woahfraze

What does the past Panthers’ offensive schemes have anything to do with the present iteration? Frank Reich and company are not running an Air Coryell, so it’s asinine to point out that Bryce isn’t suited to operating they scheme.

Not really. Bryce is reading Mingo first before Tremble. Mingo is open so Bryce throws the ball. There is no reason for Bryce to progress to Tremble because Mingo is open. If Mingo doesn’t drift up field on the crosser, it’s a completion. Nothing wrong with Bryce’s process here. And nothing really wrong with the throw either. I’m a Bryce believer, I will admit that. But I will also be realistic and recognize he needs to play better. He’s not blameless in our offensive woes. But this play isn’t his fault. It was good quarterbacking process combined with poor route running combined with a great play by the DB.

Well, part of the issue is that it seems like 75% of our plays have routes specifically designed for the receiver to stop. We have to diversify and get rid of this heavy reliance on hook routes. They’re static routes that defense knows are coming and can just sit on them. I’m not giving the receivers a pass. They are not good. But the coaches aren’t catering to their strengths or putting them in a position to succeed. We need more crossers, slants, and mesh concepts where the natural actions of the routes help the receivers create separation. We’ll be limited in the depth we can throw them because we can’t trust the offensive line to hold up and that will mean things are still difficult, but better route combinations would go a long way toward boosting the offense.

Multiple things can be true; these aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. We can both have made a mistake in taking Young instead of Stroud, Young can still have the potential to be a good NFL QB, and our roster/personnel and coaching staff/schemes can be failing in providing Young an environment in which to flourish. Bryce needs to play better. His mechanics are inconsistent and he has missed reads. But some of this is the constant duress he is under due to consistently poor pass protection. And with a scheme with routes that don’t stress the defense and rely on a set of talent poor WRs to generate separation on their own, he often doesn’t have a place to go with ball. He has shown some positive traits. He’s shown the ability to take off and pick up a first down on a scramble. He’s shown good accuracy over the middle of the field at intermediate set when the play call actually does call crossing routes instead of static stick/curl/hooks and he gets relatively better protection. And most of all, he has shown some really good anticipation. I understand the frustration from the “Bryce sucks” crowd. He hasn’t been good. But those takes are too harsh on him in my opinion. Most of the pro-Bryce crowd isn’t sitting here saying he’s awesome. We’re just recognizing the positives he’s shown and the context of the suit show situation he’s in.

The roster is talent deficient, and that’s on the front office. But that’s not the biggest issue here. It’s the coaching. There are other shitty rosters in the league that are much more functional than our team because their coaches aren’t stuck in 1995 trying to implement a dinosaur offense.

I mean lordy, WTF is the offensive coaching staff trying to do? They breakdown the same film as JT. It’s all right there in the open. I understand that during the season, it’s difficult to make major changes to scheme and add new plays, and the players would need reps to get all that installed, but how on earth after seeing 8 games of this filth have we not tried to change up the routes combinations we are running and done something to fix to the pass protection issues? I know the coaches can’t make the players execute, and it’s on the offensive line to win their matchups. But whatever blocking scheme they’ve installed isn’t sticking. While some of it is a continuity and collective mesh issue with injuries to the line breeding a lack of familiarity and ability to communicate across the line, it’s clear what they are asking this group to do doesn’t suit their skill set. These guys were relatively effective last year. Players don’t fall off a cliff this drastically and this quickly from an individual ability performance. The coaches aren’t responsible for Bryce making three really bad throws, but holy hell this is some damning tape. They need to make changes or be fired. Bryce has flashed some really good traits when given the opportunity, but he’s playing on hard mode. Our issues are far and away mostly on the coaching. The front office hasn’t done a good job with resource management and roster construction, but there are other talent deficient teams in the league that are getting better results because their coaches aren’t stuck in 1995.

Chuba has come a long way. He's got some juice, for sure.

I mean, that's what happens when both your starting safeties are out.

