- Joined
- Jul 11, 2005
- Messages
- 16,889
- Reaction score
- 31,476
I thought I'd use this week's post to use it on a variety of random thoughts as they occur to me over the start of the week. Having this bye week is vital to the team, but it sucks for us fans. I mean there will be games this week that will be of interest, but nothing beats a Pats game week.
1. Post game thoughts:
a. I think the intensity and effort the entire team showed for this game was impressive. The execution wasn't always perfect, but if there were ever going to be a let down game, this was it. And it wasn't. Vrabel made a fast start a priority and that's what his team accomplished. He made violence a priority and that's was they did. They made "the next man up" a priority and the next man stood up tall.
b. Maye didn't make a great leap forward, but made some progress. The sack was his fault, but the fact he recognized it right away means it is less likely it will happen again. Scary accurate on the TD passes. Everybody eats when Maye cooks the dinner, no one eats too much. That seems to be the case each game to Maye's credit.
c. The OL didn't skip a beat. Not perfect, but certainly "acceptable ". Lowe did more than just decent job on porn boy. Brown was just as good as Wilson. And the old man erased Burns. Kudos to them,but even more praise to Marrone and his boys to get them prepared. It was as impressive as job as the Bills did without their 2 starting OTs
d. Williams can get quick releases off the LOS. He can beat guys deep. He can catch the ball. Those are the things we know he can do. What we don't know is if he can read coverages in mid route, can he run option routes, can he adjust on the fly when Maye goes off script. Probably not given that he is a raw rookie trying to adjust to Josh's demanding timing structure. But we HAVE finally started to see him show why he was taken with that 3rd rounder instead of Burden or Tesslaa. 5 catches/2 long TDs. That kind of explosiveness threat can make every other part of your offense better. We have seen some minor improvement the last few weeks, lets see if it continues.
e. Henderson is also showing improvement. I still question his vision and patience, but I'm seeing the beginnings of him starting to look for "plan B" holes, but there is a long way to go. However if production like last night becomes the rule rather than the exception, that will be enough until the vision comes
f. Defense line and LB's were good enough last night but not great. However, given we were missing 2 of our regular rotation it was good enough.
g. We lost Spillane early and Ellis had a double digit tackle night and TWO note worthy hits. I NEVER thought he was worthy of all the bad press he got here, and now even the boo birds have to eat a little crow because he was outstanding last night beyond the 2 big hits. Between Spillaine, Ellis, Tavia, and Gibbons and Mapu we have 5 LBs who have a variety of skill sets who can give us solid play and depth we need at inside LB. No one is "great" all are pretty good because they aren't asked to do too much.
h. Now the elephant in the room. The fatal flaw. For once again we couldn't generate a single four man pass rush that could immediately pressure the QB, let alone sack him. Even when we blitzed him with 5 and 6 man rushes we only got instant pressure maybe 3/4 times and only one resulted in a sack. THIS is the area that needs to looked at before the playoffs to see what can be done to improve this need. Not sure what can be done at this point instead to look at some other rush and blitz combinations. The players are who they are. Clearly we are better with Milt in the line up. Barmore is far more effective with him in the line up. But this is THE are of #1 need this off season. We need one of our first 2 picks to be an edge rusher, and our #1 FA needs to be one too. (and I DON'T mean Chaisson either)
i. (DISCLAIMER) I have NEVER called the offensive plays or coordinated the offense when I was a HC. I DID have to understand offensive concepts because I was always in charge of the defense even before I was a HC. But I need Josh to listen to me just this once. We need to add a 3 plays series of a RPO that we can run in both directions and from under C and from shotgun.
We we are inside the 10 we are having trouble now. Teams are just digging in and just beating our straight dives into the middle and off tackle and QB sneaks. So our plan B has been to announce pass and do that to mediocre success. Either way NOTHING is easy for us down there. I suggest this option as a way to threaten the edges and thus loosen up the middle. We have speed at both RB and QB regardless of how we choose to align our 11, we can threaten the edges. The other thing I would suggest to Josh is to look at the Bears/Eagles game and checks some of the Bears running schemes. Lots of angle blocking and KO's. Those schemes got what was a moribund running game going to a tune 240+ yds. Maybe these schemes could open a few more holes. Just a suggestion. If you think this is an interesting topic I can go more into detail on how the RPO works and some of those blocking schemes. (BTW- they all go back to Tubby Raymond's Delaware Wing T schemes that were popular in the early 60's when I was in HS.)
j. Sure he looks like one of those odious preppies from some bad 80's movie, but I like Jackson Dart. He's tough, skilled, and aggressive and shows a lot of the same things I liked about Maye last season. It was interesting that he wasn't pissed at Ellis for the hit. He seemed to be invigorated by it. Kind of remind be of Brady after that big hit that knocked his helmet off. Brady bounced up fired up. So did Dart. No, the Giants got the best QB of this draft, If he survives the initiation process he should be a good one.
k. BB had the solution to the Ref problem years ago. It was simple. Coaches could challenge any play and could challenge anything. a catch, a penalty, an out of bounds, anything at all. If you think that guy clearly held your guy, you can challenge it. And if you win your first 2 you get a 3rd. When you use them up, you are out of luck. No automatic reviews. The refs are part of the game and bad calls are just like bad bounces or bad plays...part of the game and you live with them. They help as often as they hurt.
