colin

Allen obviously tried to do too much, he was a disaster at times. Aside from motor though, he was the only guy who showed up on offense. I'll give a pass to bease because he was riding the pine while practice squad guys ran dabols trash plays. Blocking was just cheeks. Our offense hates to be in an advantage position. Five wide with no motion in the condensed part of the field is something they love to lose with. It's disgusting

Duke has the ability to be a wr5. We have two play makers and one actual weapon on O, singletery (Allen is the other play makers). Our mix and match always changing gadget O is we Todd did, sofa king we Todd did. We need new offensive coaches, a new te, a new OT, a new rb2, possibly a guard, and most of all an actual nfl wr Our entire team has no ability to get open vs man or best an aggressive blitz. Dabol not realizing that Duke was better than what we had out there, or that singletery needs to be our focal point, or that empty sets don't produce points for us has driven me insane.

He is so clearly our best weapon. The following players are nfl offensive players: Allen (spazzed, but was out by himself for a lot of it) Dawkins Morse Singletery Brown Beasely Feliciano (not great but dece) Spain (as above, but perhaps a touch less so) Knox if he improves Ford (who I pray can be converted to guard) Smith, kroft, gore, mck, roberts, dimarko, Duke (at this point at the very least) and that other wr who looked sick last year are all not on the field for a good team. I do sometimes wonder if a better coaching staff would make something useful happen, maybe a power run and screen game with some over the top stuff, I dunno. I remember that stupid up for grabs ball to dimarko. We had protection and Josh was being spied, but our two WRs got nada (like usual) and we had no body disengage from a block and roll into a soft spot. The guys on the field combined with the play call was pure dabol. Trying to out smart everyone but not realizing his garbage just doesn't work

Really good article. Our offensive coaching is terrible, dunno how much is mcd and how much is dabol, but a change is needed.

Allen made some bad plays, our WRs had trouble getting open and catching, our tes were invisible in the pass game, we passed and went empty way too often and we could have been way more aggressive on d. All of that said, we lost because of trash blocking and trash tackling. Absolute basics. If we block the ot qb sweep, we win, if we block the rush on that break down drive before we got the ball back in the 4th, we win. If we tackle the qb when he's wrapped we win, and of we tackle the wr on 3rd and 18 we prolly win. Allen is obviously not there yet, but we need at least one ot, one wr, an rb2, upgrade to te2, and we have to solve out tackling problem.

some is luck, some is how we rush them, and more if it is good d forcing teams to make harder kicks (in terms of being further given the conditions and more mental pressure from not getting closer)

i think roman might be pretty epic on clevland. i'm sure he'd have some better OL brought in (maybe trade ODB for one, i dunno) and with the backs they have, he'd be able to scheme some pretty impossible to defend stuff. it wouldn't be what they do in baltimore, but i could see it being more pass heavy with heavy formations and just huge run production from those two backs. the browns really do have insane skill talent. could you imagine one of those backs on buffalo and ODB here too? we'd prolly get an extra 70 yards and 5 points a game.

our coaching staff has shown to be very very conservative in removing or putting in new and especially young players. they were way too slow to start josh in his first year, too slow to feature motor this year, too slow to keep smith off the field more, etc. in the longest of long terms i understand the wisdom of this strategy, but we aren't minimizing bad things at this point, we are aiming to win in the playoffs and the super bowl. we really need to "play fearless" now. duke and yeldon need some burn, maybe even sweeny too.

was that 2012 Raven team a wildcard too? over 50 years it looks weak for a wildcard team, but from 2000 to 2013, it looked pretty good!

you are the most consistently in character poster of 2019. big fan!

watson is sick and to date is clearly a better qb than allen. i'll give the future to allen tho, his raw talent and energy are off the charts, and watson has the benefit of much better college prep and much much better weapons through out his career (imagine fuller and hopkins over benjamin and zay jones for allens first year and this year?!! watson's protection was trash last year, but ours was perhaps just a tiny bit less trash, i won't say better). as far as who is better today? we'll find out on saturday.

It's a complicated game of rock paper scissors. Rules help push things along, but defensive coordinators and the generally higher level of athletic ability on d catches up, and then new offenses come along and the cycle begins anew. Right now, D's are really good at pressure, coverage, and run blitzing. They all seem to be poorly equiped to stop a power run game. There is also something to be said about a very balanced d like the one we have, where if guys make tackles we can defend anything. I think that why mcd likes waves of dline and super athlete mbls, they can deal w most anything. I'm a big fan of how these things trend and change. I really got into it back when I played and pitz came in hot w the zone blitz concept and the 3-4 vs 4-3 stuff.

Gore got run into a pile over and over again vs cleveland, while motor was beating the breaks off of them. even the announcers were baffled at how futile our predictable O was. Yeldon and motor have the wheels and hands to run screens, and motor has even had a couple go for big yardage (i THINK even vs cleveland). we are too predictable in what we will do based on down, distance, and formation. we also have too many formations/groupings/play combos. misdirection and different looks to set up plays which we run effectively is what is missing. we are bottom 5 or so in passing and overall O, but top 9 in chunk plays (and the distance from 5th to 9 is really small wrt number of big plays) and are near the top on 3rd and long and still pretty solid in the red zone. that shows me that when we just line up and play we do have the ability to make Ds play and make things happen, but we totally lack consistency and our drives stall out terribly. screens or just short quick execution low difficulty dump off passes can help us vs pressure, but we simply do not run those. we need better tackle play, maybe an upgrade at LG, another back and a big body WR to have a chance at being a good O, but we could be a 22 -24 or so points per game O if we just had better play calling from our OC who simply does not have a good feel for the game.

