But the game ain’t played on paper!!! This makes me like Mora even more. I thought it was a questionable gameplan, but I didn’t assume it was the wrong approach. It was bold, which I liked. Hearing the reasoning behind it makes me feel more comfortable.

No use wondering if we’d kept 8 in coverage if it woulda helped. Teams aren’t dumb, and Warner and Whisenhunt certainly are quite astute, and they’d have figured it out. Maybe they did and we had to adjust and did. Nothing can be done about that, now.

More and more this year, though, I am left wondering why the NFL hasn’t written in the chapter in the book that says facing a premier pocket passing QB you collapse the front of the pocket.

Not that teams aren’t trying to do that, and again, like Mushasi said, not to overuse one weapon, by any means. But from my layman’s perspective I would think the approach to Manning, Warner and Favre would be to concentrate pressure up the middle. Enable pass rush by brute force. Have three guys attack the A gaps while you drop someone back or into the flat while moving Curry over to cover middle. Just leave them no room to step up, buy time by making them slide over, flush them out.

I mean on both sides of the ball heightened resources are dedicated to the edge rush. Premier tackles and premier ends. Even guys like you and me can quite easily gauge a QB’s general pocket presence his movement in the pocket as the edge wraps around, it’s automatic. It’s been a fundamental tactical platform — THE fundamental defensive tactical platform, with passing offense correlating most highly to winning — since Buddy Ryan and Lawrence Taylor.

There has to be more teams, less equipped, to mitigate increased, even persistent pressure, right up front. I don’t want to be myopic about it, but I just can’t fathom it wouldn’t make a dramatic difference and that teams with average talent like ours couldn’t execute it with moderate consistency.