PBF81

To start, I'd love to see the data on that and what it means as put out. I'm not buying it at all from a decision-making aspect. Again, the issue isn't the throw itself, which you seem to be highlighting. It's about the decision as to whether or not, or where to throw to. What's the source of that? I'd like to look it over. It's hardly a stretch to realize that that's likely why he got the job. Yeah, who knows, but at this point if it doesn't work, McD may be out of lives. ... and scapegoats. I can see him blaming the defensive woes if they exist, on Babich, but Babich was his choice, ... again.

The question is how much does that offense have to rely exclusively on Allen to make that happen, particularly in the running game. According to the one camp report posted here today, he was down on the field and had his ankle wrapped. We must assume that it's nothing, but if it isn't nothing or gets worse, high-ankle sprain or whatever, then it will heavily impact his ability to run.

Well, OK, but the fact is that while you may believe that, it is not necessarily true. Remember, last season at this time there were zero issues whatsoever wrt Diggs, none, everything was hunky dory. He and Allen were forever besties, there was nothing between he and the team/McD, etc. That obviously turned out to not be 100% true to understate matters, really more like nearly entirely false. And yes, I understand your position, nor did I suggest that you think it will work out, but plenty reading it do think it's going to be all peaches and roses. You've read here. Insofar as the plan here goes, regardless of what it's called, how coaches refer to it, the official strategies involved, etc., it appears that the offense this year is attempting to be the type where creativity is used in the routes and receivers, and that the plan is for Allen to have the plays develop while hitting the open guy for whatever gain we can get, or thereabouts without much specificity being offered by the team/coaching staff contrarily. In short, the writing on the wall suggests a mitigation in our deeper passing game, focusing instead on the short-medium high-percentage passing game as they call it. Numerous people have in similar words stated as much here and elsewhere. If that's true, then it is also irrefutable that this will be the first time that Allen plays this way. He hasn't even typically much less consistently taken advantage of the short-medium higher percentage receivers that have been wide open in the past, opting instead to go deep, for better or for worse. So this will be new territory for him. All we have as a reference is Brady's system at the end of last season which produced below-average metrics for Allen, way below on the efficiency metrics. No doubt we're all curious as to how this shakes out. The one thing that we do know is that it'll be interesting one way or the other.

Yeah, that's the narrative, but the official narratives have proven to have not been entirely truthful often at best, lies at worst. If you merge the two, that was very likely the reason why Diggs wanted out. It's way premature for anyone to insist that this "new approach," and a style that Allen has yet to play regularly much less master to this date, will be an improvement. It sounds catchy, cook, even mildly innovative, but we've heard many things this time of year that never panned out. At best for the time being, we'll see how it shakes out. Pinning the entirety of the situation on a superficial narrative however doesn't line up with reality. I know you'll disagree, obviously, since implicitly you already have, but nonetheless.

LOL, you'd think that they could have ironed that table drape. It looks like someone pulled it out of the trunk of their car where it was all balled up.

Why not, we already have Allen at RB. Maybe he can play C too. This also implies that perhaps there was more to Diggs' release than has been let on. Because the reasons for his release now make even less sense at face value anyway.

Tough to say they'd have won the division, but it would have been much closer. I don't know why anyone is up in arms about this, if Rodgers stays healthy all season, and no doubt their prediction depends upon that, it should hardly be a reach that they win the division. If their offense supports their D like ours does, then their D is better than ours.

What do you mean, an African or a European swallow?

That will largely be the determinant as to how good we are this season. 🤞

Lighten up a little, I was just kidding, ... sort of.

No, you still missed it, the basis anyway. No need to discuss further however. I'm very open to the notion that it didn't mean as much as it may seem, but there is a difference, as pointed out, between us and the others.

No, as usual, you leapfrogged the primary point. No worries, I'm used to it.

