“You play defences like Edmonton,” began Tedford, “people don’t have a lot of success running against that. So you can keep hitting your head against the wall, or you can go away from it and throw the ball. When you’re struggling running the football against a great defence like that, you can stay stubborn and keep doing it, or you do what you’re having success with, so that’s why we were throwing it.”
http://www.theprovince.com/sports/footb ... story.html
Attacking defence.
Praise for the defence of Chris Jones. Hard to run against. Hard to pass against. It took Jones all of about two weeks to put his defence into place when he became Head Coach of the Eskimos. He had no trouble finding the kind of players he wants.
So it won't wash if people say: "Oh but he has such good players."
And someone might say, "Well, if we had his players, we could play that way."
Coaches do their work according to their philosophy. Jones wants to play aggressive, attacking defence, and that is what he does. No excuses.
Us? We heard talk of aggressive, attacking defence. But we have played deep zone all year. A little more blitzing lately. We still do not like to overload at the LOS. We still keep our guys in stationary spots. We do very little in the way of stunts. We have deep drops in our zone. What we play is the exact opposite of aggressive, attacking defence.
We play to protect against big plays. The irony is that we get hit with big plays all the time. We give too much room to receivers. We give huge gaps for running games. Our LBs are too preoccupied with pass defence. Our defence is out there like sitting ducks, waiting for blockers, who have them all lined up, just like they see on tape.
With our setup on D, we are very vulnerable to QB runs up the middle. Reilly killed us on his final drive to tie the game. It is there all day for the QB. Reilly looked far from 100% physically, but he took the runs to get the win.
It has been painful to watch our defence. It is passive. It is slow death. It stops nothing when the game is on the line. But it is the style of defence that Wally has always wanted, and his protégé Mark W is delivering what Wally wants.
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Semi good news ... After half the season, we finally got our guys in the positions they are best suited to.
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.
Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.
Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.