The Frankish Reich
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Posts posted by The Frankish Reich
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Do you guys think that San Diego fans called for McCoy's head after they ran the ball ineffectively over and over for 3 quarters with a lead against the Bills?
Right. We did to the Jets exactly what McCoy's Chargers offense did to us in Week 3. Take a look at the stats in that game:
Donald Brown, 31 carries, 62 yards. That's right, 2 yards per carry. Longest was 14 yards. We stuffed the run completely, just as much as the Jets stuffed our run. But McCoy said "Let EJ try to beat us, we are not about to beat ourselves." Rivers hit on a 49 yarder. The game felt like we could get back into it, but that was an illusion. It wasn't close. And neither was yesterday's game.
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I understand what you're saying but there's not point in arguing two extremes - nobody is saying to abandon the run. But at the same time, calling the same run, run, pass setup countless times resulting in 3 and outs is unacceptable. We weren't running the ball effectively, so why continue the same pattern over and over again. It only sets us up for a likely 3 and out which is exactly what happened over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. NH is dumb as a stump.
Allow me to go all Zen on you: The Running Game Doesn't Have to Be Effective to Be Effective. I don't have a Tebow obsession, but living in Colorado when Tebow took over for Orton and watching the difference in results taught me a valuable lesson, and it's this: the Broncos offense sucked under Tebow! Most of the time the run game gained less than 3 yards per carry. But it suckered defenses into doing dangerous things like putting 9 men in the box, and even though Tebow couldn't throw to save his life we got plays like the OT "catch and run" vs. the Steelers that won a playoff game -- there's was literally nobody back 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage to catch D. Thomas after he broke a tackle of the guy covering him. I think we saw a little of that yesterday. It's boring, it's frustrating ... but against bad offenses it can work! To paraphrase Woody, 90% of football is just showing up and not doing anything stupid, like turning the ball over when your opponent is in the middle of an almost unprecedented offensive meltdown.
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We'll see when the All 22 comes out, but it sure felt like the Jets were stacking the box to stop the run -- that's why Watkins was open deep twice in a row; the first time Orton missed, the second time he didn't (but Sammy celebrated too soon). So the run-run-pass is frustrating, but at the same time we have to recognize that you don't get those Sammy one-on-one situations if the defense knows you've abandoned the run. All I'm saying is this: what Hackett did worked yesterday against the Jets. Not that the same strategy will work against the Chiefs, or in some other game where we fall behind instead of jumping out ahead. Orton has already had games where he's thrown 40 passes, so it's not like this is the Tebow offense or anything. Let's give Hackett a break this week. We think the Bills could've put away the Jets early if they had opened it up a bit, but we don't know that -- it could've been strip sack/tipped ball INT, who knows if they had decided to pass more instead of running. What we do know is that ultraconservative play calling with the lead wound up with us winning quite comfortably. I'm actually kind of o.k. with winning comfortably ...
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Like his whole Bills career then.
TJ was invisibile yesterday as usual, except when he was quite visibly being an idiot trying to show Marrone how tough he thinks he is.
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Bills first drive with score 0-0: run, run, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass (TD). The game situation dictated the play calling. Do I think it was too conservative? Yes. Was it a rational response to an opponent self-destructing on offense? Yes.
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Ridickulous Tpoic...They Won... Be happy for a day...Ortons finding his Chi...
When your opponent is committing suicide, get out of the way. It wasn't pretty, but it was zero turnovers (partly because only 17 passes thrown) and what should have been 5 Orton TD passes if Sammy hadn't showboated on the first bomb. Hackett hasn't shown me much, but check out offensive genius Trestman this year in Chicago. One of the Dolphins after last week's game said that their sets are tipping off their plays, making them easier to defend. At least we've seen a little play action trickier from Hackett, which ain't easy when your O line stinks and your two best RBs are out.
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imo they gave him the hook too early. The first pick was on the coaching staff for trying to force the ball deep to Harvin early. Guy doesnt know the offense and as Michael Irvin aptly pointed out "he's a running back playing WR" ... deep routes aren't his thing. The other 2 were on Geno, which isnt great but doesnt get your starter yanked that early. That and Vick being completely washed up, meant you keep Geno in the game
Well, I will grant you that the Jets coaching staff seemed to think "heave it up and let Percy go get it" was a good strategy. Of course, at 1-6 we thought they had nothing to lose, but it turned out they did -- any sense of pride whatsoever, Rex's job, etc. I'm a little concerned that after getting blown out by KC next weekend they'll regroup and play hard enough for Rex to play us tough in 3 weeks, but this is the worst situation a team can find itself in: needing to rebuild from the bottom up, but stuck with the wrong players and contracts to get that done. Miss Mark Sanchez yet?
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vick at least looked better running the ball, but at this point, what good does it do them? Crazy situation up there.