I would have faked it again lol

I understand the need to threaten the defense horizontally, not just vertically, and that screens and swing passes are going to be part of the gameplan, but it's frustrating to see the play calls poo from throwing down the field to more horizontal when the offense is clicking. Seems to have disrupted the rhythm we had the first couple drives.

Why didn't they review that during the initial commercial break? C'mon refs, get your ish together.

I don't mind the call. Miami can score from anywhere on the field. Worth the chance to extend the drive and keep their offense off the field. What's the difference in them having to drive 75 vs. 50? Probably not that big.

Damn. Chark was open. Good start from Bryce, but he's gotta hit that.

Wow. Shocking 1st quarter. Go Bryce, go! Keep Pounding Panthers!

When Bryce has time AND the WRs get open on the same play, he's money.

Who are you and what have you done with Tommy Tremble?

Lolol. I actually think that's a great playcall by McDaniel. That could have been a huge play. His players just simply didn't execute. Lucky or us.

I’d trade a 5th or 6th for him. Maybe, and just maybe, would consider a 4th. Ridiculous to think a fourth year WR who hasn’t eclipsed 1,000 yards in a season before and who wants to be traded would garner a 2nd, much less a 2nd and a 4th.

To be fair, most NFL QBs won’t be able to throw a “dot” without better positioning. It’s just a question of whether Bryce would be able to get it to Thielen well enough or if this throw would float enough to allow the defenders to close. I suspect he wouldn’t be able to, but it’s not an issue if he corrects the footwork. On the Bates interceptions, I do think Bryce was able to see him. I think he didn’t expect Bates to be able to get there and he found out in his first real live NFL action what NFL game speed looks like. And I don’t actually think that one was an arm strength issue so much as Bryce being a tick too late releasing, once again because of his footwork. That Ringer video making the rounds showed the extra half step in Bryce’s shotgun drop that delayed him just slightly in delivering the ball. I think Bryce has a good enough arm to succeed in the league. He needs to improve his timing and footwork. It’ll come with more reps and coaching. If it’s a height issue, we’ll we’re boned.

I can’t tell whether Bryce didn’t throw this because he didn’t didn’t see Thielen likely to win on the double move, he didn’t trust his arm, or if he wasn’t prepared to throw it because his footwork on the drop back didn’t have him in position to make the throw—his body isn’t lined up to make the throw in this screenshot. He’s shown great anticipation on some other throws so far, and it his head is pointing at Thielen, so I’d assume it’s either a lack of confidence in his arm (hopefully just due to him still lacking familiarity with the speed of NFL defenders…while his arm isn’t a cannon, I think he has the arm to make this throw), a footwork issue (coachable and correctable), or he couldn’t actually see Thielen over the line (most concerning since you can’t fix height and the only way to mitigate is tailoring the offense to it with moving the pocket and scheming your pass blocks to open up sight lines, which likely only works with certain routes). I hope to god it’s not the last one.

Bryce supporter here. He missed the read. It happens. To QBs of varying experience levels, not just rookies. No one is sitting her saying Bryce has played incredibly well. We’re just saying that he’s flashed the skills that have made him the number 1 pick—movement within the pocket while keeping his eyes downfield, off platform throws, anticipation. His lack of production is a product of a poor environment—personnel, scheming, playcalling—in addition to him being a rookie learning on the job. Look, I wanted Stroud. And I’m disappointed we didn’t take him. But Bryce is our QB and it’s simply too early to tell whether he’s going to pan out long term. And it’s unfair to negatively dock Bryce for not performing as well as Stroud when their situations are completely different.

Puzzling. Last season the personnel that remains this year showed they can get push in the run game. Hard to blame scheme for failing to do so when you actually get engaged, unless there's something I don't know about technique wise about what the coaches are implementing schematically that doesn't allow the players to utilize their full strength and/or leverage. I suppose that's possible. Regardless, they need to improve.

