Game Thoughts

[OldhamA]

1 hour ago, electro's horse said:

Sounds like coaching is the problem

Sounds like QB is the problem.

[OldhamA]

52 minutes ago, The Lobo said:

Saints did an excellent job of exploiting our weaknesses: qb and lack of pass rush. Stop Dowdle and the game is over 

I think if Horn doesn't fall over twice we might still be playing. 

[ProcessBlue2]

1 minute ago, OldhamA said:

I think if Horn doesn't fall over twice we might still be playing. 

Hard to blame the defense though. They did limit them to 17 points and the offense turned the ball over twice.

[OldhamA]

48 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

Again, see above...

Anybody on this board could have predicted what the Saints were gonna do today. A professional football coach and his staff should have not only known, but prepared a game plan that understood that.

We didn't, and that isn't Young's fault.

Bryce can be blamed for a lot of things, but poor game planning isn't one of them.

Can he be blamed for his poor throws?

Y'know the ones that if he could complete them the D would back off from stacking the box.

Or is that a coaching problem too? The INT that was called back for roughing the passer - awful. The INT he actually threw - awful. The pass behind a wide open T-Mac in the middle of the field - awful. 

[Mr. Scot]

22 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

100%.

Outside Bryce, coaching seems to be the biggest issue with this team. We are not prepared enough on too often a basis on one side of the ball or the other. 

No excuse for getting whipped in the trenches this badly. 

Canales has some of the same weaknesses Rivera did.

What he did today was pretty much the same thing Rivera did in the Super Bowl, i.e. failing to anticipate what teams might do against us and laying a backup plan.

His depth chart management and playing time decisions are a little off too (again, like Rivera).

[Mr. Scot]

14 minutes ago, Pantherxtreme said:

They should get Etienne involved more and see what he could bring, if Chuba really is not healthy, he's not helping us win games in that condition. 

No argument on either point...

[OldhamA]

41 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

Same as you typically would against a pressure heavy attack.

Screens, draws, misdirection... basically standard WCO. The whole approach was birthed specifically to defend against that kind of thing.

We did that on a few plays, but not enough.

Screens and draws into a stacked box?

[WhoKnows]

1 hour ago, Mr. Scot said:

First off, ouch

Lemme say up front I'm not even gonna bother with any deep analysis of Bryce here. Seriously, what new insight is there on that topic? We all know who and what he is, so why spend effort rehashing it?

Instead, I wanna look at other aspects of the game:

Even accounting for the Saints focus on him, Dowdle looks like he's getting worn down. Using him as a workhorse may not be sustainable over the full season, especially not with the line playing like they did in this one.

This is why it was premature to talk about shipping Hubbard. What we really need is for Hubbard is get healthy and return to form so that we have a genuine two back rotation. Otherwise we're gonna watch more games like today's.

Regardless of who's running the ball though, we got whipped in the trenches.

(on both sides honestly,but I'd say worse when we were on offense)

Hunt is sorely missed. Corbett is probably done. Moton looks like he's either not fully healthy or has hit a wall. No exaggeration to say Nijman and Curhan looked better last week.

Left side is still solid at least, but that's not enough.

(certainly wasn't today)

The Saints have a better overall set of skill players than us, and it showed, but they also enjoyed a little better blocking. Even with good play by Brown and decent defense from some others, New Orleans' blockers mostly did their jobs. Kamara had enough daylight to run, and Shough wasn't harassed nearly as much as he should have been. 

That's what you count on.

They could. We couldn't.

Mind you, the defense had its moments. Some admittedly owed to the Saints being ass, but more positives than the offense had. Even so, I still have a hard time staying with Evero at DC. Seven more games to evaluate, but I'm prepared to move on.

There are some positive players on defense, at least. Scourton is showing up on a regular basis. Wallace has been good (defense got worse when he got hurt). And there are the known quantities of Brown and Horn, even granting the latter didn't have a good day. We're still lacking a game plan defining pass rusher of course, but that's not exactly news.

