I've seen Green Bay. And I see they have a lot of really good players who would likely be successful in any system. Just like Mike Wallace would be very successful in this system if Tannehill could merely hit him downfield. He's not Calvin Johnson, I agree with you, and we probably overpaid, but who cares? The guy is here now and can and will help you if the QB can get on the same page with him and you figure out some other things to do with him. Why the Wallace bubble screen isn't a staple of our offense I don't udnerstand? Philbin and Sherman seemingly have no idea how to use any player who doesn;t immediately fit into their preconceived notion of what their role should be. And they only figure out how to change it after months of the same problems happening over and over again.
LOL! I thought so. The offensive line can be fixed in an offseason, I just look at what the Bears did this offseason. They are not World beaters but they did "fix it". I just don't want Gaine or Ireland or any other scout that currently has a business card near the decision. I think a problem will be Ross' love affair with Philbin and by extension Aponte. Neither of them are going anywhere. What kind of GM will we get when he knows he does not have any true power?
Bill Belichick adapts his system to whatever personnell he has at the given time. You can incorporate Mike Wallace into a West Coast system. And we are to an extent. The guy is open downfield multiple times every single game. We haven't hit on many of them for a multitude of reasons. some QB, some Walalce, some the play design itself. The fact is, you have a guy who can help you win games. If you can't figure out a way to maximize what he does best and cover up what he doesn't. The really good coaches know how to do this. We don't have really good coaches
So, we need to go to playground football and just say go deep with him, have no structure, organization, or pass concepts to the offense as a whole. Let's build the offense around our most limited receiver.
Unfortunately, we have an owner who LOVES this head coach. It would take a 1-15 for Philbin to get fired. The question is, will Philbin have the balls to do what is required in the offseason. If he is staying (which he is) unless he fires Sherman, Turner, Taylor and Coyle we are for more of the same.
Mike Wallace is getting open deep, multiple times per game, in every game this season, within the structure of our offense. Now, there are other things you can do within the system to get him the ball, which we inexplicably don't do. The bubble screen is one example. Wallace was very successful running drags and slants across the middle in Pitt, yet we rarely have him run those plays. We stuck him at one position and left him there. No creativity, no trickery, no nothing, until it was almost too late. Same thing happened with Bush last year. I agree that we need more talent, but a good argument can be made that we aren't maximizing the talent that we do have. If we aren't maximizing talent now, why would you expect any different even if we get a few more good players here?
Bill Belichick doesn't have a system. He pretty much is letting his coordinators run their own. Expecting more deep completions isn't realistic. There is a reason why a lot of teams avoid those type of routes - they're reliably unsuccessful. IMO Mike Wallace has been maximized. Statistically hes right around the 25-30 range for WRs, and I think thats about what he is. He's a top-25ish WR.
I don't know about the AFC as a whole. But as for the AFC East I see the Patriots very differently from you. They've won 11-12 games this year with Rob Gronkowski only playing about a third of the season, ailing for much of the time they did have him, Vince Wilfork out the whole year, Jerod Mayo out for 2/3rds of the year, Sebastian Vollmer out for half the year, Shane Vereen out for 2/3rds of the year and Tommy Kelley out for 2/3rds of the year. They get a lot of those guys back. You can say they'll be coming off injury, which is true, but they'll be THERE, won't they? Has Brent Grimes been any less of an impact player for Miami because he's coming off a major injury? Two more things I would look at with the Patriots: 1) The young players they have particularly Logan Ryan, Chris Jones, Kenbrell Thompkins, Alfonzo Dennard and Shane Vereen. Development from them would pay dividends. 2) They were caught flat-footed on the whole Aaron Hernandez thing and so were unable to plan for his replacement in the offense. Now they'll actually have an off season to do it. I don't know that similar things apply to the Dolphins. You can say that we'll get Brandon Gibson back and yeah that will be nice but at the same time we're not sure whether he is preferable to Rishard Matthews anyway. Dimitri Patterson would be the big one that could come back but we're not even sure they won't just cut the guy given his injury history the last few years and his being 32 years old with a $5-6 million salary. Dustin Keller's a free agent to be. His injury caught us flat-footed like the Hernandez thing but Hernandez was proven and we don't know that Keller would have given us anything Clay didn't end up giving us, and maybe Clay is even better. We lost Incognito and Martin, but we're not accepting either of them back. So we don't really have a lot of the "X player was out for most of last year and we still did well so now when he's back we'll be even better" thing going on for us. As for the Jets I agree with you that is a franchise that is in danger of spiraling, depending on what they do with Rex Ryan and who they hire as the next head coach. If they pull off some crazy Gus Malzahn hire (or Art Briles) then I'll be pissed. But if they get just sort of your run of the mill hire (Mel Tucker, Todd Bowles, someone like that) then I agree with you they're on the way down. The Bills could be on the way up. I like how they're playing.
