HappyDays

A few nuggets from a Dianna Russini article at The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/5007267/2023/10/28/nfl-week-8-news-trade-deadline?source=user-shared-article

I just don't see any good trade options to improve our defense all that much. None of the DT ideas I've seen excite me at all. A true #1 caliber CB is unlikely to be traded. WLB is a non-premium position and can be papered over just fine. On defense the realistic path to substantial improvement is Rousseau, Miller, and Oliver recovering from their nagging injuries and becoming the best versions of themselves. On offense on the other hand there is no realistic path to substantial improvement with the current personnel. Nobody is playing injured, we're kind of just stuck with the limitations we have on that side of the ball. Adding Hopkins or Henry creates an immediate and clear path to substantial improvement.

No. The Bucs are a poorly coached team playing on a short week and seemed totally unprepared. They had crazy off coverage alignments and never adjusted, which allowed us to funnel the ball to Davis in a way that we normally can't. To his credit he was able to make a couple plays after the catch, but we have seen him have these sudden high production games in the past before falling back into 2 catches on 5 targets for 27 yards the following week. Don't be a prisoner of the moment. A WR that can play outside is still a big need. To me, of the realistic available targets, Hopkins makes way more sense than anyone else. Right now in obvious man situations we are always throwing the ball to Diggs. That's obviously the right read 100% of the time given our current personnel, but Diggs is not a contested catch specialist and is not all that great at dealing with physical coverage, so if he doesn't outright win the route the ball likely falls to the turf. One of our drives against the Bucs in the 2nd half stalled out for exactly that reason, and it was at a time when we desperately needed to get out of our offensive rut. So now add Hopkins into the mix. Suddenly defenses have to be very concerned about those jump balls/contested catches and Allen can just kind of chuck it up to him, instead of always relying on Diggs to win his route. That hopefully will pull defenses out of man coverage more frequently which gets us into favorable zone looks that we can beat with our preferred spread formations. Hopkins also gives us an actual downfield explosive presence that we currently don't have at all. I'm at least intrigued by the idea of Derrick Henry because Murray has not been good the past couple weeks and we currently have no goal-to-go run offense. Henry/Cook would be a great 1-2 punch, arguably the best in the league. But I would prefer to lean into our strength which is obviously passing the ball downfield.

You could make an argument that the only difference between last week and this week is that when we punted the ball in a TD to win situation, we did it with 30 seconds on the clock instead of 2 minutes on the clock. Because I have zero faith our defense would have stopped the Bucs on that drive if they had more time to go down the field. Honestly the game script was pretty similar to last week, just inverted. Our offense still stalled out for multiple drives in a row. Allen magic was the primary reason for our TD drives. The defense choked repeatedly at the end. In this game the clock saved us more than anything. If only Knox had been put on IR one week sooner. Kincaid would have made that 4th down catch and we likely would have won. So far as actual offensive improvements that is a big one, and I will also throw in Shakir's strong performance with the caveat that I'd like to see it more than once before declaring it a real trend.

The offense we ran last night is probably our best shot at winning games given the current personnel, but it is still way too reliant on perfect execution on long drives and at least a couple Superman plays from Allen. We have completely lost our deep passing offense. Diggs and Davis are not YAC specialists so quick passes to them is good for getting into manageable down distances, but as we saw last night any little miscue or failure in execution leads to a stalled drive. Then again other than Miami and maybe Philadelphia every offense is struggling with deep passing right now, so this might just be the new world in the NFL. And if that's the case they have to make getting a true elite YAC specialist a priority. A lot of those RPO quick passes to Davis could have gone to the house if thrown to an explosive player.

Yeah this is a case of people not understanding the play. We played the whole thing exactly right and the Bucs were nowhere close to coming down with it. To be fair Al Michaels is totally clueless and his replay analysis of that play is really what's driving this entire discussion. How do you announce football games for as long as he has and still not understand the player responsibilities on hail marys?

McDermott has always been bad at closing out games. 13 seconds, the Hail Murray, this year alone all 3 of our losses came at least partially because of poor coaching decisions near the end. It's a huge concern for trying to win a championship, we can't keep faltering in those critical moments in high leverage situations.

Some of the narratives on here about Josh have been absolutely insane. Never seen anything like it from any other fanbase.

That's ultimately on the coaches though. Morse snapped the ball so clearly the plan was to snap it if a defensive player jumped Offside. Allen and Morse didn't go rogue, that was the call. The problem with that plan is that you're asking players on the field to identify an Offside, and if they're wrong you get a really stupid looking outcome. Honestly a smart coach would tell his defense to intentionally fake jump Offside in obvious situations like that. On 2nd and 1 there's just no need for that trickery. Get to the 4th quarter and run James Cook on the next play.

