DCOrange

I don't think separation data is generally very good yet but Shakir has pretty much always been below average or downright bad in terms of YPRR vs. man. He's always been great against zone.

That doesn't change the fact that our team was 9th in the league in passing yards. Josh himself wasn't top 10 because he got pulled out of so many blowouts.

This hasn't changed. We're still #2 in the league in offensive yards and #5 in points this season. #2 and #3 in terms of points and yards on a per drive basis.

We've been top 10 in passing yards every season since 2020 including this year.

Where does this slow plodding offense fit into the fact that we are one of the highest scoring offenses every year? During our streak of division wins, we've gone from averaging 2:59 per drive to 3:02. Do you really think those 3 seconds are the difference between being up-tempo and trying to score score score vs. just trying to kill the clock? We're also averaging fewer plays per drive and more yards per drive than the 13 seconds season.

Completely different topic, but Shakir is a weird one for me because he's clearly the best WR we have right now, but winning from the slot is also the easiest role vs. what we've asked Palmer, Gabe, Keon, etc. to do and despite all the good things Shakir brings to the table, he's never been particularly good at winning against man coverage even with the advantages that playing out of the slot afford you. We have way bigger fish to fry on this offense but I don't think it would be all that difficult to find an upgrade to Shakir too even though he's a pretty good player and again, the best of our bunch.

Well I assume they watched him in college rather than just looking at the stats lol. He was always this player and has only gotten better at rushing the passer in the NFL. It was a very well known part of his scouting report in college that he mostly feasted off of the pressures that his teammates generated (and was legitimately good at rushing the passer when he lined up as the DT on 3rd downs but that's not what we drafted him for). Again, it's a valuable skill set to have, but he's never been a guy you expected to just go out and win on the edge.

Okay I feel less crazy now. Despite our horrendous run defense, Rousseau has been the bright spot there IMO. In terms of pass rushing, he is what he's always been; he sets the edge and generally does a good job of seeing how the QB slides up or out of the pocket and then he reacts and finishes the play. Even dating back to college, basically all of his sacks were plays where someone else got the initial pressure and Rousseau finished the play. It's a valuable skill to have but not really the kind of skill that will dominate games and put fear in the QB. He's a good player, but his skillset is one that lends itself to him being dependent on his teammates to really shine and as we've lost guys like Oliver, Hoecht, etc., and Bosa's play has slipped, that's eroded Rousseau's ability to be a difference maker too.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but man, the optics of firing a guy that's generally considered a top 10-15 coach to hire someone who just got fired from one of the most patient but inept organizations in the league for underperforming and generally being a nightmare to work with would really be something lol. I suspect if McDermott is gone, Beane is too and we're bringing in a brand new voice rather than someone from the old regime. There will be other, better options out there.

I know it's cool to hate McDermott right now, but I promise you he did not watch our offense hang 40 points in a win and pull Brady aside to chastise him for scoring too much lol. Houston is just a lot better defensively than Tampa is and both of our tackles seemed to be playing hurt.

This is the best answer. Would add on to this that it slightly goes beyond the plays that Brady (or as the OP infers, McD) is calling too. They get the initial call in but as Josh looks over the defense, he is often changing things too. So the defense reacts a certain way to us motioning the RB out wide and we think we have numbers out there now so we run that screen pass instead of the initial play call. Light box; we audible to a run, etc. To an extent, the defense is dictating what we do on offense (though it kinda goes both ways, right? We see the heavy box and hit the screen pass successfully a few times and theoretically you start to get the defense to come out with lighter boxes to take the screen away). But yeah, ultimately our offense is very limited by our WRs inability to get open. That's not to say they're the only issue. Josh has relatively struggled in his pre-snap reads this year after showing a lot of improvement in previous seasons, his willingness to take the easy yards has been inconsistent this season (and for an offense that struggles to get open, we kinda need to take the easy yards any time we can), between Josh and the OL we've really struggled with certain blitz looks this season, etc. Would also add on to this that last night for example, yes our WRs struggled to create separation, but there was also often no safety help. It was purely 1 on 1 and Josh was unwilling to give his guys chances to win. He finally tried with Gabe at the very end and Gabe was inches away from making the play. Those kinds of throws aren't high probability completions, but they were available to Josh basically all game and he just opted to take sacks instead of giving his guys an opportunity. TLDR: WR is the biggest issue in the offense and improving the WR room probably fixes a lot of our other issues, but it's seemed to snowballed into hurting other position groups too. Hopefully we address it in the offseason and having better WRs allows Josh to return to MVP form, OL looks a bit more in sync, etc., but it's also possible that these other issues could linger.

We did take a bunch of deep shots this week though. Josh just didn't throw them well.

This being the week everyone seems to have had their last straw with Coleman is just really odd to me. He hasn't developed as much as people wanted and I think the front office did him no favors just throwing him out there as our X with zero competition for snaps, but this was probably the best game of his career so far. If Josh had just gotten the ball to him, we probably win that game and are celebrating a breakout performance from Coleman. It's not even an exaggeration to say a normal Josh performance probably results in Coleman having over 150 yards and at least 3 TDs this past week. Instead, Josh continued to struggle with his ball placement and continued to just be out of sync, missing reads, etc., and Coleman's performance was wasted. It's fair to argue that having a big game against a terrible secondary still isn't impressive, but we've been begging for someone to threaten the defense down the field all year and Coleman was able to beat Miami deep several times and Josh just couldn't make the throws for whatever reason.

I think this is pretty fair to be honest. There's diminishing returns in replacing your best WR vs. addressing your weaker WRs. The issue is in retrospect, McConkey is undoubtedly an upgrade and that's better than what we've gotten from Coleman, and also, McConkey probably would have fared fine as our Z. My issue with Shakir is he's never been particularly good at separating against man coverage, and doing that from the slot is the easiest role in the offense so if he struggles with that, it makes things more difficult for everyone. Great YAC dude though and has generally done a good job of finding holes in zones.

I think folks (seemingly including Beane) thinking McConkey was only a slot WR was a mistake, but he definitely is not an X which is what we were trying to address. In retrospect though, McConkey would be a significant upgrade over Shakir in the slot and while that isn't what we were looking for, it would be nice to have even if Shakir is a decent player himself.