Coaching matters. Take a look and find out why.

[ellis]

 

[ellis]

McVay mopped the floor with Ron for much of the day. For nobody on the sideline to be keenly aware of McVay’s tendencies (playing the clock like a fiddle, using it as a psychological see-saw), while anticipating such scenarios and preparing your subs adequately—for nobody, including the head coach, to be completely on top of this is completely unacceptable.

It’s 100% on the head coach to have a firm grip on each LIVE situation at hand. He spent the entire pre-snap yelling at the ref about stuff from the past.

 

Rams convert and Ron’s STILL screaming like an animal at the zebras (you’ll hear it). Meanwhile, the other team is fully in control and sees an emotional train wreck on the other side line. McVay undoubtedly instructs Goff “GO! GO! HURRY!” 

They do, and the second crucial time out is wasted. And of course, the timeout was sorely needed in the final two minutes of the game. 

[Burnout189]

Just more proof of McVay playing 3-D chess, while Ron is playing tiddlywinks.

[DeAngelo Beason]

Rivera gets outcoached weekly.  I like his scheme (sometimes), and love his playcalling when he's running the defense, but his situational awareness is non-existent.

[ellis]

He doesn’t always get outcoached. But the fact that he was fundamentally overmatched on opening day really concerns me.

I’m not pushing for Ron to be fired after one game this year. I’m pointing out a critical 45 second stretch during a game, and how it could have cost them a week one win. It felt sloppy and terrible in person, and it looks almost as bad on television. I was pretty confident my eyes weren’t failing me on site.

[Mr. Scot]

9 minutes ago, ellis said:

It’s 100% on the head coach to have a firm grip on each LIVE situation at hand. He spent the entire pre-snap yelling at the ref about stuff from the past.

In our case, it's supposedly a hundred percent on an assistant defensive line coach with no head coaching experience.

What's also bad about this is that Rivera ripped into the players for losing their minds in the playoff game against San Francisco a few years back..

[panthers55]

So usually Rivera gets slammed for not being emotional and animated. When he does, now he gets slammed for not being focused and level headed.  If Rivera got owned all day it is amazing we only lost by 3 points to the NFC Champs. By that description you would have thought we lost by 20.

[ellis]

Let’s get off my ass about Rivera please. I’m pointing out a situation, not a trend. I’ve never said Ron Rivera needs to show more emotion. Never. It’s a stupid thing to say, and I would never say it. Now if you want to defend this piece of tape, if you want to tell me Ron’s doing his job, please do that. Because I’m not telling anybody that Ron Rivera got outcoached all day long or gets owned every week. This series was terrible, it was critical to the outcome of the game, and the head coach was completely off the grid in terms of being on top of the situation. The other head coach saw this, and put the pedal to the metal. That’s what this thread is about, not me taking a dump on Ron Rivera’s career accomplishments.

This was not the only substitution gaffe in the game. In fact, it happened in all three phases. So the argument is: “Relax, multiple unforced errors and we still only lost by three to the Rams!!!!!” Unfortunately, no such column in in the NFL standings exists. 

Or, you could consider the fact it had it not been for several critical errors which were completely unforced by the opposition, Carolina may have won this game by 14.

[Mr. Scot]

Can't be true. I've been assured by @MasterAwesome that Rivera is master strategist on an equal level with guys like Sean Payton and his coaching performance in the second half of this game was an example of that.

[Greatman77]

I think Rivera is a better coach than a lot of Huddlers give him credit for, but there is no mistaking the fact that his management of time-outs has always  been horrendous. You will never see Belichick waste time-outs for stupid stuff like Ron does.

[BrianS]

So the fumble was definitely a poo call.  However, it took a really long time to come to that call.  In all that time, someone should have been preparing our defense for the outcome to go against us.  Listen, if the challenge outcome is in our favor, fine, put our offense out there and let's play.  But the outcome was never a sure thing, so a good coaching staff will prepare their team for ALL the potential outcomes.  It looked like we were not ready.

This was further exacerbated when after the next play, we tried to put in a different defensive package despite the fact that the Rams were in up tempo.  That falls solely on the DC . . . aka Ron.

The impact of those two lost timeouts on the end result of the game cannot be overstated.  If we had those two timeouts, we could have kicked deep after we scored and then put it on our defense to get them 3 and out.

[panthers55]

2 minutes ago, ellis said:

Let’s get off my ass about Rivera please. I’m pointing out a situation, not a trend. I’ve never said Ron Rivera needs to show more emotion. Never. It’s a stupid thing to say, and I would never say it. Now if you want to defend this piece of tape, if you want to tell me Ron’s doing his job, please do that.

This was not the only substitution gaffe in the game. In fact, it happened in all three phases. So the argument is: “Relax, multiple errors which were completely on Forest, and we still only lost by three to the Rams!!!!!”

Or, you could consider the fact it had it not been for several critical errors which were completely unforced by the opposition, Carolina may have won this game by 14.

You started the negativity not with the film but the analysis. If you had said that Rivera wasn't paying attention that is legitimate or you could have pointed out what Rivera himself noted which was his 6 back defense on third down often allowed us to get gashed in the run game when their no huddle kept us from substituting.  Again it was clear. But saying he was consistently outcoached based on one example is overblown analysis in my opinion.

[Mr. Scot]

1 minute ago, Greatman77 said:

I think Rivera is a better coach than a lot of Huddlers give him credit for, but there is no mistaking the fact that his management of time-outs has always  been horrendous. You will never see Belichick waste time-outs for stupid stuff like Ron does.

The dumbest argument I usually see for Rivera (or Hurney, for that matter) is people saying "he knows way more football than you".

If being a great football coach was as simple as knowing more than the fans,  it'd be pretty easy.

It's not Rivera's job to be a better coach than us. It's his job to be a better coach than his opponent and/or the other 30 coaches in the league.

As Ellis has shown here, that wasn't the case this past Sunday.

[MasterAwesome]

Perhaps you’re right, but if you make such strong assertions as “McVay mopped the floor with Ron for much of the day”, then I’d expect to see a bit more of a comprehensive analysis than one clip of Ron having to burn a timeout cause he lost focus.

Among all of the reasons we lost yesterday, I wouldn’t put “wasting a timeout” particularly high on the list. Having an extra timeout wouldn’t have really helped a whole lot with our inability to stop their run game in the second half.