by chris98251 » Mon Jan 01, 2018 4:05 pm
I don't blame the defense, we had numerous hits taken due to injuries and the guys brought in to replace played great, even with Avril, Kam, Sherman and Lane as starters we would have been in a very similar situation. You can't ask a defense to play 3/4ths of the game or close to it without wearing down. The guys on the other team are professionals also and by wearing our defense down will get an advantage.
The blame goes completely on the offense, scoring early and playing with a lead helps, controlling the ball with a running game helps. It allows the defense to play down hill and take a few chances for pressures which create more turnovers and more scoring.
The offense was mostly intact, Fant went down but he was learning the position and we had replacements in the wings already that by play didn't get the job done, we brought Brown in and he was better but how we use our scheme even he was made to look average which on our line was a huge upgrade. Carson a Rookie RB looked good as well, but we had Lacy, Rawls, Michael, Davis, Prosise as depth, 4 of them experienced and at some point successful RB's in the league, Michael sure was a wild card and had other issues and was let go, but none of them could run consistently with our line and scheme unless we went to a Power run blocking scheme. We lost and had no fullback most the year. When you have issues running the ball and then choose not to add a lead blocker as well that's perplexing.
Now we have the WR's having a bunch of drops, there are two reasons lack of focus or checked out, the underneath routes were not used hardly at all send guys deep and hope for a catch, Graham was a obvious check out player if not in the end zone, the selling of routes was getting bad also, the WR's underneath knew the ball was going else wear and did not sell them well, this is about design, not to mention predictability as well as simplistic route trees. Bates was fired for pushing the passing game with deep shots in one season, Pete has stated he wanted more balance and the run game worked in. Yet we see what happened this year.
It is not about drafting, or signings of F.A. for the line, it has had pretty much exclusive attention the last 4 years in many shapes and forms to get it going. You can't blame one player, or even a dozen at this point. It falls back on what has not changed, OC and Line Coach or Pete.
Now to the topic, Kicker, you bring in a guy that has a issue, he was a head case coming in, you don't bring competition in and hand him the job. The guy misses, misses some more and costs you games. He doesn't look like he has any confidence, in fact looks more like the kid that had his lunch money taken at school every day, and other then the Viking game he showed no level of swag at all. This goes back to when we changed long snappers, many people said you don't win games with a long snapper, some disagreed, when you need 3 points or a extra point the holder and kicker trust that guy to get the ball to a spot on time and you can lose games with bad snaps if the kick isn't made. We found out the hard way once again that year until we replaced the replacement long snapper. Walsh is the same deal, if his head ain't right we are not going to be able to count on him going forward, he has missed a lot of pressure kicks to win games in the last two years. That isn't going to get better, in fact after this last miss it may get worse, he has a whole off season now to let that grind in and affect him next year. That kick and the kick in Minnesota plus the other games he cost us. Pete needs to wake up and understand he can't fix everyone.