I think that defense is really close to top 5. They have some nice pieces. If EJ Manual becomes serviceable and that defense takes the next step they could leap frog us in 2014.
I'm so tired of that argument. People pretend the guy is Clyde Gates or Ted Ginn. They pretend that all he is, is speed and the ability to get a step on a defender and therefore it's up to the quarterback to time the throw perfectly to within a tenth of a second, put the ball on a dime at distances of 55 to 60 yards through the air, and anything different from that is totally on the QB. I see 12 million reasons why Mike Wallace needed to fight for that ball in the air instead of just passively waiting for it to perfectly land in the bread basket. But that's what people are cool with. They're cool with the most expensive Ted Ginn that ever Ted Ginn'd.
I really don't think this is true. Well obviously it's technically true. Anything is possible. But realistically speaking the chances of replacing 4 out of 5 linemen in one off season and even getting mediocre/average line play would be what like 10-20%?
T-Hill needs to stop trying to finesse the long ball AND Wallace needs to be more aggressive going after it.
Wallace isn't a guy who is going to "out-rebound" somebody (for lack of a better term), like Johnson or Alshon Jeffrey. He's not big enough or strong enough. I agree that there are certainly times he could have made ana djustment, or at least gotten into the body of the defender and see what happens, but his vlue is beating a guy in space and outrunning him. He costs what he costs. They knew what he was when they paid him. That's what happens in free agency. There are other things we could be doing with Wallace to increase his production, which is actually pretty good all things considered.
If that's all true then he's not worth close to what they paid for him. You can replace him too easily for that to be true.
This. We all knew what we were getting when we payed for Wallace. He is doing exactly what he did in Pittsburgh and that's not about to change anytime soon. Just because we're paying him an X amount of money doesn't mean he should do all of the things we want him to do. If you spend 200 thousand dollars on Lamborghini you're not gonna expect it to be spacious and comfortable just because you paid that amount of money but what you can expect is that it'll go fast hell.
But a Lamborghini can do more then just be fast as hell in a straight line. Is it totally unreasonable to ask Wallace to dive for a ball?
Problem is that those guys aren't that good to begin with, besides Gronk of course. Gronk will miss significant time again next year and will now be coming off a serious injury that is jeopardizing his career. Jerod Mayo is awful and I thank the media each year that they prop him up so much, so Bellichick can think he's good and keep him. Tommy Kelley is a bum..and Vince Wilfork is one Biog Mac away from a coronary. he is near done at his age. Vollmer is a nice player on the decline due to injury and Vereen..come on...he's a 3rd down back. As for those young guys? Terrible. Read the Patriot Message boards. They still "kinda" like Thompkins...."kinda". The main thing with them is this..Brady is noticeably declining.
Chicago did it..and we almost did it ourselves once before. Easy..you have to transition at least one guy...I say McKinnie...So you have McKinnie and Pouncey. (draft McKinnie's under-study) replace three guys. you can find 3 guys easily by spending resources and picks. we just need the right guy to do this.
