It should be good when you protect with 7 or 8 just about every pass play.

 

Yup, no mention of max protect.

 

I don't believe the offensive line was the 3rd best pass protecting unit in the league last year.

But I do believe they were top 10 at the worst. Yet it's often cited as yet another reason...well, I won't go there.

Suffice it to say they were better than a lot of people give them credit for, but at the same time when you see a #3 ranking that's in part because Chad Henne called 3.5 extra tight ends and backs in to protect for every extra (5th, 6th or 7th) pass rusher that came at him. This was far more than any other team in the league, that I've found yet (haven't tallied the stat on every team).

 

I need to know something...what tangible evidence that we can view shows Henne called those protections all by himself and it wasn't a part of the scheme or wasn't impressed upon him to do regardless of situation on the field. I understand why you make it a point to say Henne called it. One, that's how a lot of other teams work; Two, you want to put the blame on him. But what can you show me that proves that it wasn't what he was told to do.

 

Excellent points & questions. Especially considering that we led the league in pass protectors per pass play in 2008 while Henne was on the bench watching.

 

The coaches have referenced it publicly.

 

Haven't we(CK rather) determined that in 2008 under the same coaching Pennington used less than 2.0 extra blockers which was within the league norm. And in 2010 Chad Henne used 3.5 which far exceeded the league norm.

I'd say that's tangible evidence. Aside from hiring a private investigator to bug Dan Henning's phone calls, I'd say that's the most definitive evidence we can possibly get to prove it wasn't some sort of scheme of his

 

That doesn't prove anything beyond the number increased. Consider the personnel those years. I believe our 2008 O-Line was better than 2010. In 2008, were all those protections called by Pennington? Or, were some of those called during the large chunk of Wildcat plays we ran? Ronnie and Ricky were threats in 2008. By 2010, the best thing they could do for our offense was stay home and block. Martin was a good receiver in 2008. But Fasano is one of the better blocking TE's so maximize his strengths when you have a young QB.

 

The OL in 2008 was certainly not better. Alleman and Ndukwe were absolutely atrocious.

 

Dan Henning said plainly and specifically in one of his press availabilities that Chad Henne calls the protections and he's free to audible extra guys in to protect on any given play.

As for the Wildcat, that has nothing to do with anything. Those are run plays, not pass plays.

 

All QBs past the JV football level have the option of changing protections, calling hot routes, using additional blockers etc. If a QB is doing this inefficiently, it's the coaches job to correct the issue not go in front of the cameras and throw his players under the bus.

Even if it was Chad Henne's decision to use all of the extra pass pro, that doesn't change the fact that our OLs pass protection figures were inflated by the extra pass pro. Perhaps we'll get a better idea of what Henne prefers once he takes the field under a new coordinator.

 

All QB's have those (extremely basic) privileges. The relevant question would be was Henne permitted to send extra guys into the pattern? If a play calls for a 7 man protection, could Henne tell Ronnie or Polite or Fasano "Nah, don't block, run a flare route"?

At the end of the season Marshall seemed upset that Henne was unwilling to change routes and he credited Thigpen for bucking the play calls and hitting him deep vs NE. Thigpen was berated by David Lee after he did his sandlot thing w/ Marshall, which that suggests that Thigpen didnt have coach given authority to do that, which suggests that Henne didn't have it either. If Henne couldn't tell Marshall "screw the curl, run deep", then is it safe to assume he could tell Ricky "screw blocking, run a flat route"? I don't think that'd be a safe assumption.

 

Well, on the surface this would appear "bad" for Chad Henne as he went Max Pro often, but keep in mind his #1 proirity was not making plays, it was avoiding negative plays, inow "playing not to lose" if that is the philosophy then Max Pro makes sense, I'd take it a bit further and say Henne performed fairly well in that environment, but it is a loser of a strategy.

If Henne is to mature he will simply have to be exposed to man free type of blitzes and stick the throw even when he knows he will be wacked, he isn't going to "extend plays" with his poor athleticism, and his pocket mobility is barely passable, the only solution is to the Big Ben flak jacket and hope for the best.

 

This doesn't make sense. He threw more INTs than TDs. By any measure, he failed to avoid negative plays.

 

Well, not really SB that is a shallow view.

Wr's slipping accounted for 2 int's (Hartline Cinic, Bess Lions)
1 tipped pass accounted for the other one (Browns)
Beast alligator armed a ball for one (Ravens)
Beast made a sight adjustment on a route that Henne did not pick up on (1st patriots)

And Henne had one potential Int dropped all yr, the unluckiest in the NFL, Sanchez had 12 dropped Int's for some context.

