ctk232

MUCH appreciate those wideviews - camera cut digs off just before the mailbox, but looks like Allen was passed that part of his read, albeit correctly or not. Sure, a completion to Knox seems possible there and he is at the sticks, but this wasn't the first and only time Josh preferred the deep route to the shallow route. Very easily could have been a first there, and at least a higher percentage of completion than the actual decision. Again, hard to tell exactly but we can at least say the read progression moves left to right, and looks to be reading the stack defender on the left side, and deep safety. He moves on pretty quickly, but man he does miss those two flat-footed defenders with Diggs splitting them. Deep safety (maybe Baker?) has already reacted to Allen's windup in the first still, but even if he stays put there a well placed sideline ball is something Diggs should come away with every time. Just b/c it is Baker and can close with the best - he likely covers that 10-15 yds since he's shading the left hash, but not in time for a well placed throw. All this to say, hope they're seeing this in film this week - both the potential to Diggs, and the garbage decoy concept using an RB much less Singletary specifically.

Not to nitpick Kubiak but I agree that was the only part of that play critique that I couldn't see - crap film vantage, but Knox's defender is still tight on him right before Allen works his progressions that way. The better critique would likely be Allen rushed his throw due to perceived pressure, coverage, etc., but it's hard to tell when exactly Knox's defender peeled off to cover the cross route from Brown. Sure, maybe if he rolls out instead this all goes the same way and Knox is open, but the only real critique you can make from this play is why tf is Daboll dialing up a RB go route as a decoy against one of the best man DBs in the league? Beasley, Diggs, and Knox all ran lackluster routes (5yd out; 10yd post and gets chipped over middle; 5yd curl respectively) meant to keep coverage down and to the left while Brown crossed and Singletary decoyed Peterson. He practically gave Allen one option on that play and it wasn't even remotely well protected. Not to beat down on Daboll, who I'd say actually has shown improvement on his own as well, but this play was one of those head scratcher moments where he still thinks he's in NE, where RBs run the full route tree successfully.

Sounds obvious, but our best bet is to keep it at 3rd and long as much as possible to help Taron in coverage. If he's going to be expected to come up on Murray runs/scrambles and cover Fitz we'll be diced on key conversion downs. It'll be interesting to see how they line up in that regard - and how much free man they give our LBs.

Love Dane - the prospect of him needing to cover any one or more of Hopkins/Kirk on the outside gives me concern though. Almost as much as Taron covering Fitz out of the slot - Larry will likely take him to school on every third down.

Athletic put this out today: https://theathletic.com/2196414/2020/11/13/bills-cardinals-thoughts/ Specifically:

I get this, but even with the benefit of hindsight I'm not sure I'd give up Diggs to have had Metcalf. No guarantee it goes down this way, but if we take Metcalf it's likely we don't make a move for Diggs. Agreed that the 2020 1st rounder could've tipped the scales depending on who it would have been used on, but right now Diggs is the better receiver, second in the league only to Hopkins this season. I know we essentially spent our 1st rounder on him this year, and frankly I'm more okay with that than having Metcalf. For this offense, he's the more dynamic benefit - all-around better route runner, not nearly as physical but still high points all contested catches, and has great awareness and knowledge of the position. I'm curious how Davis will develop as well in conjunction with having Diggs. It's fine to say who was wrong in pre-evaluation of Metcalf, but extending that to mean we are worse off as a result isn't really defensible.

I'm glad him doing literally one thing decently is thread worthy for our starting OGs

Who? Andre Smith? Matakevich?

Admittedly, I'm overall onboard the McD train - but this preference is just maddening...for someone who stresses match-ups it's impossible to apply any logic to this. Argument was made by BuffJunction that it's likely due to Feliciano being better at line calls and familiarity with Allen, but even that is a hard-pressed argument to make with Mongo's recent absence and two weeks practice since the end of last season.

I don't entirely disagree Mongo is possibly better at line calls, but Allen has had more snaps with Bates than Feliciano since the end of last season. Find it hard to believe Mongo took any snaps these past two weeks in practice getting back to form. Winters has no business starting in the NFL, which I understand is a consequence of our injuries to then Feliciano, now Ford and today Morse. Boettger is a liability in both aspects of the game, frequently holds and can't move DTs off their spot in run blocking. If you have to weigh the decision between these two options, you'd be hard pressed to argue Winters & Boettger are the better OG answers over Feliciano & Winters. I'd personally argue Bates is the better lineman than both Winters and Boettger, and does very much understand line calls demonstrated by his fundamentally consistent play at both OT and C.

