Adrian Peterson's 75 Yard Scamper: Who's Fault Was It Really?

Because of team building and such, no one could ever expect Gary Kubiak to just blurt out what Texan's Defensive player was at fault in Monday night's mishap against the Vikings where Adrian Peterson took off like a cheetah for 75 yards and a score. Being the Viking's first Offensive play of the game, it was a punch in the mouth to the Texans coaches, players and fans who all knew full-well that they needed to stop the run.

So what went wrong on the Texans D? Somebody missed their assignment...that's what.

Naturally the cliche answer is to say, "Well...the WHOLE defense is at fault." However in my opinion, that answer is a bunch of crock.

The play went down like this:

The play was design as a run to go left. After the snap, the Offensive line and Adrian Peterson all showed signs of going left too. The Texans Defense pursued this just as they normally would. The D-Line and outside linebackers were all smacked in the face with good blocking. Adrian Peterson saw a lane back right, so he quickly cut back like a super-human and hit that hole. By this time he is past the defensive tackles who were engaged with blockers and had no way to escape. Demeco Ryans and Zac Diles had both pursued the original hole, but saw the cut-back. Their path to the cut-back hole was blocked by the pack of O-line and D-Line fighting in the trenches. One safety, Dominique Barber was off in la-la land following the pack to the left, while Brice McCain was getting his ass handed to him by a receiver blocking him...and AP broke out and was never caught.

Again...who's at fault?

Well, you could say the whole Defense, but I think the true culprit needs to be called out. While you could place partial blame on Diles for getting caught behind the pack, the onus should truly be placed on the Safeties.

In a cut-back situation that has already been established as a run, the Free or Strong Safety assignment is to blast up and plug the cut-back holes. Barber was no where to be found or in position to do this. McCain was playing a shifted Corner and positioned almost as a safety because no wide out was lined up on his side and he was playing a deep zone. And who knows where in the heck Eugene Wilson was. He never even appears in the camera view.

So the fault for letting this play get out of hand would definitely be placed on Barber and McCain. As soon as they saw it was a run, they should have been charging to plug gaps. As soon as AP saw that gap to cut-back to, he should have been smacked in the face by one of those two guys.

As a former Free Safety, I can remember getting my butt chewed for not plugging cut-back gaps and blowing plays. And that was just in High School. I can only imagine the butt-chewing that they received from the Kubiaker. Ouch.

Gary does get a lot of props for keeping it within the team and not placing blame in the media. That kind of respect goes along way with players. Thanks for leaving it to guys like me to analyze!!!

This is just another testament to the fact of how bad we need Dunta Robinson on the field. If Dunta was playing the corner instead of McCain...he sheds the block and makes the stop.

PEACE!!!