Complementary Football, or: How to Lose a Game

[theinstrumental]

There's a lot of Bryce and Evero hate today, as always, but I haven't seen the end of the first half mentioned. I want to highlight it because it's really where we lost the game, it's as infuriating as anything else that happened yesterday, and it hasn't gotten enough attention. 

- Just after the 2-minute warning, Arizona kicks a field goal to make it 3-13. The Cardinals have two timeouts left. On the kickoff: Not one, but two holding penalties. Ball's spotted at the 11. 
- First play: Inside zone from shotgun, for three yards. Chuba gets up ready to hand the ball immediately to a ref, but nobody else has any urgency.
- Second play: Ball doesn't get snapped until 8 seconds left on the play clock. Bryce sprays a pass into the ground in front of Legette. We use 36 seconds of game time, but stop the clock for the opponent.
- Third play: Shotgun snap. Bryce throws the ball low to Sanders. Sanders almost reels it in, but can't. Clock stops again. Panthers face 4th and 7.
- Fourth down: Punt to Arizona. Dortch returns it 30 yards to the Panthers 45.
- Following drive: Arizona uses the short field and both remaining timeouts to score a touchdown as time expires.

This is the stuff that doesn't show up in the box score that loses a game, the classic hidden yards:

• Special teams miscues. Two holding penalties and a long punt return flip the field.
• Poor time management. Why run the first play if we're not going to run again? Why pass on second down if we're not going to hurry into it? Why not make the opponent use either of their timeouts? 
• Poor QB play. These kinds of throws get lost in the Bryce post-mortems since they only count as two incompletions, but both were makeable throws. Sacks would have been better than incompletions. He just missed the throws. It's an awful mixture of physical failure and mental obliviousness.

I generally think Canales is doing a decent job, but we blew a good chance to go into the half with a game in reach despite everything going wrong. Instead, we made it much, much worse. Considering how close the score was in the end, this two-minute stretch of complete ineptitude is going hang over the rest of the season as a giant missed opportunity. 

[LinvilleGorge]

It's wild how hard Arizona tried to give us that game and we were like, nah we good. 

[theinstrumental]

1 minute ago, LinvilleGorge said:

It's wild how hard Arizona tried to give us that game and we were like, nah we good. 

Hate to think this way in week 2, but this feels like a game we win in the past and screw up our draft pick. Maybe this is the year the bottom finally falls out and we can add another blue-chipper to Tet?

[XClown1986]

Thanks for this. Great points. Time management and lack of plays being called to combat the blitz, were what I saw as the difference in winning and losing yesterday.

 

Also, the lack of hustle during and between plays is painfully obvious. I watch other teams flying around and am frustrated by our team's play speed. 

[electro's horse]

I was gonna make a thread on this but you beat me to it. 

didn’t feel like Canales/offense knew if they wanted to try to run out the clock or try to play for a fg. 

playcalling doesn’t really indicate either. 

Bryce as usual doesn’t show any urgency to the line situational awareness. This has been an issue since his rookie season. 

I mentioned in the game thread that this team doesn’t look like they have a two minute package. Like you have to know there if you’re going for points or just want to get two first downs and end the half. 

terrible all around. 

[CRA]

as bad the the defense is.....they allowed points on just 2 drives (10 points) Sunday where the drive started in AZ territory. 

We all know we got a bad defense....

but the Panthers O allowed a TD

Cards started a drive on the Carolina 48 (FG)

Cards started a drive on the Carolina 45 (TD)

D is really bad.... but a lot of those Cardinal points were just exclusively because our D stinks. 

[Dave Gettleman's Shorts]

during the 2 min drive before half, after the pass to JT Sanders on 3rd down

the ref spots the ball with 59 sec on clock, everyone is walking to line instead of quickly lining up and running a play to avoid a review

XL lines up on wrong side of formation that Bryce wanted and decides to slowly jog to other side of formation giving time for ref to decide to review the catch

given the state of Evero's defense, that turned the game from 3-13 to 3-27 before the offense got back on the field in the 2nd half

Edited 4 hours ago by Dave Gettleman's Shorts

[electro's horse]

5 minutes ago, Dave Gettleman's Shorts said:

during the 2 min drive before half, after the pass to JT Sanders on 3rd down

the ref spots the ball with 59 sec on clock, everyone is walking to line instead of quickly lining up and running a play to avoid a review

XL lines up on wrong side of formation that Bryce wanted and decides to slowly jog to other side of formation giving time for ref to decide to review the catch

That was when it looked like they decided to run clock, but not all of them realized it was a close catch. That’s honestly on Bryce and JT. they’re both the ones who saw the catch was close and they need to be aware it might get reviewed. 

im not sure it would have mattered since it was a booth review but neither the qb or receiver played their part there. 

