Monthly Archives: August 2015

What I Have Been Watching

31 Monday Aug 2015

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I’m still catching up with games after my holiday, so it feels somewhat redundant to bringing your detailed round ups of the first week’s action with the third going on at the moment. Let’s face it, if you are coming here for your breaking news then I question your use of the internet. That said, there are still lots of relevant things to discuss as I take you through what I’ve been watching, and what I’ve been missing as well.

I’ll start with the Bengals, and whilst I’m hopeful that the defensive line rotation already looks more effective, and the first team offense look good as it marched down the field to get a touchdown on the opening drive.

What I really want to talk about here are quarterbacks. There is no question that everybody is waiting for Andy Dalton to backup his four playoff appearances in his first four seasons with a playoff win. In fact there’s no shortage of people calling for his head and saying that the Bengals should move on. However, whilst I’m not a Dalton apologist, I do think there is a more nuanced position to be taken in between the two camps.

There is no doubt that when is off, his play looks terrible. He can look lost, miss throws, and people question his leadership. The thing is that leadership is about how you do your job and get the best of those around you, and it doesn’t have to be done by shouting and leading from the front. But leadership also has to be earned, and in the recent seasons we seen the trend in the NFL has been to play quarterbacks much earlier and be less patient with them.

Now apart from the physical tools required to play the game, there is a huge quantity of data for a quarterback to process so he can execute the play for each play that he is on the field. To get good at this requires the right kind of brain, but also a huge number of reps, be them mental, practice, or in the game. There simply aren’t enough good quarterbacks to go round for a league of thirty-two, and so whilst everyone would love to have an elite franchise quarterback, you can win with above average quarterback play and I wonder how many players could win if they were in a situation where they were developed properly over time.

Last year’s playoff loss was horrible to watch, but the team were so injured in the skill positions when it came to receivers, that the offence couldn’t move the ball. Now at that point Dalton couldn’t throw the team better like Brady has done in the past. However, Brady is in the discussion as one of the best quarterbacks ever, and so let’s not throw Dalton out just yet.

Particularly as which of the Bengals’ quarterback would you replace him with? AJ McCarron had shoulder problems last year and has been troubled by a rib injury this season so I’ve yet to see him take a snap yet, even if his performance in game two was enough to have Josh Johnson released.

It was Josh Johnson’s performance that to me highlighted the problem of quarterbacking in this league. There were plays that he made with his arm and legs that demonstrated why he has hung around the league for six seasons already, but the lack of consistency was troubling. For me he is too quick to take off and use his legs, although he at least doesn’t take the kind of hits that are truly terrifying, but in the first game he threw two balls that should have been intercepted, and at least one if not both could have been returned for touchdowns.

It is coming towards the time where you may well have to decide that Dalton is not going to develop enough, and that it is time to move on, but I don’t think the Bengals are there yet. I am hopeful that with Hue Jackson going into his second year as offensive coordinator, that this team can get the playoff monkey off Dalton, and Marvin Lewis’ back.

So moving on from the Bengal’s first game, let us talk about preseason games and what I can see, as well as one of my favourite series around this time of year, namely Hard Knocks.

I haven’t been back to watch the years I wasn’t able to see, but as a football obsessive it doesn’t really matter who the team is as I love getting this glimpse of what is going on. This year is even better for me as we’re getting to watch JJ Watt in training, which should just be a series in of itself. However, I have enjoyed watching Bill O’Brien as a head coach, and it always nice to see the personalities behind the facemasks, which is all you see of so many players.

However, it has highlighted the problems of trying to analyse games deeply when you only have the TV copy, which is what you have for preseason on Gamepass. Through commentary, and replay you can see what’s going on if it is highlighted, but if you’re trying to look out for specific players, or watch certain coverage to figure out how s player got so wide open, it can be really difficult without the all twenty-two and end zone views. It also means that you tend to focus on skill players, and flashy defensive plays, but you miss a lot of what is going on around the lines or in the receiving game before the player catches the ball.

