3 hours ago, stine said:

Well, Here is a stat I heard recently. We are 3rd in the league Yards per rush, yet we are 28th in the league in rush attempts per game. GB has a weak rush defense. It is their one area teams can exploit. OK, so if I were to hand over the play calling, I would give it to someone who would not sway from the run. That is, unless you want to prove your play-calling is not the problem. Then I would hand it over to someone doomed to fail. Marty?

VS Hawks SIX(yes 6) carries for Sanders. Wentz had more yards on the ground. That is simply STUPID. Even he had some drops in the pass game. This whole team has given up. Not concentrating, getting accustomed to losing. But the bright spots are the unknowns playing hard to get noticed(I'm sure we'll find a way to let those guys go lol)

1 hour ago, jsb235 said:

A couple of things from the Inside the Bird podcast this morning.

Wentz has bad mechanics. His arm slot is off, his footwork is bad and his eyes are dropping. I think this is due to his failing to trust the oline. But he won't get better until he fixes those problems.

Mosher said that Wentz is struggling against cover 3. TEs should be killing that zone, and it's one of the reasons that Goedert and Rodgers have been wide open lately, but Wentz is struggling most of the time against it. He's failing to manipulate the safety like he used to do.

Another problem is that they are failing to scheme to get receivers open. They brought in guys to be able to do that, and they are continually running the same plays over and over again. They mentioned the Rams as a team that schemes its receivers open and plays to the strength of its receivers.

Jeffery being on the field makes no sense to anyone in the NFL.

The oline should get better in pass protection once they start picking up stunts better. They are bad at that and picking up blitzes. Once they start playing together more, it should help. As an aside, I would put Driscoll and Herbig in for Peters and Pryor, but they should stick to the same lineup, so maybe not changing things is better. 

 

 

  

Possible reason for Jeffrey being on the field. Besides the fact we are paying him, noone would trade for him if he can't play and I think we were expecting him to at least show he still had gas left. But we're so bad that is a moot point. I don't agree with putting Jeffrey out there, but that may be a reason. Another point is, using the eye test, Wentz has no clock in his head. Throw the ball away if you have to, but no, he takes the sacks(I believe he is the most sacked in the league?) And while it's great for QB's to step around, or roll out to extend plays, Wentz is just sitting back there like the old statuesque Bradford. Just a matter of time before he goes out for the year. At that point Howie suddenly becomes a "genius" for drafting Hurts lol

Growing up in Ohio, through 35 years of a rebuild(lol), it was a standard joke that players came to Cleveland to end their careers. I'm starting to see the same here

I also remember "Bradford is our QB" until we traded him the following day lol

Just for fun would you make a move in round 1 for Trevor Lawrence? Or Fields? I'm really not seeing much from Hurts anyway, but we're stuck with him for 3 more years if we are keeping him. It would once again require a move up to the consensus #1 pick. Or do you stay committed to a QB that's killing you and a BU who doesn't play? SO would you trade Wentz for that #1 pick? Then trade Hurts,for another position of need. IDK we have lots of possibilities now. I'm just running options through my little 1 celled brain

2 hours ago, stine said:

  I agree for the most part. However, we also are guilty of giving up on players too soon. Sidney Jones is a solid player now. Raheem Mostert, Alejandro Villanueva, Dion Lewis, Dennis Kelly and others I cannot think of. This can be attributed to coaches not allowing them the time they need or we simply did not put them in places where they could succeed and forced them to play in a system that does not work for their skill set.

    I do wonder what would have happened if we had drafted Metcalf 2 years ago and drafted Justin Jefferson round 1 and Chin round 2 this year....

 

  Agholor has almost 500 yards and 6 TD's this year for the Raiders. Rasul Douglas played the whole game against Ridley and held him to 25 total yards. Is it really all on Howie?

You bring up a good point. Some players take longer than others to start producing. 3-4 years is too long for the early picks IMO. I still think Sidney Jones is afraid of the run game, will forever refuse to lift a weight, and will play physically soft just like he did in college.  The others you mentioned may fit better in other schemes.

To me a GM establishes the big picture of the team, goes and gets a HC that fits that vision, and then gets the most talented players who fit. Howie is responsible for the coaching hire and the players added in the draft, FA, and trades as well as re-signings. Howie has drafted 1 pro bowler since 2016 in Wentz. That's it. That's worthy of being let go as a GM if there were no other issues, which there are. I do put it all on Howie, because he's responsible for all of it. If one gets the big salary and make the big decisions, then one must suffer the consequences of his failures. No scapegoats. No blame shifting. Stand up and accept what was earned.

