Jene Bramel's analysis of Texans TD vs. Ravens (1 Viewer)

[Matt Waldman]

What the conventional TV angles don't show

Entertaining and informative breakdown from Bramel that refutes Dan Dierdorf's initial view that Ed Reed made a mistake on a Jacoby Jones TD reception.

 

[The Man With No Name]

Good stuff Jene

Dierdorf isn't the only tv announcer that doesn't know what he's talking about at times. Every week I hear someone say something that is plain wrong.

 

[firstseason1988]

I regularly ignore announcers, sometimes I have music on while watching games.

One thing I do know, I have beaten Bremel every week in the free roll.

 

[Ministry of Pain]

Good stuff guys. In the weekly game recaps I have stopped listening to the announcers except when they have something fun to add that you might not get otherwise. Example...last week in the NO/TB game Jim Mora Jr called the 34 yard scamper by Earnest Graham, a play titles "Double Down, Kickout, Scream for Blood"...that was good stuff. But I agree that a lot of these announcers don't get it right on a lot of plays. Dierdorf is especially bad.

 

[Stompin' Tom Connors]

Love this breakdown, solid as always, Jene.

Didn't Jene do a column like this all of last year, both analyzing some D alignments that were successful or broke down in coverage?

Apologies if it was another staffer, but it was by far the most interesting read each week. I miss it -- and Jene's analysis here reminded me that it should be brought back.

 

[glumpy]

I love this kind of analysis but there's always going to be some room for interpretation here.

The Ravens disguise coverage frequently so this pre-snap look could mean a few different things. A Cover-2 shell, rotation into a three deep zone, man coverage concepts to the right side, zone coverage to the left, lots of things are possible. But I’d argue that both safeties (12-14 yards off the line, just outside their respective hash marks) are showing deep zone responsibility rather than man responsibility this late in the presnap progression.

Given the choice, I'm always going to err on the side of the FBG's analysis, and Jene gives some really good ones. If he says the odds are for deep zone coverage from this alignment then I'll buy that. That being the case--then Pollard played against the odds and went with "man coverage concepts to the right side"--and lost the bet. Why? I'd suggest that Houston also recognizes this alignment and played for it, that Shaub is good enough a QB to go down the progressions, and after Pollard played man coverage on Daniels then Shaub's second read was Jones deep--otherwise he was going for Owens on the other side to move the chains. I'm going to suggest some credit to the offense here for a well designed play against some really tough Baltimore coverage, and 'the look' between Reed and Pollard as one of grudging admission. No matter the defensive alignment they're going to have to play the odds once plays get going. There's no particular Dierdorf criticism deserved against Reed in this case--or Pollard--because every defense will have its seams to exploit if the offense is lucky enough to set up for them and good enough to get it there. Great analysis; jmo.

 

[Matt Waldman]

Let's remember that these announcers have only a few seconds to piece together a cogent analysis of plays real time. Easy for anyone to make the types of mistakes Jene is pointing out when they have to deliver something real time as opposed to the way Jene, me, Matt Bowen, Alen Dumonjic or Chris Brown would analyze in the comfort of hindsight.