Hossage

As the buddha says: when a man must take a dump to save his life, not even ten thousand flaming monkeys may stop him. You have to bring in a martial arts expert to learn hand fighting? Really? I thought they still taught defenses how to hand fight over and over again with endless drills and a lot of hands on coaching.

When fitz came here he put the ball where it needed to be in awful conditions and didnt make stupid throws. He didnt have long to throw, and few of his passes were caught. Fitz and his team were not on the same page, but from the upper deck you could tell that this guy knew where to throw the ball on routes and saw the field well. I saw a smart, young QB in way over his head.

I think it is offensive coordinator. Other than that, linebacker. Keith Ellison and Kawika mitchell arent players you want to go to the super bowl with, although the giants won with mitchell. Mcgee had a poor season last year. I agree with spartacus, our pass blocking for the last couple years was excellent. But the patterns we were running didnt make sense, our formation gave away that it was a pass, and the receivers and qb werent on the same page.

Do you mean Ko simpsons? His is worth millions.

What bothers me is that statistically, when you have the ball past a certain point on the field you are more likely to score than the defense is. You also have an opportunity to have your offense run a few more plays and run down the defense. It just isnt as much fun for the fans and doesnt get the players pumped up when you are overly cautious like that. As far as the whole players failing thing, its hard to coach a jerk or an unfocused guy. But that is the coaches job. Last year's debacles were largely failures of effort, not lack of preparedness. Jauron does a good job of teaching his players the fundamentals and eliminating their mistakes. Especially in his first year it was apparent that the amount of fumbles, penalties, etc that players made was drastically reduced. We tackled better and the defensive backs showed vastly improved technique. The front office shares some blame. Losman was demoralizing and was always going to choke. Losers should be cut. I just watched our last superbowl loss again in slow motion and in HD. Some of our players were jerks. Our defensive backs consistently abandoned their techniques in the hopes of jumping a route and getting interceptions. Thomas was waving the ball around in front of the Dallas defenders in an effort to look cool and accentuate his fakes when he should have put his head down and run because he wasnt going to juke all four defenders in front of him. On that play, he was a jerk. Bruce Smith tried to sack the QB on obvious running downs, even when he was supposed to stay in place and play the run. On those plays, he was a jerk. Sometimes our tight ends and wide receivers didnt hit blitzing players in the hopes that they would quickly be thrown the ball. That is a jerk move. You dont see a lot of that on Jaurons teams. But last year he failed to motivate a team that quit on him.

Yeah, this seems harsh, but if you quit because of a bruise then you should have to turn in your testicles. Any male who doesnt give it to someone like that hasn't done his duty.

Jauron deserves this and more for not practicing in the snow, and for not having his guys out in this beautiful weather. Ive been out on the golf course, and we have definitely had some wind. A little rain isnt going to hurt these guys either.

This discussion has gotten absurd. I think some posters here are sensitive about having their favorite player criticized. Either that, or the short bus just let out on this topic. One ridiculous individual has suggested that I am unaware of how long five yards is. Another seems to believe online fansite BS is actually a legal trial, and that I document my opinion with evidence of each time Lynch has been in a footrace with DB. A third has reminded me that since I am not an NFL player, I should not be allowed to wonder why another athlete of a similar height and weight has much smaller strides, when as a former track coach I know that stride length is universally correlated with speed. These are small opinions: that Lynch is known more as an inside runner than as a speedster, he seems to have shorter strides than most people, and he doesnt burn defensive backs with his raw footspeed. They are also not controversial. I dont think many people think of him as fast and elusive as Leon Washington or Marshall Faulk or Curtis Martin. I hope Lynch turns into Earl Campbell now that he is heavier. I hope he will be the powerful goal line player we lacked last season, and still be fast enough to pick up yards off tackle.

I agree with Thebandit that we lost because we did not adjust to a bigger defense even though they had an extra lineman in there. Any high school coach would have. Jauron did a good job protecting Mckelvin. Whatever his weaknesses are, Jauron does a god job of giving quarterbacks different looks in coverage. In nickel, he often put McKelvin manned up with a player or in a short zone while the other four dbs played deeper.