In my mind Lawrence is about as NFL ready as it comes. That would be my QB with Hurts as my BU and we have BOTH on rook contracts. We take the dead money hit, but at that position, if you spread that loss out over the 3-4, possibly 5 years(aka the QB rook contracts duration), it becomes really not as bad as it sounds. Alshon gone, Djax gone,CAP SPACE freed up. Thats why I am bringing all this up. We HAVE the young weapons for Lawrence pretty much already in place. Would you make this move???? For all the above reasons, I would have to consider it. Now you have 2 young QB's, a young WR corps, Sanders. We can then concentrate on drafting defense add a young RB and go from there. Sounds like a plan to me. I would do this. Start over, not a rebuild really but a move to the future of this team. Thoughts?

I suffered through the all 22. Here are some thoughts.

On offense, if I had to rank our receivers on their ability to get open, it would go Goedert, Ward, Rodgers.....Reagor, Fulgham, Jeffery. Fulgham does a lot of feints at the LOS, and Seattle's corner was just grabbing him, preventing him from releasing. Just go. You have the speed to beat him and the size that you are wide open if you get a step. Reagor seems slow to me. Defenses don't respect his speed at all.

A lot of missed opportunities by Wentz which have been well documented. As far as playcalling, it was bad. We ran a pass play for Hightower that was never going to work because the misdirection to get him open didn't fool anyone. Plus we ran a route in the same area, so that DB could help contain him. Just have that receiver block someone. There were a lot of times where they blitzed and we didn't have a hot route available. On the one play where Wentz rolled out, Rodgers was wide open. I felt we could have run that play 20 times and they wouldn't have been able to stop it without taking LBs off the field, and in that case we just run it.

Peters played better than I thought initially. Pryor was bad. Goedert missed a block on a key third down where we had to punt. He just ran right past the guy who made the tackle. Kelce hasn't been great. He had one really bad play that stood out, and the obvious bad snap and false start.

I will give Schwartz credit, the defense looked good. Singleton was his usual solid self. Edwards was exposed twice in coverage on a RB on the first series, but they sorted it out. Riley had a bad penalty but was solid otherwise. In all honesty, if Slay was better, we likely would have won. Wilson didn't have many open guys. Maddox did a great job, and was the victim of a highly BS PI call. Mills was good as well. The dline was pretty unstoppable.

If we got that level of play out of Maddox consistently, we would be fine at corner. He was beat for the TD, but they have to take him off the field in that situation, or at least not match him up against a much bigger guy like that.

 

16 minutes ago, jsb235 said:

I suffered through the all 22. Here are some thoughts.

On offense, if I had to rank our receivers on their ability to get open, it would go Goedert, Ward, Rodgers.....Reagor, Fulgham, Jeffery. Fulgham does a lot of feints at the LOS, and Seattle's corner was just grabbing him, preventing him from releasing. Just go. You have the speed to beat him and the size that you are wide open if you get a step. Reagor seems slow to me. Defenses don't respect his speed at all.

A lot of missed opportunities by Wentz which have been well documented. As far as playcalling, it was bad. We ran a pass play for Hightower that was never going to work because the misdirection to get him open didn't fool anyone. Plus we ran a route in the same area, so that DB could help contain him. Just have that receiver block someone. There were a lot of times where they blitzed and we didn't have a hot route available. On the one play where Wentz rolled out, Rodgers was wide open. I felt we could have run that play 20 times and they wouldn't have been able to stop it without taking LBs off the field, and in that case we just run it.

Peters played better than I thought initially. Pryor was bad. Goedert missed a block on a key third down where we had to punt. He just ran right past the guy who made the tackle. Kelce hasn't been great. He had one really bad play that stood out, and the obvious bad snap and false start.

I will give Schwartz credit, the defense looked good. Singleton was his usual solid self. Edwards was exposed twice in coverage on a RB on the first series, but they sorted it out. Riley had a bad penalty but was solid otherwise. In all honesty, if Slay was better, we likely would have won. Wilson didn't have many open guys. Maddox did a great job, and was the victim of a highly BS PI call. Mills was good as well. The dline was pretty unstoppable.

If we got that level of play out of Maddox consistently, we would be fine at corner. He was beat for the TD, but they have to take him off the field in that situation, or at least not match him up against a much bigger guy like that.

 

  I would replace Pryor with Herbig and leave it alone unless someone gets hurt. Also, we need to run the ball MORE!  This will help any offensive line......

With 5 games left, the only one I can reasonably see us with a possibility of winning is dullass - and that's only because of their injuries.

Our team hasn't been run properly for yrs, which is why I'd hoped for big FO changes this yr as the NFL season was going to be a mess anyway.

4 teams that we know of are looking for new GM's, that number will most likely grow.

We really need a new GM to enact a cohesive plan in order to move this team forward. It would be the new GM's discretion who the HC should be. 

It will be telling if Lurie doesn't make a GM change. If he does, there's hope. If he doesn't, it will be the same old bs.

