Tag Archives: Bruce Arians

Fell at the First Hurdle

10 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in Gee's Thoughts, Playoffs

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Here we are in the second week of January with four playoff games complete, eight teams left, and six games to the Super Bowl. Today I’ll be taking a look at the playoff teams who fell at the first hurdle and will run through the coaching news as I have it, although it will be worth you checking the usual places as events are picking up pace as teams start to hire.

Houston Texans

The Texans made it to the playoffs but fell to their surging division rivals in the Indianapolis Colts. The Texans had a slow start to the season, and there was talk of Bill O’Brien’s job being in danger if they lost again and fell to 0-4. Instead they got an overtime win against the Colts, and then ripped off a further eight wins. The problem they have though, is whilst the front seven of their defence is strong, and they have one of the best receivers in the game as well as a dynamic young quarterback, there are holes in the rest of the team. This might not be surprising given they had to trade away picks to get their quarterback in Deshaun Watson, but they need to balance up the skill players surrounding DeAndre Hopkins or get them healthier and they need to improve the secondary of their defence. They have the sixth most cap space looking forward to 2019 so they have some room to manoeuvre, particularly with a young quarterback on a rookie deal, but they also have several picks in this year’s draft that have been traded away. More worrying is that whilst O’Brien keeps making the Texans competitive in the division, they have not quite convinced and the Colts look like they are shaping up to be a fearsome team in 2019. Experience teaches us that the Texans will likely compete for the division title again next season, and it was definitely great to see JJ Watt playing a high level again and who know what he might be able to achieve with a full off-season without a major injury to rehab. The Texans have gone to the playoffs four times in the last eight years, and twice under O’Brien, but in his five years as head coach they have only won one playoff game and that just makes me wonder if the owner will start to think about a change if the Texans can’t get a step further next season.

Seattle Seahawks

This is going to be curious one to write up as in a lot of ways the Seahawks defied the expectations coming into the season by finishing 10-6 and making the playoffs despite their young roster. The defence was overhauled and they committed to running the ball as their identity and that was good enough to make the playoffs, but my worry is that they will be too stubborn surrounding the offensive game plan. The repeated run on first and second down in their Wildcard loss to the Cowboys was not effective thanks to the Cowboys fifth rated rush defence. We have moved well pst establishing the run as a offensive philosophy and I very much believe that what you need is a credible threat to do either so that play action is effective. In Russell Wilson the Seahawks have one of the most effective quarterbacks in the game, and if they say ran play action on fifty percent of their first downs and threw in some mid-range passing they could be really effective without abandoning the run. I just don’t know if it is going to happen or not and it makes no sense to extend Russell Wilson as they will need to do shortly, and pay him the premium he is going to deservedly ask for if they don’t make the most of him. That doesn’t mean they should start running an Andy Reid style offence, but to my mind the offence needs tweaking. They have plenty of cap space and frequently draft well, but I just don’t if they are going to change spots now and I wonder if that will hobble them from getting back to the Super Bowl.

Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens got back to the playoffs after three years of missing out, and discovered the future of their offence in rookie quarterback Lamar Jackson. They can’t keep giving him carries at a record setting pace despite him only playing half a season, but he can throw the ball and the fact that he was able to get a couple of touchdowns in the fourth quarter of their Wildcard loss to the Chargers should reassure that he won’t be solved by a clever defence. The front office won’t be the same with Ozzie Newsome stepping down, but it feels like with the infrastructure in Baltimore they will be back and competitive next season. It certainly seems like John Harbaugh will stay as long as he gets the contract extension with the terms he wants. Unlike many defences, the Ravens always seem to be around the top five in the league and so you would imagine that the Ravens can focus on getting Jackson tools for the passing game, although you can never have too many pass rushers or corners. The Ravens are a little below league average for cap space in 2019 as currently constructed, but you would expect them to be there or there about next season and with a good draft they could be really scary.

Chicago Bears

The Bears loss in the Double Doink game was heart breaking, although the field goal miss has been amended to a block as a defender did get a touch. Either way, the worry for the Bears is that they had the number one defence in the league and couldn’t get the game won against the Eagles. They are twenty-third in the league in salary cap and there are players whose contract has expired. As defence is generally considered to be less consistent year to year (unless you’re the Ravens it seems), any step back from the defence would have to be countered by an improvement in the offence. Although Matt Nagy has improved the team, and there has been lots of focus on the way he called the offence, it only finished twentieth in the league by DVOA. I definitely thought that Mitchell Trubisky looked better this season, but he really needs to improve next year and there’s no way of knowing if it will happen. They also look like they will be without defensive coordinator Vic Fangio who is being looked at as a head coach candidate for the Broncos, who was the mastermind behind the Bears defence, and whilst they have a lot of talent, a new coordinator is not guaranteed to get the same result with the new roster next season. I do think the Bears can remain competitive, but there are enough factors to make Bears’ fans wary that it was a one season wonder. Hopefully a good pre-season and start to the 2019 season will put those fears to rest.

Coaching Hires

And so we move to the coaching carousel, where we have started to get some hires.

First up were the Green Bay Packers, who had a head start thank to their firing of Mike McCarthy mid-season. They are hoping to capitalise on the rise of Sean McVay by hiring his former assistant Matt LeFleur after one year of running the offence in Tennessee. It’s hard to assess how good a job LeFleur did with the Titans given the nerve injury Marcus Mariota battled through for large parts of the season, but at age thirty-nine with limited experience it is a risk. He’ll have been hired with a mandate to innovate and to get the best out of Aaron Rodgers, but as ever with young coaches it will all depend on how he builds his staff. I don’t think it is a coincidence that both McVay and Matt Nagy had first year success as a head coach and had very experienced defensive coordinators to lean on.