Bills 27 - Texans 20

ok, so you think we just don't have the horses to run a screen play, whatever. i disagree, i think we simply don't prepare and practice for it because we have too many plays and formations taking up all of our time. what about our lack of 3rd and makable, or lack of offensive identity, or constantly running gore into a pile? sometimes it's not personal, sometimes it's coaching.

assuming we can land shurmer or someone like that, i'm all for dabol leaving to another team. him trotting gore out and running him into a wall so often, duke never playing although he is our only big body wr, him taking so long to make motor or offensive focus (and still kinda getting away from him as well), our inability to beat aggressive blitzes with man coverage, NO ABILITY TO RUN A SCREEN, and most importantly the penalties and lack of offensive identity just shows that our O isn't cohesive, we don't have bread and butter go to plays, and our ability to score in the redzone and convert third and long with the best in the NFL is simply a function of allen using his legs and extending plays, not his drawn up O.

trent and shak are fine. shak is worth more, and i hope we keep him, but trent isn't that bad at all. our D scheme has waves of DL coming at the O and keeps linebackers in there (with interchangable positions for two of them) all day. if milano and edwards can cut out the mistakes their elite skills could put them over and our front 7 ends up being pretty monster. as far as shak and more topically trent go, i'd be good with keeping both, neither, or something inbetween. im confident our FO can find DL talent. the only thing that would really super charge our D is a high level CB2 (not so much of a need, but look what it's doing in baltimore) or most importantly a game changing disruptive pass rushing DE. if clowney is there i say we grab him and just blow up pass plays while rushing four. if you recall, in carolina McD had those two LBs who were money, that one CB who left for washington and fell off, but they were at their most disgusting when they had short at DT (for us that's ed oliver) and the KRAKEN hardy at DE. to me clowney could be that guy and would be a sick monster in our rotation.

Dabol is a bad OC. My evidence for this is on every NFL team he has had an OC role with, he had bad numbers. we have plenty of deficiencies on O, but the biggest flaw on our team is that we simply do not have a concrete offensive identity. trying to ram the ball on 3rd and 4th and short w gore and failing, or not ever running screens well (although that looked a little different vs the jets w yeldon, but of course that guy doesn't dress for games) is what a team that is just throwing stuff against the wall and hoping some sticks does. several players have commented that the O we run is the most complicated they've ever seen. baltimore (and us before w roman, and SF before that) had a very simple O (with lots of trickery and it does take forever to get the plays in and line up, i'll grant that). NE's O is the same stuff over and over w some misdireciton. we do not have the talent nor the cohesion to be running the most complicated O our players have ever seen. the problem with a complicated O is that you don't get enough time to practice things to get the down pat, so you get missed blocks, pre snap penalties, and the like. dabol is the ultimate young coach with a million ideas who is not getting them executed at a high level. the solution is to keep the bread and butter plays that you can always go to and run well, challenging the D to play perfectly. further evidence of this is that we are nearly the best in the nfl at 3rd and long. that is not a function of how well our O is called (3rd and makable being the norm is evidence of a well run O) but of the fact that Josh is a special talent who can extend plays and run for first downs as well as thread the needle into tight windows, and the fact that WRs, while tiny, are hard to cover for long stretches. our red zone success is basically a function of Josh running, or his threat of running, which is not a coaching thing. we need more talent on O (i'd say one or even two new OL, and one new WR and another RB although yeldon should be an upgrade) but we just don't have any blitz beating ability or ways to get solid dependable yards on first and second down, and that's scheme and practicing the scheme as much as it is a talent deficit.

I honestly do think they called an overly vanilla game plan on purpose. They didn't want to show anything and wanted to see how they could do just playing straight up

Missing tackles is a problem of ours, but we lost the game on two big yardage screen passes. If we blow those up, I bet we walk away winners. Why can we not run or stop a screen?

Josh has plenty of bad habits to get out of a d lots to learn. Most of all, he needs to learn to calm down at the start of big games. I've come to the conclusion that dabol is a very much old school coach who has a rigid idea of what a good o is and will slam square pegs into round holes until they fit or they break. Josh in a timing pass o is kinda not perfect, our trash rt singled up on long developing plays is bad, gore as a speed/power back is laughable, and our Smurf wrs don't get open vs man enough. He's designed some good plays here and there, but has zero feel and it just seems like our team is playing uphill all the time

He really is trash.

Direct runs and passes out of spread are what is working, we are fools to do anything else

Obv we are still in it, but on O we just aren't fast or physical. Every ne play has a convoy of blockers and yards after contact, Devin is the only guy who can do anything after contact on our team, and we aren't long or fast. Just a dumb o

Great st play, but once again the degree of difficulty of our o exceeds our talent.