27 minutes ago, stine said:

  I would replace Pryor with Herbig and leave it alone unless someone gets hurt. Also, we need to run the ball MORE!  This will help any offensive line......

Herbig at RT??  I don’t see that.  I think if anything you play Driscoll there or if he isn’t ready then maybe consider Mailata and moving Seumalo out to LT.  

But I’d play Herbig at RG and sit JP.

12 minutes ago, time2rock said:

Herbig at RT??  I don’t see that.  I think if anything you play Driscoll there or if he isn’t ready then maybe consider Mailata and moving Seumalo out to LT.  

But I’d play Herbig at RG and sit JP.

  Sorry, I thought Lane was playing. Not paying attention I guess. If Seumalo is playing OK then forget that post lol

 

 

One thing that Adam Caplan has said over and over again is that we don't scheme our receivers open very much, and I thought this was really clear in the Seattle game. I don't recall seeing a single crossing route run by Reagor or Fulgham. Instead, they are expected to win at the LOS and get open right away, and when they don't the offense stalls pretty quickly. We just don't do much of anything with our wide receivers that would confuse the opposing defensive backs or cause them to get out of position or make a mistake in coverage.

If I was going to make one quick fix to the offense, it would be to address this problem. And one thing I would note is that, if they work for Fulgham and Reagor, they will likely work for JJAW as well, who has obviously struggled with the same issue.

I am hoping to see a change in this area for the rest of the season, because the worst thing we could do is head into next year thinking we need different wide receivers, when the problem could be that we don't properly use the ones we have. 

 

Ped-bad decisions. He hasn't learned a thing in 5 years. In a close game you take that 3 points to make it a 1 score game. At least give your team a CHANCE. He is also still awful at clock management and making adjustments before the 1/2 as well as giving up the run game,even when it's doing damage. Very sad to see his LACK of growth as a coach

1 hour ago, jsb235 said:

I suffered through the all 22. Here are some thoughts.

On offense, if I had to rank our receivers on their ability to get open, it would go Goedert, Ward, Rodgers.....Reagor, Fulgham, Jeffery. Fulgham does a lot of feints at the LOS, and Seattle's corner was just grabbing him, preventing him from releasing. Just go. You have the speed to beat him and the size that you are wide open if you get a step. Reagor seems slow to me. Defenses don't respect his speed at all.

A lot of missed opportunities by Wentz which have been well documented. As far as playcalling, it was bad. We ran a pass play for Hightower that was never going to work because the misdirection to get him open didn't fool anyone. Plus we ran a route in the same area, so that DB could help contain him. Just have that receiver block someone. There were a lot of times where they blitzed and we didn't have a hot route available. On the one play where Wentz rolled out, Rodgers was wide open. I felt we could have run that play 20 times and they wouldn't have been able to stop it without taking LBs off the field, and in that case we just run it.

Peters played better than I thought initially. Pryor was bad. Goedert missed a block on a key third down where we had to punt. He just ran right past the guy who made the tackle. Kelce hasn't been great. He had one really bad play that stood out, and the obvious bad snap and false start.

I will give Schwartz credit, the defense looked good. Singleton was his usual solid self. Edwards was exposed twice in coverage on a RB on the first series, but they sorted it out. Riley had a bad penalty but was solid otherwise. In all honesty, if Slay was better, we likely would have won. Wilson didn't have many open guys. Maddox did a great job, and was the victim of a highly BS PI call. Mills was good as well. The dline was pretty unstoppable.

If we got that level of play out of Maddox consistently, we would be fine at corner. He was beat for the TD, but they have to take him off the field in that situation, or at least not match him up against a much bigger guy like that.

 

I agree the D played ok as a unit. I was rather shocked Slay got spanked so badly

5 hours ago, stine said:

  We are looking at a top 5-6 draft pick this year. Do we trust HR to draft the right player next season? That LB from Penn State may be available and if he is there and we do not take him, we will have let another perennial pro-bowler pass us by.

Don’t think it’s that simple. Plenty of top talent to consider that high in the draft. I’m leaning Ja’Marr Chase the WR from LSU. DLine from The U is pretty unbelievable also.

4 hours ago, jsb235 said:

A couple of things from the Inside the Bird podcast this morning.

Wentz has bad mechanics. His arm slot is off, his footwork is bad and his eyes are dropping. I think this is due to his failing to trust the oline. But he won't get better until he fixes those problems.

Mosher said that Wentz is struggling against cover 3. TEs should be killing that zone, and it's one of the reasons that Goedert and Rodgers have been wide open lately, but Wentz is struggling most of the time against it. He's failing to manipulate the safety like he used to do.

Another problem is that they are failing to scheme to get receivers open. They brought in guys to be able to do that, and they are continually running the same plays over and over again. They mentioned the Rams as a team that schemes its receivers open and plays to the strength of its receivers.

