maineman209
Veteran Starter w/Big Long Term Deal
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Yeah, I thought about mentioning him as well, but decided not to because he was coming in from the outside anyway. If his assignment was basically to set the edge and funnel the return inside then he more or less did his job. Certainly not optimally, but he also almost certainly was not responsible for leaving that cutback lane open purely do to where he was coming from and where the hole opened up.
It's theoretically possible, but for that to be Jones' fault, they would've had to be running something more exotic (basically a stunt, I guess) where it was Ebner's job to deliberately push too far upfield specifically to bait the returner into taking the cutback lane he took while Jones simultaneously filled it.
If that was the case, though, then that would mean that Jones severely misplayed it from the get-go, and that basically everyone else was flowing in the wrong direction for good measure, and that Hogan and Slater both missed the memo since they could have been in position to make plays on that cutback lane but were caught off guard and with their momentum and positioning working against them.
Based on all of that, I'd estimate that it's possible Jones is at fault here, but if we're ranking the probability of each individual player being majority responsible I'd go something like Ebner 95%, Slater 4%, Jones 1%.
Excellent points. I've certainly seen Slater, Jones, and others deliberately loop around behind the returner, presumably to close the box.
I guess it might have also been more than one guy missing an assignment or some sort of miscommunication/misread of what they're teammates are doing.
From the other side, the new rules obviously require the return team to block in somewhat different patterns, which leaves me wondering if Pats coverage units are misreading these new patterns, or possibly encountering novel patterns that they aren't prepared for. That cuts both ways, of course. The Pats have also needed to develop new return blocking schemes, and it seems to me that there are some similarities (at least superficial) in where the cutback lane opened on this return and where it opened for Patterson on his TD return.