RunTheBall

The amount of whining in this board has reached fever pitch levels. Oh no the snow! Oh no the wind! Oh no Mercury has aligned with Venus! This team is a helluva lot more resilient than the fans. You can be sure they don’t care what the conditions are they are ready to play, period. You adjust as needed and the team that adjusts better wins. As Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. This team has been punched plenty and came through again and again.

Now Jackson being elevated is an interesting play. I have no ideas what to make of that. Not surprised about Williams but I think he will be inactive.

I think the key is to set the edges with our DE’s and keep Lamar or the RBs from getting outside which is why I think Murphy will be active as he’s better than most of our DE’s at settling the edge. I don’t think we will have a spy, we will be in our normal zone with all eyes looking at the QB in case he takes off up the middle. We need to clog the middle of the field to handle the between the tackle runs, make Lamar throw outside instead of his preferred over the middle TE shots, and we need well timed run blitzes. Our pressure will come from the interior, hopefully Oliver has a monster game, and likely blitzes on 2nd and 3rd and long. On offense I think we are going to give Singletary a chance to get into a rhythm running the ball. If/when that isn’t as effective as we like I think we’ll see a lot of WR screens and chip/releases to the flat with Singletary and Yeldon while Josh looks Intermediate/deep first. The real short passing game will have to take over for the running game if we can’t establish Singletary early.

There is ZERO chance Roberts isn’t suited up and little chance he isn’t given the green light to do what he’s been doing. It’s clear some of you guys get your football knowledge from playing Madden. In the real world you don’t sit your All Pro kick/punt returner for a practice squad guy who has a good speed rating.

I think it will be Yeldon for his pass catching and blitz pick-up experience. I don’t think Williams has enough experience for them to trust him to pick up a stunting blitzer while Josh waits for routes to develop I can easily see them using Yeldon to chip then slip into the flat or for the screen game which will be instrumental in slowing down the Ravens blitz/rush

90% of what is discussed in this now 38 page thread has absolutely no bearing on the outcome of this game. It’s the playoffs, each game is a different season and I truly believe you can throw out all the stats from the regular season in terms of making predictions. It comes down to which team is ready to play (they both will be), which coaches developed a better game plan against their opponents perceived strengths/weaknesses, and most importantly - which coaching staff makes the correct adjustments during the game, especially early. Whether its adjusting the game plan or adjusting underperforming players, that’s where this game will be won or lost.

This is what pisses me off the most. IDK what the issue is, but it seems often when we get a little breathing room our D gives up quick points. It’s one thing to give up points, it’s another thing altogether when you give up 2 TD drives in under 3 minutes each. That’s unacceptable anytime but especially in the playoffs. Is it a coaching change in game plan? The players throttling down? IDK what it is but that bothers me more than our bend-but-dont break style.

That certainly played a role but if I recall correctly, Roberts had a few brain farts either letting the ball hit the ground instead of fair catching or running it out of the EZ when he should have kneeled. I wasn’t impressed with our punt/kick return blocking when we had the opportunity to return.

Our special teams had an uncharacteristically bad game against Indy resulting in horrendous field position and limiting our offense in the first half. I don’t expect that will be the case Saturday night. As other’s have said, contain Lamar and crowd the middle of the field. Make him throw outside the numbers, he feasts over the middle with TE’s and seam routes. I expect a lot of our usual zone coverage so everyone’s eyes are on Lamar. He’s going to get some yards, we just have to limit them. Baltimore isn’t a dink and dunk team so if we can force them into that style of game we should be fine. On offense we should be seeing a lot of man coverage which our receivers should feast on. Instead of running Singletary into their D line I’d try some tosses or even better, a lot of quick WR screens to the outside. Josh will have a few designed runs up the middle against their man defense as well. I hope we get rid of the designed runs to the outside.

I couldn’t care less who we play. It’s the playoffs all teams are tough. That being said, I think Vrabel is a douche and his team is very unlikeable. I enjoyed watching his face on the sidelines as they lost. He also has Pats* stench all over him so that doesn’t help.

Why do some people think players are robots and always perform at peak performance?? All players have bad games at times and when you play against good teams/coaches that’s going to happen more than when you dominate the competition. That doesn’t mean you bench a guy as soon as he makes a couple mistakes. We’d have no one at any position on the field if that were the case.