Jeffery being on the field makes no sense to anyone in the NFL.

The oline should get better in pass protection once they start picking up stunts better. They are bad at that and picking up blitzes. Once they start playing together more, it should help. As an aside, I would put Driscoll and Herbig in for Peters and Pryor, but they should stick to the same lineup, so maybe not changing things is better. 

 

 

  

Jeffrey’stime shouldbe done. But everybody is bashing the offense(deservedly). So giving Wentz back his best WR for him to use as a go-to makes sense. Maybe he’ll throw him up some fifty fifty balls he’ll come down with. It didn’t work. But I can’t say it wasn’t worth a try.

3 hours ago, GreenbleedinNC said:

Growing up in Ohio, through 35 years of a rebuild(lol), it was a standard joke that players came to Cleveland to end their careers. I'm starting to see the same here

Whoa...hold the horses. We just won the SB in 2017. Been to the playoffs in 2018 and 2019. We are having a bad season in this anomaly asterisk of a season....and you go there. Not even close. No preseason. Can’t even meet or huddle during some days and weeks. This post by you was a massive overreaction!

3 hours ago, GreenbleedinNC said:

In my mind Lawrence is about as NFL ready as it comes. That would be my QB with Hurts as my BU and we have BOTH on rook contracts. We take the dead money hit, but at that position, if you spread that loss out over the 3-4, possibly 5 years(aka the QB rook contracts duration), it becomes really not as bad as it sounds. Alshon gone, Djax gone,CAP SPACE freed up. Thats why I am bringing all this up. We HAVE the young weapons for Lawrence pretty much already in place. Would you make this move???? For all the above reasons, I would have to consider it. Now you have 2 young QB's, a young WR corps, Sanders. We can then concentrate on drafting defense add a young RB and go from there. Sounds like a plan to me. I would do this. Start over, not a rebuild really but a move to the future of this team. Thoughts?

Trevor Lawrence is a no brainer. Which is why it’s not worth your time to consider. If we were sixth pick could we even give up two more first round picks to acquire him(three first round picks for number one overall)? I don’t even think that would work. 

2 hours ago, stine said:

  I would replace Pryor with Herbig and leave it alone unless someone gets hurt. Also, we need to run the ball MORE!  This will help any offensive line......

Pryor was the RT...not RG

2 hours ago, mjkline1958 said:

With 5 games left, the only one I can reasonably see us with a possibility of winning is dullass - and that's only because of their injuries.

Our team hasn't been run properly for yrs, which is why I'd hoped for big FO changes this yr as the NFL season was going to be a mess anyway.

4 teams that we know of are looking for new GM's, that number will most likely grow.

We really need a new GM to enact a cohesive plan in order to move this team forward. It would be the new GM's discretion who the HC should be. 

It will be telling if Lurie doesn't make a GM change. If he does, there's hope. If he doesn't, it will be the same old bs.

I don’t feel this way. Rosie got us into this tough spot. He needs to lie in this bed. We are way over the cap for next season. He knows what has to be done to get through that. His problems have run downhill on him. This I’ve been trying to point out to this Board since we won the SB. Nobody listened. Called it Rosie Magic. NOW....and finally NOW everyone here might be thinking back on everything I’ve been saying about these backloaded contracts.

2 hours ago, time2rock said:

Herbig at RT??  I don’t see that.  I think if anything you play Driscoll there or if he isn’t ready then maybe consider Mailata and moving Seumalo out to LT.  

But I’d play Herbig at RG and sit JP.

Alright you beat me to it

2 hours ago, stine said:

  Sorry, I thought Lane was playing. Not paying attention I guess. If Seumalo is playing OK then forget that post lol

 

 

Lane got shutdown. Total injury mismanagement. Just a terrible job. How do we miss a guy this whole season from an injury last year? Him being a top player for us makes it all the worse.

26 minutes ago, cunninghamtheman said:

Don’t think it’s that simple. Plenty of top talent to consider that high in the draft. I’m leaning Ja’Marr Chase the WR from LSU. DT from The U is pretty unbelievable also.

We cannot continue to draft WR's in the 1st round. Much rather grab the best Defensive player on the board. Parsons is ranked #1 defensive player by some.

Rushing attempt numbers usually reflect who was in the lead. Wasting time at the end you run. When you are playing catch up you pass. The point of Pedey needing to stick to the run more is valid. Us being behind having to play catch-up has been the situation most of the season also though.

4 minutes ago, stine said:

We cannot continue to draft WR's in the 1st round. Much rather grab the best Defensive player on the board. Parsons is ranked #1 defensive player by some.

You have seen this kid Chase though, right? The guy that was such a stud he took over at LSU and made Jefferson the second option out of the slot. I’m thinking Chase is the second best player in this draft behind Lawrence.