Evaluate the Defense Game #1
 

I thought they looked improved from several aspects. Keep in mind this was Jax and not a high-powered offense.

Tackling = Much, MUCH better

Coverage = Tighter. Few plays without a defender right on the WR

Run Defense = Stellar start, let's not get cocky

Pass Defense = Not a ton of pressure today. Missed a huge sack which ended up leading to a TD. Coverage overall was decent. Made a backup look all-world but that happens when a backup comes in mid-game.

Overall it looked like we were more sound fundamentally. Run gaps were getting filled, screens were getting blown up and not a ton of YAC. Hopefully as the season progresses our defense will as well.

Overall grade today: C+

Frank Clark has more picks than Jalen Ramsey!

Not terrible, not great.

Patriots will destroy our defense

The price of PP just went up.

Fingertips away from a pick 6 with that tip

Run defense and tackling were much improved.

Lots of blown assignments in coverage. Time will tell is Spags can fix those issues.

Initial reactions:

DL = good run stopping, no pass rush.
LB = seemed okay in short areas, decent against run
DB = forest fire

B-

Run defense was much improved other than one drive, where they got gashed in nickel.

Jags hit some passes, but they were holding a lot, especially Jones.

We'll be fine.

I think they played pretty vanilla against their backup, to be honest.

Thought Clark would dominate today.

Didn't look that great against a rookie backup.

When the game was in the balance, when it was 23-13, they made the plays to bring home the W in conjunction with the offense responding to those stops with scores.

That's the standard I always judged Sutton on.

They keep that up and we'll be a hard team to deal with.

Evaluate the Defense Game #1
 

C-

DBs ****ing sucked, Ward in particular.

Surprised Honey Badger was invisible.

C-

There was communication today. Something we didn’t see a lot of last year.

It was very meh. Good and bad.

But truthfully, we aren’t going to know what we have until week 8 or later.

Better against the run.

Better secondary tackling.

I'm glad we still have more CB help on the way.

I think Thornhill will be really good by mid-year.

Our pass rush will be fine.

The Foles TD (where he got hurt) was a really great play by the Jags. Good coverage, can't fault anyone for that.

I suspect we'll see more blitzes as our secondary starts to gel.

C

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I owe <a href="https://twitter.com/tkelce?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@tkelce</a> lunch or something for that ������ <a href="https://t.co/m1Gwh8Nzmk">https://t.co/m1Gwh8Nzmk</a></p>&mdash; Patrick Mahomes II (@PatrickMahomes) <a href="https://twitter.com/PatrickMahomes/status/1170810540534448128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 8, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Cornerback position is still crap. Fuller got beat constantly. I would feel a lot better when Claiborne returns from his suspension.
Damien Wilson was a stud out there. Very impressed by his game. Frank Clark was decent. Honey Badger had an average game and so did Thornhill imo.
Our run defense seems definitely more improved and we tackle a whole lot better when compared to last year. The pass rush seems to have regressed a little. Overall I notice a slight improvement. Still too early to tell.

They looked like shit. The pass rush is nonexistent, coverage outside of Fuller was nowhere to be found, and the run defense wasn't even all that great.

Matthieu was legitimately invisible. Didn't hear his name called a once.

My gut tells me it won't get any better, but it's a long season. We'll see.

They got the ball back for the offense when it mattered. Mission accomplished.

Honey B is probably the reason there was only one long ass burner TD.

This. I was over reacting in the chat to be sure, but looking back, when Jax was in the game in the 3rd qtr and things could have went to shit, the defense did what we have wanted them to do...they got the one or two stops needed that allowed the offense to score a couple of TD's and put the game away.

I am dissappointed in the two 4th qtr garbage time TD's, but there is hope for this defense. I keep reminding myself it is gonna take a few weeks for this defense to develop its chemistry and gel.

Got a game's worth of experience and a win. A lot of folks here have been saying they will improve as the season goes on and they work together more. Well, this was a full game of practice and 1 step closer to what they'll look like later on.
+1 on tackling - they looked much improved
+1 on stopping the run. Kept them under 100 yds for the game. Only remember a couple of runs over 5yds, most were 3-4 yds and not big gashes.

Not good enough.

Run defense was strong.

Passrush was OK.

Coverage was not a disaster but not good.

Ward was a liability.

