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The Divisional Disappointed

16 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Gee's Thoughts, Playoffs

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The divisional games mostly lived up to expectations, the last NFL head coach was hired and new staff’s are beginning to take shape so let’s get going.

What I Saw

I’ve been delayed in getting to this week’s post by work and travel so I’m going to zip through the games a bit as I’m pretty sure you know what happened by now!

The San Francisco 49ers win was an impressive team effort based on a defence that limited the Vikings all game and running the ball. Jimmy Garoppolo had a quiet game, but the 49ers looked comfortable and will be confident going into the weekend having beaten the Packers 37-8 in week twelve, but more on the Packers in a moment.

The next Saturday game saw the Tennessee Titans pull of the shock of the weekend as they beat the Baltimore Ravens in a similar fashion to the previous game. The Titans were able to contain the Ravens’ offence, helped no doubt by the injury to Mark Ingram that lessened the impart of the Ravens running game. The Titans didn’t get a great game from Ryan Tannehill, but he did enough whilst Derrick Henry ran for nearly two hundred yards and combine that with special teams and the Titans deserve to be in the conference championship games.

That start of the Sunday pair of games saw a wild game where the Houston Texans produced an almost perfect quarter of football and went twenty-four points up in the second taking advantage of special team errors and Chiefs receivers dropping the ball. However, the Chiefs’ rust didn’t last for long and by half-time they had taken a lead as they scored an unanswered forty-one points. The Chiefs managed to score fifty-one points in three quarters whilst the Texans couldn’t do anything to stem the tide or get back into the game.

The final game of the weekend was the most competitive and was the only one to feature a real quarterback duel. For all that things aren’t exactly humming for the Packers offence, they were able to do enough to take and hold the lead. Down the stretch Aaron Rodgers got the first downs for the Packers not to have to face a final win the game drive from Russell Wilson. I’ll talk about how maddening the game plan was later, but Wilson almost singularly dragged the Seahawks back from 21-3 down to win the game and had them within a score with over nine minutes left in the game. However, as they have done all season, the Packers ran the ball well with Aaron Jones, played good defence and so didn’t need Rodgers to play to the level he had to previously to win games.

What I Heard

The Cleveland Browns have hired Vikings offensive co-ordinator Kevin Stefanski, which wasn’t a huge surprise as he was Paul DePodesta’s choice last season, and after the failure of Freddie Kitchens saw him fired after a year and lost John Dorsey his job it appears the Browns are swinging back behind the analytics model. The only worry is if things don’t turn around quickly it feels like Jimmy Haslam could pull the trigger to early but let’s see how this shapes now.

I also thought it interesting that fresh off helping LSU win the national title as their passing coordinator, that Joe Brady has been hired by the Panthers to their new offensive coordinator. The only way was down for Brady in the college ranks after the year that LSU had but by hitching his wagon to Matt Rhule and his seven year contract he should have time to find his feet in the NFL.

Whilst I’m talking about the Panthers, I just wanted to acknowledge the retirement of Luke Kuechly who was one of my favourite players to watch on coaching tape. He was a linebacker who always seemed to know what was going to happen, never seemed to put a foot wrong and clearly wishes he could still play. It’s not the all time career I said was possible a few seasons ago, the concussions and injuries put pay to that but eight years is five longer than average at one of the tougher positions to play in the NFL and he is a Hall of Fame player as far as I’m concerned. I’m glad he’s stepping away on his own terms. Very few players get to do that.

The Divisional Disappointed

This is going to be a painful section to write as I have a huge amount of affection for Mike Zimmer and what he did for the Bengals, but I’m beginning to think that the Vikings have a Marvin Lewis type problem. Now some might draw the comparison between Kirk Cousins and Andy Dalton, but my worry is that Zimmer is clearly a good coach and taken the Vikings to the playoffs three times in his six years in charge. However, I’m not sure if he’s going to win the big one, and for me the problem is that he is too old fashioned in how he wants the offence to run, quite literally running the ball too much into a 49ers defence that was stuffing them. Now the pass rush of the 49ers played a huge part in thee Vikings’ offensive woes, but Cousins is now going to have his third play caller going into his third and final year with the Vikings. We shall have to see how next year’s team are assembled, but the defence is not getting any younger and when you have one of the best receiver pairings in the game should you be as reliant on the run game as Zimmer wants? I await Dan’s Dad verdict on this theory and would love to be proved wrong next season, but I have my concerns that the window for this current version of the team is closing.

