Film Room: Panthers O-Line vs Lions - Optimistic Perspective

[Saca312]

An interesting video, analyzing the schematic aspect of the Panthers o-line vs the Lions. Despite some misshaps explained, seems this brings about a more optimistic perspective on the o-line than most would've taken away:

Primary Takeaways:

-Zavala does show potential, but did make quite a bit of mistakes. As a rookie, such is expected, but shows he needs time to grow.

-Bradley Bozeman - elite center. We've got a good one.

-Ickey sack, while he technically did give up, does not make sense in context. Evidently, Bryce Young takes a seven step drop in a situation that didn't seem normal for such. Either QB miscommunication or OL miscommunication likely attributes. Goes along with the coaches comments that it's preseason: they're trying out different stuff, perhaps this was one of those times. Either way, despite Ickey's subpar preseason performance, seems hard to blame when a likely error in miscommunication may be the true factor.

-Ekwonu primarily had elite reps vs the Lions and looked solid. Besides the sack, seems he's rebounded nicely through the game.

-Overall, the offensive line shows elite traits. Right guard is a slight issue and weakness. A much more optimistic take if they keep this up through the regular season.

 

[shaqattaq]

Good stuff! I know that there's a lot going on today with it being cut day, but I'm genuinely surprised that no one has commented on this. I bet if it was another "our o-line sucks" overreaction piece, we'd be 5-6 pages deep by now!

Another take away from this that seems to be unpopular...Christensen is good. I've felt that all along. He's no Mauler, but he continues to play clean, smart football for the most part.

[bythenbrs]

1 hour ago, shaqattaq said:

Another take away from this that seems to be unpopular...Christensen is good. I've felt that all along. He's no Mauler, but he continues to play clean, smart football for the most part.

On one protection during the Detroit game, BC passes his man off to Bozeman and steps back to pick-up the DE that beat Icky wide.  Whether that was planned or just situational awareness, damn, that was impressive.

[NCBlu]

I don't think the Lions played any of there starters so I would hope with our 1st team OFF out there they looked better. 

The Lions HC said the plan was not to play his starters in the last pre season game.

This is why I hate the pre season you don't know what the team plans unlike when there was 4 games the 3rd game would always see starters play at least a half.

[WhoKnows]

18 minutes ago, NCBlu said:

I don't think the Lions played any of there starters so I would hope with our 1st team OFF out there they looked better. 

The Lions HC said the plan was not to play his starters in the last pre season game.

This is why I hate the pre season you don't know what the team plans unlike when there was 4 games the 3rd game would always see starters play at least a half.

Yeah, I’m tempering my expectations. The Lions were literally a bottom of the barrel D last year. They might have been 32nd overall. Playing their backups should be easy for our starters.

For example, Bozeman is an average C. He certainly isn’t elite as mentioned in the OP otherwise Dexter Lawrence wouldn’t have pushed him around. I’ll take average because it was much better than what we got used to after Kalil. You aren’t going to have top 10 guys at every spot on the OL. That said, calling him elite for playing Detroit backups is preseason talking.

[RumHam]

you know what got me giddy? Seeing Bryce multiple times duck and dodge and dive around what would be a sack.

[Saca312]

20 hours ago, bythenbrs said:

On one protection during the Detroit game, BC passes his man off to Bozeman and steps back to pick-up the DE that beat Icky wide.  Whether that was planned or just situational awareness, damn, that was impressive.

Oh yeah, Brady has definitely shown great traits. Solid guy.

Overall, I think the o-line will be more akin to last season. I'd like to presume the first two preseason games were an anomaly rather than the norm.

Excited to see how they perform during the regular season.

[WhoKnows]

6 minutes ago, Saca312 said:

Oh yeah, Brady has definitely shown great traits. Solid guy.

Overall, I think the o-line will be more akin to last season. I'd like to presume the first two preseason games were an anomaly rather than the norm.

Excited to see how they perform during the regular season.

I think they’ll be an average OL. You can’t say the first two games were an anomaly and count on Detroit as the example. Detroit’s defense was at the bottom last year and they had no starters. The Jets and Giants have better DLs and had their starters.

The OL played well last year but we did get handled by good Ds with competent DLs. I think we’ll be in that average area where they’ll look good against bad teams but will have trouble with the top Ds. I still think we could improve (youth and upgrades) especially against the pass.

[d-dave]

We'll have to see.  I thought the unit played better against Detroit, but that's not saying a lot.

There are still a lot of issues to fix in the protections and communication.  But that's what happens when mostly everything is new.  Having Campen is great, but they are still transitioning away from the power running offense they finished the year as.  Asking these guys who'd rather run block than pass block to pass block a LOT more is going to have a learning curve.

Hopefully we'll see more improvement throughout the season.