2008 Season Retrospective: Darryl Tapp

And a slight reach, at that.

with 3 years in already, damn right Ruskell should lock him up now. " unassuming difference maker" is an apt description, and along with Wilson, fast becoming my favorite Seahawk.

give a tape review of Tapp’s run defense skills? I had emailed Doug, before the season had started, after reading Pro Football Prospectus 2008 and noticing that Tapp had the best run defense numbers on the team. And the trustable reports from training camp, like from Farnsworth, indicated the coaches wanted a run defense upgrade and that was partially the reason they were leaning toward starting Jackson over Tapp.

My speculation, to Doug, was whether Leroy Hill being on that side of the defense most often could have contributed to teams were puptting a hat or hats on blocking Hill, which opened up more rushes towards Tapp, and he responded, or whether he really was that good at run defense and no one noticed.

I’ve gone back and watched the Miami game, from last year, and on Wild Cat snaps he was awful, he was frozen. He doesn’t have super quick reaction, and the Wild Cat exploited that, but aside from that, I didn’t see any actual mis-steps against the run. I’ve re-watched a couple games now, trying to gauge how good Tapp is against the run, but I still can’t tell.

I figure, he couldn’t have been 8th best in the league against the run among all DEs and the coaches still would think he’s a liability. They could be very wrong on him, easily, but I can’t imagine he’d have been that good and it would be completely lost on them. I figure, something else has to account for that gap. OK it’s late and I’m running out the door, but I’ll post the PFP2008 front seven run defense numbers tomorrow if anyone’s interested.

Think about it. Starting LoJack instead of Tapp early in the year was done for run D. Moving Deon Grant into the box and leaving Russell back was done to improve the run D. What did it get them? Pass D giving up big plays. So what was the concern? Was it more an over-confidence in the pass D, or was it a true concern about the ability of the 2007 front seven to stop the run?

Particularly, overconfidence in the secondary to perform when pass rush broke down.

Maybe there wasn’t actual, significant concern about stopping the run, but acknowledgement about Jackson, and covering Russell up / putting him in position to capitalize on his “strengths,” particularly because the former directly made the latter more of an issue.

And it brings up the question about what Russell’s bigger weakness was, angles/tackling, or his lost step and inability to get in position. I think before the season started it was the former, and the latter developed this season, as it wasn’t as much of an issue prior. Now? I dunno, angles/tackling by a hair.