1. Post game thoughts:
a. I think the intensity and effort the entire team showed for this game was impressive. The execution wasn't always perfect, but if there were ever going to be a let down game, this was it. And it wasn't. Vrabel made a fast start a priority and that's what his team accomplished. He made violence a priority and that's was they did. They made "the next man up" a priority and the next man stood up tall.
b. Maye didn't make a great leap forward, but made some progress. The sack was his fault, but the fact he recognized it right away means it is less likely it will happen again. Scary accurate on the TD passes. Everybody eats when Maye cooks the dinner, no one eats too much. That seems to be the case each game to Maye's credit.
c. The OL didn't skip a beat. Not perfect, but certainly "acceptable ". Lowe did more than just decent job on porn boy. Brown was just as good as Wilson. And the old man erased Burns. Kudos to them,but even more praise to Marrone and his boys to get them prepared. It was as impressive as job as the Bills did without their 2 starting OTs
d. Williams can get quick releases off the LOS. He can beat guys deep. He can catch the ball. Those are the things we know he can do. What we don't know is if he can read coverages in mid route, can he run option routes, can he adjust on the fly when Maye goes off script. Probably not given that he is a raw rookie trying to adjust to Josh's demanding timing structure. But we HAVE finally started to see him show why he was taken with that 3rd rounder instead of Burden or Tesslaa. 5 catches/2 long TDs. That kind of explosiveness threat can make every other part of your offense better. We have seen some minor improvement the last few weeks, lets see if it continues.
e. Henderson is also showing improvement. I still question his vision and patience, but I'm seeing the beginnings of him starting to look for "plan B" holes, but there is a long way to go. However if production like last night becomes the rule rather than the exception, that will be enough until the vision comes
f. Defense line and LB's were good enough last night but not great. However, given we were missing 2 of our regular rotation it was good enough.
g. We lost Spillane early and Ellis had a double digit tackle night and TWO note worthy hits. I NEVER thought he was worthy of all the bad press he got here, and now even the boo birds have to eat a little crow because he was outstanding last night beyond the 2 big hits. Between Spillaine, Ellis, Tavia, and Gibbons and Mapu we have 5 LBs who have a variety of skill sets who can give us solid play and depth we need at inside LB. No one is "great" all are pretty good because they aren't asked to do too much.
h. Now the elephant in the room. The fatal flaw. For once again we couldn't generate a single four man pass rush that could immediately pressure the QB, let alone sack him. Even when we blitzed him with 5 and 6 man rushes we only got instant pressure maybe 3/4 times and only one resulted in a sack. THIS is the area that needs to looked at before the playoffs to see what can be done to improve this need. Not sure what can be done at this point instead to look at some other rush and blitz combinations. The players are who they are. Clearly we are better with Milt in the line up. Barmore is far more effective with him in the line up. But this is THE are of #1 need this off season. We need one of our first 2 picks to be an edge rusher, and our #1 FA needs to be one too. (and I DON'T mean Chaisson either)
i. (DISCLAIMER) I have NEVER called the offensive plays or coordinated the offense when I was a HC. I DID have to understand offensive concepts because I was always in charge of the defense even before I was a HC. But I need Josh to listen to me just this once. We need to add a 3 plays series of a RPO that we can run in both directions and from under C and from shotgun.
We we are inside the 10 we are having trouble now. Teams are just digging in and just beating our straight dives into the middle and off tackle and QB sneaks. So our plan B has been to announce pass and do that to mediocre success. Either way NOTHING is easy for us down there. I suggest this option as a way to threaten the edges and thus loosen up the middle. We have speed at both RB and QB regardless of how we choose to align our 11, we can threaten the edges. The other thing I would suggest to Josh is to look at the Bears/Eagles game and checks some of the Bears running schemes. Lots of angle blocking and KO's. Those schemes got what was a moribund running game going to a tune 240+ yds. Maybe these schemes could open a few more holes. Just a suggestion. If you think this is an interesting topic I can go more into detail on how the RPO works and some of those blocking schemes. (BTW- they all go back to Tubby Raymond's Delaware Wing T schemes that were popular in the early 60's when I was in HS.)
j. Sure he looks like one of those odious preppies from some bad 80's movie, but I like Jackson Dart. He's tough, skilled, and aggressive and shows a lot of the same things I liked about Maye last season. It was interesting that he wasn't pissed at Ellis for the hit. He seemed to be invigorated by it. Kind of remind be of Brady after that big hit that knocked his helmet off. Brady bounced up fired up. So did Dart. No, the Giants got the best QB of this draft, If he survives the initiation process he should be a good one.
k. BB had the solution to the Ref problem years ago. It was simple. Coaches could challenge any play and could challenge anything. a catch, a penalty, an out of bounds, anything at all. If you think that guy clearly held your guy, you can challenge it. And if you win your first 2 you get a 3rd. When you use them up, you are out of luck. No automatic reviews. The refs are part of the game and bad calls are just like bad bounces or bad plays...part of the game and you live with them. They help as often as they hurt.
