FanPost

Debunking Kiffin's Aura

There seems to be a lot of skepticism about the Buccaneers this year.

There isn't a lot to be confident in when your team loses its head coach, general manager, defensive coordinator, offensive coordinator, quarterback, and five other essential players from the previous year. Sports Illustrated said that the Bucs had the worst off-season in the NFL. In 2009, there will be a new offensive scheme and, for the first time since 1996, a new defensive scheme.

But when defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin announced after Week 12 that he was going to be joining his son Lane Kiffin at the University of Tennessee, many fans were left to wonder what the Bucs defense would do without their leader.

(On a side note, Lane Kiffin is the only man on the planet who actually made Al Davis look sane.)

Personally, Kiffin's departure came about four years too late.

Let me ask you, what do Matt Moore, Cody Pickett, Shaun Hill and Quinn Gray all have in common?

...besides the fact that you couldn't pick them out of line-up if any of the mugged you.

They all beat Monte Kiffin .

That's right. They are NFL quarterbacks who got over on the Bucs' defense. And who are they again?

When you start talking about Kiffin , saying anything critical will, at the very least, raise an eyebrow. At the very worst, it gets you a punch in the gut.

That being said, I think Kiffin was overrated as a defensive coordinator. But how can anyone call Monte Kiffin, the architect of the Cover/Tampa 2 defense, overrated?

It's not like the Bucs caught Tom Brady early in his career. These guys are career back-ups. If Kiffin is such a genius, how come he can't get a game plan together to beat them?

I'll give you some examples from the 2007 season:

  • Against Jacksonville, Quinn Gray, filling in for an injured David Garrard, completed 7-of-16 passes for 100 yards. That's a 46.3% completion percentage. Gray in his first start, on the road, against a top Bucs defense handed off to Fred Taylor, Labrandon Toefield, and Maurice Jones-Drew for 128 yards of offense. Instead of loading up the box and taking away the run, Kiffin stays back, relying on his overmatched front four and failed to stop the run. The Bucs lost 24-23.
  • Against Houston, Sage Rosenfels, filling in for an injured Matt Schaub, completed 75% of his passes. He was a 10 for 17 on third down conversions as well. It was Rosenfels second start of the season and he was darn near perfect despite not having a running game to support him. Unlike the Jaguar game, the Texans WERE one dimensional - Darius Walker and Ron Dayne averaged 2.7 YPC on 23 touches. With no threat of a run, Rosenfels sat back and picked the Bucs apart.
  • The Bucs traveled to San Francisco to take on the 49ers but lost to the heir-apparent to Joe Montana, Shaun Hill. Hill tossed three touchdown passes and only completed 11-of-24 passes, but the Bucs D is not able to stop Frank Gore who ran for 89 yards. Hill is a seven year veteran who played in exactly one game in his career and did not attempt a pass - ever.
  • In the final game of the season, Matt Moore and the Carolina Panthers beat the Bucs 31-23. Moore, in his third start, spent most of the day unhurried as the Bucs back-ups were unable to touch or hurry him. Moore completed 15-of-24 passes for 174 yards. The Bucs didn't stop the run giving up 180 yards to the Panthers and Moore's rather pedestrian day was enough. Moore was so unheralded as a quarterback that ESPN.com did not have a picture on his player profile and listed his height and weight as "0'0"" and "0 lbs."

Four winnable games against four less-than-impressive quarterbacks who were all facing what the Bucs marketing department would tell you is a fearsome NFL defense. All four came away with victories. And while it is true that Carolina and San Francisco faced a lot of the Bucs' back-ups, Kiffin can't scheme to beat these guys? Why not?

Winning these four games makes the Bucs 13-3 and vying for a bye in the first round of the playoffs. Maybe the Bucs let Galloway, Hilliard, and Garcia rest and put up a better fight against the Giants. But they lost all three games. These were gimmies - tap ins, if you will.

And it's not just 2007. In Week 5 of the 2005 season, Vinny Testeverde prepared for the Bucs in one week after the Jets coaxed him out of retirement. Testeverde attempted 19 passes and no picks with no training camp, preseason, or warm-up game. Facing the Niners in 2005, a team with the 31st ranked offense, Cody Pickett and Ken Dorsey combined to beat the Bucs 15-10. The Bucs gave up 158 rushing yards and forced no turnovers. The Bucs also couldn't force Kyle Orton into an interception in a 13-10 loss. Orton, who lost his job to Rex Grossman (how bad are you when Rex Grossman is considered an "upgrade?") couldn't be coaxed into an errant throw by the Bucs D. There's three more wins to tack on to a 10-6 season. There's another bye in the playoffs. The Bucs might have had a good shot to get to a second Super Bowl and beat a Steelers team that needed two awful ref calls to beat a very underwhelming Seahawks team.

This is the difference between "good" and "great." Nine, ten wins... it sounds nice. Twelve, fourteen wins means you are something special.

But yet, Monte Kiffin can't come up with a scheme to figure out the Quinn Grays and Kyle Ortons? Why?

Well for one, Kiffin hated blitzing. The Cover 2 defense is predicated on the fact that the front four gets pressure on the quarterback on their own. Assuming an offense doesn't keep a tight end in to block, that's five guys blocking four. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if your four are going to get by their five, your four better be studs. One guy will get double-teamed so the other three are left to beat one-on-one blocking. The Bucs D hasn't had those studs since MacFarland, Sapp, Rice, and Spires played together.

Despite the depletion of a defensive line that could pressure the quarterback on its own, Kiffin basically pretended like he still had that talent.

But blitzing isn't going to help the Bucs if the quarterback doesn't have to throw the ball. When faced with these pedestrian quarterbacks, Kiffin very rarely dropped a safety into the box to help stuff the run.

Bottom line: Kiffin failed to make adjustments when adjustments were needed. He failed consistently.

Was he that concerned with the arm strength and prowess of Kyle Orton? Of Shaun Hill? Matt Moore? Are you kidding?

If Kiffin was the genius he was made out to be, he would think that Kiffin would abandon the Tampa 2 in favor of something that might, oh, I don't know, rattle Matt Moore. How hard would have that have been?

The Bucs have had a top 10 defense for over a decade. Because of that stability, Kiffin gets an awful lot of respect. But look at the forest for the trees. Some of the NFL's bottom-dwellers have gotten over on Kiffin . Seasons that could very well have ended as 14 and 13 win seasons ended up as 9 and 10 win season. Rather than sitting home in the first week of the playoffs, the Bucs sat home for all of the playoffs.

The MGM Grand has the Bucs as a 40-to-1 shot to win the Super Bowl. Maybe I'm drinking the Kool Aid, but I like hearing that new defensive coordinator Jim Bates plans to keep the 4-3 defense, but wants to more man-to-man, press coverage on the outside with more blitzing and defensive tackles who play more heads-up on the guard and center.

I say bring it. Bring the house. Get after people. have the attitude that "we're coming after you." Mike Tyson once said, "Every boxer has a plan until they get punched." Well, Bates sounds like he wants to punch first.

Maybe the future is a little brighter. Enough "good." Bring on the "great."

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