Pattersonca65 wrote:CrimsonCrew wrote:Man. At the end of the day, we're 1-1, which is what I figured at this point in the season, but even with a lot of miscues last week, we clearly played better then than we did this week. We really played down to the level of competition, and frankly did not deserve to win.
I'll start with the defense. Our lack of outside pass rush was glaring in this one. Frankly, our lack of anyone except Buckner and occasionally Blair.
Witherspoon had easily his worst day since the mid-point last season. With more time to study him, defenses may be doing a better job of exploiting him. From everything I've read, he's a smart, hard-working kid with very good physical talents. I think Sherman's presence will be good for him. But he needs to bounce back in a hurry. He's the only CB on our roster who even has a prayer of matching up with the Chiefs' receivers physically. Safeties also seemed a step late much of the time.
The tackling was appalling. Seemed like everyone got in on the act. Despite LB looking like a relative strength going into the year, Lee and Nzeocha aren't cutting it. Getting Foster back should help a lot. Can we play Smith at SLB when he comes back? Doesn't seem to play to his strengths, but we may not have a choice.
Outside of the ground game, the offense was awful, too. Jimmy seemed entirely out of sorts for much of the game. He was indecisive and skittish in the pocket. He either wasn't feeling pressure, or just didn't know what to do when it showed up. I was surprised by that based on what I've seen of him as a pro to date. He hasn't ever gotten that rattled. The OL was doing him no favors, but he was still holding onto the ball way too long. Part of that could be attributed to the loss of explosiveness on offense with McKinnon (Breida is explosive as a runner, but not the dynamic receiver McKinnon is), Goodwin, and (for a couple quarters) Pettis out, but it's not like our receiving corps was any better last year and Jimmy still made plays. And the would-be INT...wow. He got bailed out big-time by that hold.
This team has a lot of work to do. I can't see us going into Arrowhead and getting a win next week the way we played this week. Our offense will need to score a **** of points. May have to start Breida over Alex Collins in fantasy.
I am wondering if Jimmy G
is still trying to get the offense down. Last year he played in a very stripped down offense. This year he is trying to execute Shanahan's complicated offense. He definitely held onto the ball too long and at least half of the sacks were coverage sacks. You can see from the limited replays that Detroit covered our receivers well downfield but why isn't there a back to check down to?
There has to be and is some of that going on. You can argue there's some of that going on for every NFL quarterback. It's just to varying degrees. With Shanahan, however, it's pronounced because of the complexity of what he likes to do on offense and all the little variations that come with it. Mike Shanahan was the same way.
I don't know if anybody can find them, and I don't have time to hunt them down right now, but there are some good interviews with Matt Schaub and Matt Ryan on the internet that talk about what the young Shanahan demands out of his quarterback during the week going into games, before the play comes in, then everything you're asked to do getting up to the line and then finally once the ball is snapped.
About the ONLY area where Shanahan's system frees up the quarterback is all the calls at the line fall on the center. You HAVE to have a center that knows what the heck he's doing because all of the calls go through him. Or they have in the past and I haven't seen one thing yet that indicates Shanahan has done away with that. The fact they spent big money on a center doesn't shock me for a couple reasons but this is a big one and all the little nuances of it.
What adds to those issues going on is I also don't see any differences in his platform delivery mechanics since he got to the NFL. He's stiff with his front foot. That leads to stiff/closed hips, which leads to delivery issues, which leads to erratic accuracy, especially the further you ask him to throw downfield because he doesn't have a cannon to help offset some of it. The fact he doesn't have any true size monster dudes to bail him out makes it worse (Hello, Tyler Eifert, Hello, Dallas Goedert, etc.).
He also needs to work on getting a stronger base when throwing as well IMO. Watch his lower half only for a couple series. He doesn't have enough of a quiet lower half. He's fidgety. He bounces. He floats too much. If you have a strong base your lower half is under more control and you don't have to rely on your upper body as much. His lack of arm talent is magnified IMO because there's too many times when he's dancing on his toes when he's setting up to throw. If he develops a stronger base he can start to work on the repetition of doing it thousands and thousands of times where it becomes muscle memory.
For too long he's been doing it the way IMO. I don't see a ton of change yet. The fact he's got too much gross talent around him only makes it worse and the aforementioned other stuff he's having to learn being in a new offense that is notorious for being difficult on quarterbacks for a while.
A lot of this stuff are things guys 8-9-10 years in the league still are having to work on as well, too. I have listened to Rodgers, Roethlisberger, Ryan, McCown, Rivers. etc., talk about some of the fundamentals, especially stuff that has to do with your lower body and it's stuff even they still have to keep working on because it's so easy to develop bad habits and get off proper fundamentals. Some guys do it with better consistency than others. Jimmy first needs to know what to work on, if he doesn't already, and then show that he's capable of doing it consistently over time if he's going to get around some of his physical limitations.
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