Did anyone with more knowledge than I get a good look at those last 4 plays? I understand Rivers was trying to hit some sideline passes, but did we do anything different on D that took that away? I couldn’t tell from the tv angle McD needs a lot of credit for a perfect example of situational football when he called a TO as the clock was running and right before Rivers completed a pass nearly in FG territory. Also, the TO he took right before the obvious fumble is the only reason they took a look at that call (and still got it wrong). NY was just tying to save face giving us our TO back but thank God they did. I thought the 2 plays before the Hail Mary were uncharacteristically off by the Colts and was just curious if anyone saw that we caused that with our D or did Rivers just panic a little when no one was immediately open. I get that he didn’t have much time left.

It’s a game of inches and a few key plays went our way. When you are dominated in the trenches good things happen for the other team. McD helped at the end with a key timeout before they completed a pass nearly into FG territory. The Colt O looked uncharacteristically discombobulated on the next 2 throws before the Hail Mary.

Just a little perspective from a near 50 year old who has been through the lows, small high, very low, real high, then 17 years of absolute hell - Enjoy the playoff W. They are very hard to come by. Each game is a different season. What we did or didn’t do today will have little impact on next week. We won, that’s all that matters. Enjoy it for what it is and don’t fret about style points or what we could have done better or different. Celebrate this Win, you deserve it.

What are you talking about? McD had his best game of his career with situational football. His timeouts were perfect, especially after the refs ran some clock and Rivers threw that pass which almost put them in field goal range. He shouldn’t have had to call that timeout to review the fumble but that was perfect and the dbag refs are saying they reviewed it on their own now to save face. IDK what you want from a coach but McD really grew in my opinion.

If Duke is active, the only time he will see the field is for a designed Allen power run. Duke can run block.

That is a loose, focused team in my opinion. I really have zero concern they’ve been reading all the press clippings. I think the sting of last years playoff loss is probably front and center and even if it wasn’t, McD will have them laser sighted on the Colts and only the Colts.

Interesting. It was the only good explanation for why they started the game like that. I do like that McD seems to be aware of various records and stats that may be effected. I'm sure he doesn't let it dictate the overall game plan but I'm sure the players appreciate it.

I’d like the see the Colts over Miami or Titans. Rivers arm is half dead, most of his throws are less than 10 yards downfield it seems. I’d bet Fitz would start against us if Miami were to make it in and their D won’t be as horrendous the second time around. Henry is a beast even though the Titans D sucks.

He did that so Josh wouldn’t get the L as a starting QB had we lost because he knew he was going to be pulling starters at some point.

Oh look, another fight song thread. Can we start 3 or 4 nickname threads while we wait to see what McD does Sunday? Those are the best.

You make a good point, there isn’t anything inherently bad about what he said. It’s just one more in a long list of examples of his “woah is me” attitude. The guy always comes across as feeling sorry for himself when he’s been in the most privileged position in sports.

McBeane absolutely love Edmunds. He’s not going anywhere for a decade. Many members here are still having trouble adjusting to the role a MLB plays in McD’s defense. His primary purpose is to get them lined up correctly and protect the middle zones in pass defense. Edmunds is superior in this respect. He absolutely needs to improve his run stopping and gap filling but McD is willing to give up those yards on the ground to protect the zones. If Edmunds didn’t have stone hands and just caught the balls that hit him in the chest we wouldn’t even be discussing his run defense deficiency. I hope he got a JUGS machine for Christmas.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/12/31/in-2020-cam-newton-learned-hes-a-mentally-tough-sob/#comments I don’t tend to start threads but I was browsing PFT and this little tidbit just blew my mind. I thought I’d share since there has been some discussion that Cam might be an option for backup QB for us next season. In my opinion, I don’t want this clown anywhere near our franchise. Besides the fact that I think he is an absolutely awful QB now, his absolute lack of self awareness is stunning. This whole article is a self congratulatory homage to how mentally tough he thinks he is because he’s had to persevere through one of the worst seasons I’ve seen a starting QB have in memory. There is zero acknowledgment that he’s even part of the problem. He spends more time discussing the difference in clothes he wears compared to Belichick. He has no chance of fixing his mechanical issues and becoming even a serviceable backup QB because he really doesn’t think he’s any part of the problem. I think Cam was allowed to get away with horrible mechanics for his career because he was such a physical specimen he could overcome it with arm strength and escapability. Now that he’s older and injuries have taken their toll, his flaws are horribly exposed and its been obvious all year he can barely throw a football anymore. No thanks. Combine that with a personality that is the exact opposite of “the process” and I can’t believe McBeane would let this guy west of Syracuse let alone in the building despite their familiarity with him.

I think he meant the GM Tannenbaum unless you are asking about Tannehill as an aside