Bear Hands

I dislike that this is the perception being made. Some of the most successful defenses deploy a base 3-4. And everything is very scheme fluid these days with how safety, nickel and LB roles have evolved over time. I agree, it takes time, but we simply grabbed the wrong personnel. It's not the 3-4, it's that we're playing a scheme without suitable LBs for deployment. We don't get good enough edge setting at OLB and don't have the smart & alert ILB play. Compare to what Evero learned in. That had Willis/Bowman...we had a guy in Jewell who knew how to do it and pretty well, not from Evero but straight from Vic. The best we could find was Rozeboom and are trying to develop Trevin (threw him in with the wolves) which is not ideal. Meanwhile, the vets at EDGE do not have the run stopping chops you expect.

Some of this was good offensive playcalling against our front (the 4 & 1 for example). But interesting on that one it was our 3-4 personnel but we technically had 5 with hands in the dirt. I wouldn't call that a 5-2 but it's what 3-4 teams do in these run commit scenarios. So that playcall restricts us from having 1 more guy to be more fluid in space on the strong side, and we lose lateral containment. Good job by our new safety to call it out presnap, but bad execution by Wallace and Jackson IMO. Trevin with the error. He saw the motion and shifted but took an initial angle towards the handoff not the anticipated location. Bad field awareness. So he was now behind and the Jags had 2 guys to engage Jackson & Moehrig on the outside. Jackson just kind of sloppily engaged Strange. Outside of that, one of the biggest things I'm noticing is a severe, and I mean severe, lack of presnap communication on our defense. It just seems to be Moehrig. He had some iffy angles this game but was far and away doing the most to get our guys in the right place presnap. I think Moehrig is trying to do everything and then some so he's going to be caught out of place because of this. Rozeboom and Wallace aren't doing that (and other things) which is a major concern. Rozeboom took such a excessive first few steps in that last clip, he just gave the Jags a cozy opening to float in a completion. You could see he was pissed. The 2 ILBs in our scheme need to be communicators and quick decision makers. Trevin has the quickness but not the awareness or decision making. Rozeboom doesn't have the quickness and is just average/below-average. We need help there if we want any sort of decent defense this season. The line and OLBs have the ability to stop the run, but not when these 2 are making terrible decisions and allowing teams to play in the middle of the field.

The answer: If a QB is bad, it's front and center. It's an issue to glaring to ignore and it simply mutes the other problems. That's just the reality. Same goes with a bad coaching situation. (I don't think we're here yet, getting close at DC)

If you bench him, you’re trotting in Dalton who was absolutely terrible after his first chunk yardage performance last season. He has also had a lot of random injuries and is getting up there in age. So you really just have to keep playing Bryce unless you’re willing to trade midseason. But if you make a trade for some mid backup talent, like let’s say Brandon Allen, it’s a sign you’re looking at the exits and you have to commit to being done with Bryce. So I say you ride him out. Scenarios: 1-He has a unprecedented turnaround 2-He does pretty bad but never so awful that we can’t finish the year. Spirits stay aight until late in season. We trade him in the offseason for a late rounder. Draft or Sign our new QB (or both) 3-He does so bad, Dave loses the locker room and we need to make a drastic move. We bench, try Dalton, trade/sign a backup plan, he eventually gets cut if not traded

We're not very good on either side of the ball. It's been a thing for a while now.

Even if it is a shtick, I'm getting second hand embarrassment in here. Ciao. Lock.

And I don't care. Don't bring it up. Talk football.

Hopefully you're running SP and Grammarly for that client of yours

I mean, you're welcome to the opinion. The ban anticipation is an odd thing to say.

For the Cards: Will Johnson was excellent week 1. He looked like that high R1 level talent people thought he was (outside his injury concerns). Still can have issues vs. man They almost entirely retooled their defense from last year, even more than the Jags but have the same coaches. Their new front-7 is a really interesting bunch, but either new or inexperienced. They should absolutely be attackable. Their running game is a good one. Which if established early could open things up for MHJ and McBride. But the receivers after Harrison are not good, so I feel our defense matches up well. That being said, if our LBs play like week 1, it could be a very long day. Could see long sustained drives by AZ, not giving us much time to respond or have dud drives.

Don't want to make a new thread but at this point, year 3, eye-test should be all we need if the results aren't good. We should be able to tell if it's what we've been watching for a few years or not.

To be fair, I kind of like Bo but he was BAD this past weekend.

lol. It's almost as if some are realizing the worse a sports team is, the more negative its fan base becomes. Mind blowing stuff.

