colin

the suggestion above about blending the impact over a few years, be it explicitly or with some kind of carve out allowances, makes a lot of sense. the three players above, along w brown and murphy might solve our entire issue.

this game is gonna be all about the run D. if milano is back we might even see a shocking new scheme involving more than 2 line backers on the field at once! i do think the bills did a solid job vs the chargers, who are a much better O than san fran, but san fran's varied run attack kinda scares me. on the other side, a slightly more consistent performance from the O can score more points than the niners can answer with (if we get to 27 again, i don't see us losing).

that stat is is because of how much we ran it on first down. the real breakdown vs the chargers is we ran play action a ton of times and didn't do well in it. the Dline was able to beat our Oline so fast that the gains from play action were snuffed out by how quick the pass got disrupted. it was a bit of a case of sticking to what wasn't working, but the run came on like gang busters late, if we didnt' have the devin fumble we likely get another 30 or 40 yards rushing and more points, so i kinda understand what we were going for. aside from the Ol needing to be better (hope morse being back longer helps, and winters is just trash and needs to be replaced by someone else on the roster) i think dabol needs to scheme a little better on the pass run selection. i think a small adjustment will make big returns on that front.

young may be the better overall athlete, but to me the bosa's are special. they were bred to be NFL DEs. they have the genetics (dad was an NFL player, decent one too), they have been trained doing drills and learning the craft since they could basically walk (there are videos of them pass rushing against dummies and such as pre teens), and they maintain a very high level of taking care of their body, living like body builders or olympic athletes. imo, garrett or young may be the top just total talent (donald is obv a freak too, but different position), but the bend and change of direction and hand techniques the bosa's use are basically a cheat code.

the pass rush destroying our line likely made for fewer deep routes being called. also, lee smith being in there some meant less personnel matchups favoring spreading out the D. the biggest thing i took away watching this game is how different the O for the bolts and bills are. we spread out, slow to develop plays, screens are in a muddle (intentionally sure), they have these goofy bunch formations, move guys all over but generally close to the line, and the plays hit really quickly. ball is out in under 2 seconds at times, and they screen on a pre snap read to the rb out wide most of the time. the only thing i want to see us add is a couple of quick hitters, not the whole bolts package. i think having a TE worth a shoot makes a lot of that possible tho.

How about we make a radical move and even play football with 3 linebackers on the field?!? Given that milano can cover, we could even do it vs 3 wrs sometimes! I get we have had injuries and that we played a ton of nickel last year, but how do we never have 3lbs? Our base 4-2-5 is weak to the run up the gut, but that is due to lb injuries and bad dt play, it has also gotten eaten by screens and sweeps, which is just bad tackling and block shedding. Having an lb around the ball making teams adjust blocking and two others who can rush can give the o fits. We may just invent a wacky balanced d call d the 4-3!

I think the bills can eat the browns. I don't see them covering our 3 wrs in the intermediate passing game, which will open up everything. They have some sick players on O, but our d is getting better at just the right time and without the browns getting big plays, they will shoot themselves in the foot on long drives.

Well, the downside of today is it was a super sloppy game and at times on O an absolute disaster. The upside is, the run game came back, and the d honestly balled out of control. Except the desperate garbage time hail Mary (which didn't even result in points), there were no big plays given up, and they did reasonably well against the run too. Our o lacks any kind of speed without brown in there. Diggs is obviously sick, but the d was talking the top away from him all day (the one pass early which lead to pass intro woke them up) and our TEs are cheeks and no other wr is a real burner, and our rbs are slow too. I think the team we saw today, warts and all, with brown and milano and kroft can match up all over the place. On D, and if be been pooping on it all year, they seem to be figuring some stuff out and if epenesa can continue to improve, and with klien coming into his own, throw in milano and an improved edmunds and it might actually be playing a bit better then they were at the end of last season.

Tre! Oh my the drama

They want to lose and deserve to

D just absolutely balled doubt there

This team is just disgusting

Sloppy laydown

Third quarter strikes again, even after a money opening drive. This team just falls into lulls like no other. I think it is because we have near zero balance

Have we stopped a single 2pt attempt this season?

I just knew this let down was coming. Always does, but we've mainly been playing sick os

That's literally the truck call

Comment above about quick whistles was spot on. Ball was moving. And nice td!

If we can't win the one on one on the left side (vs a monster today) our oline has no answer. Really wish we didn't cut spain

Off a bye week, center and best g are back together for the first time (except like 3 snaps) and we do a shotgun qb sweep on 3rd and 1 on our own end of the field. Dabol really sucks a lot of the time, crap like this keeps the o out of rythm

baltimore tenn saints steelers kc browns (perhaps a fluke, but i remember a super bowl where both teams had a total of like 7 or 8 former browns) gb seattle seahawks

watching the steelers vs dallas, i really don't think they can cover any of our WRs

he's a reasonable JAG defender who can start at CB2 for our D. that's not a knock on him, average at one spot back there can get the job done. i think the poor record without him is more a function of how awful our depth is behind him. its crazy to me how much FA money and the picks (1st, 2nd, and a 3rd) we plowed into the DL to get like totally average play from it. between who we have and our scheme something is plainly wrong w our D this year. enough individual players make enough individual errors to break the 1/11th thing that you have to wonder about it.

i dig the talent part of OP's post. Your dominant teams tend to have just total superstars, a few really good guys, and then Jags and perhaps the odd weakness. Looking at O, we have two Super stars in allen and Digs. we have two really good guys in Brown (when healthy) and beasley. i think our LT is really good, and our C or RT might qualify there in a pinch. Our interior line, particularly w the injuries, is trash, and our entire TE and RB roster is cheeks. On D, White is the only one who flirts w super star status, and frankly he has simply not been there this year, although i do think he is hurt. beyond that at CB, i think we struggle to hit JAG w the injuries. at LB, assuming both of them can heal up and be 100%, in a long stretch, milano and edmunds might qualify as really good, but i think just good would be an improvement from where we are now. beyond that we are below JAG at LB. at DT we don't have a single 1 tech on the team, Star was like JAG+ when he was in there. maybe oliver or houghs would qualify as really good, but i think that's a stretch. the rest are over paid JAGS, or even below. i suppose harrison is a 1 tech, but he mostly watches games now. so, looking at this with a bit of a devil's advocate bias, i really do see how our record is better than we have played. to me, the big difference now vs other years is with (if healthy) a few weapons at WR and a killer QB, you always have a shot in the game. if we can elevate the play of our LBs and our DL figure something out, that could be enough for the D to get back to being decent at least, and hopefully the OL getting healthy means we have an ability to stop the interior pass rush and push some teams around in the run game.

one thing to note: seattle just beat zona due to running and stopping the run better than we were able to do on sunday, and their D is cheeks overall. a very small change for us in those two things would result in very large differences on the field, so im all for it.