What's this? Two breakdowns in one day!?! "You must be crazy!?" I hear you cry, but no, I'm going for it, I'm doing it just for you guys! This week's Power Play of the Week was the 3rd INT by Rex Grossman. I think it was the best opportunity for us to get some big momentum and pull off another comeback win. Our defence had just stuffed the Eagles offence, and we had just managed to get this INT by DeAngelo Hall off Vince Young:
I don't think we gave Hall enough credit for this, that's a pretty touch catch to pull in there. By the way, Eagles fans, I'd be constantly paranoid about Michael Vick going down. Vince Young is your back up! He's on the field for two plays and he throw's an INT from his own goal line! He's nowhere near the receiver in the background there! Anyway, onto the actual play.
We're lined up in a fairly weird formation. We have 3 WR's (Jabar Gaffney, Santana Moss, Donte Stallworth) 1 TE (Fred Davis) and 1 RB (Ryan Torain).
We motion out Torain to a WR position on the far side of the field.
With Torain motioned out, we can see the full route patterns. Both Gaffney and Torain run comeback routes, and Moss is running a quick in route. Stallworth is running a post pattern, while Davis... well I'm not 100% sold on his route yet. It appears to be a deep comeback, or post. But he stutters before he finishes his route so it's hard to tell fully. Also note, the Eagles are in a nickel defence.
Looking at this slightly blurry picture from the "coaches cam", we can get an idea just how the Eagles are set up. I have two theories about what coverage they are playing. The first is they are simply playing cover 2, where the two deep safeties cover one side of the field each, like so:
However, going by the cushion that the two CB's are giving Gaffney (hardly going to burn you deep) and Torain (not even a WR) as you'll see here:
I expect it's more likely we're seeing cover 4, as illustrated below:
Either way, the important thing we can see here is that Davis has gotten ahead of the DB that was covering him. Grossman see's this as an opportunity to get a big play and pulls the trigger.
I think this is a great shot, it shows Just how much Rex can actually see when he throws the ball, and you can see that Davis is stopping and losing speed to come back to get the ball. Whereas, the Eagles safety Kurt Coleman uses his momentum and breaks on the ball, stealing it out of Davis's arms.
As I said earlier, I felt this really killed any sort momentum we we're building from the defence's performance. We really needed to get at least a Field Goal out of that possession to put doubt in the Eagles mind and give us confidence going into the 4th quarter. What do you guys think? Was there a more pivotal play for you? If so, let us know in the comments below.