Quote:
Originally Posted by milkman
I am not talking about play after play after play.
They picked their spots and took their shots, which loosened up the underneath stuff.
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The problem with that is the underneath stuff didn't need loosening. Houston ran pretty much their entire offense from the shotgun with a lot of 2 second passes. Clearly trying to negate the pass rush. They only threw deep twice in the first half. Well, technically three times, but one was a hail mary at the end of the half that wouldn't count towards Sutton adjusting to anything.
I don't think one deep pass attempt per quarter is going to cause any great adjustments to a defense. And in the meantime they gave up over 120 yards on short passes in that first half. They looked totally unprepared for a team to counter the pass rush with a short, quick passing attack. Which is troubling because that seems to be a fairly obvious strategy against a great pass rush.
I just don't see a cause and effect where they were being taken advantage of deep and then started getting burned by short passes because they had to back off. I think getting beat short came first. I saw it as teams trying to negate the pass rush by getting the ball out quick and the defense rarely having an answer. With the cherry on top that when they did go deep, it would work too because Lewis was garbage.