Interesting comment. So I did some minor research. KC: Yes, in their worst season in 6 seasons. The year prior not the case. '21, the opposite. '20 not the case. Bal: To three above-average rushing teams. 3 of our 4 were against well below-average rushing teams. Neither team narrowly missed making the playoffs either and were not in the same situations, losing games to notably inferior teams more often than not. The difference must be coaching.

Yeah, we'll see how it shakes out this season.

That's a lot of QBs tho. You should also have some competency at the position presumably.

Well, OK, but the 4 games in which we allowed the most rushing yards, we lost. All games that we lost by less than a TD. The 6th most was the Giants, which we nearly lost. The 7th which we also lost. If you don't think that significant, so be it. 🙂

Well, let's hope that our 15th yardage and 28th ranked yards-per-carry against defense improves in that category. In the playoffs we allowed 252 rushing yards on 5.4 yards-per-carry in two games. We've neglected the run-D part of our defense that past couple of seasons in favor of smaller LBs that excel in defending the pass. Which is odd since McD's philosophy is that you need a good rushing game to win it all in setting his expectations for our offense, but defensively he obviously operates contrarily. The four games in which we allowed the most rushing yards, and in 5 of the 7 most, were losses. Three of those losses were against non-playoff teams.

He's got the postseason down, now he's working on the preseason. How is Nathan Peterman still in the league?

Come on now, that's not the proper TSW spirit. More emotion.

Did you get a rock? As to THREE and FOUR, see my post to Thurm above. On FIVE, thanks! IMO this is the season that McD's methodologies are exposed as being both dysfunctional as well a ill-fitted to an offense led by Allen. Well, other teams with lesser talent played better than we did offensively in the playoffs almost as a rule. It was our rushing D that did us in v. KC. Everyone lauds McD's Williams & Bernard, but our rush D predictably diminished and went from 5th to 15th in YPG allowed from '22 to '23, and from 14th to 28th in YPC allowed from '22 to '23. What's telling about that is that McD preaches balance in offense as if it's 1990, claiming that's how you win games (with the strongest armed QB in the league), while setting up his D to defend the run. At some point thinking like that can only be exposed. Your point on Spagnuolo appears to be at least somewhat trying to defer McD's incompetence off onto an embellishment of Spags. In his 16 playoff games with KC, his defenses have allowed 24+ points in half of them and over 30 in four of them. His average PA is 23 PPG, which is far from great, it's well below average on a season. In the playoffs it's in the average range. The average score of all teams in last season's playoffs was 24.7, but that doesn't include accounting for defensive of STs TDs, so it's somewhat lower than that after those are removed. Spags is good, but he's not so good that he should be shutting down Allen like he shuts down Jackson or Tagavailoa. The whole Diggs thing is and continues to be poor planning. They fully knew that there were issues last season but outright lied to us about them. It doesn't matter why, they did. You say that Diggs and Brady were not a fit, indeed, they were not. But neither are Allen & McD. That's about as poor a fit as can exist. McD controls Brady. It's impossible to separate Brady and McD. For anyone denying this or even on the bubble re: it, that'll clear up this season.