It is interesting to me that so often people seem to want their coaches to be all out disciplinarians, and that the term player’s coach is as often used more as a criticism than a complement. I have found it fascinating to watch the way Mike Vrabel has been coaching the Texans’ linebackers, and in particular Kourtnei Brown. I don’t want to single out Vrabel for criticism as he is working in a culture that he’s deeply steeped in, he was a really good player, and he is trying to bring out the best in his charges. But different people respond to different types of coaching, and I wonder if there was not a more nuanced way to approach the message he was trying to get across. That said, Brown had an amazing sequence of snaps in the third quarter of their game against the 49ers, getting two sacks along side multiple pressures as things really began to click for the NFL journeymen who may yet make the squad. I’ll be interested to see the rest of their games, and I shall make sure to have watched their third game before I watch the fourth episode of Hard Knocks as that is the only thing I am up to date with so far.

So, if I was frustrated by the camera angles in the Texans game as I was looking to spot the players I had been watching in Hard Knocks, the Colts at the Eagles was the game I made most notes about of the preseason week one games. I picked two teams because I wanted to look at their coaching thank to the offseason reading I had been done and this proved to be a good choice in this game.

The real proof of what Chip Kelly has been doing in the offseason will be how they perform in the games, and in this first preseason game, things looked pretty damn good. But what I really want to focus on this week is an aspect I particularly liked about the Eagles offence, and don’t worry folks, it wasn’t Tim Tebow.

There has been a lot of talk about how good Kelly’s system is, and that it is quarterback proof. I might not go that far as I don’t think any system can really cope with bad quarterback play, but it is really well structured, and what I really admired about it whilst watching this game was the commitment to deception, and specifically the run/pass questions it asked of the oppositions defence.

Apart from the use of quarterback options plays, if you watch the backfield of the Eagles, on almost every play the quarterback/running back gives you a look of the opposite of what they are doing. You have quarterbacks faking that they’ve kept the ball on run plays, play action passes, and draw plays. This commitment forces the defensive players to make a read on every play, which means they have to respect both possibilities and this can get you easy receptions just as much as route combinations designed to attack a particular coverage.

From what I can see, one of the reasons that rookie tight end Eric Tomlinson was wide open in the second quarter, was because Cam Johnson had to make a read on the play fake run as he dropped into coverage with Tomlinson, and so he was just a fraction late, taking too flat of an angle to make a tackle on the Eagles tight end and so what could have been a short gain goes for nineteen yards.

The pace of the Eagles’ offence is really hard to judge on the condensed view, other than that the coverage is frequently scrambling to catch up and a number of plays were missed or picked up half way through as they were too quick for the TV team who were still looking at the previous play, so you can see how it can stress a defence.

The final game I watched from the first week was the Chiefs at the Cardinals, and in this is the hardest for me to comment on. The Cardinals have had a change in defensive coordinator this year, and the number of defensive backs that they were typically using last year in combination with the way they rushed the passer is something that’s really hard to look out without really going over game film rather than the TV game footage.

However, it was really nice to Carson Palmer back and playing, and you can see the potential in Logan Thomas, certainly with his arm, but he still needs time to develop. The team moved the ball well with the first team, but I shall be really interested to see how they develop going forward, and hopefully will get a better understanding of what Bruce Arians is planning for the upcoming season.

I have a lot more games to watch, as I try to catch up with the NFL, but going over games isn’t exactly a chore. So roll on more games, the season is coming!

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And So the Games Begin

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

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Why is it okay for you to be excited about the NFL preseason whilst you don’t care about preseason football (soccer for any Americans reading this, although I will point out we got there first)?

That was the question my equally sports obsessed other half asked me over dinner tonight as I mentioned wanting to write up the first pre-season game this evening, and it is as good a question to answer.

My response was two things. Firstly, each Premiership football team is guaranteed thirty-eight games in the league each season, plus various cup competitions, and for some Europe. In the NFL, your team is guaranteed sixteen games and that is it. Both seasons are marathons for their players, but in very different ways. Secondly, in the NFL the preseason counts. Not directly in terms of record, but right now the teams’ rosters are ninety strong, yet by the time the season starts in a month they will be cut to fifty-three. This is a crucial time for a lot of players, who are not just pursuing their dream of playing professional football, but who are putting their bodies on the line in a game that injures everyone, and in which you only have so long to maximise your earning potential. It is worth remembering that for all the starts and the Hall of Famers, the average NFL career is three and a half season , although according to the NFL that figure increases if you make an opening day roster. Either way, there is a reason why it is said that NFL stands for Not For Long.

