http://www.briancushing56.com/bio.html Favorite Defense? "I like it when I am able to blitz A LOT." "The blitzing results we found are pretty remarkable, though. The Texans were 31st in the league in pass defense DVOA when they rushed four -- regardless of whether it was a zone blitz or simply a straight rush of four down linemen. As they rushed more players, their lot improved. When the Texans rushed five, they had the tenth best pass defense DVOA in the league; when they got all the way up to six, they were the second-best pass defense DVOA in the league (relative to when every other team in the league blitzed the same number of players)." http://blogs.chron.com/texanschick/2009/07/houston_texans_blitz_numbers_p_1.html http://www.casttv.com/ext/9rwtur1
If you took a random poll from 100 LBs, they would ALL say that their favorite thing is to blitz. That doesnt necessarily mean it would be effective. If your front 4 sucks, it doesnt matter who you have at LB. I have no doubts that when we have the correct personnel, that Cushing will be very good at blitzing. The chron blog you posted is regarding last season's team. Our front four actually got worse with the loss of TJ, haha...but seriously, we have 3 lineman that cant get penetration. Thats just not good.
That's because we've only played four games so far this year. Maybe if we Safety blitz with Pollard, he'll knock Warner out the game and we all know it won't take much to get Leinart out of there. Who's their third string QB?
Indy sacked him 4 times, and Warner played all but 2 snaps that game. I don't see any real possibility of them taking out 2 QBs in one game. We've had individual flashes of talent from our other 3 DL, but even Luther Head will score double digits a few times a season. If Mario is commanding a double or even triple team and we cant get to the QB still that's gotta mean they arent trying.
Sacks are not the only goal of blitzing. If the opponent ends up with more incompletions or short passes than otherwise, it could be a net positive. Are there any stats for this year's team similar what right1 posted for last year? That's alot more useful than saying they suck when blitzing because they suck when not blitzing too. The question is under which scenario they suck less.
a 22-year old rookie likes to blitz and sack the QB? really? huh. i would have NEVER guessed that. no one is suggesting they shouldn’t blitz at all, just that they shouldn’t blitz *more*. when a team is having to simplify its game plan to try and limit mental mistakes – which the team has been guilty of countless times this season – creating a scheme in which you increase the amount of pressure on each individual player to perform their job is risky and not very smart. btw, if you read the article, houston actually faced only 234 "passing situations" last year (2nd- and 3rd-and-8 or longer), 9th fewest in the NFL. he doesn't specify how often they blitzed; just that their success when doing it seemed to increase. but because we know houston wasn't, by any measure, a blitz happy team last year, i think its fairly safe to assume we're dealing with a pretty small sample size. teams blitz, or average, less than 20% of the time. so you're talking about less than 50 plays with no way of actually measuring what, if any impact the blitz had on the play. based on watching how uniformly ineffective their blizting has been this season, i can't picture any scenario in which doing more of it would be beneficial to the team's success. so your defensive scheme is based around knocking out two QBs because our safety did it last year to another QB?.... lord. i'm out.
How is it that there's no way to measure the impact of blitzing on a play, but you're 100% certain that it's a bad idea and makes the defense worse? The statistics from last year alone aren't sufficient, but they certainly are useful as a tool to help determine the impact of blitzing. Knowing the core data and sample size, you could determine the likelihood, for example, of it simply being random luck vs. statistical significance. You could look at the consistency of the data - was it completely random game-to-game, or was it fairly consistent? If we have the data from this year, does it show similar or different results? etc.
i think it's a bad idea and makes the texans' defense worse. this is not a general discussion about the impact of blizting. when a team is simplifying its scheme because they've given up not 1 or 2 but very nealry a half dozen big plays (in just 4 games) due to mental lapses, it's not rocket surgery to conclude that increasing the # of blitzes, which increases pressure on the non-blitzers/mental lapsers, would be a bad idea. it's anectdotal, at best. you can't just assume that because a blitz was called, it was effective - if your blitzers get no penetration and the QB - say, jamarcus russell - throws the ball into the stands because he's a terrible QB, your blitz had no impact on that event. but in this measurement..... the texans, this year at least, have been woefully ineffective blitzing; so much so, fans don't even seem to realize how often they're doing it. doing something more that you don't do very well isn't smart.
