Hartline says He's very excited about our offense and the ''Spread concepts''

IDK Deej, Henne had max protects last yr so often, have to wonder how he will do without the safety blanket so to speak.

Like the personnel in the System, but think the #2 te position is up for grabs.

 

IMO Hartline is surprisingly athletic.

 

TBH, thought we could have used Greg Camarillo, probably still could use him as Beast will miss a game this yr, Hartline has to show he is durable enough to go for 16 games and heading into the yr with inexperienced backups doesn't make a whole lot of sense imo.

 

Whatta you guys think? In a thread awhile back we were discussing how spread concepts have been in the NFL a bit for awhile now, but they are definitely becoming more and more prevalent. I would be excited to see some of that mojo. For awhile now, our running game seemed so predictable and conservative. It's..up the middle, up the middle, up the middle and oooh..an occasional off-tackle. If nothing else, I would love to see the spread open up the run game. Pouncey's ability to pull could really help as well. I'm actually excited about our run game this year. Pouncey, Thomas and Clay are versatile players that could do well in different schemes.

Do you like Henne in the system? This is not meant to be a bash on Henne, but no, imo. He is NOT the QB you want running the spread. His skill set is not for the spread. You can say; "well we can bring in a guy to run some of the spread stuff and use Henne for the more traditional stuff", but then you're splitting too many snaps in practice and not letting guys get into a rhythm, etc, etc, etc, and creating a whole mish-mash. With that said, I think we can be A LOT more creative with Henne and put him into better situations to succeed and the players we drafted can go a long way in that regard. Let's hope Daboll is creative and can think out of the box and just needed a new situation to thrive.. I'm not going to put a ton of stock into what he did in Cleveland.

Does the scheme hide his major weakness..Lack of athleticism? Spreads usually need an athletic enough QB, so I will say no here.

Is this great news for our team? I definitely think it could be. Only time will tell.

How do you like our overall skillsets from our offensive positions to execute? Just looking at the guys we drafted....pretty good, imo.

An athletic center seems to be a must for running some spread? I think a guard or center whom is athletic to pull and block on the move, but strong as well, is VERY important for most concepts. That's something I've wanted here for so long now. I'm praying we will finally see some killer screens.

 

Henne is not accurate enough to be a spread QB IMO.

 

IMO one of the main problems with our offense last year was the predictability and poor use of our skill players that resulted in poor spacing. I have always maintained that Henne is most probably not a franchise guy, but he was clearly better last year when in multiple receiver sets so putting him in more spread sets would seem to be putting him in more situations where he has better odds of success. And we added a few potential targets that we hope will improve the spacing for our offense. We also added a much more talented player at the pivot (key to the running game) so if Pouncey grasps things as quickly as his brother then that bodes well for the running game.

 

Henne's best game in college was running a wide open, spread-esque passing attack in the Capitol One Bowl against Florida.

[video=youtube;uygjoeTs9rw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uygjoeTs9rw[/video]

 

Well as for Henne, I think he will do okay in the spread especially if it has more run and shoot elements in it then what has come to be thought of as "the spread", in the R&S the premium is not on an athletic qb it is on a Qb who can get the ball out of their hand quickly and accurately as well as take the pounding hits that will come with having empty backfield looks.

 

I've been telling you guys since we hired our new OC that he is bringing a big focus on the spread with him. We will be multiple formations like NE but the shotgun and pistol spread scheme will be a large part of what we do. I think it's all about Ross laying down his expectations for what he considers "exciting" football.

 

Max protect against defenses that didn't have to even consider the run and instead just went flat out, balls to the wall rush the QB with no concerns for their gap coverage and where Henne had 2 WR's covered by 6 DB's. No one can suceed in that situation.

 

I read this about Henne often around here. I have asked numerous people, I think maybe even you once, to explain to me why you think Henne, who has a career 61% comp percentage, isn't accurate.

 

Because that worked so well for Petrino in Atlanta ?

 

I've always believed that Henne was a rookie QB and played like a rookie QB. However, he wasn't the only, nor the biggest problem on this Dolphins team. Now, I'm not going to sit here and predict that Henne will one day be some great, HoF QB. Just like I won't sit here and predict that he's going to be out of the league in 2 years. Why? Because under the circumstances he's had to play it's very hard to predict anything about the guy.

