The Raheem hate in past seasons is for legitimate reasons, but I will say if you know anything about football he has altered his scheme this year and it has worked a lot better.
If you haven’t realized that don’t talk about Raheem Morris’ defense.
Nope. Hate was never justified - especially the personal stuff. Rams defense was top 5 DVOA in 2021 and DVOA was in top 10 (6th, I think) until Donald got hurt and then after game 11 the defense did perform badly and ended at 18th---it's 22nd or so this year. People just hated the way it looked. It looked soft, etc.
There were reasons for the 2022 defense and it related to the offense ... Jourdan explained it but it was hard to accept by the haters.
However, the scheme was not altered from last year, it's still a very recognizable Fangio defense. But there is more Cover-1 this year,
But from PFF it was about 11-ish% in 2020 under Staley, 9-ish% in 2021, 8.1% in 2022 and 13% in 2023.
A bigger change is from Cover-3 to more Cover-4 and Cover 6/8 but that's right in line with what Fangio is doing with Miami. Almsot exactly.
The cover-1 makes us all feel better and it has its positives but for the first time in three years Rams gave up explosive plays, quick strikes. Rams were among the very best at not allowing explosive plays before, now they are not a top 2-3 team in that. I posted those numbers somewhere along the line.
The difference between 8% to 13% is not huge, though, it's not nothing either. The major "alteration" if you will is from Cov-3 to more Cov 4/6-8 which is about 35% to 36% ... and both are so-called soft zones.
I will say what I reject is the notion that 2021 was "bad Moris" and 2021 playoffs was "good Morris" and 2022 was back to "bad Morris" and 2023 is a return to "good Morris". That's an absurdity.
The extreme haters (not saying you, the cat-4 I called them) would question Morris's smarts and thought he was a coward. They called him stupid and retarded and a "fraidy cat". Some tried to get specific with their accusations.
It came down to Staley's defense was great in 2020 and it has not been as good since. That's just a fact. And people got all mad and looked for a scapegoat. No matter how much information was out there they'd just say things that they thought was happening when it wasn't.
So, the criticism of Morris's defense not being as good as Staley's one year is legit. It wasn't. But the X factor is Staley was not any guarantee he'd have been better in 2021-2023 given how his defenses performed with Chargers.
But what was totally unfair and indefensible is the personal hate for Morris and the notion that he was stupid, retarded and lacked stones couple with the ignorance of what was being done and why.
That part is shameful. the jihad against him.
And the funny thing is there are people who say he didn't deserve the hold the trophy.
My take is the defense was never so bad he deserved to be fired and the defense is not all that great this year. It's more likable because the depth of the CBs is not as deep as it was. The defense is actually the same - performance-wise. It's better than the last 5-6 weeks of 2022 but nowhere near as good as the first 11-12 weeks of 2022.