There will be no such concerns about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ new head coach, as they have hired Bruce Arians, who is one of my favourite coaches. I hope the year rest has helped his health as that is honestly my biggest worry, but he was attracted to the Bucs by his relationship with GM Jason Light and if anyone can turn around that franchise given some time it is Arians. I’m not totally abandoning my previous comments on the Bucs from last week as there is a lot to do, but I have about as much faith in Arians turning it around as anyone.

The Cleveland Browns have hired their temporary offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens as their new head coach, following the recent trend of teaming up an offensive mind with a young quarterback and we shall have to see how this works. Certainly the rapor with Baker Mayfield seems positive, but these hires haven’t always worke so we shall have to see.

The Arizona Cardinals have hired Kliff Kingsbury from college, and the honest answer is I don’t know enough about college football to judge this hire. It is deliberately an offensive coach to develop Josh Rosen and I’ve sean a video clipe of Sean McVaty praising him but only time will tell on that one.

Finally, at least of the ones I’ve seen confirmed, the New York Jets have hired Adam Gase to be another offensive minded head coach paired to a young quarterback, and Sam Darnold will have to hope to replicate the success of Peyton Manning than Ryan Tannehill.

There are other hires in the works as well as coordinators hired or staying so keep your eyes out and we’ll do a deeper dive when things calm down and we don’t have more important things like games to watch.

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The Disappointed Twenty: NFC Edition

03 Thursday Jan 2019

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Following on from yesterday’s post it is time to say farewell to the NFC half of the disappointed twenty.

Washington

I almost don’t where to being with this team. They had a 6-3 record going into week eleven but no team can survive two quarterbacks breaking their legs and they also lost both starting guards in two separate games as injuries wreaked havoc over their roster and 2018 campaign. However, this is a franchise that has also just fired a huge number of their front office staff whilst the coaching staff have never quite convinced. Meanwhile, fans are attending games in ever fewer numbers and the glory days on the field are now over a generation away. I’m really not sure what to expect this offseason, a team that claims Reuben Foster on waivers three days after a domestic violence arrest are capable of pretty much anything but it’s possible they could compete in NFC East next year yet I could equally see it all going wrong and I certainly have very little confidence in them for the upcoming off-season.

New York Giants

The Giants got themselves a possibly all-time great a running back in this year’s draft, but that didn’t exactly result in a huge turnaround for the team, which is why the pick was questioned back in April. There is still talk of Eli Manning coming back for another year, but whilst he’s a lot better than I would be, he doesn’t look like the player who was part of two Super Bowl wins. Until they truly face up to, and resolve, the quarterback situation for the future then I think there is a pretty severe limitation to what this franchise can achieve. They also have other areas of the roster to address and are not exactly flushed with cap-space either but at least GM Dave Gettleman has built a Super Bowl contender before. There were questions about his iteration of the Panthers, but they built around Cam Newton and right now I think the Giants need a quarterback they can build round before they can improve by much. The Giants’ fans will live in interesting times this off-season.

Minnesota Vikings

The Vikings went into the season’s final week needing a win to make it to the playoffs and so they can hope to compete next year, but the window might be closing for a talented team that were hoping that the addition of Kirk Cousins as their quarterback would put them over the top. This very much did not happen, but there were other issues as the offence sputtered this season. The defence may have only slipped a couple of places in DVOA by the end of the year, but you don’t expect a Mike Zimmer defence to ship twenty-seven points to a woeful Bills offence and there were other slip ups. I love Zimmer as a coach, but he has not been able to find an offensive co-ordinator or quarterback to work with long term and this is something the Vikings need to get right this offseason. Cousins isn’t going anywhere with his guaranteed contract and the Vikings have the least amount of cap space available going into next year of the teams who aren’t actually over the cap at the moment i.e. thirtieth in the league. The problem with that is the Vikings’ offensive line is still letting its skill players down and so I have to wonder whether the Vikings will be able to pull something together next season or if they are going to have similar problems again. They are not going to turn into a bad team overnight but I’m not sure how they get the answers they need on offence, which would be a concern if you a fan or attached to the team but I wouldn’t rule them out of improving either. It’s just not as easy to see as for certain other teams and they need to hire the right offensive coordinator and stick by them.

Green Bay Packers

The Packers fired one of the longest tenured coaches in the league this season, having hired a new GM in the offseason and so now we get even more change. On the face of it the Packers job is appealing given the tradition of the Packers and the presence of Aaron Rodgers. However enough people have speculated about Rodgers to make me wonder if there is something about the way he has been handled by the franchise and the stories of his attitude. More concerning is the fact that he is thirty-five, the expectations that come with this job will be huge yet the Packers are in the bottom half of the league for available cap space next season and Green Bay is not exactly a free-agency destination. This is the first season where a healthy enough Aaron Rodgers hasn’t got you into the playoffs, and with the right hires and roster moves I’m sure the Packers can be back in contention next season, but I’m not sure if it is the slam dunk that some might have you believe.

Detroit Lions

The coaching tree of Bill Belichick has not exactly prospered when they have left New England and Matt Partricia had a difficult first season. The offence was hobbled by injury at the skill positions, but long term offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter paid the price and Patricia will now get to hire his own coach to run the offence. However, it would not surprise me if there was very little room for Patricia to manoeuvre going forward as he was hired to take the team on and they went backwards from their 9-7 record of the 2017 season. If Patricia can step away from some of the Belichick inspired behaviours and find his own way then the team could rebound next season, but I would not exactly be surprised if the Lions have another difficult year and then Patricia should be very concerned about his job given how cut throat the world of NFL coaching has got in recent years.

