Rubes

Who's Lineman? Can he play right tackle?

Nobody with a brain expected Levy and Jauron to fix this right away. They inherited a mess on offense and defense, but a quality special teams unit. They had holes everywhere. You had to know that this would be a two or three year effort. Start plugging the holes one year, plug some more the second year and watch the first group mature. In the third year, you finish plugging the holes while the first two groups mature into solid players. There were that many holes to fill. I think they're doing a pretty decent job on defense so far, and that seems to have been the focus this first year. We're still pretty lousy at stopping the run and stopping teams at the end of games, but it's still the first year of the plan and so far I'm not disappointed in the effort. I think they might have underestimated the complete mess that is our offense, and I also think they ended up not getting their money's worth out of the stiffs they brought in for the line. Fowler will probably be serviceable, and Peters is decent, but beyond that we have, basically, nothing for a line. I expect this offseason we will see a focus on bringing in some better quality offensive linemen in free agency and a focus on offensive and defensive linemen in the draft. But I wouldn't expect more than one big offensive lineman FA signing, which means we still are two good offensive linemen away from a decent line. Those we draft next year will need at least a year to develop. A lot depends on if Pennington (or Butler) can prove by the end of the year that they belong in the league, if not on the starting line. Even if we focus 100% of our off-season efforts (FA and draft) on offensive linemen, we're still talking a couple of years to see that effort bear fruit. It sucks, but unfortunately that's the way it is, and we have to deal with it.

I can't really say that I disagree with any of that. This organization has been striking out on offensive linemen for so long, both in the draft and through free agency, that we are just a mess.

Cool, so let's have him drop back to pass 42 times so Indy can rack up 11 sacks. But he'll at least have the chance...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061109/ap_on_...e/space_shuttle My goodness.

On a related note... The #1 cause of death in China by an infectious disease is from...rabies.

Dammit...you beat me to it.

And here I thought you had something against Nate and Terrance.

Not until he tries to grab my wife's ass.

"I think we finally got to show what this team is really capable of." Problem is, I'm not sure who's going to be saying it.

Multitasking, man. Multitasking.

Wow, that's real?

Hey, that's cool. Can I start a thread of my own tomorrow?

Crashing down on 40 and still believe that JP deserves the whole season. He also deserves a line that can handle a blitz and a coordinator that can hide the weaknesses of the team rather than highlight them.

Sigh...I see the point was lost here. Regardless, just look at New England.

This makes far too much sense to be seen on this board.

Not at all...just that size is not critical for a successful quick slant.

It's called "game film".

Isn't that what I was saying?

At least this thread has lived up to its billing...

San Diego. I had a nice view of it from the upper deck. Bastard.

Parrish took a quick pass 50-something yards to the house against the Jets. Nice play. It was against a blitz, which it was designed to do. A thing of beauty. But like I always say, once a play works for this team, you can pretty much forget about seeing it again because it'll be taken out of the playbook.

I have been wondering this for months now. As for WR size, I'm sure Marvin Harrison can execute the quick slant just fine. He's one inch taller than Peerless Price and 5 pounds lighter.

I think you pretty much identified part of the problem right there. Can you count how many times JP took 3-step drops yesterday? Can you count how many times we threw a quick slant? A screen pass? A swing pass to a running back? I can think of one or two. Part of helping a young QB is to give him some easy throws. Quick drops, plant, and fire. Lienart was doing that very nicely against the Bears. I haven't seen Gradkowski, but I would guess that's what he's doing, too. Youu can't do too much of it, because teams won't respect the long ball. But that's what Brady does all the time. Favre was doing it all day yesterday. It's good for keeping the pass rush off your back, and it lets the QB get into a rhythm. Yet all I see from our coordinator and our QB are 7-step drops. Time and time again. Long developing plays. The TD pass to Evans required two moves, out and up, and the reason JP's pass was underthrown was because he basically couldn't plant his front foot to do it. He was about to get smacked in the face. Look, I am not a huge JP apologist, but we really do not have the offensive line to do excludive 7-step drops. I am dumbfounded as to why the coaches insist on leaving 3-step drop plays out of the playbook. The team appears to be incapable of picking up a blitz OR making a hot-read and hitting a receiver on a quick slant to counter a blitz. I haven't seen a whole lof of play-action or draw plays either, for that matter. I don't know if it's Fairchild/Jauron's plan to just force this kid to sit in the pocket and learn how to feel pressure and make decisions or what, but it's really puzzling to me.