

The Tampa 2 does not work very well with Hillenmeyer....just ask Santonio Holmes finding a spot in the middle 1/3rd at 10 yards...or Hines Ward....or Heath Miller.

I hope that the Bears coaching staff doesn't trust Tillman as a "coverage corner". The guy never bumps at the line, his "quick twitch" is too damn slow, and he manages get burned when (in recent memory) he is on an island with a #1 receiver.

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@audioidkid

Thanks that was extremely informative! Who knew you could actually learn something on the CSFMB?

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Bit by bit:



Eh... maybe? I wouldn't say that an impact player at safety is absolutely essential. It's probably no more important than having good safeties in any system. Frankly, most safeties almost always are playing in two deep or three deep coverage anyway. It doesn't make a huge difference to them where they are playing. And when they screw up, it all looks the same.



Not really. Tampa had already adapted away from the system, even by 2006 (Kiffin was playing a TON of man coverage by then). And the Bears defense was pretty darn good in 2006. Besides, I think all the talk about how the Colts exposed the Tampa-2 is mostly continued by Bears fans upset by the result of the game; the defense still held the Colts offense- a pretty darn good one- to 22 points, without its superstar DT, without Mike Brown, and without an offense to help out. And one of those touchdowns was a quick strike as a result of a individual error. You can't hold that against the system.



Just because you play a Tampa-2 defense does not mean you run the same defensive play, over and over again. There are variations, and there are ways of disguising coverages. What you're saying isn't rocket science. It's what every 12 year old kid does playing Madden. If the defense was that deficient, it wouldn't have been so powerful for so long. And every defense has inherent, exploitable holes.



That's undeniably true, although as I said before, it's more of a personnel decision than a schematic decision.

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Fire Phil Emery

The least of the Bears worries should be the MLB. And Holmes will find space, no matter who they are playing.

Theoretically, Tillman fits the role in the T-2. That said, I think he is absolutely a safety on my team. Problem is, he doesn't have the speed you would like at FS, and the strength you would like at SS, to play the run.


@TB

When I say impact player at safety, I mean a Bob Sanders. A guy that Dungy always said, was the linchpin of his scheme. While he isn't terribly good in coverage, he has the athleticism to get back where he is needed, and at the same time, is able to play the run better than anyone.

As far as what Dungy did to the Bears, I am taking this from another source:

The Colts were challenged to attack the No. 5 defense in the NFL and the No. 1 defense in average gain per pass play. What Dungy did exposed the Tampa 2 coverage being used by more than half the teams in the NFL. He triggered that deep pass drop with a pass key. As Urlacher dropped with great speed while reading his pass key, the Colts ran a draw play vs. six in the box and the end result was a Colts offense that gained 191 rushing yards in 42 carries and another 74 yards throwing the check-down route to the backs, which essentially is a delayed draw.

No one thought the quick-strike Colts would hold the ball for more than 38 minutes in the Super Bowl, but they did. Since then every coach has gone over that game tape looking for the ways to break down Tampa 2 coverages around the league.

Besides what the Colts were able to do, there are a number of teams running an over/under principle on the Tampa 2 coverage: Drive a seam route down the middle -- usually by a tight end -- and trigger the deep drop by the Mike, or strongside middle linebacker, and then run a 12-yard dig route by a wide receiver under the tight end and in front of the Mike. The big stretch by the deep route can produce a nice hole in the middle of the field.

One team that regularly gets described as a "Tampa 2" team hardly ever plays the coverage anymore. After I watch some of the late-season game tapes from 2006, I asked the coach what happened to his famous coverage. "Can't play it anymore," he said. "It lost its competitive edge from overuse."

http://www.nfl.com/kickoff/story?id=090 ... nfirm=true

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"Mattress technology has come a long way"

- Dan Bernstein, 2016

fine...how do you explain Hines and Heath?
I'm telling you...the Bears are going to get smoked by passes in the middle of the field all season.

o.k., so basically Tillman is not good enough.

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@audioidkid

Tillman does everything you want him to do in this scheme. Again though, its the scheme that leads to the Bears being picked apart.

Teams have long preyed on the Bears by simply running quick passes, where the receiver catches the ball before the CB can close. In that sense, you can run a good amount of routes that exploit that. You can march right down the field. It does get decidedly more difficult in the red zone though.

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"Mattress technology has come a long way"

- Dan Bernstein, 2016

Pat Kirwin = not particularly football smart.

Why would an offense that scored three TDs, one of which was simply a deep pass against blown coverage, be treated as such a revelation? It's a smokescreen; there's nothing there that coaches didn't know years before that game. Don't believe everything unidentified coaches say.

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Fire Phil Emery

Interested in your take in how the Bears defensive line stacks up.