For whatever reason they want Boettger in the lineup... It's astounding - we have concerns about a run game, but insist on starting Winters and Boettger and expecting that to change. Run offenses are entirely generated by the OG/C's - having Bates at C/OT allows Feliciano to occupy one of the two guard spots and we can actually have both pass pro and run gaps...not to mention Bates had three key blocks to help Moss cover half the field on that drive. I...just don't get it

It's amazing how many people don't even realize this - much less understand the nuance of 1T v 3T. He's not going to get the pass rush stats if he isn't even rushing the passer. It's not just Oliver, they're doing it with Jefferson, too. Someone we brought in as a hybrid DE/3TDT, not even remotely close to 1T responsibility. Evaluated within this context, the performances of Oliver are actually stronger. From a limited outside perspective it seems we're hurting so badly at 1T that we've converted two of the stronger 3Ts in the league (Oliver/Jefferson) to fill these roles. Hell, we all saw how Zimmer faired in his 1T snaps as well. Joe B coincidentally argues Zimmer actually did very well in his 1T/3T roles when paired with Butler, but I haven't watched his snaps as closely to say whether I'd agree. I'd be interested to see how the Zimmer/Butler/Jefferson/Oliver assignments play out on Sunday. At risk of looking past any opponent, it might still be the best way to trial run different interior roles among those guys. Via today's Athletic article

"best" part is how he reappears at the very end like he just went under a wave - the entire LOS moved past him by 6 yards and just pops up at the end like "where everybody go?"

Don't know which hot take thread it belongs in, but from the Mahomes post-game, "once we saw how far off their LBs, DBs, and safeties were playing, we knew we could just lean on the run game." Plain and simple, even in the rain, our defensive strategy this game was to take away Hill, Kelce, and the deep threat. Yea we'll give up yards on the ground but it'll slow the game down and it'll slow Mahomes down. Well, it did. It kept us in the game longer than it looked like. The problem is still of course the DL who can't anchor that kind of strategy. This Zimmer take is hilarious, he was obliterated on almost all running plays and certainly all where he was double-teamed. Not a knock against him alone, we have no DT presently capable of standing ground against a double team. Oliver is not that 1T, and frankly think he's still learning to trust his knee a bit more. This from today's Athletic article says a lot about this strategy last night actually: It doesn't get better, most of that was a Jefferson/Oliver combo getting taken advantage of. The rest were all rotated guys who suffered equally. I think this is an important point considering what we're all griping about from last night. This was a direct consequence of our strategy - allowing short/ground yards to eliminate big passes and chunk plays. It worked, well in fact, but the problem was our DL was porous on 1st and 2nd downs not giving us anything manageable to stop on 3rd. This is the cornerstone of McD's defensive philosophy, fwiw. Again, there's more than a few issues, including personnel - but my god we need to stop sharpening the pitchforks. All collective expectations for this team this season aside, winning teams all have bad stretches and blow outs, how they respond the rest of the season defines the team they are and will be. Again, my hope has been checked for the remainder of the season unless some fundamental strategies are worked out, and guys get healthy. But I find it hard to reason we'll be this team the rest of the season.

Doesn't Wade run a base 3-4? That'll mesh well with this personnel and pretty much everything else about this team...for starters, where are you going to find the LBs?

Didn't check the Frasier thread, so apologies if this has been mentioned there - but since there's still a cohort with their Edmunds pitchforks still sharpened, Joe B put a segment of the Athletic's All22 in about Edmunds today: For what it's worth in relation to the above, he and the DL (specifically anyone who isn't Hughes) got the most flack - honestly need to watch myself to see, but from Tuesday most of what's said here seems to line up: Not claiming Joe B to be the definitive voice on this of course, but seems relevant to these ongoing discussions. It's clear the defense has some issues this year, I think far more variables affected them Tuesday than prior, but everyone notices it including the coaches. The difference is we don't have near the collective knowledge or inside info they do, and it seems the majority of us here think we know better. Lorax isn't some Edmunds sympathizer - he understands that our defense does not actually have an MLB and Edmunds and Milano very much have similar roles. He isn't going to outright criticize him either, but what he is saying isn't baseless - a lot of the criticisms that focus on this aspect are however. I do agree with the criticisms in coverage playcalls, and hiding coverages - but I have to wonder how much of the playcall coverages are due to the personnel we have left to play. Without Milano and White Tuesday (again have to check) we ran a lot of the same base coverage to relieve our replacements, and our DL yet again did nothing to help us outside of Jerry. I'm more interested to see how they play the Chiefs this week if healthy, and more so the Pats in three weeks.