I'm not sure how you maximize the talent of a player whose most productive plays are a 9 route and a shallow cross from right to left. Take a look at the stats and see where the most of his YAC yards are? It's on a shallow cross play from right to left.
Transitioning three guys is easier than four. A lot easier. But if you try and hold onto Bryant McKinnie as a holdover that's also a pretty huge buyer beware. How he played yesterday is how he played most of the time in Baltimore, once they made a similar decision to hold him over to the next year.
I think realistically if you can find one good tackle and one good guard/center, then the line will be fine.
that's why you draft his replacement...and if McKinnie is terrible by week 6...the rookie is ready to step in. again..we just need the right guy to do this. we gotta hit on at least 2 of the 5 guys we bring in. ( I would say 3 in FA, 2 in the Draft)
Which is why they shouldn't restructure his contract and kick the can down the road. Admit the mistake, pay him, and then when the dead money is not that much, release him and replace him with a younger, cheaper player. You don't pay this much to a receiver who has such a small catch radius and is so limited in the routes he can run. This is all part of Jeff's roster management though, and is one of the main reasons he should be fired.
We're not even to the point where his physical ability to do it is a pertinent question, because the effort isn't there.
In today's NFL that the most perplexing...effort alone would equate to Def PI calls. But with no effort to High Point the ball it lets the ref leave flags in the pocket. Its sad. Let alone I am convinced he would win a majority of jump balls if he just tried and showed effort to high point it.
the body language police is out in force again..... Nobody here can judge "effort" from his couch or his seat in Section 126 or wherever.
Watching him yesterday, he looked very sluggish moving around out there. He appears to have gained some weight since his arrival or it could have been extra clothing for the cold. Either way he looked bad.
LOL. the saints. Take them out of that dome, and they have a knack for turning into crap. BTW..did I just imagine the Miami Dolphins stomping a mudhole in the Jets in their place just a few weeks ago? did that happen?
Pretty much anyone regardless of technical background who watches enough football should be able to discern between effort and ability in this capacity. Maybe something like the offensive line, sure, but this? No ****ing way. Jump. Extend yourself. Dive for the ball. Come back for the underthrown pass. Use the body positioning techniques you've been taught by multiple coaches for over a decade.
Understood. But this is a guy that makes his money running really fast for long distances and he gets tired like everybody else. Now..does it show for him often? yeah..it also shows a lot for receivers of his ilk. He is just not that type of player. Brandon Marshall played hard as hell here, and he got hit with that "effort" tag as well. I'm just saying that this is not something any of us are in a real position to judge.
A Heat assistant coach once told me something very instructive: Me: "My numbers tell me that player "A" is worthless unless he can produce "this" this way.." coach: "We don't care about that." Me: "You should" coach: "you are not looking at the broader issue, because you ware watching this from too far away. WE are HERE..you are NOT."
and I also had a NFL assistant once tell me that a player I thought was "all heart, blood and guts, badass....." was a "bum" in his words. We don't know as much as we THINK we do.
True. At the same time, raw knowledge isn't the end all be all. These guys make mistakes all the time. I'll take having the correct perspective on more limited information over having all the available information and looking at it the wrong way every time (where I can get it, which is admittedly not that often ).
My use of effort wasnt related to desire or passion....but just once I would love to see him "High Point" what in actuality is a jump ball 45-55+ yards down the field. I swear he would get the flag if he didnt haul in the pass, and some times I bet he accomplishes both. Have you honestly ever seen him "try" to High Point one? Thats the effort I refer to. Heck, even the worst shooters in the NBA throw up a 3-pointer just to see right? And I am in the camp of I want Wallace on my team, I think the timing gets better with offseason OTAs, and heading into next season, and less and less jump balls will be the outcome, but would love him to fight for ball using his height/arm length/leaping advantage to aide in the QB timing in the meantime.