Atlanta Falcons

The Falcons had a difficult season, with injuries up the spine of their defence wrecking their hopes early in the season and they actually battled back pretty well to finish 7-9. It was always going to be a hard job to follow Kyle Shanahan as offensive coordinator, but the offence has never quite been the same since he left and Steve Sarkisian has paid the price this off-season after two years of not quite putting it together. That said they still finished with a top ten offence by DVOA and Matt Ryan is thirty-three so whilst the Falcons window to get a championship has not closed, they need to get the new co-ordinator hire right if they are to make this a blip rather than the start of a downward trend. They also can’t have a defence that ranks thirty-first in the league by DVOA, but getting players back from injury and a good draft should solve that, but they really need their offence to fly again if you’ll forgive me the pun. I couldn’t help myself. Sorry…

Carolina Panthers

This was one of the stranger falls from grace as the Panthers were 6-2 after week nine but then lost seven straight games before closing out with a win against a resting Saints team in week seventeen. Until his shoulder started to bother him the unlikely pairing of Cam Newton and sixty-six year old offensive co-ordinator Norv Turner was paying dividends in their first season together, ably assisted by Christian McCaffrey who totalled nearly two thousand yards of offence this season and might have hit it if Cam Newton had not been sat for the last couple of games. More worrying for this team is that the defence slipped from seventh in the league by DVOA to twenty-second. I’m not entirely sure what the off-season holds given that the Panthers have a new owner with a background in finance and analytics whilst the coaching staff have an avowedly old school feel and the team ranks twenty-eighth in terms of cap space for next season. I think a lot of this will be immaterial if Cam Newton can’t get his shoulder healthy and manage it so he’s healthy for all of next season. I know I like to say we’ll have to wait and see a lot, but with the Panthers I think that is especially true for the next fourteen months or so.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Buccaneers got off to an entertaining start whilst Jameis Winston was suspended, but then things fell apart and head coach Dirk Koetter was let go after a 5-11 season. I’m more surprised that GM Jason Licht is staying and that the Bucs have committed to Winston for next season, but now whoever the new head coach is, he will have to buy into a roster that has threatened but never quite lived up to expectations and make it work. The Bucs are actually twenty-ninth in the league for cap space next year and with a new coach but no questioning of a regime who have failed to have a winning season then I’m not sure I can buy into a turnaround until I can actually see it. For context, the Buccaneers haven’t had a winning season since 2010 or back to back winning seasons since the 1999/2000 seasons. I take no pleasure in this, but I can’t look at this record and the previous four years of Jameis Winston and say yes, the Bucs are going to be fighting for the playoffs next season. As ever, I would be delighted to be proved wrong but I think there is more turbulence to come for this franchise unless they knock this coaching hire out the park.

San Francisco

The 49ers got their first bad piece of injury news in pre-season when running back Jerrick McKinnon, who came across from the Vikings in the off-season, was lost to IR with a knee injury and then quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was lost for the season before the 49ers even made it through a quarter of the season. In fairness the season never really got going and that will be a worry, as will the performance of a defence that couldn’t get out of the twenties by DVOA and a team who were thirtieth in the league overall. You can’t really judge the direction of this franchise by this season but I would imagine that both head coach Kyle Shanahan and GM John Lynch will be feeling a sense of urgency going into this offseason. I don’t think it is time to panic, but they could do with a good offseason and a definitive improvement to solidify their project in San Francisco or they might not get to complete it. The 49ers are at least in the top ten for cap space next season so they have room to manoeuvre and I wouldn’t necessarily bet against Lynch and Shanahan pulling it off but we’ll know a lot more by about week five of next season.

Arizona Cardinals

The first thing I want to say about the Cardinals disaster of a season is given the state of the roster, that GM Steve Keim had a five-week suspension from the team after pleading guilty to an extreme DUI charge in the summer, and that the Cardinals’ defence was top ten at points this season, it feels a little unfair to fire head coach Steve Wilks after one year. The offence had a rookie quarterback for lots of the season and a bad offensive line and there is a lot of work to do with this team. I will be interested to see who they go with for next season and how much room Keim will be given to manoeuvre, although he seemed to work very well with Bruce Arians so has some track record with the franchise. It could take more than one offseason to turn things round again though and clearly this is a franchise who now expect a certain level of success but I wonder if they will be able to achieve the results they expect if they don’t show some patience. There are certainly a number of coaches around the league who have demonstrated that in the right situation it is possible to turn things round quickly, but I’m not convinced that any coach doesn’t deserve more than a year unless there are serious problems in the locker room or behind the scenes and I’m not aware of anything like that in Arizona. This is a situation I’m going to watch closely but I wouldn’t like to predict right now what I think will happen next season.

NFC Preview

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

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18-09-05 NFC-2

So having set myself this ridiculous task, it’s time to try to finish my whistle-stop previews in time for the start of the season so on to the NFC!

NFC North

The Minnesota Vikings won the division at a canter last season and whilst they might not have it all their own way this year now the Packers have Aaron Rodgers back and healthy, they are one of the fancied teams in the NFC. Having let three quarterbacks walk at the start of free agency they signed Kirk Cousins and expect to match offensive production with their fearsome defence. The offensive line is the one obvious weakness but in Mike Zimmer they have one of the best coaches in the league and I think they will be there or there about come December.

The Green Bay Packers had a down season last year thanks to Aaron Rodgers’s broken collar bone, but they will be hoping for a return to the playoffs now he’s back and healthy. A new GM saw the Packers dip into free agency more aggressively this offseason and after nine years they let go of Dom Capers and brought in Mike Pettine as a new defensive coordinator. It hard not to see the Packers in contention come the end of year as long as Rodgers stays healthy and if things gel for them they could be one of the better teams in the league.