Fwiw, it's not only on Taron here, or Edmunds for that matter. I posted this in the Edmunds hot take thread after Sunday, but might be worth it here for context on Taron: Simply put, the Rams ran a great offense in the second half, any defense would have a hard time handling it: McVay was keeping track of the DL rotations we were using and made the most of the match-ups he identified. We saw year one Goff getting to the line early and have to think he had the extra mic time and ability to pre-snap read. We were focused on shutting down Higbee, which we overall could say we did. This should really be #1 here, considering it was our top priority after Gesicki had another field day with us, and Higbee didn't see a catch until late in the 3rd. We erased the biggest part of their PA pass game. Yes, Woods took us to town on sweeps, but overall we were looking to make this a trench game and prevent air yards. The Rams are a very good football team, it's as simple as that. Joe B posted some points in his All-22 along these lines: Why we have Jefferson at 1T when he's a hybrid 3/5T is likely telling about how healthy Harry actually is. As for his few snaps last year, Harry faired better at 1T than Star before his injury as the anchor and eating gap double teams. This year it looks like he still doesn't trust it quite yet and needs to get overall strength back. But ANY defense that has issues with the run need not look further than their front four - run stop starts up front, and if the middle can't set the LOS and anchor gaps it doesn't matter if we have the best "pantene pro" LB and/or Nickel DB in the league.

Came here for this, "defense" and "defence" are both correct. Pretty sure the US is the only english speaking country that uses the former, everywhere else uses the latter. Now that that's said, this thread is meaningless. Defense has an all-around bad week and we're calling in the auxiliaries. Most of the issues present here are ongoing in the Edmunds thread, and are just as hot if not hotter refuse there as they are here. Let's see how this defense comes out against a tough run game with Jacobs in Vegas.

That second half would've been infinitely worse if Dodson had to step in, frankly. McVay would've picked him apart in coverage, forget the run. To OP's points, fwiw: Regardless of whether Edmunds was 100% today, this wasn't his best showing from a run read perspective. It's always been his biggest chip. However, you can only take so much of these hot takes every time he has a showing like this - this dead horse can only be beaten so many times. What these people should actually have an issue with are two things: one, we have a difficult time at 1T DL in getting a set LOS and gap setter. It starts up front, and frankly Harry may not be 100% either. I'm not sure what happened to Butler today but Oliver can only do so much. Two, this is the defensive scheme and system we have - and it's hard for people to understand apparently, but McD's base scheme does not have a "traditional" MLB. What people are craving for is the Brandon Spikes run stuffer which to McD is a one-dimensional aspect of a multi-dimensional position. That to say, McD's MLB is a hybrid position requiring as much, if not more, coverage ability in the zone match scheme than in the run stuffing scheme. I agree, Edmunds can still do more to improve this aspect of his game, but he is not the LB that played today and McD sees all of it. I'll end this bit by simply saying the kid (literal, kid in NFL terms) is continuing to show growth in a highly complicated defensive scheme. He is and will be a great piece of our defense, and it was night and day between last week and today regardless of what the outcome was in the second half. Lastly, I'll say this one thing about today specifically. The Rams ran a great offense in the second half, that I'd like to see any defense handle. McVay was keeping track of the DL rotations we were using and made the most of the match-ups he identified. We saw year one Goff getting to the line early and have to think he had the extra mic time and ability to pre-snap read. Either way we were focused on shutting down Higbee, which we overall could say we did. That was huge. Woods took us to town on sweeps, but overall we were looking to make this a trench game and prevent air yards. The Rams are a very good football team, it's as simple as that. What will say the most about today is how this defense comes out next week away against a seemingly resurgent Raiders team with a, you guessed it, a stout run game with Jacobs. These hot takes have to stop though...today's blood pressure game is enough.

Nailed it - and condolences, they didn't do OR any favors with the SF/NY game. Out of curiosity, is it mostly SF fans there?

Grew up in Wayne/Valley Forge area - it was rough for Bills games lol That said, now living in the PNW and I'm LOVING this week

^This Daboll's gameplan is that what is done one week sets it up for the next - we ran a lot of RPO/script runs to Josh because the Ravens tore the Jets a new one with it. Dolphins were gouged by 11-personnel so Daboll relied on that, but the week 1 runs were to get tape out on Josh running this year so it's just another thing teams still need to prepare for. Tell you what though, if he keeps passing like this defenses are going to hate prepping for his arm and legs every down.

Loved this when I saw, mostly because of when I saw it - but a huge score that would help seal the win. Another worth noting was the 2nd and 24 to Beasley - to me that one play demonstrates the entirety of Allen's growth over the past three seasons, from the pre-snap read, to the pocket presence all the way through the touch throw completion. Frankly, it gave me more faith in Daboll too the way it was drawn up - lots of levels going on and it nearly converted (or maybe it did?) and was the reason we were able to score the go ahead TD to Davis.

Somebody called it back in April, someone should pay that guy 🍻 Easy to see how he beat out the rest for the roster spot

Came here for this - talk about guys stepping up big when needed, this is it.