Bottom line, though, what disappointed me most this game?

Canales

Genuinely felt like Canales went into this game planning to use the exact same game plan as the last few weeks.

The Saints clearly were ready for it, and Canales didn't have any answers.

That's checkers thinking, not chess.

It was obvious from early on that the Saints plan was to stuff the run and force the Panthers to depend on Young's arm. For most of us, the automatic response to that is "duh"

So if it's obvious to us, why does it feel like Canales and his staff didn't get the memo?

You can argue that having Bryce limits his options, but even allowing for that, there were things that could have been done that weren't. I'd hoped to see more as the game went on, but instead it looked like the proverbial definition of insanity.

"But Bryce" I hear someone saying...

Yes, Bryce iis bad, but he's not solely to blame here.

With Bryce running the show, there's a pretty strict formula you need in order to win. Injuries have taken away some of what that requires personnel wise, but for me leadership was the bigger weakness against the Saints.

"Keep doing what works until they stop it" is a good mindset, but you still have to have a backup plan in place for when they do. Canales didn't.

If I were to sum up up, I'd say we didn't lose this game on Sunday.

We lost this game before it even started.

Sorry man, you can try and excuse it but Bryce was awful and absolutely the biggest problem. Not sure what game you had on but if not for penalties on the first drive, he would not have led a single scoring drive. He was atrocious. We can’t do QB sneaks. We can’t do long passes.

We had 2 potential scoring drives. First one was extended due to penalties otherwise Bryce throws a pick. Second was a blocked FG. Outside those two drives, we had 28 plays on 8 drives. Basically we averaged a little over 3 and out on 8 of 10 drives. Most of those ended with inaccurate passes or a pick. Refs generously helped us out so we didn’t get shutout by a 1-8 team.

Canales hasn’t been amazing but it’s hard to work around the shitty QB play we saw today. We worked around it at GB but we were never behind. Bryce’s interception just made winning last week harder. This week, it just close the door.

[Mr. Scot]

10 minutes ago, SCO96 said:

If I were defensive coordinator I’d go into game against Bryce with 8 men in the box to stop the run and double TMAC all game long and dare the offense to beat me thru the air.

Sounds familiar...

[Mr. Scot]

11 minutes ago, UnluckyforSome said:

Some people are/were entertaining the idea of the Panthers in the playoffs. This was a preview of how it would go. The Saints are not a playoff team, but when the stakes go up in the playoffs, the opponent tries to take away a team's strength, and Young isn't good enough to even make the Saints pay for that strategy.

Insert Jim Mora gif here

[ProcessBlue2]

23 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

Bryce doesn't make the game plan.

The coach, who is (or should be) well aware of his limitations, does.

If he fails to account for those things, it's on him.

(and he did)

No he doesn’t make the game plan. But he definitely limits it and there’s only so much you can accomplish with him. So it’s hard to ask Canales to make a game plan with a limited player. 
 

When I moved out on my own years ago, My Dad gave me 3 things: a roll of duct tape, WD-40, and a pair of pliers. He said you can fix most things with those 3 things long enough to get you by. We are asking Canales to game plan with just the duct tape.

Edited 3 hours ago by ProcessBlue2

[Mr. Scot]

11 minutes ago, ThPantherFan said:

That is my #1 concern.  He will wear out if they don't share the load some way, some how.

Same, which is why I wasn't in favor of trading Chubba 

[Lemur Lathon]

Canales's plan next week to help Bryce see over the line lol

 

[Mr. Scot]

12 minutes ago, Tbe said:

I hear you, but I don’t think a few more screen plays would have made much difference. 

We’re not scoring 20+ points without some kind of effective pass game.

What we're best equipped for roster wise (especially with Bryce at QB) is a heavily WCO influenced offensive scheme.

What we called today looked more like a smashmouth style game.

And when that didn't work, we didn't seem to have any sort of fallback plan.