So what did I learn from the Hall of Fame game? Well for starters, I remembered my notation system from last year, but you won’t really care about that.

The Steelers lost to the Vikings 3-14, but my first take away was that the Steelers look to have some good you receivers floating around their roster. Their receiver/running back Dri Archer particularly caught the eye both running from the shotgun and as a receiver, but equally rookie Shakim Phillips pulled in a lovely one handed catch on a thirty-five yard reception. However, every rep in practice is evaluated, yet alone in the game, so the two key drops that rookie Jesse James will be haunting him. Particularly as the first on fourth and one cost the Steelers a touchdown, and the second bounced out of his hands and was picked off by Brian Peters. It’s also worth remembering that the drop also cost Landry Jones a touchdown and gave him an interception, and neither of those plays were the quarterback’s fault, but he could also carry the can as his stats have been affected.

The Vikings looked good throughout the game. They moved the ball well, and what little we saw from Teddy Bridgewater was encouraging. More importantly, their o-line seemed to be holding up okay, and that was a real problem last season but it is very early. They also appeared to have some good looking young receivers, and fifth rounder Stefon Diggs will have done his chances of making the team no harm with a sixty-two yard punt return that only just failed to make the end zone. The defence is looking good too, and I trust that Mike Zimmer will continue to improve that side of the ball.

The Steelers look as if they will be a real force again on offence, but I’m not sold yet on their defensive rebuild and they were not good on that side of the ball so it will be interesting to see how they develop having moved the legendary Dick LaBeau on.

You can see why the Vikings are considered as one of the up and coming teams for this season, any division where you face Green Bay twice a year is going to be tough to make the playoffs from, but I think we’ll continue to see improvement from them.

I’m about to disappear on holiday for a week, but I’ll be watching all of my selected teams’ pre-season games plus Hard Knocks, and once I’m back home will be writing them up and heading on into the season. Who says Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year?

A Coach’s Time of Year

09 Sunday Aug 2015

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With training camps open across the NFL, I have been looking back at my offseason reading and thinking about something that is talked about in America when comparing the major sports. It is often said that baseball is a GMs’ league, basketball is a players’ league, but that the NFL is a coaches’ league. This is an oversimplification for all of the sports, but in the NFL the level of competition is such that a coach can only do so much to overcome a real deficit in talent given how fine the margins are between winning, but this is the part of the season where a coach really demonstrates what does make the NFL a coaches’ league.

A football coach has to be more than just someone who gives an inspired half-time speech, in fact there is only so often he can pull that trick given the frequency of games, and how often it is do or die time. In fact it seems to me that there is so much to do for a head coach that we routinely oversimplify their role when judging them. There are thousands of hours of planning, preparation, and training that goes into getting a team to the game, yet alone managing the play calls, in-game adjustments, the clock, and liaising with your team of coaches. There is so much more to their job than whether you should run or pass a yard out from the end zone with twenty-six seconds left in the Super Bowl, although when you have one of the best short yardage backs in the game perhaps you should have run.

However, whilst there has been talk of how the Seahawks are going to come back from that loss, and the scars that decision will have left on Pete Carroll, having read Carroll’s book on his coaching philosophy I think that this has been over blown. His whole coaching philosophy is built round competition, and specifically always competing to win forever. I don’t know how many NFL coaches have gone away, sat down and deliberately written down their philosophy in such a structured way, but I’m pretty sure that a focus around always competing with yourself to do things better than they have been done before is likely to deal with a set back like losing the Super Bowl in such a heart breaking manner pretty well.