To this point, the Bears have a pair of D-lineman on pace for 16 sacks this season each (obviously, it's only a 2 game subset). We can make any excuses for how they got those sacks (poor offensive line play, for example), but the reality is the Bears have put pressure on these QB's. Rogers was shut down because he had a man in his face every play. Roethlisberger was on his back about 5 times and threw a pick because he was pressured and hit while delivering a pass.

I think some have a distorted view of reality on what a good pass rushing front should look like. What D-line has outplayed the Bears so far this season?

My argument is that the Bears Defensive Line has PLAYED like a top 3 Defensive Line this year, that we'll need to continue to see this level of play for them to remain that high in my mind, and that Rod Marinelli must be the difference (with a sprinkle of Lovie play calling). Do you think Marinelli should be given credit for the play, thus far, of the defensive line, and, if so, what specifically? How much credit does he get (or does he deserve any) for the play of veteran guys like Ogunleye and Brown?

Until they prove to us that these first two games were a fluke, let's not tear them up...

They weren't able to generate the sort of pass rush you'd like to see against Pittsburgh, considering how bad that O-line is. Also, the fact that the coaching staff feels compelled to send 6 and 7 blitzers so often says something. I felt a lot better about Ogunleye until Odom went up to Cincinnati and had five sacks. That O-line might just be a smoking crater.

When this team faces a good O-line with a dominant-type LT, they're in big trouble, because they won't be able to generate any sort of pass rush with the front four.

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Fire Phil Emery

That is convenient. You are a guy on a forum, calling a guy who writes about football, not particularly smart, and generally calling him a liar. When all the while, he is in agreement with you...

I don't understand. You create a thread about how the T-2 is becoming more and more exploitable, I post a link a guy who breaks down what the Colts did to the Bears, that led to a lot of teams dropping the T-2, and you take issue with that? Would you care to actually respond to what the man said? It was a bit more complicated than deep passes against blown coverages...

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"Mattress technology has come a long way"

- Dan Bernstein, 2016

I didn't call him a liar. I said not to believe everything that unnamed coaches say, because said coaches are often self-serving and have no reason to divulge accurate info to the media.

The Colts scored 29 points in the Super Bowl. 7 of those points were on an INT returned for a TD. Another 6 were on a blown coverage deep. This isn't an example of "exploiting" the system; it's just a blown coverage, which can happen in any system. That leaves 16 points that the Colts scored... not the stuff of legend. Hell, the Bruce Gradkowski-led Tampa Bay Bucaneers scored 30+ points a couple of weeks before during the regular season. And Payton Manning and Colts offensive players > Bruce Gradkowski and the dreck that the Bucs were running out on the field.

But here's some examples of "not football smart":



Wow... 4.5 yards per carry! Amazing! All with the Bears best D-lineman injured. That's not a fantastic shock.



This is probably true, in a "coaches watch lots of game tape" sense, but the burden of proof is on you, or Kirwin, to tell me why 16 points scored by exploiting the defensive scheme is so tremendous.



Leaving aside the "exposed" part, nowhere close to that many teams ran primarily Tampa-2 systems. Probably 100% of teams, at some point during their games, play cover-2, but that's been true since the 40s.



This revolutionary play left defensive coaches entirely unable to adapt their systems. Teams have been doing this since the early part of the decade against Tampa. The system is not merely the same defensive play run over and over again, and there are ways of disguising coverages. The defense can account for that route combination.

And, no, he doesn't basically agree with me, except for in the superficial (but obvious) sense that the scheme is not used as an overarching system by any team anymore (with the possible exception of the Vikings who, by the way, are pretty good on defense and have been for a while). The problem isn't one of the scheme being exposed, but one of personnel becoming overstretched. There's only so many CBs that are appropriate for such a system; if all teams are going after those CBs, they will become overvalued. Repeat for all positions.

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Fire Phil Emery

Indy drive-by-drive summary:

14:46 1 01:58 IND 30 5 11 Intercepted Pass
11:20 1 04:30 IND 20 9 80 Touchdown
06:43 1 00:00 CHI 34 1 0 Fumble
04:34 1 01:29 IND 16 3 3 Punt
02:34 1 01:01 CHI 43 3 7 Punt
00:09 1 03:52 IND 42 8 47 Field Goal
09:17 2 03:08 IND 42 7 58 Touchdown
03:57 2 02:31 IND 35 7 28 Fumble
01:18 2 01:18 CHI 35 5 18 Missed FG
15:00 3 07:34 IND 38 13 56 Field Goal
05:23 3 02:07 IND 36 6 62 Field Goal
01:14 3 02:36 IND 32 6 18 Punt
09:55 4 02:23 CHI 40 4 1 Punt
05:05 4 03:23 CHI 47 8 31 Downs

Four punts, three turnovers, two TDs, 3 FGs, 1 missed FG, and one turnover on downs near the end of the game.

Truly, an offensive performace for the ages.

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Fire Phil Emery