Quote Originally Posted by RavensDomination View Post
Those who don't want to blame Pees need to remember their Ravens history. Not too long ago we had a guy named Greg Mattison who was a lot like Pees. Vanilla, conservative. Remember that year, how our sacks plummeted, and the 3 man rush was our achilles heel? Pagano takes over, relatively the same team, and works wonders. A lot of players that offseason talked about going back to playing "Ravens football," a not so subtle jab at Mattison's conservative defense. Now here we are, Pagano has left, Pees takes over, 3 man rush is back. We are the only team in the league that didn't go after Vick. We are the only team in the league that doesn't try to pressure a rookie QB in a pressure situation (Weeden in the 1st Browns game at home). It's pathetic. Like Mattison, Pees needs to go.
The criticism of Mattison then was idiotic, and it's not made better by age. Mattison had to contend with a weak secondary, and if we'd blitzed like the idiocracy of Baltimore fandom wanted, we would have given up 50+ points per game. We had Frank Freakin' Walker and Fabian Freakin' Washington behind the pass rush. We still ended up with top 10 defenses.

While we thought the secondary was going to be a strength coming into the season, it hasn't been. Losing Webb has significantly weakened it. I don't know why we don't press more with Williams and Smith, but that might be because the coaches are seeing something in practice that we, the fans, don't. I rather suspect it is.

Yesterday a two-man rush got to Palmer in the red zone. Last year, that hated three-man rush created a sack and a hurry in the red zone against the Bengals that sealed the game. Blitzing creates weaknesses in the secondary. You can't blitz every down.