Our Oline needs to step it up (1 Viewer)

[Shawn]

bushrod had multiple penalties last night, one of which negated a touchdown.

I believe he had two illegal procedure penalties. In both cases they were going on a visual count. The one that negated the touchdown was a questionable penalty, just a hair of a second early, and is the kind of thing that happens when you can't hear the snap count.

That guy has hardly had any penalties all year, and has done a great job out there on the edge.

 

[Shawn]

Stinchcomb has far outplayed Bushrod this year.

Bushrod has struggled all year and easily has been our worst lineman.

Last night was an absolute embarassment for the guy.

No he hasn't. You're completely wrong. Bushrod is playing better than last year, and has done a good job. He gave up a sack last week because Heath Evans ran into him and knocked him off his block.

I don't know what some of you guys are watching, but I think a lot of folks don't understand what's happening on the field. When a tackle lets a guy run right by him, it's almost always be design.

 

[Shawn]

They blitzed and overloaded and shifted on 75 percent of our offensive passing plays, what do you expect for us to stonewall a team thats constantly blitzing? They are going to get through if they continue to constantly blitz, what disappointed me was that we were unable to burn them on it. The line did fine considering that for most of the game they had to protect Drew from more men than they could handle often and both Reggie and Pierre were both awesome in blitz pickup. Bushrod is a decent starter at tackle, he is not elite and him going against arguably one of the best pass rushers in the league can't give anyone expectations of him winning that battle overall, Stinch is in the same position. Abraham obviously for most of the league needs to be chipped or something that helps nearly every tackle out there, the problem is that when the Falcons blitz alot like last night the backs/TE's cannot chip or atleast get in the way physically because they have to help out with blitzes in other areas.

I think the protection schemes were decent considering they blitzed us heavily almost every passing play. I think we should have had better hot routes, route running, and catching in the passing game. We were not prepared for them blitzing so much it's obvious because if we were Drew would have been slinging it out of there in .5 seconds on designed/well prepared hot routes.

Just to add to this point--most of the elite quarterbacks in the league can burn these blitzing schemes on quick slants to the middle of the field, either in the seam or behind the linebackers.

Brady, Peyton, Roethlisberger, etc...they will murder you on those routes, and can hit them on a quick drop.

Brees really can't do that. He's too short. It's one of the reasons teams can play so loose and dangerously with the alignments up front.

Brees is a great quarterback, but that's one of his vulnerabilities, and teams know it now. It creates a lot of problems for not only the offensive line, but for the tight ends and the backs who have to make pick-ups on the fly.

All it takes to pull a team out of that kind of scheme is to hit a few big plays--the pass to Colston, the pass to Moore or Meachem, a run like Ivory had against the Bengals, etc. "Almost" hitting those plays doesn't cut it, which is why "almost" catches like Colston had last nigh don't cut it.

There's a lot more going on out there than simply "the line sucks".

And having Chris Ivory is going to be huge for us in the playoffs. He's such a ferocious downhill runner, that linebackers and DB's can't get caught moving around when he has the ball. As great as Pierre Thomas is at times, Ivory really changes the balance of power up front, and makes the offensive line look better.

 

[Vrill]

How would some of you grade Evans season so far? I hope he isnt one of these guys who get a huge contract and then......well, you know.

 

[CantonLegend]

I don't think going for the big play a few times on third is establishing a tendency. Doing this a couple or few times during a game introduces an element of uncertainty into the situation and defenses can't overlook the possibility they may not get what they expect.... the first down play. I love the strategy. It's third and short .... what's it going to be? Long ball? Short pass? Run? Defenses don't know and can't play too tight. In this playoff stretch it will be impossible for defensive coordinators to predict what the Saints will do in this situation and they will have to prepare for all possibilities precisely because Payton is not displaying any tendencies.

im worried about the bolded statement.

id say about 70% of the time we are goin to throw the ball. that seems like a fairly easy thing to defend when you know its going to happen. the other 30% we are going to run......mostly out of a 2-back set and almost always its the I-formation. also notice that almost all of those runs are a 1 TE set. and when streif comes in as an elligible receiver we have only thrown it a handful of times. when we do throw, its normally out of shotgun and a lot of them are play action fakes. ive seen very few runs out of shotgun sets and im more fooled when drew doesnt fake a handoff than when he does.

our offense is very very predictable.....i just summed up the majority of our offense in a small paragraph.....imagine what defensive coordinators are doing when they scheme against our team

I see it more as very poor coaching per the offensive calls of SP. No RB draws, few screens, few short TE routes and way too many zero back sets to slow the rush. And I also agree that we should have gone no huddle a ton and wore the dirty birds nasty arses out. Yes we had some poor line play but SP sure didn't help them out any. But I'll take this great "heart win" by our guys all day long!

lots of pressure.....no extra protection......not many short routes

we cant run empty back sets without running a few short routes or checkdowns. especially when a team like atlanta is going to blitz like crazy all night. had we left a running back in the backfield to help block on a few more plays, drew wouldnt have taken so many hits and made those 2 bonehead plays.

the pressure yesterday was not on the Oline at all......it was almost all coaching and scheme mistakes. not leaving any extra protection against a team that is clearly going to be bringing heat is one of the worst mistakes you can make as a coach

 

[CantonLegend]

How would some of you grade Evans season so far? I hope he isnt one of these guys who get a huge contract and then......well, you know.

hes having another pro bowl caliber season.......im pretty confident hes not going to eat his way out of the league or get lazy like you are implying