Thanks for the post! But let's keep this on point. That's fine, but it does not mitigate the fact that no one stepped up. It was a prime opportunity for someone to have done so. And the greater point, this is standard on McD's playoff teams for all and whatever that implies. On a side note, we barely beat KC during the regular season, a win that had it been a loss would have resulted in us missing the playoffs, with KC having Pacheco out. So while it has nothing to do with this particular game, the injury argument is a double-edged sword. Similarly, we barely beat the Chargers who were missing Herbert and Allen, the only two offensive players worth a crap on their offense. ... again, off-topic. The point is that if we're going to start explaining our losses away due to injuries, then we also in the same broad-brush way, need to explain some of our eked-out wins away in the same vein. I'm not sure we want to do that, particularly last season where a STs TD let us beat Miami, Herbert/Allen out let us beat the Chargers, a D TD handed us our win v. NE, and no doubt another one or two. Thank you! That's the primary point here. I say that it had a whole lot more than something to do, quite a lot to do in fact, with McD's inane complimentary football approach that insists that passing (with Allen as your QB that is) and rushing (with no RB of any significant consequence until further notice) needs to be balanced. 39 passing plays, 39 rushing plays That's not a coincidence. Allen was hardly perfect, either in that game or under Brady where on average he posted only better passing numbers than he did in 2019, and regarding the averages, only marginally so. Again, it's a huge season for the McDermott Way. But again, absolutely no one stepped up otherwise to propel us to a win. Very solid is one thing, doing more than merely contributing while not even hitting average performance for a starting player or as the top players for that game is hardly doing something to propel the team to a win. After reading New Era's post after yours, I decided to take a look at every playoff game for comps. In 12 other games and therefore 24 other team performances, only twice did a team not put up the combined receiving yards that our two leading receivers in our game referenced here, with one being Jackson on Baltimore, who's awful in the playoffs. otherwise, only 7 of 24 other teams failed to put up a receiver that got equal to or more than Shakir and Kincaid combined here. That means 17 of 24 teams played notably better in that regard, even against KC, including Miami; and even the playoff dysfunctional Jackson played better vs. KC than Allen did with Flowers posting more than Shakir/Kincaid combined, with 115. In a few cases teams had multiple players that did that and in one case Dallas had three, all over 100 yards receiving. New Era mentions that McCaffrey "only" had 22 carries for 80 yards against KC in the Super Bowl, which granted, isn't impressive. But he also went 8 for 8 in receptions and posted 160 yards from scrimmage and 5.3 yards-per-touch. Our leading YFS player in this game was Cook with 82 yards, on 3.7 yards-per-touch. Here's the thing, in our two playoff games, we had the second and third lowest net passing yards of all 26 playoff performances, and the our passing performance in vs. the Chiefs was the 3rd fewest total passing yards with the Steelers playoff game having been the 6th fewest passing yards of all 26 performances. Here's the thing, this "balanced approach" is what McD has said he wants. But it's what McD wants, despite having a generational talent at QB with an arm that is arguably the best in NFL history. It's also why under Brady, in all 9 games including the playoff games, Allen's yards-per-game average was what would have ranked 14th on the season, 11th not including the playoffs. This is what McD wants. If he didn't it wouldn't be the case. That's what he instructed Brady to do. Either way, having bottom-dwelling passing production in the playoffs when we have Allen is ridiculous. That absolute worst that it should have been is something well above average.

It's going to be interesting to see how this thread ages. Coleman may be better suited to a career in the stand-up comedy circuit than in the NFL.

That question explains quite a bit.

Quite a few here defend him arduously. Again, all because of and only because of Allen. He's a different player in the playoffs. Cook has sucked in the playoffs. No other offensive skill position player has done much of anything. He's averaged 13 carries for 48 yards and 1 rushing TD in four playoff games. 8 catches for 26 yards and nada in the TD column. That's crap. His only relatively decent game was against Pittsburgh and their below average rushing D. After that in three other games he's averaged 3.2 yards-per-carry. Shakir in four games has averaged 4 catches for 41 yards and a TD every other game. Kincaid, four catches for 52 yards and a TD every other game. Knox, three catches, 27 yards, and a TD every other game. We're putting up points because Allen becomes possessed in the playoffs. Not for any other reason. Take him out of the mix and we're likely 1-10 or 0-11 in the playoffs under McD.

In fairness to me, I have never defended Diggs' playoff performances in general. At the same time, what people fail to connect the dots on, is when the entire team besides a single player, Allen, underachieves with regularity in the playoffs, and that includes McD and his entire staff by the way, and also are incredibly inconsistent, at best re: coaching, then how can the head coach possibly be exempt from the lion's share of the blame. That's an absurd proposition yet one that seems to stand generally speaking. It's beyond mind-boggling. This season is going to be incredibly enlightening.