The Detroit Lions went nine and seven but failed to make the playoffs and decided to go for a new head coach. They brought in Matt Patricia from the Patriots and a lot of the focus this year will be on just how good a coach the Belichick pupil is. Having left a team with the thirtieth ranked defence by DVOA last season , Patricia takes over a Lions team that ranked nineteenth so we shall have to see, but I like the continuity of Jim Bob Cooter staying in charge of offence and continuing his successful work with Matthew Stafford. I can’t take too much from pre-season as I didn’t see any of the starters, but they were not impressive against the Browns and they could be a candidate for a team who struggles. We’ll just have to see how things work out and a lot depends on how successfully Patricia blends what he learnt in New England with his own beliefs now he’s the man who is ultimately responsible.

I was feeling things were on the up for the Chicago Bears even before they swung the trade for Khalil Mack. I’ve seen their offence improve over the course of the pre-season and whilst I’m not necessarily convinced by Mitchell Trubisky, with the skills players the Bears brought in through free-agency and new head coach Matt Nagy’s offensive scheme the Bears almost can’t help but improve on offence. The defence was pretty good before the addition of Mack and rookie linebacker Roquan Smith so I can see why there is a buzz around this team. How many wins this will actually yield this year I don’t know, but I like the aggressive approach the Bears took having realised how short a window an NFL franchises gets to exploit having a quarterback on a rookie contract. Whilst I didn’t like how they manoeuvred to get Trubisky in the draft, I like how they surrounded him with talent this offseason. Now let’s see just how big a dividend the team gets.

NFC East

The Philadelphia Eagles come into the season with one of the strongest rosters on paper, but there are a fare few injuries floating round apart from the Carson Wentz making his way back from the ACL and LCL tears. More worrying is that the Super Bowl winning Nick Foles and the first team offence have not scored a touchdown in pre-season. I think they are still favourites for the season and after the Super Bowl win Doug Pederson had all the affirmation he needs to stick to his plans but there may be a difficult few weeks ahead.

The Dallas Cowboys have lost a lot of franchise cornerstones over the last couple of seasons and big questions remain over who Dak Prescott will be throwing the ball to so a lot rests on how well Ezekiel Elliot can run the ball. That won’t be helped by the injuries to an offensive line that has been the cornerstone of the Cowboys’ offence in recent years. Meanwhile the defence has been more impacted by whether Sean Lee plays or not than any other unit has been by a single player that is not a quarterback. I’m not ready to declare them non-competitive just yet as there is potential for them to have a good year but it would not surprise me if they do in fact struggle, particularly as Jason Garrett doesn’t fill with a lot of confidence as head coach if this team starts to have difficulties.

Washington failed to make the playoffs last season and after several seasons of franchise tagging Kirk Cousins they traded for Alex Smith and then promptly gave him an extension. I am not convinced by the roster moves over recent years and I have a feeling that Jay Gruden will likely have his team win another 7-9 games like they have the last three seasons. There have been positive noised about Smith’s performance in the pre-season and when healthy Jordan Reed has been one of the most effective tight ends in the league in the passing game but I don’t know if the changes that have been made indicate a big improvement.

The New York Giants were a car crash last season with Ben McAdoo losing the locker room, the offence failing to function minus Odell Beckham and the defence slipping to a rank of eighteenth by DVOA having been second in 2016. This year’s Giants have a new GM and head coach who doubled down on Eli Manning despite his flagging form in recent years. They brought in Nate Solder from New England to solidify their offensive line at left tackle and drafted Saquon Barkley second in the draft without trading down and ignoring the various quarterbacks they could have had. There are genuine arguments about taking even as transcendent a talent as Barkley is thought to be over a quarterback given their respective values to a team and career length, but it seems they could have also struck a deal to move down but this what they have to play with now. The worry is how much does Manning still have in the tank but the coaching situation has to better than last year and so whilst I expect an improvement, I don’t know quite how much of a step up the Giants will make. I just hope they don’t regret not grabbing a quarterback when they had the second pick in the draft, who know when they’ll next pick that high again and they certainly will be hoping it isn’t for a while.

NFC South

The NFC south was one of the most competitive division s in the NFL last season with three teams finishing with double digit wins and making the playoffs.

The New Orleans Saints had a franchise changing draft bringing in enough defensive talent to shoot their ranking up into the top ten by DVOA whilst Alvin Kamara generated 1901 yards of offence. There were whispers that Drew Brees’s arm was not quite the same but he’s still as good as any quarterback in the league and threw for four thousand yards for the twelfth straight time! Yes he’s thirty-nine, but there don’t seem to have been any serious signs of decline yet and the Saints have just traded for Teddy Bridgewater who looked excellent throwing the ball for the Jets in pre-season. I’m not sure I would have invested the amount of draft capital the Saints did to pick such a raw pass rush talent in the first round as they did in this year’s draft but I suspect they will be there or there abouts at the end of the season.

The Carolina Panthers’ experiment with changing the way Cam Newton plays failed early in the season but he now has a new offensive coordinator in Norv Turner and I will be very interested to see how this works out. They do have multiple injuries at offensive tackle so it may be a work in progress but for his occasionally maddening accuracy issues, Newton is an effective quarterback in the style that he plays. If the defence continues to be in the top ten by DVOA then I would feel confident in saying that the Panthers will contend. My only concern is that for the last six years the Panthers have alternated double digit win seasons with seven win seasons, although one of them did net a playoff appearance. I certainly don’t believe this constitutes a pattern that is going to suddenly manifest itself in a seven win season but I do worry about their Panthers consistency from year to year. As ever we shall just have to see what the season holds.