Exactly. They're stuck. 1-7, Geno was so awful I can't see him getting a start again until maybe Game 15-16 (even JaMarcus Russell go a couple mercy starts like that). They thought they'd be competitive so they went with the veteran Vick as the backup -- there's no other developmental QB around, and playing Vick would make zero sense other than to try to save Rex's reputation (a little). Matt Simms? Really, that's where they're at, which is no different than when Chris Simms actually got a start in Denver over ... Kyle Orton. Chris Simms immediately took a big hit and sprained his ankle, effectively ending his season and career. The Jets are a godawful mess.
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D line depth was key to the Seahawks incredible run last year, and it's the biggest thing they're missing this year, having lost a couple key rotation guys to free agency. A lot of us were pretty critical of the Marrone/Schwartz D line rotation when it meant Mario wasn't out there in the 4th quarter in a critical series in Houston, but today we saw what fresh defensive linemen can do against a tired offensive line.
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Lee Smith: TD catch was a really nice play. He threw a cut block at one of the Jets, stayed down for a moment, then got up and walked into the end zone and waited for the ball. Nice.
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Question: in an alternative universe, the Jets signed Kyle Orton and he took over at quarterback for them in Week 5, while the Bills recommitted to EJ for the entire season. Who won this game, EJ and the Bills, or Orton and the Jets?
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I'll admit to being a stats geek. But I know stats have their limitations. Take baseball. New offensive metrics are superb, and GMs would be idiots not to rely on them. Advanced defensive metrics? Not so much. They're useful, but even the best sabermetricians will use a blend of new defensive metrics plus scouting reports -- that is, what your eyes tell you. That's how I see advanced football stats. PFF tells me that Richardson and Pears are two of the worst guards in the NFL this year. I saw that. But it also tells me Seantrel is one of the worst tackles. I missed that; I'll watch more closely -- I think I've been distracted by how awful Pears has been. For traditional "skill" positions I rely much more heavily on what I see (and what the All 22 shows) and the traditional stats -- things like YAC for receivers. Bottom line: PFF's stats look "advanced," but they're really just counting stats (a + if a lineman wins a one-on-one, a - if he loses, all in someone's subjective impression) -- in baseball, that's positively medieval and you'd be laughed off boards like this for citing to them.
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Albert Haynesworth. Never guarantee that much money to a defensive tackle. I know Dareus was dealing with off the field issues last year, but I think we've seen what can happen when he's not motivated.
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Technically, the 8.1 is not a "projected win total", but an "average simulated result". Out of the thousands (millions? Dunno what kind of computing power 538 has) of simulations run, our average win total works out to 8.1, but I'd guess around 20% of the simulations have us winning 10 games or more -- because that's our playoff %. Possibly higher, even, because I imagine we miss the playoffs at 10-6 in a decent number of simulations. So there's definitely a chance, and not that horrible a chance either. If we lose this Sunday, I think it's pretty much over -- I can't see us getting to 10 wins without sweeping the Jets, and there's almost no way we'd win a potential 9-7 playoff tiebreaker.
If we can get back to the non-QB level of play from the first 2 games, and Orton can keep up about this level of play (or preferably cut down on his turnovers), I think we have a real shot at it. But if we keep playing like garbage until the last drive or two, we'll get smoked.
That's about right. You have to be the Bill Simmons "good bad team" -- the team that routinely beats all the weak opposition (especially at home) but really doesn't really put together the statement game to say we've arrived. For us, that statement is obvious: best the Pats. So we really have to beat the Jets, not once but twice. And Miami again too. The rest of the schedule gives us nothing easy at all. At Oakland would seem to be a win, but any away game in the NFL is tough, and by then Derek Carr will have about a year under his belt. So
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OK, I'll concede douchy.
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Nate Silver now has our playoff odds at ... wait for it ... 20%.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/nfl-week-8-elo-ratings-and-playoff-odds/
And that's with his projected win total of 8.1 games. In other words, an 8-8 team. Now, with Orton in and an O line that really can't get worse, I think 9-7 may be more realistic. But even so, as he noted in his column the week before, the problem is 9-7 is unlikely to get an AFC wildcard this year, and even 10-6 stands as unlikely right now. That's the effect of having Jacksonville and Oakland in your conference giving everyone else free wins to pile up (unless you are Cleveland). So while things may be coming together (and I am an optimist here -- I think they are), playoffs are still a longshot, particularly since my best playoff scenario (Pats tank, we win the division) now looks like kind of a fantasy ...
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Because there probably was a kind of gentlemen's agreement not to do it after the first time someone (Kraft?) pulled it. I'm sure the player's union never contemplated that teams would put the franchise tag on a guy like Jairus Byrd -- it was supposed to be to allow a team to keep it's Elway or Montana or Marino, not some pretty-good-but-hardly-legendary safety. The first team that did that probably stunned the player's union, but the other owners immediately thought, "hey, great idea, it screws the players, not us -- I'm in too." This is what happens in business. The owners are all billionaires, they can afford the lawyers who draft agreements that seal off this kind of gamesmanship. I'm not saying it's honorable, but it's not cheating.