All in all Henne was actually doing quite well until the last 4 or 5 games of the yr, he was on pace to pass for the 10th most yds in Franchise history and he had a positive Td to Int ratio then the wheels fell off and pretty much everything that could go wrong, went wrong for him.

 

I think you're overstating how many plays there are in a playbook where there are backs and tight ends that have no default route to run whatsoever. In fact, I would be surprised if that was something you'd find on any but a bare handful of specialty plays (flea flickers, etc)

 

Then why didn't Pennington do it the same way?

 

The INT against CIN was into triple coverage, Hartline falling or not wouldn't have made a difference. That game he was atrocious, and if they didn't have BAL on the schedule the next week, he would have been benched then.

 

Penny was a 10 yr Vet with a functioning running game.

To me, that explains some, but not all, of Henne's struggles, other then being a eunuch of course.

Ireland has not missed on a running back, has missed on 1 linebacker, which is why I think there are reasons to think Thomas will solve some ills for us, Ireland is only betting his and Sparano's job on that coming to pass, unless Lex Hilliard or Kory Sheets play better then anyone think they will play.

 

Please allow me to cry a bit for Chad Henne here as robots cannot do so themselves, when Henne doesn't throw the ball up, he is not a playmaking qb, when he does throw it up and the Wr slips down, then he made a bad decision, I'm not in love with Chad Henne's game that dual standard seems a bit unfair SB.

"If" you want a Qb to make plays there will be int's, it comes with the territory.

 

Perhaps because Henning was calling the game one way for a 10 year veteran and another way for a young quarterback. I see no reason to assume because Pennington and Henne played for the same offensive coordinator that his strategy and play calling aren't also a variable in this equation.

 

Its not a double standard at all. Its the standard of being a successful QB in this league. Make big plays, yet don't make turnovers. Throw it up, but make sure only your guy can get it. Its the reason someone like Eli Manning has really only had significant success during the playoff run when he threw 6 TDs and only 1 INT.

 

Hey guys, remember the good ol days when people could make a thread about the OL w/o the Henne bashers coming in to hijack it?

 

I'm not sure how you can separate the QB from the OL.

 

I think you're overstating the number of times that Chad Henne canceled a pass route that Henning called in exchange for extra pass pro, but there's no way to know either way. What we do know is that the number of 6-7-8 man protections that were called was pretty damn high and that the number of sacks/pressures allowed by the "OL" decreased b/c of it.

 

The thread is about our OL being #3 rated in the NFL according to PFF.

We all know that our OL was NOT the #3 pass protecting OL in the NFL. We know the ranking was inflated because of Max Protect.

Discussing who makes the protection calls (Chad Henne and/or Dan Henning) is completely relevant and crucial to the conversation. Discussing the overruse of Max Protect and the culprit makes complete sense to me

 

I don't know how you can reach that conclusion. Its very possible that the increased protection was unnecessary, and an increase in sacks/pressures would not have necessarily happened.

 

It's not hard to grade an OL based on their individual performance.

 

I didnt say that the extra pass pro was necessary, I actually think our offense would've been better served using hot routes and outlet backs to protect the QB as opposed to extra blockers.

What I'll agree w/ you on is that extra pass pro may not necessarily decrease the number of sacks, but it certainly deflates the amount of quick pressures and unblocked blitzers allowed. On the flip side, the number of coverage sacks and throwaways will probably go up b/c you're asking 2-3-4 guys to get open vs 7-8 defenders, which was what we tried to do for most of last season. Would the numbers balance out? I dunno. But generally speaking, more pass protectors means better pass pro.

 

Hennezilla! Hennezilla is attacking the thread!!!

Has been this way all offseason GMJ, Henne cannot do anything right.

I do think what PFF is selling, and what I saw out on the field in 2010, are two very different things.

 

I disagree with your theory.

Chad Henne called extra protections in 2009 at about the same rate (0.78 extra blockers per pass play) as in 2010 (0.86 extra blockers per pass play), however I found that the number of extra blockers per extra rusher in 2009 was well within range at about 1.7 extra blockers per extra pass rusher. The primary difference between 2009 and 2010 was that teams sent fewer pass rushers at Chad Henne. But he still called the extra protections about the same rate as before, not adjusting to the blitzing tendencies of the defenses he faced.

Which is all very in-character for Chad Henne, truth be told.