I was definitly expecting more of Clark and Mathieu but it is just one game.

If Veach adds a good CB, I trust this D to be competent.

I thought for a new scheme and coordinator it looked pretty damn good. Late in the game, when things were pretty much over, we had allowed 13 points, and only 1 really broken play. Saw us "almost" make a lot of great plays in 1st half, including blowing up screen passes. I have some hope this could work.

Defense not playing all that great could be a road thing?

Last year we saw plenty of that but at home it was a different story.

That pattern may repeat itself?

Defense was a lot like how it was preseason. Good run defense, bad pass defense for the most part. I'll reserve further judgement until Claiborne gets going.

This, if you want to win a ring...

Claiborne needs to play ahead of Ward when he returns.

They have a long ways to go to jell into a top 15 defense.

I must say, regardless of the Chiefs D, that Jags QB was playing damn well.

Foles wouldnt have been any better. Maybe worse.

Number 35 needs cut tomorrow. Other than that, things look promising. Not good, but promising.

D+. Cashew shredded us. 22/25? Embarrassing.

Even after the overhaul our best defensive player is still Patrick Mahomes.

Just have to get to 20...especially in points allowed.

They were 24th in points allowed last year.

Being too cute.

Didn't see the fourth quarter, obviously, so I can't really evaluate what happened with the garbage time scores, and that's half the points allowed in the game...

As I mentioned in the gameday thread, however, the scheme today looked a lot like preseason game number 5 to me. While there were some blitzes, I really didn't see a whole lot of creativity or much of an aggressive philosophy. And I do expect this to be an attacking defense.

So my guess is that they saw the offensive line injuries that Jacksonville had, decided they could win the game without having to be very exotic, and just played a relatively vanilla defense from the outset. And once we got ahead very quickly, there wasn't really a need to change that approach. Jacksonville was done before halftime.

So while it wasn't all that exciting to watch, I think they effectively kept the scheme off of film for another week, which may be beneficial moving forward. And it wouldn't surprise me to see it happen again in Oakland.

That said, I think they do look to be much improved against the run, I thought that both the linebacker play and the play of Thornhill was encouraging, but it does look like we're going to have to get creative to generate a pass rush, which I don't think surprises anyone. Although Jacksonville's approach did seem to be 'get the ball out as quickly as possible,' and maybe some slower-developing playcalls from the Jaguars would have resulted in more pressure.

All in all, not great, but it's a start. As the players themselves said, they need to tighten some things up, and they know they don't need to be giving up 26 points.

Pretty shitty, going against backups on the oline we got garbage for pressure. We let a no name scrub carve up the secondary. Smells like it always has.

I think the Fuller TD was just a damn good play. That’s just gonna happen sometimes.

Was definitely the best throw from the QB’s.

Ward is transitioning to a coverage defense after playing man n Dallas and under Sutton.

We definitely need Claiborne.

Side note: Thornhill was really good today

Oh and we still suck on 3rd down. Unbelievable that we gave up 3rd and 18 today. That is completely unacceptable

****ing Chark and Conley both had damn good games.

Chark 4 rec 146yds 1 TD

Conley 6 rec 97 yds 1 TD

I'm not sure what some of you saw from the run D that makes you think they're improved, because Fournette (who may be the most overrated RB in football) had 13 rushes for 66 yards and averaged 5.1 ypc. The only reason he didn't have alot more is because they had to play catch up and their rookie QB did his best Alex Smith impression and completed 22 of 25 for 2 TDs. From what I was able to watch our pass rush looked like it wanted to replicate last year's AFCCG. Luckily one of the only times the D got to the QB they knocked the starter out of the game or else they would have allowed a lot more points.

They suck.

They gave up 428 yards to a bad offense who was using their BACK UP QB.

You guys need to come to grips with this. The defense is not going to be good. It's like watching you guys convince yourselves Matt Cassel doesn't REALLY suck.

Jax O was able to move down the field way too easily. Need lots more QB pressure. Need a Derrick Thomas / Neil Smith sack team.

I miss that D.

Key stat:

JAX rushing 1st downs: THREE

Phenomenal.

I don’t expect this defense to be GOOD, but I saw improvement in the run game at least.

Fournette’s overall numbers look good, but the Chiefs were much more sound tackling and filling run gaps.

They did a much better job at the LoS to my eye. Weren’t getting put on skates as much as we saw last year.