XL just making things worse incidentally was just a cherry on the pie. 

Edited 4 hours ago by electro's horse

[Evil Hurney]

2 hours ago, theinstrumental said:

- First play: Inside zone from shotgun, for three yards. Chuba gets up ready to hand the ball immediately to a ref, but nobody else has any urgency.
- Second play: Ball doesn't get snapped until 8 seconds left on the play clock. Bryce sprays a pass into the ground in front of Legette. We use 36 seconds of game time, but stop the clock for the opponent.

My read is they intended to try and get points but that first run and usage of the clock was done to hedge against things going poorly. Basically they shouldn't need all that time to score since they had multiple timeouts.

Dirting that second play put us in a no-win situation. Sure you can run on 3rd down but ARI had timeouts so they still likely get the same result.

[PleaseCutStewart]

As bad as that was, we were still running the play clock down to 5 or less the entire 2nd half despite being down 24 after the Cards last TD. I still don't know who is more at fault for this - Bryce or Canales. There were definitely a few times where it looked like we were lined up at about 20 seconds and Bryce is I think making line adjustments until less than 5 on the play clock. Other times, the team didn't even get lined up until less than 10 seconds on the play clock.

I really think we have the worst marriage between a coach and QB in the NFL - a QB who is bad + a coach that looks clueless.

[PleaseCutStewart]

19 minutes ago, Evil Hurney said:

My read is they intended to try and get points but that first run and usage of the clock was done to hedge against things going poorly. Basically they shouldn't need all that time to score since they had multiple timeouts.

Dirting that second play put us in a no-win situation. Sure you can run on 3rd down but ARI had timeouts so they still likely get the same result.

My biggest problem with that mentality is we were down 10... Why the hell would we be running it on 1st down when we desperately needed points and momentum. Running it for a short gain on 1st made it much easier to decide what defense to run on 2nd and 3rd and long for Arizona.

[PleaseCutStewart]

1 hour ago, electro's horse said:

That was when it looked like they decided to run clock, but not all of them realized it was a close catch. That’s honestly on Bryce and JT. they’re both the ones who saw the catch was close and they need to be aware it might get reviewed. 

im not sure it would have mattered since it was a booth review but neither the qb or receiver played their part there. 

XL just making things worse incidentally was just a cherry on the pie. 

Sounds like the usual story of his soon to be short-lived NFL career

[electro's horse]

3 minutes ago, PleaseCutStewart said:

My biggest problem with that mentality is we were down 10... Why the hell would we be running it on 1st down when we desperately needed points and momentum. Running it for a short gain on 1st made it much easier to decide what defense to run on 2nd and 3rd and long for Arizona.

It’s not the worst strategy to run an inside draw in that situation….if the defense respects the deep pass. Patriots made a killing on that play  

It’s one thing when you’ve got baker mayfield, Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. 

it’s another thing when you have someone you absolutely under no circumstances are going to let go play action deep from the 11. 

Edited 3 hours ago by electro's horse

[Jon Snow]

1 minute ago, PleaseCutStewart said:

As bad as that was, we were still running the play clock down to 5 or less the entire 2nd half despite being down 24 after the Cards last TD. I still don't know who is more at fault for this - Bryce or Canales. There were definitely a few times where it looked like we were lined up at about 20 seconds and Bryce is I think making line adjustments until less than 5 on the play clock. Other times, the team didn't even get lined up until less than 10 seconds on the play clock.

I really think we have the worst marriage between a coach and QB in the NFL - a QB who is bad + a coach that looks clueless.

There's so much dysfunction going on with this offense it's like they are just making the plays up as they go through the game. The end of each half was a complete disaster from start to finish. And despite Arizona's best efforts to give them the game they still couldn't do anything remotely close to indicate they knew what they were doing.