The Atlanta Falcons were coming off a difficult Super Bowl loss last season and losing their offensive coordinator to the San Francisco 49ers. They were still a good team but the offence didn’t quite flow under Steve Sarkiesian but the defence continued to shape up under head coach Dan Quinn’s direction and they made it to the playoffs once more. Having adjusted Julio Jones’s contract and extended Matt Ryan’s contract the Falcons look set to challenge once again this season and may feel they weren’t far away last season in the playoffs.

The other team in the NFC South very much feel like the other team. Head coach Dirk Koetter was promoted because of his relationship with Jameis Winston who so desperately wants to be a leader but hasn’t quite managed that or to develop his play. Winston starts the season on suspension after groping an Uber driver and this franchise feels like it is disarray and it would not exactly surprise me if this team struggles all season. We shall have to see how the season plays out and it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong, but come the end of the year I suspect it could be all change for the Buccaneers.

NFC West

Last season’s surprise package in the NFC were the LA Rams who were transformed by young head coach Sean McVay who overhauled the offence to reignite Todd Gurley and rescue Jared Goff from the category of draft bust whilst leaving Wade Phillip alone to run the defence. Not content with making it to the playoffs last season they added Marcus Peters, Aqib Talib, Sam Shields, and Ndamukong Suh to the defence. It’s clear they have faith in Wade Phillips to control that combustible mix of personalities but there is no doubting these players talent and if both sides of the ball live up to expectations they will be one of the more formidable teams in the league. I’m not sure if it is possible to live up to some of the hype but the Rams would be my pick as favourite for this division.

The Seattle Seahawks had a tough time last year as injuries hobbled the legion of boom and it has been all change for the franchise in the offseason. Not a lot is expected of them, particularly with Earl Thomas holding out but I’m ready to give up on Pete Carroll just yet. The offensive line might finally have solidified a little according to those watching closely and Rashaad Penny, the Seahawks’ rookie running back, has been turning heads in pre-season. As has Australian rookie punter Michael Dickson who managed to kick two fifty yard plus punts out of bounds within the five yard line in one game. I’m not prepared to guarantee anything other than a competitive team, but I think they could surprise a few people this season.

The Arizona Cardinals seem a strange prospect for me without Bruce Arians never mind having to find a new starting quarterback. We know that Sam Bradford is unlikely to make it through the season without getting injured and that receiving legend Larry Fitzgerald deservers a better team, but David Johnson is returning from a wrist injury and so he should get back to something like his previous form. However, with a new coaching staff and so much turmoil it feels like whilst this team in transition might rally round and surprise people, it could also really struggle and something says to me that struggle is the more likely option. I always want to see teams and players do well so I hope to be proved wrong.

Finally, in this two day scramble of writing madness we come to the only team with a quarterback who has an undefeated starting record in the NFL. It is a small sample size so whilst I’m certain that Jimmy Garoppolo’s steak won’t continue throughout this season, the hope that he and first year head coach Kyle Shanahan gave last year will continue to come to fruition this year. However, they have already lost running back Jerick McKinnon to an ACL injury and it’s worth remembering the place that the 49ers started from when John Lynch came in to be Shanahan’s GM last year. I expect the 49ers to be competitive even if they can’t replicate the five game winning streak from the end of last year’s season but the fans from San Francisco may have to wait until next season to return to the playoffs given the size of the rebuild job that had to be taken on. I wouldn’t necessarily put any money on that though…

Trying to Make a Plan Stick

30 Thursday Nov 2017

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A combination of the Thanksgiving games and an ill-timed support call at the weekend got me thinking about the obsession with routine that many NFL head coaches seem to have.

I think the desire for routine was part of the reason that John Harbaugh was comfortable in complaining about his team’s trip to London earlier this year.

An NFL head coach is used to micromanaging. I’m sure there has to be a degree of flexibility built in, but a coach has his plan for the entire season prepared before it starts in terms of practise, travel, and everything it takes to play a game of football. This is much easier to implement if you are working in a familiar routine, particularly if you have a heavy schedule and any NFL coach, yet alone the one in charge of an entire team works an awful lot of hours.

One of the reasons that Bruce Arian’s is a favourite coach of mine is that he often talks about how important it is to maintain a work life balance and that if he hears of any of his coaches missing an important family occasion then he’ll fire them. However, in the ultra-competitive world of professional sports people are always looking for advantages and with the complexity of tactics that make up an NFL game plan you can see why coaches put in as many hours as they do.

I know from personal experience how if you don’t have a focussed plan, that you can spend a huge amount of time watching the coaching tape of a single game, and comparatively I know nothing about football. Not that I let that stop me from commenting about the game or coaching.

However, I don’t pretend that coaching is easy, and whilst I can and do share frustrations or wonder what was going on, something I heard Michael Wilbon of ESPN say really struck a chord with me.

He was talking about coaching and given how prepared these coaches are, the hours they put in, what interference and distractions must be going on for them to make the decisions they do.

Take for instance the Buffalo Bills. They have a quarterback in Tyrod Taylor that the franchise has not committed to, and with the GM and coaching regime change and apparently there still being no faith you begin to wonder what influence the owners are having. Certainly the decision to start Nathan Peterman ended badly and with Taylor back under centre this last week, the Bills were able to beat the Kansas City Chiefs.

I had a lot of time for what Sean McDermott did this season with a team that had move a lot of players on yet was still found a way to win, but for many the decision to sit a quarterback who didn’t turn the ball over for a rookie because Peterman gave them the best chance to win was fireable given how badly Peterman played. However, with a win McDermott at least stabilised the situation and what we don’t know is how many people were involved in the decision, but when it comes to a starting quarterback I wonder how many voices are involved.

