South Pender wrote:Excellent analyses, B.C.FAN and Blitz. An exciting game for sure, but shouldn't have had the nail-biting finish. It's hard to understand MW's lack of pressure on Collaros in the 2nd half when it had worked so well in the first half. I had thought that it had become fully-accepted that playing cautiously in order to maintain a lead was bad strategy, but evidently not. And, of course, it wasn't just the D that went ultra-conservative in the second half; the O seemed to also have lost its bounce and effort. It's great to get the win, but I didn't come away from the game feeling that the Leos were developing into a dominant team.
The Lions defence had five sacks in the first half, and, even though he had some success, Collaros looked uncertain and skittish on many occasions. For reasons that I cannot understand, Washington rushed either three or four on EVERY down in the second half, giving Collaros time to settle in, find his receivers, and gain confidence.
Even though the Lions usually had eight or nine back in coverage, the Tiger-Cat receivers are an excellent and experienced group, and they were able to consistently find the holes. Washington didn't need to send extra rushers on every down, but he needed to give Collaros different looks as he had done in the first half. The Lions' defence played hard, and I thought that the secondary covered and tackled very well. But allowing Callaros to stand in the pocket without pressure was asking for trouble
IIRC, Jennings only rolled out once by design in the whole game, and that lead to the second touchdown pass to Arceneaux. He had a receiver with him to the outside,
and could also have run for a decent gain. The Tiger-Cat secondary had to flow with Jennings, leaving the middle of the field wide open for Arceneaux. Why Jones
doesn't roll Jennings out more often, especially to escape pressure, is incomprehensible to me. zeppo
Our Leos have used the same offensive play book since late 2004. It has been used by Chap, Jones, Cortez, and now Jones again. The only adaptions to it were in 2007, with Hufnagel consulting Kruck, 2011 and 2012, when Chap finally went to more tight end sets and a lot more misdirection play action and rollouts, and this season, where at times, Jones has gone to some tight end sets and two back sets but with a spread offence mentality of keeping his quarterback in the pocket.
Jennings, quite frankly, is making our passing attack work due to his talent and poise in the pocket. He can make all the throws fromm deep, intermediate, and short and he can fire bullets or put touch on the football. He is very mobile and can throw on the run to be able to use semi-rollout and sprint out plays but we choose to keep him in the pocket.
We don't give Jennings the tools to combat the blitz. In the spread 5 receiver set, he really only has time for two progressions. He can never go through the progressions for all of his receivers under that type of pressure. He can look at his primary receiver off his read, and then he has time to look at one more receiver or has to escape, buy time, run, or throw it out of bounds. We rarely give him the pass patterns to combat the blitz. We don't run quick slants, quick, short crosses, the quick sideline pattern, the quick dig, the skinny post, the quick hook (comeback) or the quick slant. We rarely release the back to the flat. We hardly ever, ever screen. The screen pass is a great play to combat the blitz - the bubble screen, the jailbreak screen, the slip screen, and the misdirection screen to the fullback or tailback are not in our repertoire.
In the run game, all we run is the inside zone read with a rare quick pitch play. We don't fly sweep, the motion swing pass, run a reverse, use the shovel pass, the outside zone read, or the zone read option. So almost every run play is an inside zone read right at the defensive tackle spots. No variety at all.
Offensively, we're basically counting on Jennings to make great passes under pressure and for Arsenault, Burnham, and Gore to make great plays.
Defensively, Mark Washington's defense has been middling for the most part, until this season. Using more combination coverages and personnel packages, along with a mixture of strategies from three man and four man lines with more effective half back, nickel, and linebacker blitzes we came into this game tied with Hamilton for the league lead in sacks and have five more in the first half.
Rushing only three or four men, as we almost did the whole second half is a recipe for problems. It might work well against an average quarterback but quarterbacks like Collaras, Bo Levi Mitchell, and Trevor Harris will eventually pick it apart. We needed more mixture in our defensive scheme in the second half and we didn't get it. We also got a tired defense playing that style, while the offence also went two and out too often.
It was an exciting game and I love excitement when watching other CFL games but when we have a huge lead, I don't want excitement. I want to see the game put away. This is not on the players. Yes, there were mistakes by players too, from penalties to an interception to a missed field goal by Leone. But coaching strategy in the second half of the game and missed challenges played a bigger role in allowing the Hamilton comeback. If Wally challenges the no yards call, Leone has a chip shot, even though he should have made it. If Jennings had a check down or hot read, he would not have attempted to thrown the wide out pass to Burnham.
As for Edem's 'brick' hands zeppo, the correct play, as you note is to knock it down. However, if you do the dum thing on that play and go for the interception, you need to catch it because he could have deflected it to a Hamilton receiver. It's happened a few times this season in the CFL where a defensive back has missed an easy interception and done just that.
This Leo team could easily be 7-0 this season had we not allowed two comeback wins against Toronto and Calgary. We almost allowed a third one. Thankfully, we didn't and that shows some maturation but we need to strategize better and learn to play better with leads.