^To add on to my post above, I agree that it looks like the offensive line is really crippling the offense. You didn't show any clips of run plays, but in addition to them struggling to pass block, they are also not executing in the run game. That's not to excuse some of the other scheme issues. I believe that if Reich would open the playbook from Bryce like he did for Dalton, that would mitigate some of our issues. But like you said, the offensive line is just brutal and is torpedoing the good stuff that Riech does come up with.

Great job. This stuff is illuminating, but it also can be hard to draw full conclusions on certain plays because we aren't in the rooms with the players and coaches, so we don't know what the protection schemes should be or what the progressions are for reading the routes. On this one, I can't tell if this is on the offensive line or on Bryce. It could be that the protection wasn't properly called pre-snap and/or that combined with deceptive blitz design by the Vikings. Basically, the offensive line doesn't kick out to block the free rusher, but that's because it looks like there are multiple guys running at the RT and RG only for one of them to drop in coverage after a step and a half toward them on a feigned blitz. The offensive line has to block inside out, as the inside defenders have a shorter route to the QB. This left the LG with noone to block, with Moton handling the end, allowing the defender furthest out with a free run at Bryce. Without knowing how they handle protections, I don't know if this is an issue with how the protection was called once the Vikings showed blitz, an issue with the offensive linemen communicating pass offs o blocks during the play, or something else. It's tough to diagnose who is and isn't going to come on a Brian Flores defense, so my assumption is that the offense has to assume they all are and call the protection accordingly. With the look the VIkings showed pre-snap, that would mean Bryce should have known that there would be a guy unblocked and that defender was his responsibility, meaning he has to hit his guy on a hot route quickly after the snap. He has Hurst open on the curl route to his left and should have gotten the ball to him in that scenario. But it looks like Bryce didn't conside that blitzer as his responsibility. Not sure if that's on him or someone else, as I don't know if Bryce or Bozeman calls the protections.

Noone is saying he needs to be surrounded by world beaters at all positions. But the fact of the matter is that the offensive infrastructure--that is both the personnel, the scheme, and the playcalling--have not set him up to succeed. If any one of the following was happening, Bryce would look better: The offensive line was executing (and yes, part of the struggles are due to injuries, which are largely out of anyone's control); The scheme did not put ask the offensive line to block in a scheme (zone) that is not suited to their strengths (power scheme); The playcalling/scheme/coaching directives were not so predictable--e.g. such a large percentage of runs on first down, draining the play clock to 1 before snapping, not utilizing the whole play book and limiting the number of routes downfield All of the above have allowed defenses to really crowd the line of scrimmage and both overwhelm the offensive line and jam a group of receiving targets that aren't the best at creating separation in the first place. The scheme does not call or much motion or route combinations that would assist the receivers from creating separation on a more consistent basis. It's all a bunch of feedback loops. There are deficiencies in a lot of areas, and each deficiency magnifies problems in other areas. It all adds up to a dysfunctional offense. And a lot of these compounding issues can be corrected not by having all stars at every position, but simply getting competent, NFL-level performances from the players on the roster. Bryce is not blameless. He has missed some WRs. He has failed to recognized disguised coverages and blitzes. He has not held onto the ball when trying to extend plays. But the anti-Bryce crowd here has been blind to a fair number of positives. He has shown some ability to extend plays. He has shown the ability to scramble for first downs. He has shown pretty good accuracy in stretches where the offense plays with more tempo and they give him the opportunity to work the short-middle of the field. And most encouragingly of all, he has shown some really good anticipation on a few throws, releasing the ball before the receiver gets out of their break. Yes, the arm strength is never going to be top notch. But I don't agree with the takes that he has zero zip on his throws. The anti-Bryce crowd seem to falsely be painting the view of Bryce supporters as folks that think he's absolutely a franchise QB. But almost no one is saying that. Most of us are acknowledging that he's in a bad situation. That context is important. I was a Stroud guy going into the draft. I'm glad to see him doing well with the Texans. I wish we had taken him. But I don't think he'd be performing nearly as well in our current situation, not that that matters since Bryce is our QB.