Quote
Leoram
...While the Rams defense has been good against the deep pass and much of that has been by design, they've also been lucky. There have been several times that open receivers have busted past the D but the QB either missed the pass or the opportunity. -- A QB missing opportunities is not always luck and in our case, it often isn't. In many of those times when the QB has missed a deep pass, pressure was bearing down on him causing him to throw early or without proper fundamentals. That's the pass rush and secondary working in sync. If you take our defense off the field, would the QB have completed that deep pass? Probably! That's our D creating its own "luck."
There have also been times the defense has simply looked willing to allow 5-7 yard gains as they await opportunities to get a big play. -- This is by design. It seems there is some bend not break aspects to it. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's very tough for offenses to have 15 play drives all the way down the field. Eventually, they make a mistake or a big play happens. However, remember that we're the #1 team in yards allowed so we're not always giving 5-7 yard gains.
What I'm saying is that this defense has taken a wise approach and while that's working, I fear it may not work well enough against offenses that execute well in the playoffs.-- I too suspect some efficient offenses, such as the Chiefs, could put up quite a few points against us. Not sure if there's any other team that could.
The approach is rarely aggressive. It's smart, not dominant. -- Good observation on the lack of aggression. But IMO it's a misnomer to suggest that aggression is synonymous with dominance. The level of aggression is a tactic; there are defenses throughout history that were very aggressive and those that weren't. Both approaches work. On the other hand, the level of dominance is not a tactic or means to an end; it's a measure of the end result.
Frankly, there are no dominant defenses in today's NFL. -- See above on equating dominance with aggression. In addition, besides the Chiefs, are there any great and dominant offenses? See this all relative. The defense's level of dominance only has to be higher than the level of dominance of the league's offenses.