Certainly with the announcement that Eli Manning is to have his starting streak of over two hundred games for the New York Giants ended because he is being sat for Geno Smith I start to wonder who was involved in the decision apart from Ben McAdoo. I’m not saying that anyone else told him to do it, but with all that is going on in New York, with the press being less than impressed with McAdoo’s handling of the team – what influenced him? The play of Eli Manning has not looked that great for a while now, and predates the loss of Odel Beckham earlier in the season, but what is he hoping to gain with his two time Super Bowl winner on the side lines.

I wonder how you get into the position to keep making the best decisions. How you have to be in lock step with all the people round you. I know how some approach it as coaches like Pete Carroll or Bruce Arians will write a book or talk about it, whilst someone like Bill Belichick reveals as little as possible.

However, I can easily see how being in the head coach’s office of an NFL franchise could be very different once you’re in there to how even an experienced coaches thought it might be.

And how only a tiny change could derail the best laid but highly complex plans.

So we move to a game featuring a coach who very much appears to be on the hot seat after a quick glance at last week’s results..

Gee:      Week 12   8-8                     Overall   97-80
Dan:      Week 12   9-7                     Overall   94-83

Washington @ Cowboys (-1.5)

The Dallas Cowboys have really struggled over the last few weeks, and the reaction of their coaching staff does not inspire confidence with a lack of creative scheming not helping a group of skills players who have not been getting it done with Ezekiel Elliott’s suspended. It maybe that Washington are so injured that they are going to lose on the road, but with both teams having played on Thursday of last week, I’m backing Washington in this one.

Gee’s Pick:          Washington
Dan’s Pick:          Washington

Week Five: Cardinals at 49ers

09 Sunday Oct 2016

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San Francisco 21
Arizona Cardinals 33

In a sometimes hard to watch game the Cardinal ran out eventual winners through a combination of taking advantage of turnovers and being more successful at getting to the quarterback.

It feels strange to say, but the offences in this game were eerily similar at times with strong running games and only one effective receiver but there were differences. The 49ers managed to rack up a lot of yards on the ground through a combination of effective straight ahead running by Carlos Hyde who ran for seventy-eight yards off twenty-two carries whilst Blaine Gabbert ran for seventy yards himself, including a quarterback keeper for a touchdown. However, Gabbert was only able to find receiver Jeremy Kerley consistently in the passing game, and Gabbert finished the game with an anaemic one hundred and sixty-two yards and two interceptions to one touchdown. He also spent a lot of time escaping from the Cardinals pass rush and yet still was sacked seven times, yet there were several long passes that Gabbert plane missed and it would not be a surprise if at some point if this inaccuracy loses him the starting job.

The Cardinals defence is still not where it was last year, with Tyrann Mathieu still coming back from his knee injury of last season and not looking himself, although the pass interference penalty that was called against him in the second half was very soft. However, the Cardinals were able to get consistent pressure with Markus Golden getting another two sacks to take his season total to six, and Calais Campbell adding an interception off a tipped pass to his two sacks. However, there are still questions in coverage opposite Patrick Peterson even if Marcus Cooper did cut under a route very nicely to get his interception. They got away with it in this game because the 49ers were unable to exploit open receivers when the opportunity presented itself but they will need to continue to improve if they are to get where they want as a team.

The Cardinals offence was struggling even before Drew Stanton was made starter through Carson Palmer’s concussion, particularly with both their starting guards being injured, but at least Stanton gave them a clean game with no interceptions and two touchdowns. However, he only threw for one hundred and twenty-four yards, most of them going to Larry Fitzgerald who looked as good as ever being constantly available in the passing game and doing his usual good job of blocking when required. Stanton was not as obviously inaccurate as Gabbert, and he threw a number of typical Bruce Arians’ long pass attempts, but could only connect on one to Fitzgerald. However, as good as Fitzgerald was, David Johnson was the other star for the Cardinals as he ran for one hundred and fifty-seven yards on an average yards per carry of over 5.5 and scoring two touchdowns.

The 49ers defence did a good job of breaking up long passes in this game, their secondary remaining close enough to the Cardinals’ receivers to break up plays and only allowing one long play when the corner covering Larry Fitzgerald slipped allowing him to score a twenty-nine yard touchdown. However, they were neither able to get enough pressure on Drew Stanton nor stop the run game, and whilst they did make the occasional good play behind or at the line to stop the run, overall this was a worrying number of points to give up given how limited the Cardinals were on offence.

The Cardinals got a much needed win, but they have a lot of improving to do if they are to drag themselves back into contention in their division, which given that like many people I was expecting the Cardinals to push for a Super Bowl, is a pretty major shift in expectations. The 49ers kept this game close for a while, and ran the ball effectively but I am not sure if between their two quarterbacks they have enough play to build on, but the 49ers were always a long term project given the state of their roster.

Playoffs, and the Conference Championship Games

24 Sunday Jan 2016

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Three games. That is all we have left if you discount the Pro Bowl, which I do. They look like exciting games, or at least intriguing, but I’ll be looking at them in a bit because what I want to focus on first is how we got here.

There is a simple reason that I am writing about this, which is that in the last two weeks I have found myself repeatedly reaching for the same phrase. This was one game too far for this team, or variations of that. And in each case I am talking about a team that has done well, but for various reasons fell short, but the primary one at this time of year seems to be injury. This is not a new theme for this blog, I have been writing about the importance of depth all season, but it takes on an extra significance at this time of year thanks to the structure of the NFL schedule.

