Quote Originally Posted by pbmax View Post
Only Matthews out of that group can cover Gronk. Peppers has no experience marking an All-Pro TE and Neal is not good in coverage. Peppers has excelled in dropping into zones and getting his 6' 7 " frame in the passing lane. Smart, solid football. But Gronk isn't going to be running a route to stand behind Julius. You will need to man up on him to double him.

The problem isn't your 3-3. Its that your 3-3 pulls Matthews out of the pass rush every snap unless you want a player inferior to Hawk/Jones in coverage. That is the conundrum and answers almost all of your questions about why Hawk and Jones still get snaps.
oy vey...

You know enough about football to understand that when you double someone like Gronk, all you're really doing is bracketing him. It's not like you're playing bump and run on the outside. If he's running a drag or crossing pattern the safety over the top will stay with him and the zone players underneath need to be aware. By bracketing him up the middle you take the seam away from him, and the underneath zone should make life difficult as well.

As I said, I don't expect we'll see any of that on Sunday though. What I do expect, is to see Gronk running free all over the place.

As for your contention that Peppers and Neal can't play the underneath bracket, that is nonsense. Beyond that, I would argue that Jones and Hawk can't do anything - you'd rather have either one of them on the field?? That's nuts!! Neal is 10 times the athlete either Jones and Hawk are.

When we had the 3-3 in there, and Hawk and Jones were on the bench... we actually looked like a functional NFL defense. Of course dunderdummy went right back to his idiocy, and the only thing that kept the score down against Philly and Minnesota was lousy QB play. If Bridgewater were a competent NFL QB, we would have lost the Viking game; and Sanchez played like crap, or Philly would have posted a 40+ pt total on us.

For the personnel we have, the 3-3 is most logical and effective use of those players. The fact that dunderdummy doesn't see it is mindnumbing.