England currently find themselves in a serious rut ​​in November, but this can be identified in one area in particular: defense.

Following yesterday’s latest loss to Australia, Steve Borthwick’s men have now lost four of their last five matches, but this was arguably the worst defeat of the lot from a defensive perspective .

Yes, you could say they are between the defense coaches following the arrival of Joe El-Abd, and therefore the defensive systems, but the England defense is simply woeful at the moment, and that is reflected in fall statistics.

Missed tackles cost games

A blitz system will result in more missed tackles, but instinctively, England missing far, far, far too many tackles to succeed at Test level.

In yesterday’s defeat against Australia, from Borthwick the team had a shocking total of 36 missed tackles and had just an 84% success rate. Compare that to Australia’s total of 24 missed tackles and an 85% success rate – even though Australia had to make far fewer tackles overall – the result is pretty bleak.

This is also where these missed tackles come from which are the most worrying. The central partnership of Henry Slade and Ollie Lawrence is vital to the blitzing system, however, they missed a total of 7 tackles between them (Slade 5, Lawrence 2), which allowed Joseph Suaa’li’i, Tom Wright and Andrew Kellaway to wreak havoc at the Allianz.

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Elsewhere, skipper Jamie George missed four tackles, as did usual big hitters George Martin and Chandler Cunningham-South, and Maro Itoje and Marcus Smith also missed three each. They are not inexperienced players either, with the exception of Cunningham-South, and they should be more demanding of themselves in this particular area.

Missed tackles are starting to make their way into England’s game this autumn, and this is also borne out by the statistics from their defeat to the All Blacks. Things were a little better, but they still missed a total of 24 tackles and posted a slightly better success rate of 88%.

Once again, these are the same names that show the highest numbers. Ben Earl missed four tackles in that loss, and Martin and Lawrence also missed three each.

Missing 60 tackles over two games (an average of 30 per game) is simply not enough at Test level, and they need to address that sooner rather than later.

Too dependent on certain players?

We might have named and shamed some players, but England have lacked quality in the contact zone this autumn and are far too reliant on their big hitters in defence.

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The aforementioned duo of Martin and Cunningham-South have led the way in dominating tackles this fall, with Martin scoring five in the two games, but just having two players doing damage can’t be enough to be a team successful defense.

Dominating the contact zone, and therefore the gainline battle, is crucial to testing rugby, but you can’t achieve that dominance if only two of your players fight back.

This is also concerning because it essentially goes against the concept of blitz defense. This simply suggests that they are passive in the move, which actually goes against super aggressive line speed as they simply let their opponents slip behind and then put the defense on the back foot rather than d ‘be the attackers.

Where to go next?

The arrival of El-Abd actually brings a good marker to change their defensive principle to a more passive system. This type of absorption defense has worked well for English teams in the past and would help reduce the number of missed tackles.

Yes, it’s a huge change, and would virtually wipe out all the work Felix Jones did during his tenure, but you think it might take something drastic like this to solve their massive problems.

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