A Tale of Two Shulas

[lightsout]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Charles Dickens was clearly speaking of the 2017 Carolina Panthers offense after drafting CMC. Only there is no revolution for us to put our hopes towards. Sadly, we still get the chaos all the same.

I am not sure if it is the loss of Greg Olsen and Ryan Kalil, or if Shula is out-Shulaing himself, but this is a completely different Shula than we saw a couple of months ago in the preseason and even in the first month of the regular season, and I have the film to prove it.


So, to illustrate the difference in personnel, alignment, and play calling, I will offer preseason Christian McCaffrey plays as well as regular season Christian McCaffrey plays. You'll want to pause before the snap and look at what formation we're in and what the defense is lining up in to counter it. Then watch the play. Then recall the continuous, mind-numbing play calls of the past two weeks.
 

 

So what do we see? Well, the things that worked well are pro sets under center that aren't just 10 guys tight to the ball with a wide-out, spread sets from gun, and balanced lines with power or zone blocking schemes. Also, weakside runs out of pro sets. Granted, this is preseason, but the decisions in personnel and formations, as well as the particular playcall is important to note. 

Now, let's see CMC plays from the regular season.
 

 

 

Now, I stop at this point, because we all know the story from here. We tightened up much of the personnel packages to more 2 TE sets and we even keep guys like Funch tight to the line. We're trying to get as many people at the LOS as possible it seems and cram it inside. No pulling, no attacking the tackles, nothing. Just cramming it A gap. 


If you look back, even the first part of the year, the playcalling wasn't terrible. Bad at times? Absolutely. Situational playcalling has always been Mike Shula's Achilles heel. But we were getting CMC the ball in more space. We were spreading the run out more and making the defense attack outside to account for that, leaving cutback lanes inside. We were setting up playaction due to the effectiveness of it all. Matt Kalil was still sucking, and the blocking was generally better because we weren't trying to fold everything inside the tightest part of the field. Instead, we were opening lanes from the guards to the sideline. 


Dickens' story was dark and foreboding, which is where we currently find ourselves. And much like Darnay and Manette, we must find a way out of our imprisonment. 

Shula is this prison. Let us send his career to the guillotine so that Cam, Stewart, and McCaffrey can have a hope for a better future.

[lightsout]

Double post*

[lightsout]

Pulling guards. Spreading receivers out while in shotgun, forcing the d wide. Hitting from guard to sideline. All just last season. More of this. Less cramming it in A gap. 

Mike Shula knows how to do this and is choosing not to when selecting plays. I do not understand it.

[BIGH2001]

The offense has shown the ability to move the ball much better since the Saints game.   You might want to consider the turnover ratio as a major problem for this team.  The last two games its 6 to 1 on the wrong side, which mirrors the season as a whole.   Until we quit giving gifts to the other team we could put up 1000 yards of offense and its not going to matter.

[lightsout]

Well, this is a more a visual representation of our run game the past two weeks in comparison to preseason and earlier in the regular season. We've gone away from what works, and gone to inside zone as our only real run.

For instance, last Sunday, we tried to pound the ball into the A gaps. It failed, repeatedly. Nothing there. However, I believe it was third quarter, we went back to the B gap and off-tackle runs and found some measure of success. 

This points to one thing and one thing alone: the playcalls are the major issue here. We for sure have trouble along the OL, but it is still serviceable. We're simply asking them to run the same failed run concept over and over rather than playing to what this team does best. Pulling guards and getting the ball to the edge is what we do best. The failure to do that is what we're seeing play out. 

We're also minimizing formations and personnel packages which I think is a mistake. I'd bet good money that with Olsen, this offense suddenly looks different and not just in efficiency. We'd be seeing the trips sets with Olsen we're used to seeing at a higher rate and we'd generally be more spread out. The pass blocking is likely part of the reason why we're seeing more max protect schemes on passing downs, but I think we're only really hurting ourselves.