Coaches have largely abandoned trying to coach these behemoths technique because they come into the league knowing so little, they are afforded a very limited time to teach technique by the players union, and because turnover in the league is so high. More players than ever come from smaller schools and the south that are not traditional powers producing polished players. It is also less fatiguing for the linemen. The patriots are the best example of a well coached offensive line that we have all likely seen. They give less ground to rushers than other teams do. They tend to disguise plays by changing their first steps (a dead giveaway of the play type to a veteran player). Big guys give ground because they would rather their qb have 3 seconds to throw consistently rather than risk getting unbalanced with an aggressive move when they know they are unlikely to get bull rushed by a speed guy. I had the chance to work with some top offensive coaches, although I have never played offensive line

I saw him around town the other month, and I got the distinct impression that he isnt bringing down any big guys in the open field.

Downunder, since you asked, I am a real athlete. I was a football player and a track star. I do weigh that much. And for what its worth, my stride is longer than 2.5 yards. I keep in shape, but I am starting to get grey hair. You wont find me trying out for another football team. You will notice that I compared his stride to the statistical majority of trained athletes near his size, a category into which I and 95% of tested normal athletes fall. If that is funny, you dont get out at all.

Schemes that dont use the wedge already exist and most special teams coordinators already know about them. Not everyone currently goes with a wedge, and they are surprisingly hard to coordinate.

A lot of players are 20 lbs over their playing weight because they bulk up during the offseason.

The no huddle offense tends to be pass happy, and while it can wear a team down, especially in the short term, it is not often associated with grinding down defenses. Running the ball is.

Downunder, I fail to see the humor in the fact that our running back has such tiny strides as to make him a statistical anomaly among trained athletes. If I am wrong (I'm not), then I am exaggerating the shortness of his strides on his worst day by 25% over what the video clearly shows. If that is really pricelessly funny, you should get out more.

In the last quarter of the regular season and the playoffs, and especially when it is cold, the team that statistically runs the ball and stops the run wins. Did you watch the last game against New England this year? Or the last time we played the Giants at home? They finished the game by running 13 times in a row on us. Bill Cowher and Joe Gibbs are 150-1 with a lead of seven points or less going into the fourth quarter when they run for more than 100 yards. As for your statement "If the field is slick the advantage is heavily weighted toward the air game as pass blocking is easier to execute than drive blocking and db's have to give more cushion to avoid slipping on a cut.", I should be polite and just say that I disagree with you. The opinion of football orthodoxy is certainly not yours. Tcali, have you every actually seen a football? More importantly, why am I wasting my time debating with these obviously ridiculous people?

I run a wing-T type of offense with a lot of utility backs and a running quarterback. Were talking sweeps with three lead blockers. Metzelaars, thanks for the nostalgia. My friends and I play a game where we try to work obscure late eighties or early nineties players into the conversation. I won the last round with Karl Mecklenburg.

There has to be a decent googleable site that explains this stuff. All football coaches love to use the term nomenclature to describe football talk.

Anyone here who thinks training hard does not lead to victory and involve running up hills should castrate himself.

I understand that Lynch was clocked at a 4.46 at the combine. However, he gets caught within a very short amount of yards by defensive backs in reality. If that 4.46 was representative of his current speed, then the fastest men in the world would only be able to make up three yards on him over 40 yards. We have seen that that is certainly not the case many times over. With a number like that, he should look as fast as a healthy Ladainian Tomlinson and be running away from the majority of defensive backs. He does not. That video clearly proves me wrong. I took it too far by saying 4 strides. Lets call it three. (I have witnessed four, and I watched it again and again at the time.) The point is he doesn't have much top end and his strides are exceptionally short for a man of his height. It can be empirically proven that he has an oddly short stride for his height at speed compared to data of other trained athletes, but that isnt worth my time. Lynch is not one of the faster backs for his size in the NFL. But this discussion has gotten ridiculous. I hope his weight will not encumber him too much. VOR: "I also never heard of anyone having 7-1/2 foot (2 strides to cover 5 yards) strides." We agree that you have never heard of it. That would be considered a very short stride for a good high school level sprinter. I have seen guys within a couple inches of his height who have 14 foot strides. The timing method used at the combine is a very poor one and subtracts several tenths from the accurate olympic method. The fastest 40 ever recorded was a 4.48 by Ben Johnson in 1988.

I have robbed people with a samurai sword before, but that was in college and it was for panini sandwiches when I was broke.

Gran Torino was beautiful. Maybe I am biased, however because he is every male in my family.

I dont see the harm in it. These laws are to protect girls, not boys.

Makes Bill Clinton worse of an embarrassment.