Jikkle wrote:Maybe you can argue Shanahan doesn't need to reinvent himself but he definitely needs to figure out our execution issues.
I know we're fielding a lot of backups right now but I still think this team makes way too many mental mistakes on both sides of the ball.
One thing that has been pretty glaring this year is that we don't appear to be designing our offense or defense to put our players in the best position. The two best specific examples I can think of both come from the defensive side of the ball.
Campbell was fine playing the run, and okay in zone coverage, but an absolute liability in man coverage. But we just kept trotting him out there and asking him to cover TEs on third downs, and it bit us repeatedly. But we never really went away from it. Similarly, we kept putting Brown in single-high looks that he clearly couldn't execute. It kept going badly.
Now, in those cases, both of those players were replaced when the "starters" came back (and they were arguably getting phased out even before that). So clearly the coaching staff was aware of the problems. The issue for me is that those issues were clear and glaring for ages, and we didn't really try to adjust. Instead of trying to support the players we had, we just kept kind of hoping they'd turn into the guys we wanted.
The offense has similar problems, especially with the interior OL on obvious passing situations. This was a gripe of mine last year. Purdy likes going empty and being able to survey the field. But our interior OL just cannot stand up to an all-out pass rush. Without some threat of the run, our guys just get obliterated.
I'm not about to defend Brendel. He's been SOOOOO bad this year. He's arguably been the single biggest on-field issue with this team, and there's no indication they have ever contemplated giving Zakelj or Nugent any snaps. But if you have Brendel at center, you just can't go empty on third down and anything under like 9 yards. You need to give those DLs (and LBs against the blitzing teams that absolutely destroy us) something to think about. But we don't. We go empty, we get blitzed, Purdy throws hot, and it's either incomplete or complete short of the sticks.
