kungfoodude

Well, he has only been targeted 22 out of 224 times. Not really sure what you want him to do about that.

10% Defense, 90% offense. Blame for most of the struggles: 1. Offensive Line 2. Darnold/Brady 3. Rhule

We should be worried the way we have looked the last three weeks. Remember we are 3-3 against opponents with a combined 15-19 record. Only two opponents with winning records, for that matter.

Well, they definitely have zero idea how to judge kickers, as they have shown again and again.

This would literally be a rock bottom moment if that transpires. At that point, Rhule will officially be on the hot seat, IMO.

I'd definitely rather have Tua than Darnold or Teddy but I am not sure that is really saying much. I would certainly not be willing to invest much draft capital in obtaining someone like Tua. Nor would I view him as the future.

That is what happens to bad franchises, especially when you cannot evaluate QB's properly. I am not sure I see that in our future, given that two of our efforts were to obtain Stafford and Watson. We know what a good QB is, we just don't see what bad QB's are, apparently. In truth, I think the issue is that our coaching staff has the college mentality of seeing talented players with untapped potential that they can mold. Well, that works well in college but it is a lot rarer to find in the NFL. And it is EXTREMELY rare to find after multiple seasons of being a professional football player. Weatherly, Erving, Elflien, Darnold, etc. These guys had plenty of tape showing they weren't the guys but our staff thought they could do what others couldn't.

Relatively easy in that we jump out to a lead and maintain it, unlike recent games. I am not expecting a blowout. Nothing is ever easy in the NFL, especially when you are a bad team. I just think their weaknesses play heavily into our strengths.

We have enough athletic players on offense that we can get creative in the running game. I hope this is the plan moving forward. We are relying on the passing game far too much this season.

We don't need Sam to beat anyone in this game, we just need him to not fug it up. We have the defense and our running game should carry the bulk of the load offensively. All Sam needs to do it throw it to the right jerseys. Literally that is it.

At least they tried to get Stafford and Watson, so they know what a good QB actually looks like. We just can't have them dumpster diving for backup QB's or obvious busts again. We have to find a competent QB.

Panthers 27, Giants 17 Relatively easy win. Our offense scores one of the TD's for NY after a bad turnover and our defense picks up 14 points on short fields given to the offense. 175 rushing yards and only 30 passes attempted.

The line is really bad but it gives enough time to make good decisions. What we need is a QB who is capable of running the offense and making those good decisions. Darnold is obviously not that guy but PJ wasn't great against the Lions. He was gunning balls into tight spots, which he sometimes got away with and sometimes didn't. Overall, I didn't see that he was much of a different gunslinger than Darnold.

I liked what I saw last year but I haven't caught any of his games this year.

We have improved since last year against the run. Some of it is the scheme we run defensively doesn't feature the DT's making plays as much.

Through 6 games. I think Teddy's biggest problem was that he threw to his first open option basically all the time regardless of circumstances.

There is a stat for that Football Outsiders has called ALEX. Also, 5.7 more passes per game for Darnold than Teddy through 6 games. Here is what I found for the percentage of throws by zones. Teddy Bridgewater Behind the LOS: 18.0% 0-10 yards: 44.7% 10-20 yards: 21.8% 20+ yards: 8.3% Sam Darnold Behind the LOS: 14.7% 0-10 yards: 47.3% 10-20 yards: 22.8% 20+ yards: 10.3% Much more similar that I would have expected to be honest. I thought the deep pass disparity would be greater for Darnold. Basically just 3% difference in 10+ yard passes. Wow.

Uh...no.

Well, he actually isn't. On average just basically one more pass per game than Teddy. Throws of 20+ yards through 6 games for Teddy: 17 Throws of 20+ yards through 6 games for Darnold: 24 Trust me, I beat Teddy up about the deep passing last year too but I had to begrudgingly admit over the course of the year that he did actually take more deep shots than I wanted to admit(those threads are still available to reference, FWIW). Which, we should only expect to see so much of an improvement in taking shots deep. The offense is designed to make relatively quick reads and throws. Darnold is just struggling to do that. I can do a deeper dive to see where they both rate in terms of percentages of passes to what zones(0-10, 10-20, 20+). Perhaps that will show a clearer picture of tendencies.

Well....there is one common denominator in this equation......

Darnold is the second biggest part of the problem, IMO. 1. OL 2. Darnold 3. Brady If we fix any of the three things we will only get so much better, IMO. The OL can be improved, although it will take time. Brady MAY be able to improve but it also may be years after he is gone from here. Darnold's improvement chances are quite slim.

There isn't a worse or better in Time To Throw. That stat may indicate that you have excellent protection or it may be that your offense doesn't feature as many quick throws or it may be that you are a mobile QB and scramble to extend plays. The thing that makes it stand out is that we have a quick read offense under Brady and Teddy was near the top of the list in Time to Throw(one of the quickest). So, it makes me wonder why Darnold isn't getting rid of the ball more quickly. He is either struggling to make reads or he is holding on to the ball looking for bigger plays....or some combination of those two things. We aren't doing things dramatically different on offense than last season.

Yeah but the solution to having bad lines is not to hold on to the ball longer.

There is a reason why he has such poor clean pocket statistics. The longer he has, the worse his decision making is. Some of it is his gunslinger instinct to try and force a play but some of it is that he just isn't processing what he is seeing quickly or well enough. I suspect that's why he actually tends to do better the more quick and decisive that he is(under pressure, two minute, etc). He isn't overthinking, he is just reacting. But, I just don't think there is much we can do about it anymore. He just is who he is.

Well did he have those issues with drops in NY too? Because those stats look remarkably similar.