Long Is The Road and Hard Is The Way That Out Of Oakland Leads to Defense...

In Psalm 22 the question is posed: My God why have you forsaken me? One must wonder if this same question fills the thoughts of Al Davis when he sees his Raiders play defense.

I’m not sure that it is the wrath of God which has rendered the Silver and Black D powerless. I think the Raiders are a better team than their 2008 record would indicate.

I’m not confused or all-methed up, so I am not going to say they are a good team. However, I think with a better defensive philosophy, the Raiders could rise from pitiful to mediocre (which should be enough to be competitive in the under achieving AFC west).

I'm not naïve enough to think that a change in defensive philosophy will fix all that ails the Raiders, or that it is enough to make them a winning team, but I have a theory that a slight (OK, massive) overhaul of their current 1972 playbook (No kidding this is the same defensive set I played against in high school) can make a quick turn around on the defensive side of the ball and minimize the amount of money the Raiders have to spend in FA and up the margin of error for their draft (it is much easier to feel good about the way you draft when you are shopping for contributors rather than needing to hit super-stars).

The talent pool in Oakland is definitely thin, especially along the defensive line. It has been a long standing fault of the Raiders coaching staffs of late to seriously underestimate the importance of tackle play on the defensive line. Keeping a scant three DTs on the roster is a HUGE mistake no matter what scheme you're playing. Having no rotation equals tired legs and that means holes in the line, lazy play and a lack of gap discipline. These all add up to 159 rushing yards allowed per game in 2008.

I think with the current personnel package, a couple of deft drafts and a few fortuitous free agents, the Silver & Black defense could be brought back to respectability. (NOTE: I did not say they would be awesome, imposing or inspiring. Just good enough to be competitive and get themselves off the field every so often.)

Scheme only counts for so much when you start talking about a defense. Often the issue is getting the players to play a scheme the right way. Go a little Rod Serling with me and 'consider if you will' the difference between the defense in New England and the D in Cleveland. Basically the same package with a few tweaks here and there. The Pats have the personnel to make it work; the Browns are still in the "crafting mode" of getting the right parts to fit the system.

We begin:
 
I spent a good number of years wearing a military uniform, and there is one lesson which carried over for that time in my life to become one of the cornerstones of any good defensive system: keep it simple.

The more you start mucking things up with complex maneuvers and over the top packages and formation shifts the more you are asking for something to go terribly wrong.

In this case, since we are not working with the highest end talent in the league to start with, we really need a system that minimizes the amount of "trickeration" we are planning to employ. That is not to say it will be base-vanilla, it'll just be less exotic scheme than say the Pats, Eagles or Steelers run...

Now I am about to say something that is going to get some hairs on the necks of the collective audience to stand on end (and no, I don't need someone to teach me football): Cover-2. Specifically 4-3 base alignment zone Cover-2.

There is method to this madness.

In the zone-2 system, you don't need to have really high-end talent all over the field and you can use a few tricks here and there to cover some short-falls and some shifts on coverage to take pressure off of CBs in 0-coverage.

Trust me, this can work:

Since I am proposing an overhaul of the Raiders entire D-philosophy and the instillation of a whole new system; we have to start with the core of any defense: the tackle. Sure there are a couple of big name DTs coming into FA this year: put them out of your mind.

The reality is that no player in their right mind would want to play for the Raiders right now. So we are going to have to build a scheme around the players available, the players in the draft and some of the more low-key free-agents who are going to be available and could be lured to Oakland with the promise of a chance to get off the bench a little more often.

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