So why is this time of year so important to the coaches? The answer is pretty straight forward, time. During the marathon of the season there is so much time spent dealing with recovery, installing the game plan, travel, and dealing with matters that crop up that there is only so much time a coach can spend actually working with their players. It is in training camp where a coach gets to work for a prolonged period setting the tone for the upcoming season. It is also the time where a coach has almost double his game day roster, and so whilst you never want to over work your players, it is possible to get a huge amount of work done and to get in all the reps you want. This is where there is time to work on technique, getting the rookies and free agents steeped in how your team plays football, the calls, the structure of your playbook, and getting your timing down. These are all standard parts of training camp that remain true even if the old fashioned two-a-day practices and some of the more confrontational contact drills are becoming relics of the past.

There has been talk for years that the preseason is too long, and that coaches only two of the pre-season games to get their teams ready. I wouldn’t presume to know if this is true or not, but just trying to keep up with the news coming out of a training camp is a mission in itself. Like much of the pre-season content, it is filled with optimism. Players that are in the best shape of their lives, players on the come back trail from injury, the new picks looking good already. The proof is coming though, we have the NFL Hall of Fame game tonight, and next we’ll start getting actual football.

I wrote last year about how there is plenty to fascinate during the offseason and I am really looking forward to the up-coming preseason. It was quite hard for me to narrow down the teams I was going to watch through the preseason, but in the end I managed to get the list down to four. The Bengals were a given, and they are the team that I will understand best due to following them with the obsessive interest of the fan. The next obvious team was the Houston Texans, not just because I am such a huge fan of JJ Watt, but because they are this year’s team being covered by the TV series Hard Knocks. I will be fascinated to see how Watt practices as his work ethic is widely praised, but it will also be great to follow the series and watch all the games.

I am planning to watch two more teams, and after my offseason reading it was actually fairly easy to identify the theme if not whittle down to the two remaining teams. It became obvious to me that what I love about Football is not just the physicality and spectacle, but the tactics involved and the coaching that going into the games. So if I was going to focus on well coached teams who would be the other teams I would watch this season?

The Cardinals managed to get to the playoffs despite losing two starting quarterbacks and in my opinion were one of the best coached teams of last year. They have lost their defensive coordinator as Todd Bowles has become head coach of the New York Jets, but given the fantastic job Bruce Arians and his staff did I really want to take a look at them this preseason. It is also going to be interesting to see what effect the hiring of the NFL’s first female coach will have, even if it is only for the span of training camp. Doctor Jen Welter has played professional football for fourteen years, has a master’s degree in sports psychology and PhD in psychology, and so is a pretty incredible person just from the get go so I hope things go well with her working with the inside linebackers during camp.

The other team I am going to be watching is one that has dominated the offseason news when it has not been focussed on deflated footballs or other matters of league discipline management. I first really went all in with Chip Kelly whilst listening to him on the Ross Tucker’s podcast, and I was seriously impressed. However, since he’s been given the GM responsibility Kelly has demonstrated that he is not afraid to do things his way, but I’m not entirely sold. At the start of the offseason moves I could see an underlying plan, that he would trust his system to generate offense, and that he would invest in players on the defensive side of the ball. Then Kelly started signing expensive running backs and letting go of starting offensive linemen. There is also the small matter of not having an established starter at quarterback and not making the playoffs last season. I will be fascinated to watch what all the turmoil of the offseason produces this year, and shall have to make a point of watching the TV feed for some of their games as you simply do not pick up the tempo difference between the Eagles’ offence and other teams when you are watching the condensed cut or coaches’ tape.

So roll on the first game this evening as the football season gets closer and closer to starting.

The Bengals Offseason, Featuring a Brush with Hardy

02 Sunday Aug 2015

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I have had a draft of this post saved for months, but life kept getting in the way of things getting restarted. However, with training camps opening up across the league there can be no more delays so I’m going to kick things off properly with a look at the Bengals.

I have been enjoying my break, and whilst there were lots of things I could have been writing about, the amount of coverage the offseason gets these days seems to be getting somewhat out of hand. That is not to say that this is not an important time of year, but every offseason we have winners declared for free agency that go on to have rotten seasons (see the 2014 Buccaneers) and draft grades handed out to teams before their new charges have even taken a snap. It is not so much the quantity, as the certainty of conclusions about the upcoming season and the topics that just will not die (deflate gate, and Tom Brady’s ongoing appeals), that gets me down.

I’m not going to be exhaustive about the Bengals offseason, but will take a look at the general shape and pick out some key points.

