Fox and dealing with Injured Starters

[Ricky Spanish]

Ever notice that if one of our starters gets hurt than we are doomed to miss the playoffs. If even one of them goes down, fox can't change his games around to suit the new strengths of our teams, instead choosing to do things the same way expecting the same results with players of less talent. This isn't the case with many other teams.

Remember when Brady went down for New England a few years back? they plugged in a new QB and went 11-5. Pittsburgh this year, they have lost half their D-line, and half their o-line, and are still in first place in their division. The saints lost their entire secondary at one point this year, but are still in the playoff hunt.

It seems like if we lose 1 guy, our season goes to poo. People have been using the "Injuries" excuse every year we've had a bad year under Fox and I'm done with it. They play the game of Football. People are going to get hurt. deal with it and find a new way to win.

of course we all know fox is terrible at adjustments so this really isn't a surprise to me. I'm just more surprised that I haven't noticed this earlier.

I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass and say that I know that every year we've gone to the playoffs we haven't had significant injuries, because honestly, I don't remember. I don't THINK there are, but I could very well be wrong. I will give Fox a Pass in the 05 playoffs when we played seattle and every one of our RBs got hurt so we had to pull some guy out of the stands to run for us. I understand that, but not each other year.

I dunno, just something I was thinking about in order to procrastinate from writing a presentation that's due at 3 today. You can only Talk about Andrew Luck so much before you get tired of slurping him. I'm at that point right now.

[Fox007]

Fox isn't that good.

[mav1234]

if fox can't make adjustments in a game all that well, why would we expect him to make that great of adjustments in a season?

that being said, he usually finds a way to get things going in the last 4 games of the year, so I expect some more Fox magic to take us out of the Luck sweepstakes!

[Icege]

This has been my biggest criticism of John Fox and hopes that our next coach does not share a similar problem in.

Fox is a system guy. He will not (read: not cannot) design plays around players. Sean Payton has plays with his 3rd string TE in mind. I am completely in favor of a coach who works with what he has, because I'm a firm believer in if you're unable to change your game plan, you can't make adjustments (half time, injuries, etc etc).

Belicheat, while being a system guy, will change things week in and week out to best utilize his team against the other coach's. Rex Ryan has built his offense to try and carry a young rookie QB (WTF THEY CAN DO THAT?) because that's what he has. You can have a system still, but you have to account for the moving parts within the system.

[SorthNarolina]

What it comes down to is this year was a long shot for us to be a good team.

We have a massive amount of talent but limited experience and little depth.

This team doesn't have ANYTHING to pick up the slack should one component fail.

That's why the injuries hurt so bad.

[Ricky Spanish]

What it comes down to is this year was a long shot for us to be a good team.

We have a massive amount of talent but limited experience and little depth.

This team doesn't have ANYTHING to pick up the slack should one component fail.

That's why the injuries hurt so bad.

yeah, but we've had depth in the past, I completely agree with what you're saying about this year though.

[USR1]

It is called caoching. I think coach Fox puts handcuffs on his position, OC and DC.

[Chimera]

While I agree with the sentiment here, let's be fair. When the injury bug hits, it hits the Panthers hard.

It hit us especially hard in 2004, the 2005 playoffs, 2007 and last season. We have a lot of injuries this season, too but this season was a waste before that.

[fjblair]

Fox is a simpleton and not a deep thinker.

[MurkN]

Fox is a simpleton and not a deep thinker.