I want to know if Bo Nix is rated as the worst week 1 on PFF because he hands down was the worst QB this past weekend. Even moreso than Tua. If he's not, then PFF may need to work on their algo haha.

That's one of the most sober and honest breakdowns I've seen of Bryce. That guys is being as real as can be. No sugar coating, no tepidness to critique, blunt and straight to the point.

It doesn't look like he will. As someone else mentioned, what he does allows him (or he thinks it helps) to maximize field vision. It doesn't seem he trust himself to read during his drops if he went conventional. At his size, he's trying to survey as much as he can with his back-skip/hop before that weird hitch and turn once he's good and dropped back. Kyler and Russ for example are very deliberate and quick, good footwork mostly, with higher release points. And honestly, they both have 1-1.5" on him height wise. And Bryce plays small, lower release point, he will just throw quick on his backfoot rather than step up into the pocket and take a lick. In the process, he loses so much potential torque. It's 101 stuff but it's like all media has an agreement to not acknowledge it. He usually had the extra second at Bama to readjust into comfortable position. They called it him being this lose street-style "Point Guard", winning out-of-structure, but you still need proper damn mechanics! I don't get the collective analytic community ignoring this for so long. It's some of the worst footwork you'll ever see, and it doesn't look like he cares to fix it. It's year 3. Taking out arm strength, I felt like once I really saw the difference in him vs. contemporaries like Kyler/Russ mechanics wise, his problems were so obvious. And he's just comfortable doing his thing, doesn't want to go out of that comfort zone, and it doesn't translate. At the end of the day, I think he's simply below the physical threshold. His size just doesn't work at this level with his arm strength and lack of frame for being a runner. You hate to say it, because people love to see this type of kid beat the norm, but I think we're simply below the threshold.

Mateer does interest the heck out of me. Live arm, a solid A-power, dual threat, risk taker, experienced with presnap work, good mechanics. Has a side arm thing but nothing egregious or different than Ward, PM, etc. Outside of Sellers, he's the other with that level of high reward. And good news - the entire class is 6'-1" and above

Honestly, 2020 and 2021 were the years we sat on our asses like idiots. First being 2020. Love may have been the one we missed out on with a trade down or a trade up from our 2nd pick. And Hurts was a totally viable 2nd rounder to take a flier on after going DB. Love in particular was one of those top guys pre-college season, but he had a lot of TOs his last year and some iffy decision making pegged him back by scouts. If we hired a staff with a decent plan and vision (instead of Rhule and whatever he wanted to do) willing to groom him behind a vet, that may have been the money bet. 2021, it was Fields. We could've tried him on for size, even if it didn't work, it would have put us in position to draft a QB in 2024. It all sucks. We chased.

Our scouts better be taking a good hard look at the college landscape after the opener. I hate this whole thing about giving the nice guy grace -- he has sucked, and it's just the reality of the situation. Yes, it sucks because he's a nice guy with good spirit, but it is what it is.

Can we just ask really nicely for Kevin O'Connell?

Haha One thing I know is that I'm not one to complain in retrospect much, only when it's super damn obvious. That draft was soooo damn obvious. So f*cking clear what we needed to do. And it was hard to stomach for a lot of us. I was not a Legette fan, just had to accept it and hope he was aight. It was just like Mingo. A guy most consensus had late 2nd/early 3rd at best. If anything, Legette was a bigger reach than Mingo. And we all felt it for some time after that draft. It didn't feel good. If anyone goes back, I was a Frazier, Sainristil, Pearsall, and Kneeland fan. Could've gone BPA at so many critical spots rather than a cheerleading "fun" local interview. I'll never forget an Athletic Pod with Brugler breaking down Legette. He mentioned how he had spoke with a lot of teams and most of the league had him highest, a 3rd rounder. There was one or two teams that had him much higher than others. Voila.

It’s weird some are just acknowledging his footwork like a new thing. The lateral skip, hop and turn/hitch is and has always been his thing. I think he’s trying to correct it but hasn’t and has a weird muscle memory thing going on.

there was a honeypot of talent at the end of first/top of 2nd and we took at 3rd round talent at best in a trade up lol Ladd, Frazier, Sainristil, DeJean, there was a lot

I have a feeling we were going up to get a QB (Stroud or AR) if we didn't get Bryce. So we'd be trading up with AZ. So I don't think we would've turned around and grabbed Caleb that quickly. We could've been on the 2024 QB timeline if we just took Fields instead of Horn.

Starting Center and starting ILB injured, QB looks like a tall version of Bryce.