Agree, the pendulum always swings and you have to be on the leading edge. His play action heavy schemes will likely give the Chiefs fits, as they always have/do, all the way back to when he was under center.
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Yeah - the Fangio shell is doing what it was designed to do.

The other element of that, however, is that it compounds onto YOUR offense.

So sure, you go out there and utilize death by 1,000 papercuts and make them march slow and methodically down the field. Sooner or later they probably pull it off. but in the process now your offense has gone from getting 13 possessions to getting 11.

So when teams play that defense, it makes THEIR offense less prolific. And when both squads are playing that, you could see 9-10 possession ballgames. And then scoring suffers.

It's....{shudder}...Hermball. On a leaguewide scale.

I'm not sure it's actually conducive to winning for a great deal many teams. But it IS gonna keep scoring down. On both sides of the ledger.
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It's just put a premium on efficiency and in today's league that's just tougher.

There's become such a wide margin between the elites and the mid tier/bottom feeders that you pretty much have to hope to small sample size it and win.
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Other teams have seen the Chiefs and just given up.
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Exactly.

Teams hope that the shorter the sample size, the less a better team is able to run and hide with it and they can get the big break (penalty, turnover, whatever) that allows them to steal it.

Which is why I say that too many teams are running it. If you're an average or better team, unless you're playing Mahomes or Allen, you probably shouldn't be running that defense. You're as likely as not to win it 'straight'. By playing so much Cover 6, you're essentially putting your outcomes up to chance.

There are 10-12 teams that are well served running that defense, IMO. And some of those teams don't have the personnel in their defensive secondary to do it well. The rest of the teams are just playing follow the leader - as is custom in this league.

Which is why Campbell is trying to attack it with power running. Harbaugh appears to be content doing the same in LA. The 49ers sure seemed happy to do it last night. Physical teams will continue to attack it in the trenches.
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ALEX SMITH WAS AHEAD OF HIS TIME
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For the record, I HATE it. I don't think the Chiefs should be running that cloud coverage much at all. And by and large they don't.

If they score, they score. Fine, whatever.

This defense should be aggressive. It should be physical and attack. If they gash you, let them gash you quickly and get the ball back to your offense. The last thing I want to see is this team getting 55 offensive plays/gm.

Stay aggressive, win quickly or die trying. Create a quick punt, turnover or fast touchdown drive in the process. And in the process you'll be better equipped in the red zone than teams that are so passive (those teams get brutalized inside the 20, IMO). And now you're more likely to turn a 7 into a 3, which is a win for this team.

Teams with good offenses shouldn't be running the Fangio crap.
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FYP

and as an Iowa fan it is boring and sucks
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I wonder if scoring\offense continues to go down if the NFL will adjust the rules to stop this.
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Well then you'd start splitting hairs with some people because losing a game in week 1 or 2 could be the difference between the 1 seed bye and the 2/3 seed or a wild card spot and missing the playoffs etc etc.

It's just calculated risk. I have to assume Andy has a "feel" for how much football his guys need to be decently ready for week 1.

I wonder if Football organizations hire actuaries like Insurance companies or banks do to calculate the risk of situations like this. I mean, these are billion dollar organizations, I don't think they'd make decisions like this purely off of "feel".
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What do you adjust? You gonna tell them they can't play zone anymore?

I just don't know how you address that. Teams have to answer it.

I suspect they will sooner or later. You'll see more teams looking to find physical WRs that will do what Rice does. Rather than getting beat by the run 5 yards at a clip, you'll get beat by the pass 12 yards at a clip.

And at that point, you're just as screwed as you are if you're playing single-high.

You'll see more slants, drags and underneath routes designed to get guys into space UNDER the safeties and into spots in the zone.

Again, I pointed this out 3-4 years ago when the Chiefs were getting abused by Tampa 2 stuff. This isn't new. Teams just stopped building around it after they murdered it in the early 2000s and opposing DCs had to stop running it.

They'll kill it off soon enough. It's not a terribly good defense, IMO. And it will get dissected again soon enough.
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Eliminate zone like the NBA did :-)
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I figure we will continue to see those physical teams late in the playoffs, per usual.

Then you'll have the teams with elite QB's there.

But in terms of attacking it, I'd imagine you just have to bludgeon it until they come out of it.

EDIT: I read this wrong at first. Yes, if you are an elite or good team, I dont' know that I'd wanna play this style unless there's just a fire breather on the other side.
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Yeah I don't know, like they could do what Pasta posted and eliminate zone defense. That would be extreme though. One thing I thought of would be to require all d players to be within 10-15 yds of LOS.
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Good lord, can you imagine how brutal that would be?

The impact would actually be counterproductive. Every CB, S and LBer would have to be able to play man. You'd have 4 down lineman and 7 dudes that weight 230 lbs or less.

It would turn into rugby at that point. You'd just use 22 personnel and grind that defense into powder.

Naw - can't get rid of zone. Football would become an unwatchable product.
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