11-26-2018, 09:49 AM
The thing is that this line can run block, they just can't do it consistently. More often than not what happens is one guy (or more) makes a mental error and it blows up the play. The problem on that safety wasn't that we got no push, it was that we had two on two and they both blocked the same guy. I obviously haven't done a large film study on this, but that's my distinct impression. If that's the case, then fixing it shouldn't be hard, in theory, better health and better coaching should go a long way.
I also wouldn't be surprised if, given an off-season to really look at what it takes to be a team that passes to open up the run instead of the opposite, we can scheme some better runs. A lot of our problems with the "turtling" come from running up the gut 3 times, but there are other ways to do it, things we used to do somewhat frequently but have kinda abandoned (jet motion) and some we do but not enough (QB keeping on read option). I bet adding more RPO (which afaik we don't run at all) would help too.
Anyway, we'll see. In theory we have the pieces for a top-5 offense next year. If that can come together and if the defense can get back to "not a liability" we could be in for a special year. We'll see.
I also wouldn't be surprised if, given an off-season to really look at what it takes to be a team that passes to open up the run instead of the opposite, we can scheme some better runs. A lot of our problems with the "turtling" come from running up the gut 3 times, but there are other ways to do it, things we used to do somewhat frequently but have kinda abandoned (jet motion) and some we do but not enough (QB keeping on read option). I bet adding more RPO (which afaik we don't run at all) would help too.
Anyway, we'll see. In theory we have the pieces for a top-5 offense next year. If that can come together and if the defense can get back to "not a liability" we could be in for a special year. We'll see.