All four of what are traditionally considered the major sports in America operates with a playoff structure, as well as the expanding MLS despite football’s tradition of leagues and parallel cup competitions across the globe. It is simply the expected format over in the States, and it still feels odd to someone who grew up with team sports being settled by everyone playing each other home and away in a league to decide the best team. In the NFL’s defence, there is simply no way for them to schedule such a league wide format with thirty-two teams who are already stretched to breaking point by a sixteen game schedule spread across seventeen weeks.

The reason I bring this up here, is that whilst all the sixteen games look to have the same mathematical value initially, in practice some games are literally more valuable than others. Thanks to the importance of winning your division, and the record comparison that can be used to determine who wins a division or makes the playoffs via the wildcard places, there are some games that are more helpful for getting to the playoffs than others. This in of itself is nothing new to competition, it is impossible to make things absolutely fair, and even in the league format scheduling and timing, not to mention the timing of injuries can play a significant role in the outcome.

For those who are not interested in Premier League football, one of the stories of the season has been Leicester City’s performance, which has seen them top the league and remain in contention through and after the festive period. For me this was always the real test as it is not uncommon for a team to have a good start, but have their performance tail off over the second half of the season, with the fixture congestion over the festive period often really testing a team’s squad and their ability to maintain a title challenge or a top four finish so they get into the Champions League. Not only is great for the team in your city to be on such a run of form, but in the last couple of weeks they have been social media contact between them and the Carolina Panthers, as City had spotted the similarity in both team’s season of unexpected success, and both clubs have been sending each other jerseys.

Whilst there is plenty of season to go for Leicester City, the Panthers are coming down to crunch time. I’m sure their fans won’t be thinking about it, but to some it might seem curious that a team which finished with a 15-1 record, two games better than any other team in the league, still have to win three games to be crowned champions. At its heart, the NFL is an entertainment business and so they can’t help by love the drama and tension of playoff football, and in fairness we all do.

I wouldn’t want to change this as I have already mentioned, but I do think it should be remembered when evaluating teams and players. I will cover the way injuries are likely to affect the teams when I go over the games, but I thought I would cover an aspect of the first game as I prepare to write about the Conference Championship games.

The number of people in involved in an American Football game is greater than any other sport that I can think of, with over forty active players, various coaches, and the required sport staff. It is very much a team game, which is what makes it somewhat ridiculous to start billing the upcoming Patriots at Broncos as Brady vs Manning seventeen. They are in very different places in their career right now, even if they are not so far apart in age. This could be the last game we see Peyton Manning play, the brain is still willing but the body whilst not exactly failing, is no longer truly up to the rigours of the NFL. The most frustrating thing for him must be that in most games he still makes a really good play, but he can no longer do it consistently and the arm strength has become a real problem.

The other qualifier that is often mentioned when looking back over Manning’s career is his playoff record, and this is usually compared negatively to Tom Brady’s. It is not that this is an unfair comparison, but that I think it gets over played. They are both outliers in terms of ability, each are Hall of Fame quarterbacks, and there is no argument that Brady has the more impressive post-season résumé. There is even a structural criticism in that by taking the salary that Manning has in a salary cap sport, it has meant that his teams have had to build their roster in a different way to the Patriots, where Tom Brady’s more team friendly deal allow the Patriots be more competitive. However, whilst I think there is some validity to all of this, the overlooked part is that Brady has also played his entire career with one of the all time great coaches, who not only wins tactically, but seems to have mastered the art of taking players that other coaches have let go, and put them into a position to succeed with the skills they do have.

In a culture where we seem to love building up heroes and then knocking them down, there is so much to admire in Manning’s come back from four neck surgeries and his performance over the last few seasons. One of the best defences we have seen in a long time stopped him winning that second Super Bowl, and it wasn’t him who snapped the ball over his head. There are different ways of leading, it doesn’t have to be screaming and shouting on the side line, and Manning’s preparedness is legendary.

All of these things will be played out one more time in the AFC Conference Championship, which will be hugely pressured, but in something as volatile as game of football there are no guarantees. Not only that, but injuries could well play a part as the four top seeded team play for the right to face each other in the Super Bowl.

New England Patriots @ Denver Broncos

In the opening drive of last week’s game we saw that the Patriots had managed their injuries well over the last few weeks of the season, and looked more like themselves on offence. Tom Brady was able to get the ball out quickly again, as the Patriots threw the ball all over the Kansas City Chiefs, who were unable to get pressure on Brady. The Patriots come into this game with not the best history of playing in Denver, and they face a team that have been winning ugly all season.

The Broncos won last week with a solitary touchdown on offence, but with better special teams than the Pittsburgh Steelers and a defence that held Ben Roethlisberger and his receivers in check. However, a large concern for them is that corner Chris Harris is struggling with a shoulder problem and was in and out of the game a lot. This is a problem for the Broncos defence as he is their most effective slot corner, and when facing a team with both Danny Amendola, and particularly Julian Edelman, you want your best slot corner to be on top of their game as they will do their damage from these positions.

The other worry for the Broncos is that Belichick’s game plan on defence is always to take away what the opposition do well and force them to win by doing something they are less comfortable with. I would expect this to take the form of the Patriots focusing on stopping the run and short passes by packing the middle of the field, daring Manning to make the deep and sideline throws that have given him problems this season. With some of the injuries to the Patriots front seven, it might be that the Broncos will be able to run the ball, but they will have to if they are to keep this game close.

I am expecting the Patriots to win this game, I think that the better balance between offence and defence will be too much for the Broncos to overcome, but they got here for a reason and so if they can keep it a tight game they stand a chance. There is part of me that still wonder if Manning has one or two moments of magic left in him, but even if he hasn’t, it has still been an incredible career.

