Week 15 Post-game AMA: The Backup Show
I believe I saw Foskey get a few snaps during the game while Chase was dealing with his hand injury. The one play I did notice was he got stonewalled vs the LT. Any hope for Foskey becoming a good rotation player?
On a fourth down got to have it play, what are your thoughts on going to your number 1 option vs trying to surprise the other team with going with the least likely option?
For example, I forgot the game but Carr threw a jump ball to Cedric Wilson on 4th down rather than going to Taysom or Alvin.
Foskey hasn't shown me much this year, but then again neither has the rest of the DL. Though I will say--last game, Cam Jordan looked a little like his old self. There were a handful of plays where he was so quick off the ball that he was 2 steps into his pass rush before the rest of the DL came out of their stances. No he doesn't sustain his rush like he used to, but especially in home games, he's still got that get-off.
Back to Foskey... honestly there just isn't too much I can say. He hasn't pulled a Trey Hendrickson or anything close to that. He looks pretty mid. Not bad enough to cut (he's on a cheap contract), but also not so good that I would shy away from treating edge rusher as a need going into next season.
On the fourth down question--I really am a believer in repping the sh*t our of situationals. I put 4th down in the same category as 3rd, so we rep those together. My answer to your question would be that while the chess match does factor in--what the defense expects vs. what you do--it's also about having a play that you (and more importantly, your players) are really confident in.
During Brees later years, that meant an undercenter run/pass option (the presnap decision type) married up with a 1-step bullet slant to Michael Thomas. If Brees had the 1-on-1 with Thomas that's where he'd go. When you have Taysom, anything 4th and less than 3 you put him in and run QB power or counter or some kind of 11-man run game RPO.
These are your dominant weapons and your best chance of converting. If you start trying to go "well they expect me to go this so I'll do this" you end up overthinking.
THAT SAID... yes, sometimes you need to mix it up and not be predictable.
I'll give you an example from personal experience. This past season, in our semi-final game, we were down 20-0 at halftime and on the cusp of being eliminated from the playoffs. Everything had gone wrong. We rallied in the second half and came back to tie the game and take it into overtime. On our first overtime drive we scored on a slant-go to our #1 WR who had been pretty integral in the comeback. We gotta go for 2, so we line up and I got the play in fast. We were down to our 3rd string RB and had pretty much abandoned the running game in the 2nd half because of that. Still, I called G/H counter and we scored the 2 point and won.
Was that based on something I saw right then? No. It was just a feeling from the ebb and flow and my gut telling me that going back and trying to hit a fade to the guy who had just scored and been going ham on our opponent all half had a lower percentage chance of succeeding. Of course there's a counter-argument to that--be stubborn with your best play/player, make the defense stop it (the best example being the Seahawks not running the ball with Marshawn Lynch on the goal line to win the Super Bowl)--but these things really come down to gut instinct. Counter was good play for us, schematically, and even with our old, slow, 3rd string RB, I believed we'd get it in.
In the end the right play is the one that works. If it doesn't work, it's gonna be second-guessed until the end of time. If the Seahawks had completed that slant for a TD instead of it being picked off, Pete Carroll would be a HOF genius. If the surprise onside in the SB vs. the Colts hadn't worked, it would forever be a stain on Sean Payton's career.
This is just the nature of the game.