Maybe , the ones who tell us we have two number one draft picks for next year and that NE only won one game all year against playoff teams.
Great Thread. The only problems i saw besides the 5 minutes of Hell is the huge plays we gave up to their Tight-End. That's got to be fixed. It's a problem that Ireland has failed to provide talent for to six.
They won 2 playoff games so obviously it was more than one , plus the game they beat Denver during the regular season. That makes 3 games. All year includes all year.
No offense. Three points if you subtract the punt return for a TD. Four preseason games plus this one. Average of 9.4 offensive points per game. We can dissect the reasons all you want. But in the end the offense is broken. It doesn't produce points.
Um, OK. But my whole point was that we won 6 of 9 at one point last season. Someone said we didn't beat any playoff teams. I said NE beat one PO team all year (and they were AFC champs) so counting how may playoff teams this or that squad has beaten is a moot point. You play the teams on your schedule and you try to beat them, period.
Offense will be a problem all year. I could have told you that after watching the first week of training camp. The defense and ST will have to ball out for us to have a chance at winning games. The D/ST played their asses off today and it wasn't enough, but there are only 3 other teams on the schedule as good as the one we played today so let's see what happens.
Well, your definitely downplaying the importance of the wr position there. But I'd say te as well. Fasanos no show stopper and even clay had a big drop today. Our safeties are weak. Could upgrade at both olbs IMO.
The only bright side I can see is that the offense probably won't stay at a production of 9.4 points per game. Today we reached our nadir. As the season continues, they'll pull something together. But we can't play Wannyball, expecting the defense to bail us out; they're not that good themselves. They can play the run, but the pass defense is terrible because we have no pass rush and a bad secondary. If we have to be blitzing to generate any pass rush, that leaves the middle of the field open for tight ends and receiving backs to continue to kill us. Anf if we give the other teams' quarterbacks all day to throw, their wideouts will pick our secondary apart. The offense has to improve drastically for us to win any games at all this year.
I'm not downplaying the importance of the WR position at all. It was an honest question. What I think is that our lack of talent at WR hinders the entire offense and we will struggle on that side of the ball until we upgrade the talent there. Obviously we can upgrade at OLB, LT, or any other position for that matter. My point was that relative to other teams our talent level is pretty decent.
Did you see the game today? Houston has a top end offense and we held them in check for most of the game. You cant expect a defense to make stops when you turn the ball over 4 times in 5 minutes. When we gave them decent field position the defense played well and outside of NE we wont play an offense as good as Houston's for the rest of the season. I agree that the offense needs to improve I just don't see it happening. We ran the ball well, we struggled to create seperation, the pass pro was inconsistent, so was the QB. I think that's what we're going to see for the rest of the season.
I agree the defense played well. Starks had great interior pressure early. I haven't seen anyone mention his two sacks.
You don't know how ****ing happy I am that someone else here gets the big picture causality behind what happened on the field. Perfect description of how these things affected the outcome. Heck, with better OL protection and better separating/route running/deep threat receivers even the GAMEPLAN would have been different... Our OC would not have had to scheme mainly short drop passes... So the Texans could not have assumed the passes were all short drop quick passes for 5-10yds and woild t have committed to tipping balls instead of trying to reach the QB, meaning fewer tipped passes. Etc etc. The weakness of Tannehill's that was revealed was the result of **** rolling downhill from the OL weakness and WR weakness to the OC scheming around it to Tanny having to execute around it.
Problem is, Mike Sherman's always been a short passing game guy (WCO influence) and that didn't change last season at A&M, so if he really did throw a lot of quick today, what does that mean going forward? Last year, his deepest work consisted of 12-10 comebacks, lol.
He also made a great play to stuff Arian Foster on 3rd and 1 on Houston's second series. Good game all around from him.
Show me a team with a rookie QB that doesn't have this problem, and I'll show you a team experiencing something unusual.
GM, Oline, Pass rushers, LBs, Corner, and Safety This team is lacking talent. The Dline is probably are strongest area but we are missing another talented pass rusher opposite Wake.
Most "successful" rookies are asked to come in and not fuc^ everything up. The difference with our team is that we need our rookie QB to make plays and elevate the play of our other skill guys because we don't have any play makers.
Tannehill wasn't elevating anything about the play of Reggie Bush today. That kind of performance by the run game should've been used in a much better way to fuel Tannehill's performance IMO. Bush was helping Tannehill elevate his game, not the other way around. Sherman didn't capitalize on that IMO.
Most teams don't even have a Cam Wake, I'm grateful we do. Starks had two sacks today and he (and the rest of th DL) was free to operate 1 on 1 on passing downs because of Wake being double teamed. So I'd like to point out that you're calling an area of the team a weakness when the reality is that we are the envy of the most of the league at that position. Our OL was just fine today, judging from the gaping holes they opened. The pass pro was spotty but Houston has a slew of pass rushers and the main problem they caused was not pressuring the QB it was batting down (up) passes when they couldn't get to the QB. Our LBs were decent, so were our safeties. No big plays made, no big plays allowed. Sean Smith was burnt for a TD on a great throw to a great WR, but he had good coverage and I can live with that. Especially since we had turned the ball over 4 times in 5 minutes. I respect your opinion but it'd be nice if you gave some actual examples of what it is youre talking about.
True. I expected to see more play action but IMO Houston's defense did a good job of not overplaying the run and giving us down the field opps as a result. They were content to give up a few runs here and there and make stops at opportune times, and it worked. Gotta give credit where its due.
It means for his system to work he must have a great OLine and receivers who are great at separating (higher priority than deep speed) and YAC. It also means Tannehill must lean the timing and WR spots so well that he does not have to look at his primary at the snap, but can still snap his head around and hit the right spot at the right time. Also, we need to run more WR screens and play action.
Maybe so. But if Houston couldn't expose that weakness then who will? I'm patiently waiting for the coaches film to become available but I thought our safeties were solid in run support and Houston didn't have any big plays down the field.
If we added a Freeney type opposite of Wake I think our Dline could be contending for best in the league. Its very good but Odrick is not an ideal pass rusher. Starks is severely underrated hardly ever gets mentioned. Run blocking looked good at times, pass blocking was very meh. What I mean by the OL is the depth we are seriously lacking on the line. We can't afford bad play from starters because we have no one behind them that can produce better and that has potential for disaster. Depends on how things play out. Our LB corps might be decent depends on the play of Dansby and Misi. For me this is a make or break year for Misi. The lack of depth and playmaking in the secondary is going to be a huge issue for us. Its a small sample size but its what I foresee.
I'm not basing it on one game with them or the WRs. Neither one of them has given much indication that they'll ever be a consistent ball hawking type of safety. It would sure be nice to have at least one safety who was good for 5 picks a season on average. The last Dolphins safety to get 5 in a season was Brock Marion. One play I can think of in this game that bothered me a little was the way Clemons more or less just let Foster score on the 14 yd run. He never came across and hit him or wrapped up. It looked to me like he did some sort of an ole thing, like he was a matador or something. It reminded me of one thing Jones did in preseason where he just about let the TE roll into the endzone after the catch, dancing around him like he didn't want to make contact. He just barely touched him as he was trying to get out of his way, so the TE wasn't able to score. Though it seemed like more of accident that contact was made, rather than a concerted effort to touch the player down before he crossed the goal line.
Texans lead the league in batted down passes last year. So you combine Tannehills penchant for low passes and the Texans penchant for knocking them down..... Tanny ran into the perfect storm. He didnt look bad for a rookie though.