“It’s hard to be a Bengals fan… How do you find hope in that situation?”

This is a quote was from a podcast discussing the state of the Bengals franchise, and in fairness the hosts were in the middle of making positive points about what a good job Marvin Lewis had done given the situation that he is working in. But there was a questioning of the lack of aggression in free agency, and how could you get excited about the changes for the upcoming season. This comment was also made before the draft, but I’ll cover that in more detail in a bit.

I understand the fans who think that Marvin Lewis should have lost his job, or been moved to general manager before last season so that Mike Zimmer could have been made head coach, not have his contract extended by another year despite not winning a playoff game in twelve seasons.

The problem with that is I think there is something of a double standard here. The Bengals may have the longest playoff win drought in the NFL, but they have just been to the playoffs for the fourth straight season, and this resurgence has been built through the draft. Gone are the days when the team would reach for need, and they have been consistently recognised as a very talented team who draft well. There are still flaws, as all teams have flaws, but their focus in recent offseasons has been holding onto their own and drafting well. This is how they have gone from the national joke Bungles to a respectable team, usually in the hunt for a playoff place in one of the toughest divisions in football.

This is also the team that let Michael Johnsons go last year as they didn’t want to compete with the contract that the Buccaneers were offering, received a third round compensatory pick this offseason, as well as resigning Johnson after he was cut by the Buccaneers. Between this move and the signing of a couple defensive tackles, the Bengals have improved the defensive-line rotation enough that they didn’t have to reach for a pass rusher in the draft, although they have to improve on the disaster that was the pass rush last year but making Wallace Gilberry a situations pass rusher again can only help.

This for me is the key point, the Bengals’ free agent moves weren’t designed to fix everything, but were designed so that going into the draft they can stick to the mantra of recent years, which is to pick the best player responsible. I’m not saying that the resigning of Rey Maualuga, and the acquisition of AJ Hawk have solved the linebacker problems the team had last year, but they mean the Bengals have enough depth that they can pick at the right point. Plus, if you saw the difference in the way the defence stopped the run with and without Maualuga last season, you would be happy he’s back with your team. There are only so many Luke Kuechlys to go round.

However, I am now about to contradict myself a bit as I found the Bengals draft a little confusing. I understand the need to draft a tackle with both starters Andrew Whitworth and Andre Smith coming to the end of their contracts, and Whitworth coming towards the end of a great career, but there doesn’t seem to be any sign of Whitworth slowing down yet, so picking tackles with their first two picks seems a little odd given the problems with the pass rush and depth at receiver last year. However, it doesn’t look like the team reached, they picked up a linebacker and have really made a real effort to resolve the problems a tight ends with two draft picks and a couple of rookie free agents signed at that position. At the end of the day, you can only judge a draft three or four seasons later so I’m not going to pass judgement here.

Nonetheless, the lack of an early pass rusher pick would indicate to me that they really are happy with the depth they have on the d-line and are expecting more out of recent picks Margus Hunt and Will Clarke. However, there is one of other topic I have to mention before we get back to football as much of the talk at the beginning of the offseason was the Bengals’ anaemic pass rush, and one name was repeatedly mentioned as a possible solution was Greg Hardy.

“He looked me in my eyes and he told me he was going to kill me. I was so scared I wanted to die. When he loosened his grip slightly, I said, ‘Just do it. Kill me.’ At that point I accepted I was going to die.”

That is a quote from Hardy’s ex-girlfriend during his trial where it was also revealed that he threw her onto a sofa covered in loaded assault rifles. The conviction has been wiped away as part of North Carolina law due to the court not being able to find the woman for Hardy’s appeal to be heard in front of a jury, and it is believed there has been a financial settlement between them. This has cleared the way for Hardy’s return to the NFL, and what’s more he has had his suspension for this season reduced from ten games to four.

It is worth repeating that this man was still found guilty by a judge of assaulting a female and communicating threats.

Unfortunately, he can also rush the passer.