Here's the new offense: Diggs, Davis, Kincaid, Shakir. That's our new base personnel. From what we saw last night it's pretty good although I wish we had some more juice on the outside. Quick short passes to Diggs and Davis is not an ideal game plan but I guess it's the best we can do. I do worry about what happens when Knox comes back. I would hate to disrupt what's working out of some unfounded obligation. Maybe the medical staff can find out that his injury is worse than it seemed 😉

Yeah the 3rd down play call gets all the hate, for good reason, but the 4th down play call was arguably just as bad. It's no better than a goalline fade. It's a one read play and you don't give your best playmaker in Allen any chance to find a way to score if the concept doesn't work. Plus it opens up potential for a 99 yard pick 6. What sucks is that we're stuck with Dorsey's play calling this season no matter what, McDermott isn't going to find a justification to fire him. So McDermott himself needs to take more ownership of the offense and get some of these garbage play calls in critical moments out of there. You know who I wish Dorsey would emulate? Ben Johnson. Not in the sense that he can be as creative as Johnson is, but in the way Johnson knows what his players are good at and calls a select few plays that he knows they can execute. Like how has Dorsey not realized by now that Murrary running from shotgun at the goalline is a very low percentage play? We can talk all day about the concept and why it's run that way and yadda yadda, but ultimately our set of players clearly cannot execute that play call. So just stop doing it. Same with the quick swings/screens to Diggs. Occasionally they work but usually they are a waste of a down. Take them out of the playbook.

I'm not complaining about the punts. I thought based on the flow of the game up to that point both of them made sense. I would have kicked a FG on 4th and goal on our second drive too. I'm usually a believer in taking points early (unless facing a really good offense) and playing field position when up 2+ scores. My complaint is about the play calling that got us into 4th downs. Too predictable, too vanilla, we went away from players and plays that worked earlier in the game. We have to stop falling into offensive ruts that last an entire quarter or more. That formula is not conducive to winning a Super Bowl and we've seen it for 4 consecutive weeks now. I agree a fast start/bad finish is better than the opposite because it helps the defense tee off a bit, but it is still not a good result and we shouldn't be satisfied. Plus I wouldn't call 3 points on two drives a "fast start" anyways, but at least we moved the ball. No reason we shouldn't have scored 31+ in this game.

So on one hand I understand the instincts of the fanbase to want Josh to get the ball out fast, but on the other hand we saw tonight the downside of always living in that world - Nonstop quick short passes leads to long drives that carry no margin for error from Dorsey or the players. We have no YAC specialists so most of those passes are getting tackled within 4 yards of the catch point. Slow and methodical sounds good in theory, but in reality because of how our offense is constructed it means every drive is a lot of grind it out work and usually relies on Allen making at least one Superman play just to keep the drive going or score a TD. I guess it looks a little prettier on the field but the final result is still below par.

Allen throws to Diggs in obvious single man coverage situations every time. That read is built into the offense. I will credit Diggs with that one failed drive in the 2nd half but Dorsey was responsible for a lot more of the failed drives. We don't have YAC receivers or contested catch specialists and our OL is average so our margin for error is small. Dorsey can't be the reason that some of our drives stall out.

By default it's an improvement, but 0 points through the final 25 minutes is also really bad. And closing out two good looking drives to start the game with just 3 points combined, directly because of poor play calling, is also very bad. I'm glad one of Dorsey's bad instincts has been unintentionally snuffed out, but his other bad instincts are still there and repeatedly costing us points. We scored 1 less point than we did against the Pats. That's not really an improvement. Slow start or slow finish doesn't matter, it leads to the same result. He needs to find some consistency or he needs to be shown the door.

Well this represents the same problem, just inverted. You can't go entire quarters or longer without putting together a single good drive in consecutive games. I liked the general tempo and personnel usage of the offense tonight. But overall I did not like the play calling. And play calling has been a persistent issue this year.

Again the offense is too streaky. We'll put together a few nice drives then disappear, or vice versa. Three weeks in a row now where we've gone like 20+ minutes of game time without putting any points on the board. A lot of situational play calls just don't make sense at times.

There are still some fundamental problems with the offense and defense. The defense at least has an injury excuse. The offense doesn't. Several drives in the 2nd half that could have put the game away and we just stalled out repeatedly. That stupid attempt to draw them Offside on 2nd and 1 was poor coaching. The vanilla play calling was poor coaching. The 1st and 2nd drive of the game ending with just 3 points combined was a result of poor coaching. I really think coaching is holding the offense back more than the players.

Allen Kincaid Davis Shakir Poyer Martin

That was the longest 90% win probability quarter I've ever watched

There is zero comparison between this and 13 seconds.

Are you for real?? 20 seconds left and they need a TD!

That's why you punt twice from midfield. One 1st down and the game is just about over because we played the clock correctly.