Did his over-usage of proetctions cost him in 2010, as opposed to 2009? Absolutely. In 2009, when he wasted fewer receiving options, he was 160 of 222 for 1457 yards, 4 TDs and 0 INTs when not blitzed. In 2010, he was 139 of 194 for 1315 yards, 4 TDs and 7 INTs when not blitzed.

He kept calling extra protections the same way he did in 2009, except in 2010 the defenses didn't blitz him...and as a result his non-blitz QB Rating dropped from 95.5 to 81.9. On the other hand, his blitz QB Rating raised from 65.6 to 88.2. This suggests no real improvement in his game, just that he "bought" the improved efficiency against the blitz by sacrificing his options on non-blitz plays, resulting in basically the same performance.

 

Discussing which OL struggled/did well in pass pro, who blew assignments, who got beaten, who allowed pressures, sacks, etc. All of that relevant to an OL/pass pro thread. None of that is relevant, however, to a Henne bashing thread, which is what a few people want to turn this thread into. I would just comment that if people want to bash the QB there are plenty of threads to do it in, there's no need to hijack a thread that South Beach (or anyone else) took time out of his day to create for us.

Secondly, NOBODY on this board knows who the driving force behind our number of pass protectors per pass play was or what their motivations were for using that many. Maybe Henne didn't trust his OL, maybe Henning didn't trust Henne, maybe they both wanted to air it out and Sparano overruled them. Pick a theory, any theory, and no one can disprove it b/c no one has the necessary info. People may want to opine on why the number was so high, but anyone who even claims to actually know the truth is IMO, out in left field somewhere.

Dan Henning, speaking about Henne before he was put out to pasture. I thought it would be appropriate here.

 

Which begs the question, did he just call protections because he's an idiot? Every week, at the film study, I'm to believe Sparano and Henning showed him calling unnecessary protection and ostensibly sabotaging the offense, but decided they might as well let him keep doing it? Are they that incompetent?

You know and I know the team sets it's active roster and develops a game plan for each team individually. There is a script of plays prepared for the Offense. Am I to believe that he free-lanced that? It was detrimental to the offense, that's a fact. Yet they consistently put in a script that allowed for all those protection shifts. You bench a player for one of two things usually:

1. He isn't executing.

2. He isn't doing what you want him to.

The line we were sold is that Henne wasn't executing. Therefore they were pleased with his willingness to do what they said, yet disappointed with his ability to do it. We know for a fact that there is some contention that Henne followed the Sparano-Henning plan too closely as evidenced by some Marshall comments and the Thigpen TD against the New England Raelians. Clearly we have a contradiction.

Henne either didn't execute to their liking but did what they said, or didn't do what they said but executed fairly well. The former is the most likely situation considering comments by Henning, and the fact that you don't let a second year starting QB start those many games while disobeying what you tell him in film study.

Which leads to my final point. If he did what they told them, and it didn't work, but they didn't tell him to stop, they're incompetent. If he went out there and did that against the will of Sparano-Henning yet he continued starting that long, they're incompetent. If he kept audibling into a safety net, you take that away. You make him put up, or you take him out there.

 

I don't see contradiction so much as assumption and posturing.

You've fashioned a binomial function as to why Henne was benched, making some assumptions that I don't think are necessary. You say it has to be failure to execute and/or failure to do what they tell him. Why couch it like that? He’s supposed to go out there and call protections when he thinks they’re needed. The answer to that is not as simple as a coach simply saying “stop calling so many protections”. It's his job to call protections when he thinks based on what he's seeing from the defense that he needs them. And if he continues to call too many protections, you don’t say that he’s “refusing to do what we tell him”. That would be like telling a guy to stop throwing interceptions and then benching him for insubordination when he threw another pick. You're not benching him for insubordination. You're benching him because he's not doing his job well.

All you can do is teach the guy and hope he can put your coaching into the product out there on the field. When he’s not putting your coaching onto the field the right way, you bench him, and that’s what happened. They benched him.

EDIT: My apologies. There was an error in my summing formulas which produced inaccurate results. I was under the impression that the rate at which Chad Henne called extra protections changed significantly after he was benched. This is not true. In fact sadly, and ridiculously, the number went up...from 4.1x in the first 8 games, to 4.3x in the 5 games Chad played by himself (no Thigpen/Pennington). However, the number interestingly dropped down to 2.3x in the 3 games where Henne either didn't play at all (Chicago), or only played partially (New England, Tennessee). This constitutes evidence that the wasting of extra protectors was primarily Henne's doing this year.