Of course sacks arent the only goal of blitzing...I never stated they were. However, sacks should be at least some sort of a byproduct of blitzing. I also mentioned that our blitzes have been completely ineffective...I didnt gather this from a stat sheet, I gathered it from the signals my eyes send to my brain. Up until this point in the season, we just have not been successful when we've sent extra men. The only real play I remember that was very effective was week 1 when Ryans blew through the middle and nailed Sanchez. It turned into an incomplete pass. Other than that, I just remember a bunch of players running and hitting a wall of blockers. Either we need to get new players or disguise the blitz better.
Freaking Texans. Funny, how I wish a week would go by so fast just for Sunday Football. .....pretty sad too.
Depends if the problem is that the scheme is too complex, or the players aren't able to stay with the people they are covering very long. If it's the latter, then accelerating the pass could be helpful. Remember - we're talking about a defense that sucks all around. So watching a blitz and seeing a completed pass doesn't necessarily mean it was bad - with this defense, the alternative may have been a longer completion. Except it's not anecdotal. Well, for us, it is because we're just looking at plays or the end results of the analysis. But if you have the full dataset (as the team would, and whoever wrote that article presumably would), you CAN determine the overall impact of blitzing. Or at least, you could determine if there was an impact (how much of an impact would be more difficult). Certainly, on any given play, it could pure luck as you described. But that's all incorporated into the stats - and why you'd need to determine the statistical significance of the data. But it can certainly be done. You just find the confidence levels of the sample data and you can get a pretty good idea of whether it's just a coincidence or a consistent pattern. It's the same as having a poll decide that Obama has 55% of the vote +/- 3% or +/- 15%. The 3 or 15 number is calculated based on the data, and you can do the same here. It may turn out that it's not statistically significant, but it's definitely not anecdotal evidence.
it's not either/or, though. there are a variety of issues impacting the texans' defense; it can't be boiled down to an "if not a), then b)" analysis. they give too much space, struggle to cover, take bad angles, misread plays................ it's anecdotal. and a small sample size to boot. i mean, it's somewhat interesting - but with no way to quantify *why* the texans are more successful blitzing, i don't think it ultimately means anything. we're talking about... 40 plays here. that's 2.5 a game. meaning there're probably entire games in which they're not blitzing at all - likely against the colts twice a year, for instance. in fact, i'd guess the # of blitzes is tied rather closely to the competency of the QB. the better the QB, the fewer times they blitz. so, given the smaller sample size, it makes sense that their defense would "improve."
slight correction: it's anecdotal if you're trying prove, "the texans' defense improved when they blitzed more; therefore, the texan defense should blitz more." that's a false, empty conclusion from that (as presented) data.
We need to continue to attack Warner and get to the ball. He is known to fumble the ball a lot and we have to get to that weakness. Problem being is if we don't get to him fast enough he can pick you apart. He has a super fast release and we better hope our CB's can contain the receivers just a bit while the rush gets to him and hopefully puts him on his back.
Haha, I feel you on that. It's gotten to the point now where I'm actually waiting for Friday and Saturday to get over so Sunday will come. We're letting our lives pass before our eyes just to get our hearts ripped out by this team! Hahaha.
Yeah, its really sad that Im not in the mood to go out on Fri and Sat nights just because my mind is on Sunday. I guess thats why its so frustrating when things dont go as planned, since I put my life on hold for them.
I feel the EXACT same way. LOL. I want friday and Saturday to go by fast. I'm so hooked, I told my new job when they hired me 2 months ago, that I CAN'T work on Sundays. I'll work every other day of the week, but NOT Sundays. Course I told them it was University related.....but ya......Straight because of the Texans.