Arizona Cardinals @ Carolina Panthers

This is going to be a cold game, with the east coast storms freezing an already torn up grass field. It is into this environment that the Cardinals come after playing three straight games in the warm dome that they call home.

More worrying for the Cardinals is that quarterback Carson Palmer was clearly having problems throwing the ball last week. It may be that his finger will feel better for another week of recovery, or they can make further changes to the taping of it, but balls were consistently sailing on Palmer lat week. Not only that, but he didn’t look quite as poised or as aggressive as he has for most of the season, and the long ball is a big part of Bruce Arians’ offence.

They are going against a team whose defence has been excellent, but with the injuries in the secondary, you might be able to get at the Panthers with the deep passing game. However, in Star Lotulelei and Kawann Short the Panthers have two defensive tackle that could really cause the Cardinals problems with pressure up the middle, which stops a quarterback from stepping up and Carson Palmer was never the most mobile of quarterbacks. The defence also features one of my favourite player sin Luke Kuechly, one of the best linebackers currently playing who is equally effective making a tackle in the run game as he is when dropping back in coverage. The Panthers will be hoping their predominantly zone coverage will hold up against an offence that loves to attack a defence at multiple levels.

The Panthers power running game might be well suited to counter the aggressive Cardinals defence, particularly as the Cardinals play with a converted safety at linebacker, relying on the speed of their extra secondary players, which might struggle on the Panthers’ turf. However, the Panthers have been making their passing game work with a less than stellar group of receivers, and Arians has been talking about how the Cardinals’ focus will be stopping tight end Greg Olson. Whether this will be enough with Cam Newton’s deep passing game causing many teams problems, particularly as you have to respect the dual threat that Jonathan Stewart and he present in the running game when they run play action, is yet to be seen.

I think this is likely to be my favourite game of this week. I have so much respect for both coaches, and it will be great to see an unfamiliar team going to the Super Bowl from the NFC given the recent stretch of dominance from the Seattle Seahawk.

Most of all however, we should be savouring both of these games as there is so little football left. Sure we will all be pouring over the offseason moves as every fan base transitions into the hopeful offseason part of the year, but the games are what it is all about. More on that next week.

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.

NFL Week 15: Cardinals @ Rams Recap

14 Sunday Dec 2014

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This was a strange game that never quite took off, although it remained a tight contest right to the end. The problem was that whilst I love defence and both teams posses really good ones, neither of them had good enough offences to provide a consistent challenge to the opposition.

Both defences were ranked in the top ten by DVOA coming into this week, but they got there in very different ways. The Rams are built on a pretty terrifying front seven and a defensive line that can get consistent pressure with a standard pass rush. The Cardinals however, are built from the secondary forwards, and rely on their corners to stand up in coverage whilst they consistently bring extra people to rush the passer. In fact I have never seen a cornerback blitz as frequently as Jerraud Powers did in this game, and at the end of the game I saw him rush three straight times, on the final one sealing the game when he batted down a pass. It is also worth mentioning that Greg Cosell said in his spot on the Ross Tucker Football podcast this week that he thinks that the Rams safety pairing of T.J. McDonald and Rodney McLeod are as good as any pair in the league, and as he gets to watch the coaching tape and I didn’t this week, I have no reason to disbelieve him.

Neither of these teams have the starting quarterback they expected for the season, with the Rams losing Sam Bradford in preseason and the Cardinals’ Carson Palmer going down in week ten in their previous meeting with the Rams. I have written about what a good job Bruce Arians has done coaching the Cardinals this season, and this was the case again in this game when the Cardinals lost Drew Stanton with a sprained knee after taking a sack from Aaron Donald with Eugene Sims and Alec Ogletree also in on the play. This is not the first time that Arians has been down to his third string quarterback, yet his team won the game and stand atop of the murderous NFC West with an 11-3 record.

There were no touchdowns scored in this game as neither team could get through the oppositions red-zone defence or get a long play for a touchdown. There was consistent pressure but only three sacks total in the game, and they generated virtually identical amounts of yards in offence. However, whilst both teams had the occasional good looking pass amongst the bad ones, with the Rams having the better results of the two, the Cardinals protected the ball better as they did not turn the ball over whilst the Rams gave up an interception and one of their two fumbles. The Cardinals were also able to run the football more effectively, generating 143 of their 274 yards from thirty-three attempts and controlling the clock with a nine minute advantage in time of possession.

It was in these small advantages that the Cardinals were able to eek out the win. The long punt return that Ted Ginn broke early in the third quarter was not capitalised upon in the ensuing drive, in fact the Cardinal went three and out, but after forcing the Rams to punt on the next drive they were able to win the field position battle and kick a field goal. It was this consistent play if anything that won them the game, after being held scoreless in the first quarter, they continued to get points in each quarter whilst the Rams could only bookend the game with field goals in the first and fourth quarters.

There were some excellent catches made in this game from both teams, but the real highlight of the game other was a career milestone when Larry Fitzgerald became the youngest receiver ever to catch nine hundred passes in the NFL. This should have occurred on a proper highlight play as Stanton dropped a lovely ball through bracket coverage to Fitzgerald for twenty-seven yards with a seven man rush coming, but unfortunately he only had time to do this as centre Lyle Sendlein held defensive tackle Kendall Langford as he burst through between Sendlein and right guard Ted Larsen.

This is another season for the Rams where they are finishing strongly and demonstrating that if they can just get a quarterback, they would be a real team to watch, but they have to find the answer at quarterback and they haven’t done so yet. The Cardinals look to be heading to the playoffs, although whether then can make a splash given their injury status is anybody’s guess, but I certainly wouldn’t bet against it given how consistently they have proved me wrong when I have doubted them.