The turnovers are for sure a problem, and the lack of our defense generating turnovers to counteract our own is certainly not how you win games against good teams. But, we've generally been in games regardless. This team should want to win the turnover battle, but it's not required to win the game. We've shown that, I think. And if you look at MOST of our turnovers, they're off tipped balls. We're not fumbling really (I can think of 2 fumbles), so it's just the tipped INTs. That needs to be addressed for sure, but it's not as if we're just seeing Cam make terrible decisions left and right. I think we're just asking too much of one player. We're asking Cam to change so much of his game, on top of still being our leading rusher, and still hit those occasional deep balls. Getting our running game back fixes much of this on it's own, and that begins with Shula.

[Jeremy Igo]

13 minutes ago, lightsout said:

This points to one thing and one thing alone: the playcalls are the major issue here.

[lightsout]

1 minute ago, Jeremy Igo said:

I know, nothing ground breaking.

[JARROD]

7 hours ago, lightsout said:

Pulling guards. Spreading receivers out while in shotgun, forcing the d wide. Hitting from guard to sideline. All just last season. More of this. Less cramming it in A gap. 

Mike Shula knows how to do this and is choosing not to when selecting plays. I do not understand it.

All I can say is to all the Jonathan Stewart haters and saying he is done, you guys can all watch those highlights which are recent and suck it. He's the most underrated running back in the NFl, had he been drafted by the Steelers or Dallas or Seattle he'd be top 5 every year. 

We wasted him just like we are wasting Cam-- Even mike and mike this morning said that, Cam is one of the best athletes to ever play the game, how press conferences are his real emotion, not cookie cutter lip service, his teammates suck and the team is wasting his best years. That's paraphrased what was said.

then they mentioned Jonathan Stewart, and how his time splitting carries with Dwill kept him young and he runs like a 25 year old.

those highlights show just how fast and powerful he is.

our team has to get better. More urgency with the coaching instead of everyone standing around watching or avoiding contact, play calls have to be better and we have to get better talent on the offense. Especially the offensive line.

Stewart should be a HoF back, could and should have been on a real team. I love the Panthers but if they want to be a real team, they need to get it together like they did 2011- 2015 as a powerhouse offense, and like 2013 and 2015, having a great defense to match.

[d-dave]

Nice post @lightsout.  Whether its the play call, the blocking, or the RB choices, something needs to change to help out our offense.

We need someone to threaten the defense vertically.  Another thread around here talked about how the loss of Ginn's vertical threat allowed defenses to load up the short field because they didn't have to worry about a home run.  it make pass and run defense easier.

Who will open things up for us?

[Icege]

8 hours ago, lightsout said:

We tightened up much of the personnel packages to more 2 TE sets and we even keep guys like Funch tight to the line. We're trying to get as many people at the LOS as possible it seems and cram it inside. No pulling, no attacking the tackles, nothing. Just cramming it A gap. 

@sanjay_rajput tell me your thoughts 

[beckersteen]

Wait.. With Olsen out we are running more 2 Te sets???

[LinvilleGorge]

I feel like if I've said it once I've said it a thousand times, but Shula's biggest problem is that he's a shitty checkers player who thinks he's a chess master.

[lightsout]

1 hour ago, beckersteen said:

Wait.. With Olsen out we are running more 2 Te sets???

Manhertz is being used more the last 3 weeks. 29 snaps, 20 snaps, 27 snaps from weeks 5-7.

In comparison, 12, 14,15, 17 weeks 1-4.

So, to show actual percentages.

Ed Dickson this season % of total snaps available where he played

Week 1: 59.7%
Week 2: 81.2%
Week 3: 100%
Week 4: 98.4%
Week 5-7: 100%

Chris Manhertz (starting with Week 3 since Olsen was injured week 2)

Week 3: 25.4%
Week 4: 27%
Week 5: 43.9%
Week 6: 24.4%
Week 7: 37.5%

So, maybe it's not so much running more often than usual (for instance, we ran 2 TE sets about half the season last season. And about 60% of week 1 of this season when Greg was healthy). However, we're still staying with 2 TE sets but not throwing Manhertz in there heavily. They seem to slowly be phasing him into Dickson's backup role since Dickson is now in Olsen's role. 

Point being, we haven't abandoned 2 TE sets and we're progressively seeing more of them, particularly when we have leads.