Saint_LB

Is it possible that all the three-and-out\'s in the first and second quarter may have something to do with the bad play of the defense....getting tired in the first half and running out of gas. Just thinking out loud.

GumboBC

The three-and-outs do hurt the defense. No question about it.

But here\'s a another newsflash!!

We\'re talking about McCarthy and playcalling.

Do you think the playcalling is what\'s largely responsible for all the three-and-outs?

Or could it be that penalties, dropped passes, and poor blocking have a little something to do with it?

I suppose you could blame the majority of the three-and-outs on poor playcalling. If you\'re from Mars. Just kidding..

Look, some of you can try and find one area and use that as a scape-goat!!

But why not take everything into consideration?

You might could even try to come up with something that spreads the blame out a little.

Problems on offense percentage wise:

10% playcalling.
20% penalties
10% dropped passes.
15% quarterbacking
Etc, etc...

That\'s just an example. Hopefully you see what I\'m talking about.

Sure, the offense affects the defense and the defense affects the offense.

But, hey, our defense stunk for most of the season and no offense would have changed that fact.

However, I believe if our defense would have played better that there\'s a good chance our offense would have been much more productive once we got away from those dictated passing situations.

[Edited on 22/1/2005 by GumboBC]

JKool

I had to know, so I looked it up.

It turns out our run pass distribution was 43 runs and 57 passes for every 100 plays. That turns out to be pretty even.

However, one\'s run/pass distribution doesn\'t really say much about whether the run or pass was featured - whether or not plays were designed, packages selected, personel decided up, etc.

Here is an interesting claim: does our move to a 2TE set demonstrate that we wanted to feature the run or pass? I think it is actually neutral - the reason for selecting a 2TE set as a base set is to have a roughly even run/pass distribution. The 2TE set allows for an extra blocker (the second TE) but also some flexibility in the mid to short range passing game (TEs don\'t have to leave the backfield to make a catch). This seems to me to be evidence that McCarthy favored a balanced attack (otherwise he would have selected an I or pro for the basic set to favor the run OR a three or four wide basic set to favor the pass).

This, however, is evidence to me that some of our floundering on O WAS McCarthy\'s fault. He failed to listen to Duece who said he wanted a FB in there. He failed to notice that Duece was better in an I set (until it was getting to be too late), and so on. Yes, it is true that our OLine was so very sad, but McCarthy\'s inability to correct this with a game plan with shorter passes, a lead blocker in the backfield, rolling the pocket to get Brooks a bit more time, and so on, is exactly what makes me think that he is at least marginally to blame for our early season disaster.

Of course, I am VERY sympathetic to the idea that our Offense would have been considerably better if our D hadn\'t sucked it up all year.

"... I was beating them with my eyes the whole game..." - Aaron Brooks

ScottyRo

That\'s closer than I thought it\'d be considering how quickly we tended to get behind in \'04.

JKool

Yeah, I was kind of shocked too. When you factor in the number of games we were behind and had to throw in the fourth quarter, it leads me to believe the game plan was pretty close to 50/50.

BrooksMustGo

See this is where I\'m confused when we do the post-mortems.

I can\'t single out a reason why we performed so poorly throughout the season. During parts of the season it seemed to be an inability to stop the run. Other times, we couldn\'t run. All the time, we tended to start slow.

I think that Haz and Venturi were probably right that the problem wasn\'t X\'s and O\'s. I wonder if the \"fake love\" that Mr. Unmentionable talked about had something to do with it?

saintswhodi

I am gonna post this again(from BMG) so those of us who insist on saying dropped passes are a big problem for Brooks can get the correct facts.

http://snap.stats.com/stats/nflinfo/...4781&Submit=Go

Look at the bottom and there is a breakdown of Leon\'s incompletions and how many just plain bad passes he throws. Now we can get this mis-information out of the poo rLeon arguments. The it\'s not his fault ever arguments.

[Edited on 22/1/2005 by saintswhodi]

GumboBC

The education continues...

Dropped passes did indeed hurt the offense.

You see.... it\'s not necessarily the number of dropped passes that really hurt.

Stick with me here....

Sometimes it\'s WHEN the drop occurs!!

I think its safe to assume that a drop on 3rd down is more critical than a drop on 1st down.

Its also safe to assume that a dropped pass in the last 2-minutes of the game is more critical than in the first 2-minutes of the game.

Also, dropped passes aren\'t a big problem for Brooks. They\'re a big problem for the TEAM. It hurts the offense, defense, and the special teams.

Are you really trying to convince me that dropped passes did hurt?

I saw the dropped passes with my own two eyes. Critical drops at critical times.

What\'s next? Are you going to tell me penalties didn\'t do any harm either?

Some folks !!! :P

saintswhodi

Did you notice the OVERWHELMING amount of plain bad passes? Outweighs dropped passes 4 to 1. So pardon me if I see a bigger problem. I am sure all those red zone turnovers Leon has hurts the team more than a third down drop. I am willing to wager half of those drops didn\'t even come on third down. Find another argument. That one is played. Unless you are willing to gander at the huge number of simply bad passes. Is there ever a good time for those? You are right, some people.

[Edited on 22/1/2005 by saintswhodi]

GumboBC

Oh, you want to talk about \"bad\" passes.

Then why not say so in the first place?

Why waste your time saying \"dropped\" passes didn\'t hurt?

You confuse me!!

But, you are right. Brooks threw some bad passes this year. We agree.