The ONLY things that can't be argued is that Henne has shown flashes of being a good QB, but he has also been thrust into an offense that had no identity, was run by an incompetent OC, had no running game, had no or limited experience with any of his WR's, and was thrown under the bus so often that he had to always look over his shoulder for fear of getting "benched". There is not one QB in the NFL who could succeed under those circumstances. Much less a guy in his second season starting.

 

Well actually that was not the issue, the problem was "we" went max protect, and the blitz never came, teams knew they could bluff the offense into going max pro without having to blitz and then you had 2 on 6 football.

 

Depends, if we run the pistol Thiggy makes sense, if we run the spread with pistol elements Young would make sense.

If we go R&S but with tight ends then Henne will do fine imo.

 

Personally, I thought ball placement was an issue at times for Chad Henne last season.

 

Hmm, for me I thought Henne was decent in the ball placement dept, if anything I think he does not challenge himself or the defense often enough especially with his arm strength.

 

Didn't say it was bad, just said it was an issue at times.

 

What I did not like about the 2010 offense, and do not know what the 2011 offense will look like, was the routes being run.

Very few were designed to hit the Wr in stride and heading up the field, the were safer, back to the defender to receive the ball types of routes that will end up with completions most of the time, but the Wr is not going anywhere.

 

No damn use of Slants. Pisses me off. We see a lot of Cover 2 and no use of Double Slants.

Only in Dan Hennings offense.

 

Yes, they sometimes bluffed, but at other times they didn't because of the very reasons I mentioned.

Again, no Qb could have succeeded in that mess of an offense last season.

 

He just can't place the ball very well. His comp % is high, but a lot of it has to do with the routes that are being run. A comeback isn't going to require the same type of placement a slant will.

The slant is a play that should be our bread and butter with Brandon Marshall on the field. But Henne wasn't able to hit the receivers in stride with that pass. One play that sticks out to me was the second game against the Jets. Marshall had Cromartie with no safety help, he got inside leverage on him, but Henne didn't place the ball well enough. It was a completion, but Marshall ended up having to reach back to catch the pass, which allowed Cromartie to make the tackle. It will go down as a 10 yard completion and first down, but the reality is that was an opportunity for a TD that Henne didn't capitalize on.

 

Of course there were times when Henne could have led his WR better or underthrew it in order to give his WR a better chance, or threw it to the inside vs the outside shoulder etc etc...However, ball placement is different than accuracy. Ball placement is learned with experience and getting to know better your WR's. Henne has had neither the playing experience or the time to gel with his WR's.

Henne has a career 61% comp percentage and that, IMO, is far from having "accuracy issues".

 

Henne is not a guy that has elite accuracy (one of the reasons I don't think he'll ever be a franchise guy), but his accuracy is in the "good enough" range.

 

I agree. I think Henne started to doubt himself so much last season due to the style of offense, his OC, lack of timing with his revolving door of WR's, etc etc.

He can sling it and IMO when he gets that "swagger" back he'll play well. How well is the question though.

 

What do you consider "elite"? I mean, and granted the rules were far different, but Marino's first two years he completed 61% of his passes, Montana 63%. In today's rules Brady completed 62% in his first 2 seasons, and Manning completed 58%.

I'm not trying to compare Henne to any of those QB's, but it does show that Henne has a pretty good compl % when you put it into perspective.

 

I'm aware.

Never said that.

 

You're joking, right? Why would you think a WR in the NFL is not athletic?

 

I know I was preaching to the choir on that first part, but I had to get it out there for some others who may be reading my posts.

Also, I know you never said he did have accuracy issues, I just wanted to reiterate what I said earlier. haha

 

If you look at when he was having success back at Michigan, this was often what they were doing. And they were also doing it utilizing quick, three-step drops as well. Thus his excitement over adding that to our offensive scheme.

 

Yeah, but it's also the type of passes. His completion % can easily look better when he's playing "Checkdown Chad".

 

And, as Matt Williamson pointed out the other day, with our interior line so banged up and Henne being so immobile, teams also knew right where to hit us when they did send extra pressure.