This meant that he was mentioned by the media as one solution to the Bengals defensive problem. I understand why, but I hated the way it was always couched in a way where the non-football issues would be acknowledged tacitly, but skirted over to get to the football part. I’m sorry, not good enough. I did not, and do not want him on my team. And I am not sure how many players would. You often hear of the sanctity of locker room and how disagreements there should not get out, yet the one team who did see fit to sign Hardy began to have rumblings at the start of their conditioning programme.

There is a genuine discussion to be had about rehabilitation of people, and it is something we have seen in the UK sport world with the case of unrepentant convicted rapist Ched Evans looking for a team to take him on again. He has the backing of the Professional Footballers’ Association that he should be allowed to play, but every team that has been linked to him has been besieged by objection and has eventually backed away from actually signing the player. One defence of signing Evans that has been offered is that he has a right to make a living, but I would not say he should be stopped from getting a job, but I don’t see that he has a divine right to play a sport and be held up us a role model whilst earning multiples of the average wage.

The sickening thing in both cases is that there seems to be an equation that revolves around talent versus disruption. Getting back to the NFL, someone like Hardy or Ray Rice are talented enough that teams have tried to work their way round the issue and are keen to let due process play out, where as a less talented player will simply be cut straight away. With Ray Rice, it was only when the video of him punching his then girlfriend now wife emerged that the NFL re-evaluated their punishment of him, but only after the public outcry and pressure from their sponsors got to a level that had to be dealt with. Of course they couldn’t make the new punishment stick as they had already handed down a ban so Rice is clear to play again, but so far he is still too toxic for a team to sign.

The way the NFL tries to make up rules/discipline on the fly is likely a subject I shall touch on again, as Roger Goodell has repeatedly made a mess of this, but it seems that whilst the league continues to massively profitable that the owners have no interest in replacing him. There is not an easy answer on this one, and it is not up to a sporting league to fix societal problems like domestic violence, but even with the league’s increased focus and funding of programs both within the league and externally, it would be nice if teams focussed more on the moral matter than if we think we can get away with it because of their talent.

Getting back to on the field matters, the big question to me this year is will the team finally get the playoff win that will finally get people off Marin Lewis and Andy Dalton’s back. I hope so, not only as I’m desperate for them to break this streak, but as much as I’d like to see Lewis and Dalton succeed, there is a lot of talent on this team so I really don’t want to go through a rebuild with a new coach.

Looking at Dalton’s career so far, there are questions about his ability in high pressure games, but he was so limited last season in the weapons he had to throw to that I don’t think the playoff loss can as easily be put at his feet. However, there is no doubt that he does have a wide variance in the quality of his play, but if the line continues to be one of the best in the league, and the Bengals have more health in the receiving corp along side a running back rotation that they finally sorted towards the end of the season then hopefully the Bengals can look more like the team that started so strong last year rather than be the broken one last season. It is also worth mentioning that quarterbacks used to be given a lot more time to develop in previous years, and Dalton has gone to the playoffs in every one of his four seasons in the league.

One of the other things that is also worth remembering about last season, is that the Bengals were working with two new coordinators having lost the previous offensive and defensive coordinators to head coaching positions, so making the playoffs again was a pretty good effort.

If things can be seen as looking hopeful on offence, there are more questions on the defence. The pass rush was just bad last year, so I really hope that they manage to get back to a deep rotation like the one that caused so much trouble under Mike Zimmer. It would also be brilliant to see Geno Atkins look more like himself another year from his knee injury as when fit, watching Atkins rush the passer is one of my favourite sights in the NFL. Additionally, whilst we still seem to have enough talent in the secondary, everyone is waiting nervously to see how Vontaze Burfict will come back from microfracture surgery on his knee. Hopefully the offseason signings, and the drafting of Paul Dawson will improve things this season, but the defence really missed Burfict last year.

If the team can be seen to be heading in the right direction, I am a little worried about the schedule. I don’t pay too much attention to the strength of schedule conversations as we don’t know a lot about how certain teams will play, or how healthy they will be, but I would rather not be facing the AFC or NFC west divisions as we are this year. Yet I’m still hopeful as football starts to get closer, and I do think this is the year the Bengals will get that playoff win.

That said, the offseason is always a time for optimism so lets see how things go when the season actually starts. I can’t wait!