I think he basically got a pass because he was a rookie who came in and played better than the veteran who played the position the previous year. The OL was so bad in 2013, the entire offensive line received a pass early in the 2014 season. Not because they were that great. It was more that they were better than the line from the previous season. James was okay at RT. He wasn't great, but he wasn't terrible either. At LT though, it was a completely different situation with James. He was playing out of position and he was pretty awful over the latter part of the season once he was moved to the LT position. Since he was a rookie and played out of position for half the season, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Like all the players on the team, he needs to play better for this team to be a playoff contender. Hopefully he can play the entire season this coming year at RT and he can show improvement over last year.
OK for a starting rookie, is great. Not every rookie can come in and dominate. That is really rare for offensive line.
Juwaun James is a baller, excellent pick imo. I don't even mind the switch to LT, they threw him in the deep end to see if he could swim. He struggled but he competed, itll pay off long term.
http://www.nfl.com/draft/2015/mock-drafts When I first saw that Charles Davis mocked Andrus Peat to the Dolphins in the first round I just thought he was just too busy to think that day or something; but I like the idea of moving Albert inside sooner rather than later. Albert will be 31 next year and he has only played 1 full season his whole career. I wouldn't choose Peat at 14 but I would trade down and draft a LT at the end of the first, or preferably Jake Fisher with our 2nd. If the Dolphins have a shot at Suh, sure, go all in; otherwise, fill the holes in FA and add some young talent in the draft and be realistic about Albert's health and age.
Did you watch him play? While he was at RT, he was doing pretty well, especially for a rookie. Also, it is not fair to completely judge a player based on their rookie season. You think he can never get any better? He struggled at left tackle, but he had not played there since high school.
What makes it even more baffling is at Denver, Fox had to come in and play LT for a fair number of snaps and did pretty well. One would have thought that was a clue for Coach Queasy that his best move would be put James back where he belonged and roll with Fox at LT.
IMO, Tennessee did James an injustice by not moving him to LT after his sophomore season. It was as obvious as Jimmy Durante's nose that James was the Vols best OT, not Tiny Richardson, and both had LT experience at the prep level. So, why put Tiny there and not James?
I don't understand why it's almost universally assumed that Joe Philbin made the decision on who to start.
Well, he's the head coach and he comes from an OL background. If there's a major issue on the OL, you would think that he would have his hands on it, since it's him that's ultimately responsible. If he can't at least make that descesion, then what claim does he have towards anything at all.
If Philbin is deciding things like that then what does he have assistants for, why bother having an OL coach? I'm sure Philbin has input but so do Lazor and Benton. Most likely the decisions are based on consensus, I've seen nothing to suggest that Philbin overruled his assistants.
Because that is almost universally the decision of the head coach, after getting input from his assistants?
It is just one year, so it is a mistake to judge the pick. He is not a top 10 pick. He is a 1st round pick. He is not a wonderful pick; he is a good pick. He started every game, played both tackles, performed reasonably as a RT, and met the minimum for a LT. I am fine with the effort as a rookie. I will expect more from his next year.
Philbin prefers to start the players who do the best in practice. I'd guess Dallas Thomas is a good practice player and Fox, not so much. The final call on moving James rests with him.
Matthews played out of position all year while James played out of position after week 8 til end of season. It is hard enough for thr rookies but a position switch as well is too much to overcome for most imho. Matthews should have been playing LT.. but with enough time could become decent at new position.
See, right there should be enough for certain fans to finally jump off the Cautious Joe wagon. As HC, he completely screwed up the OL last year. He is a former OL Coach, supposed to be good at it too, and he moves'James to LT,keeps Fox on bench??????, moves Pouncey to RG when healthy, moves Dallas Thomas to RT, Keeps switching guards with College and Thomas, College and Smith, Smith and Thomas, man talk about a cluster****. Keep James at RT, play Pouncey at Center, Fox at LT, Thomas at LG, and Shelly Smith at RG until Billy Turner could play........simple enough right?? I mean for an OL guru?????? Still hoping...maybe a mid-season HC Change.
Jake Matthews was a right tackle for three years at Texas A&M. He didn't move to left tackle until his senior year as he replaced Luke Joeckel, and arguably he struggled there more than he did at right tackle. I don't think you can say Atlanta played him out of position. He just had a rough rookie season.
Its still quite mind boggling to me that this is the route we did not take. The only thing I can imagine was they wanted to find out if James could end up being a good LT, but thats ludicrus. You signed him to play RT, because thats all he played in college was RT. Absolutely mind boggling we did not sign McKinnie the day after Albert got hurt.
Pretty much every coach prefers to start the guy who looks best in practice, no? Also, it's not like there's time to hold a competition mid season. Most likely they were going off of who won those jobs in the the offseason/preseason. I can imagine the staff wanting to see James at LT even if they knew he'd struggle, given Albert's age, salary and injury history. The overall point is that despite the curious lineup changes and the well deserved second guessing, Fox being in the lineup is unlikely to have made a major difference Imo.
The problem is, the idea that one player looks empirically better than another player in practice is a fallacy. Everything is about evaluation. It's all in the eye of the beholder. So it's easy for us to sit back and speculate that one dude started because he "looked better in practice" but the reality is we have to ask, to whom did he look better in practice? Whose eyes looked at his practice work and decided he translates to games better than the next guy? So talking about practice does not absolve anyone of poor start decisions. And Philbin made REALLY poor start decisions.
Im all for holding Philbin responsible for who starts and who doesn't, however if it's dubious to say that it was practice based because we don't know who was doing the evaluations then isn't it also dubious to say it was Philbin who made the decision? Shouldnt the OL coach and OC be making that call, in consultation with the HC? Why not pin it on all three of them instead of just one guy?
Not that Philbin is ultimately qualified to do more than pick up trash, create practice schedules, or spellcheck powerpoint presentations, but are we really absolving him of poor roster management now?
I thought I was pretty clear in saying the OL Coach, OC, and HC should all be scrutinized for the decision.
Stop already. The man played two different positions. One he played damn good and the other struggled. The problem is you don't know enough to see that LT & RT are two different positions. If Wake played corner and got torched would you say he's horrible player? No of course not. This is the same thing.
A better analogy would ask if Wake played the other side and wasn't as good, that doesn't make him a horrible player, just limited.
That wouldn't be a better analogy, because if the guy doesn't grasp the simple concept of LT & RT being different, he's not gonna get the difference between LDE being different than RDE.
Understood. But unless we're gonna credit Philbin for all of the good things then it's not exactly fair to bash him for the bad.