They’ve sacrificed some pass rush to make that happen, but that’s OK.

The Chiefs D needs to be more capable against the run - preventing teams from using the game plans we saw from the Chargers and Ravens last year - and crest some turnovers. I like the early signs in those areas.

If the defense is bad statistically during the season and gives up yards but then in the playoffs they go lights out like that one Giants year when they upset the undefeated Patriots in the Superbowl, I'll be ok with that.

Yup. This is entirely where I'm at.

We're not going to have a 'good' defense. But we tackled better and were in better position than under Sutton. I'll absolutely take it given that I expect them to improve and get better over the course of the season.

They did a good enough job for us to win the game.

That's all that really matters.

1st game as a unit, give Jags line some credit. Once the secondary gels a little we will be where we need to be.

The last few scores were the chiefs trying to not get injured. Otherwise our d is better.

We paid Frank Clark $100 mil to have 1 tackle and an int. It's only 1 game and I don't expect him to suck, but if he does then that's really bad.

Some Miami players are pissed off and want out. Inquire about Howard and let's get serious with this shit.

Yep.

IF ONLY he could play like Vonnie Holliday and get 3 sacks in his first game as a Chief

Besides how they line up, no change from last year. Still bad enough to cost us a game.

Pass rush seems to be a concern. I believe the referees allowed Jacksonville to hold to make the game competitive. Especially when Clark was being held and was called for tripping to offset the penalties. That's garbage.

I saw a team that won comfortably. I'm responding to a guy that thought a Shady McCoy lotto ticket was too much of a gamble.

Fournette the most overrated RB in football?! I thought that was McCoy! It's so hard to keep up with your histrionics.

Winning on the road in the NFL is hard.

Every ****ing fan base would take a 14-point win and not complain.

I agree pete, solid C+, a sack away from a B-.

Pretty much.

The way I see it is the offensive power of this team outweighs its subpar defense and they will win a lot more games then they lose. Of course come playoff time things get a little dicier.

If i was to put a silly but honest raking on both units on where I think they will be at the end of the season Id say.

offense # 1
defense # 20-24 but thats a lot better than #31

Lack of pass rush, no pressure on Qb.
Allowing back up to Qb carve it up
Didn't do too bad against the run.

C-
not good enough come playoff time.

The ONLY improvement I saw was the tackling and run defense until about the 3rd quarter.

Pass rush blew
Thornhill rookie
Ward slow as molasses
Honey Badger more like an Ostrich or Prairie Dog today
A 1970's porn star QB who no one ever heard of outside a few bars in Jacksonville made our defense look pathetic.

F. They made some shit backup look like a stud. If Minshew actually ends up being a great QB then this grade can be changed but for now I'm not giving them any credit for this game. You shouldn't let some team's backup tear your ass up like that.

Yeah if this is our defense all year, we aren’t making it to Miami.

40 - 26 win, that’s a good enough debut

37-13 middle of the 4th. :shrug:

They're better than last year. Especially tackling.

Which is all we need.

Moderately better, knowing they should improve as they adjust to the new scheme they did alright but not as good as I "hoped".

Definitely more bright spots but some of the same frustrations if that makes sense.

With our line,against 2 inexperienced tackles, there is no excuse for captain grocery bagger to move up and down the field at will.


I'm just hoping it's growing pains and not the sign of things to come.

And against the run.

Totally agree.

F minus times 100.

Jacksonville started two tackles with zero NFL experience before today and had to go with a 6th round rookie QB for most of the game (who proceeded to complete his first 13 pass attempts against Spags shit defense).

Definitely this. I expect growing pains in the first half of the season. This was a good starting point and much more respectable than last season. If they don't improve week to week, then of course we're in trouble.

Never said it was a gamble, just thought it was dumb to sign him when we had capable backs already on the roster. People talk about Fournette as if he's some elite back, but he can't stay healthy and only averaged 3.9 ypc in 2017 and 3.3 ypc last year. I never said McCoy was the most overrated back in football. I don't know why you are getting so offended over a person's opinion. You must be one insecure mother****er. To make up lies too. Shame shame. This thread has nothing to do with McCoy, so why you bringing him up? Cuz you're a ****ing reerun or are you some girl that holds grudges and can't get over things?

now there's a name I haven't heard in a while