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Doesn't really take good lawyers, just takes not caring if you cheat. The Colts did it to the Bills when they signed Wolford to a FA contract. I won't go back and look up the exact particulars but basically, the Bills had a bunch of stars with large contracts in the SB years. The Colts had few, and gave Wolford a bunch of money that made him the highest paid lineman in the league, but in his contract it stated that he had to be highest paid offensive player. The Bills had Kelly, Thurman and Reed making more so they couldn't match the deal.
Interesting -- thanks for the details, I didn't know about those shenanigans. But I don't call this "cheating." Not cheating like surreptitiously videotaping another team's closed practice. This is being clever, maybe breaking a kind of gentlemen's agreement (which makes you an unpopular guy at the annual meeting), but when the CBA/salary cap, etc. leaves a loophole, fair game to exploit it.
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My first rule change: go the old college way, when a player is down (whether by contact or not) the whistle blows and the play is over. The occasional mistake play that makes the highlight reel (think Keith Rivers in Houston) isn't worth the continued hitting and the chance that a player who is down (or down and getting up) has someone fly into him. Plus I don't even know what the rule is now, which is why I kind of understand the Rivers blunder -- defensive players are running toward the play, have momentum, but can't do much more than touch a player who's down or risk a penalty. Just not worth it anymore.
And on Kolb: in a way, he's lucky, in the way that a boxer with a weak chin doesn't stick around long enough to suffer like Muhammad Ali when his career is over. Think of the centers who've been able to take dozens of blows to the head and keep playing -- it doesn't end up well.
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Listen dude, I don't love Kyle Orton. He is a mediocre, middling at best starting NFL QB. But he is a legitimate starting QB. Manuel was not. It's that simple. His first two starts were against excellent defenses. Against Minnesota, if Woods and Hogan both don't fumble in Minnesota territory, we win that game with more room to spare, our point total is more impressive and he doesn't have to conduct that game winning drive, which I can assure you, Manuel does not complete. Not to mention, the dude just showed up here and is still learning the offense. And above all else, you are constantly changing your tune. Last week, you're saying "I don't care about their stats (which have you looked at by the way? How is Orton's completion % ten points higher than EJ's when he is whizzing balls downfield to wide receivers and Manuel was making Trent Edwards look like Brett Favre), all I care about is wins. They're both .500." Now that Orton is 2-1, it's, "look at their sack totals." Hence, yes, you are the worst.
True. At least Manuel is not at this stage of his career. No different than switching from Brandon Weeden to Hoyer, or Christian Ponder to Matt Cassell, or dare I say Case Keenum to Ryan Fitzpatrick ... ok, nevermind, I just destroyed my own argument. But you see where I was going .... the next step is going from Matt Cassell to, say, Alex Smith, or if you're really lucky, from Tarvaris Jackson to Matt Flynn (for a few minutes) straight to Russell Wilson.
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I think linebacker is our most improved position this year, and that's even with Kiko out. (Of course, quarterback is improved too ... and wide receiver)
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The scumbag Patriots stole Welker, literally, from the Dolphins, similar to the way the Colts stole Wil Wolfford from us. They were going to sign him to a contract that gave him an extra few million dollars if he played more than three games in the state of Florida (or something to that affect). The Dolphins would have had to match the deal he would sign with New England, which obviously the Patriots would not have to pay but the Dolphins would. The Dolphins, instead of losing him outright to the blatant scumbag cheaters, decided to trade him for a low round draft pick instead.
That Robert Kraft had some good lawyers if that's really how they pulled it off. I assume the NFL has closed that loophole? At least we know that Pegula must have some damn good frackin' lawyers if he's worth $4.7 billion ...
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I already gave it earlier in the thread -- David Nelson 2.0. Faster and stronger.
Yeah, but David Nelson is more like the poor man's Brandon Stokely--taller, different build, etc. Hines Ward (if Hogan learns to block)?
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God, it's amazing how he is always compared to white guys. I'm waiting for the Don Beebe comparisons!
Hogan's size-speed-strength combo suggests to he that the top-end comparison is Anquan Boldin. Seriously. (Note that I said "top-end" too -- I'm not saying he'll be as good as Boldin.)
Boldin is 6'1" and 220 lbs and ran a 4.5 coming out of FSU. He's also abnormally strong for a receiver and has great catching skills. Hogan is 6'1"-225 lbs, ran a 4.47, and is abnormally strong, leading all receivers in bench pressing at the combine when he came out.
Interesting. And I'll admit that I was the first to throw the name of Austin Collie out there. Is that because fans have a mental block? Is it because NFL coaches and scouts do, pigeonholing the white guys as slot receivers (with some exceptions -- the Jordy Nelsons and Chris Collinsworths). Boldin does match up physically, but his style of play just seems different. I'm still thinking of a good non-white comp ...
TJ Graham of the New York Jets
in The Stadium Wall Archives
Posted
TJ and Marquis: 2 receptions combined this year. Both third round picks. But that's ok. It's not like we needed offensive line help or anything.