LinvilleGorge

No. He's not. He's one of the slowest QBs in the league to throw. That's not gonna get it done behind this OL and it's not because we're going down the field. Hence the thread.

Don't get triggered now. Read through it all if you're going to react. I'm going to try to be fair. So far, Darnold has far exceeded my expectations. He's looked good under pressure. He's been much more of a threat with his legs than even his most ardent supporters would've expected. Sam Darnold running the football has shockingly been our biggest red zone threat, though that's something I would look for defenses to take away from us going forward now that it's established - but, that should also open up other opportunities forcing defenses to account for Darnold running. Now for the triggering... Sam Darnold has processing issues in the pocket. I said it in the game thread today, it's weird but he actually seems to play better when pressured into making a quick decision. It's when he gets a clean pocket that the issue shows up. He's slow to process when given time and has a tendency to make a bad decision and/or throw when given time. I don't know why. It's weird. Just think back to today's game. He had two open downfield opportunities. Both from a clean pocket. Neither were even close. His two INTs and one should've been INT all came when he had time. The danger ball he tried to force to (I think Marshall) came when he had time. Almost every time when he threw to a blanketed WR (the throw to Robby on the near to the camera sideline comes to mind) came when he had time to scan the field. My observation has been that the better the protection and the more time he has, the worse he tends to play. His worst throws came when he had time. Oddly enough, our shoddy OL seems to actually be helping Darnold in our offense by forcing him to unload the ball earlier than he would like to on a lot of our passing plays. All of the above are just my knee jerk reactions watching the games. So, I went to look at the numbers to see if they told the same story. Darnold is ranked 25th in average time to throw at 2.87 seconds (Teddy's average time to throw last year was among the league's fastest at 2.6 seconds). That's wild considering how often he's forced to dump it off quickly due to immediate pressure. And it's not because he's going down the field. He's ranked 23rd in average intended air yards at 7.9 yards per attempt. He's also 23rd in the league in average air yards differential at -2.5 indicating a lack of success on deeper pass attempts. He's 17th in the NFL in air yards to the sticks on 3rd down with his passes on 3rd down coming up an average of -0.7 yards short of the marker (Bridgewater's number here was -1.7 last year for comparison, so he's still not nearly as bad in this department as Teddy was last year much to our chagrin causing much teeth gnashing). If we're going to have more consistent success on offense behind this porous OL we have to find a way to speed up Darnold's processing time. When he isn't pressured, he's simply too slow to read the field. I think he can do it. Like I said, oddly enough he seems to play better when early pressure forces him to make a fast decision. We just have to find a way to get him to make these decisions without the defense forcing his hand.

Derek Carr was my dark horse MVP candidate. I fully expected them and him to be sneaky good this year. I definitely didn't expect the Cardinals to be 4-0 though. They've played some decent competition. Don't let the Vikings' 1-3 record fool you. Their three losses are by a combined 11 points.

That's what you took from today's game? Okay. LOL!

Did you catch the Cardinals game this afternoon?

We played well in the 1st half. We didn't quit when getting our asses kicked. DJ Moore is one of the NFL's best WRs. Shaq and Burns were great.

We should've had a sack on the very first play. Dak just did a great job getting rid of it. He has the 4th fastest time to throw in the NFL, on par with Brady. Tough to sack a QB who is averaging 2.5 seconds to get rid of it.

They made halftime adjustments and we didn't. D looked fine in the 1st half. Got wrecked in the 2nd half.

Mediocrity? Hell, that would require a significant upgrade.

The Eagles aren't very good. We should be able to beat them.

We're gonna be missing Horn for the rest of the year. That dude ain't playing again this season.

The D was pretty darned good on the first half and never reacted to the adjustments the cowboys made at halftime. The same can be said about the offense. They just got bailed out by the Cowboys taking their foot off the gas and going prevent and pulling their best DB out of the game.

I didn't but I would have had I realized that the Saints would've been missing half their roster and coaching staff. Literally everyone expected the Jets and Texans to be possibly the worst two teams in the league this year.

This is the damn truth. In the season when blows to the head of the QB were initially being emphasized and the mere brush of a QB's helmet became a penalty, the NFL let the league's MVP's head get treated like a piñata on the biggest stage in sports. I'll never forget it or forgive it.

Me neither. He's complete trash as a ref. He might be a great guy for all I know and he might know the rules forwards and backwards off the field, but he should not be reffing NFL football games. Virtually every game I watch that he's calling features some straight up gaffes by the ref crew.

I get making stoppage of forward progress non-reviewable since it's basically a judgement call with no concrete evidence to point to in a review situation. But that's also why refs are generally pretty slow to blow that whistle. In this case, there was no whistle until after the play was over and the ball carrier was on the ground. It was only then that they determined after the fact that forward progress had been stopped. That cannot happen. I mean, that should be a fireable offense level error by a ref.

We gotta get Brown and Christensen on the field at some point to see if they can be the answer, because outside of Moton, the rest of these dudes we're playing certainly aren't.

When in doubt, go with the call that's reviewable. I don't know if refs are taught that but if they aren't they should be. This is why they hold the whistle so much on plays that look like they should be blown dead sometimes. Once that whistle blows the play is dead. What you REALLY can't do as a ref is manufacture a whistle that was never blown and call a play dead after the fact due to the result of the play. That's how you get accused of game fixing or score fixing because it sure looks like you're doing some fixing.

Oh, incompetence was definitely at play. You absolutely cannot after the fact make a determination of stopped forward progress on a play that has resulted in a fumble with no whistle on the field. That's inexcusable officiating.

Top 5-10 in a season is far from "historic". I think we will probably have a borderline top 10 D, but that #1 overall ranking was heavily due to facing horrific competition up until today.

Honestly, probably not. Not unless this OL gets a lot better very quickly. Need to just let the rookies learn on the job. These vets are awful and they aren't gonna get any better. The D just got outflanked and outschemed at half. The Cowboys made great adjustments and we didn't counter.

Like Blandino said, it simply wasn't. The ball was dislodged at the moment of contact. My question is how was this call made after the fact? There was no whistle on the field. Had there been a whistle indicating a stoppage of play at least the stripes would've had something to lean on for their call. That call wasn't just atrocious, it appeared completely manufactured in the moment.

The OL has to get a lot better and do it quickly for us to make any noise. It's not gonna happen from this current unit. Christensen and Brown have to get on the field.

If so, this is getting to Fox/Rivera level of frustratingly hard headed depth chart decisions.

The way they utterly outflanked us at halftime was stunning. Their adjustments just wrecked us. I think Kellen Moore may end up beating Joe Brady to a head coaching role. Dude's legit.