[Goldenfleece]

The big problems I see with the defense right now are as follows:

1) The run defense was atrocious today. Kennedy actually did seem to be tying up two blockers a lot of the time, although he only actually managed to fight through the blocks to make a play maybe once or twice. I saw Witherspoon fight his way through blocks without losing much speed to make some really good stops. But that's all the good I can say for our run defense.

I'm still not sure where to lay the blame on this. On LT's first big run, our entire D except Otogwe bit on the counter and headed right (the offense's left). Fullback Lorenzo Neal gets a big block on the left defensive end, Glover has already been corraled out of the way by the right guard when Tomlinson makes his cut back to the (offense's) right. That leaves the right tackle and tight end loose to take on two of our linebackers in pursuit (Spoon and Chillar I think). OJ is in position to make the play, but LT easily breaks his tackle. As some of the chatroom folks pointed out, Atogwe tackled too high. That leaves Chavous deep trying to come back in before LT gets to the endzone, and a corner trailing behind. But neither was close enough to really have a chance at him. Later I recall Chavous whiffing on another big run. They aren't the only ones to blame, but our safeties definitely earned a share of the fault in our loss today.

2) Fisher is a major liability in coverage. I'm not the first to say it, and I won't be the last. At about 7:10 in the second quarter Fisher appeared to be covering Eric Parker (with a five yard cushion) and would have given up a big first down if Parker hadn't dropped the pass. Later, he gave up 3 plays consecutively of 16 yards, 11 yards, and 11 yards towards the end of the second half. To be fair, though, his excellent coverage of Antonio Gates on a deep third down pass later in that drive forced a punt. So you could say he atoned a little bit for his mistakes, but it doesn't change the fact that he made them in the first place. Looking through the play-by-play, it appears that Fakhir Brown gave up about 7 yards total through the air on his side. It seems so clear to me when I watch plays going Brown's direction or even towards the Chargers' corners, that they all seemed to be playing much tighter coverage. Our receivers made some great catches despite the fact the Chargers' corners were getting their hands up there on the ball; I'm not sure Fisher ever touched the ball.

3) We've gotten only 3 of our 13 sacks this year in the second half of a game. I suspect our defensive ends are wearing down late in the game, and it's affecting our ability to get pressure. This is in part a depth problem. I think we've sorely missed having a good situational pass rusher to bring in as a change of pace. I'm thinking along the lines of 2004 when Bryce Fisher got 8.5 sacks for us as a backup. Does anyone reckon Green is even going to be good for half that number this year? Adeyanju may be a really good player for us in the future, but right now he's a raw rookie who may be in over his head. I hate to think what would happen if Little were to go down. On the subject of pass rush, Glover struck me as inconsistent more than anything. A couple times I saw him get a really good jump off the snap, but other times he resembled a rubber ball bouncing off a wall. I don't know whether he's taking plays off or just not concentrating, but we really need more out of him than what we're getting right now.