The Baltimore Ravens had such a successful year and so the ending of it has to be particularly hard to cope with. Clearly they need to work out a plan B on offence, but this is not proof that you can’t win with Lamar Jackson who did things no quarterback has done before and is only twenty-two. Given the franchise stability you expect the Ravens to improve again in the offseason and they would be my favourites to win the AFC North next season and likely for several years to come. The questions about Jackson in the playoffs will remain until he gets a win, but it wouldn’t surprise me if next year the Ravens get that win and go deep into the playoffs.

The Houston Texans are a funny team to evaluate because this is the fourth time in his six years as head coach that Bill O’Brien has won the AFC South, and yet he has never totally convinced. This is the second year in a row that quarterback Deshaun Watson has got his team into the playoffs and he did all he could in this game, but there simply wasn’t enough around him to compete with the Chief’s offensive explosion of points. The truly worrying thing is that O’Brien is defending the trades he made and is keeping control, yet the all in moves got them one playoff win and a horrible loss. For all of Watson’s heroics, this does not look like a team capable of winning a Super Bowl and the Texans are now missing the draft picks they traded away to augment the roster in the offseason. They may well get away with it again next year if the Colts can’t find an improvement at quarterback, but Chris Ballard has been doing great work in Indianapolis and I wonder if the Texans fall back next season.

It could perhaps be argued that the Seattle Seahawks have if anything overachieved this season as they continue their rebuild, but with Russell Wilson they always have a chance. If anything that makes their continued insistence on over emphasising the run even more infuriating. In DK Metcalf they have a fearsome rookie receiver who combined with Tyler Lockett helped Wilson excel and yet in the biggest game of the year they managed a three runs then punt drive and gave Marshawn Lynch twelve carries two weeks after he came out of retirement that yielded only twenty-six yards. It’s one thing to use him short yardage as he scored touchdowns but with the injuries at running back not maximising Wilsons prime seems a flawed plan. I have  a lot respect for Pete Carrol but I am beginning to wonder whether whilst I think floor for the Seahawks is always going to be high with him as coach, I’m not sure if they are going to reach their full potential with a quarterback as gifted as Wilson if they don’t build the offence round him. I’m sure that the Seahawks will be competitive next season, but I don’t know if they will be pushing for the Super Bowl.

What We’ve Been Asked

‘And then there were 4.

I wasn’t surprised that the Viking’s luck finally ran out as the 49ers season has been a good one and they have clearly earned their home field advantage. It was by no means a rout, but any defeat hurts especially when the Packers are still in the hunt. That was resolved by the meeting on Sunday of the Packers and Seahawks at Lambeau Field. A close affair, this went the way of the home team but only by 5. This brings the two 13-3 teams head to head in San Fran next weekend. My pick would be the 49ers but as a Viking I’m conditioned to support the Vikes and anyone playing the Packers. I think it will be close though.

In the AFC the Titans played up to their name to take down the 14-2 Ravens in the only road win of the weekend, and by a decent margin of 16 too. The final game of the weekend saw the Chiefs win a high scoring match-up racking up 51 points and I think they will fare well against the Titans whose luck has to run out sometime.

OK, now for the trivia and I know that I may have caused some frustrations in the ranks. Despite claiming to have no idea they both managed to come up with some answers nearing the truth. So here we go.

Q1. In a game against the Washington Redskins on October 13, 2000, Michael Lewis became only the 7th player in NFL history and the first Saint to do what?

Well he didn’t return two Punts in a game Dan, but he did return a punt and a kick-off for a TD in the same game. Gee also went for 2 kick returns so I feel I have to award them both the points for that, but I will take a note of Gee’s thoughts to bone up on rule changes for next season.

Q2. In a game against the Washington Redskins on October 30, 1955, Jim Patton was the first player to achieve what?

I think that Dan must have a camera in my flat as he managed to sniff out my being in one of my devious phases. Gee’s answer about a 50 yd field goal was good but didn’t quite bring home the points. Again we aren’t talking two punt returns but it is another case of a return a punt and a kick-off for a TD in the same game – Sorry it was too tempting when I found these two facts for two adjacent teams so once again despite having no clue they both delivered…

Q3. This should have been the easier one of this week’s questions and asked: From 1960 – 62 the NY Jets were known as what?

Well, Metros and Cities were believable offerings but the actual answer is the New York Titans.

So this week Dan and Gee score 4 and 2 points respectively bringing the total to 30-26 in Dan’s favour.

Now we reach the exciting Championship Week where the real questions get asked on the field but for those of us without helmets here’s the trivia.

We start at Oakland and the question is:
Q1.  Who did the Oakland Raiders play when they made it to Super Bowl II?

Moving on we get to Philadelphia and I want to know:
Q2.  Which Eagle quarterback threw for 464 yards in one game setting a team record?

Finally this week we arrive in Pitsburgh. So tell me:
Q3.  In the Steelers’ first Super Bowl appearance, who did they defeat?

Well after this we just have the Pro-Bowl and Super Bowl to go, a sure sign we are at the business end of the year.

Happy Triving’

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The End of the 2019 Regular Season

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Gee's Thoughts

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So here we are at the end of the regular season, but the start of playoffs and a new decade. I’m going to do a recap of the games I watched in week seventeen before I run through the AFC side of the Disappointed Twenty, and will follow up tomorrow with the NFC side.

What I Saw

The first game I watched in week seventeen had no bearing on the playoffs or draft position, but it still made me happy as the Cincinnati Bengals secured only their second win of the season as they beat the Cleveland Browns in a relatively comfortable manner. The Bengals pass rush was able to harass Baker Mayfield all game and got six sacks as well as picking him off three times. I’ll be talking about both of these teams in my roundup so only thing I will add here is that I was surprisingly happy about this win, even if it was ultimately meaningless in the wider scheme of things.

Whilst the Bengals win had no real affect on things, one of the other TWF teams had a definitive effect on the playoffs even thought they will not be playing either. For a bad season in terms of results, there has been much to be cheered about this season for a Miami Dolphins team, who got more wins that you are supposed to whilst rebooting your roster and look to have found a really good head coach who cemented this view with a win against the New England Patriots that cost their divisional foes a bye week and throws them into an eminently losable match-up against the Tennessee Titans next week. The problems that have plagued the Patriots offence resurfaced this week, but in addition Tom Brady threw a horrid pick-six where he sailed a ball between two receivers that Eric Rowe grabbed and took gratefully into the end zone. If that wasn’t bad enough, Stephon Gilmore did not look at all like the shutdown corner he has looked like for most of the season and the Pats’ defence did not look itself. I’m still not going to declare the Patriots done until I’ve seen them eliminated, but I can’t remember a recent time where the Pats looked this vulnerable this late in the season.

There were two divisions up for grabs in week seventeen and the first of them to be won saw the Philadelphia Eagles finish their mission impossible with four straight wins despite the injuries that plagued them all season. Their final victim were the New York Giants who offered up some glimpses of what Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley might be able to achieve between them as the Giants kept the game close into the fourth quarter, helped by an impressive sixty-eight yard touchdown run from Barkley, but whilst Jones managed to outgain the Eagles’ Carson Wentz through the air, he could not match his care with the ball and the Eagles finished strongly to win 34-17.

The final game of the regular season was to decide the AFC West as the Seattle Seahawks hosted the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers had dipped in form thanks to injury but looked to be getting back to some of their mid-season form in recent weeks and got out to a strong start in this one, building a thirteen point lead that should have been more whilst holding the Seahawks scoreless. The Seahawks have injury problems of their own, hence the signing of Marshawn Lynch out of retirement, who provoked a huge response from the Seattle crowd despite not producing that many yards but did get a touchdown. However, Russel Wilson was able to work out the 49ers defence in the second half and mount a comeback that very easily could have produced the win were it not for a combination of refereeing and the return of late game mismanagement. The Seahawks had three downs on the one-yard line to get the winning touchdown, or would have if they had not been called for delay of game and then failed to get in from the five. The result means the Seahawks travel to face the Eagles and could very well face the 49ers again before the end of the playoffs.

The Disappointed Twenty: AFC Edition

So here is my quick run through the AFC teams who missed out on the playoffs.

The New York Jets finished 7-9, despite losing their starting quarterback to mono and so you could say that this was not a bad year. The problem is that I am not convinced by Adam Gase as a head coach these days, but whilst I don’t think he has done anything to lose his job, a lot will be riding on next season.

I have already mentioned that the Dolphins looked to have found a really good head coach in Brian Flores, and with the influx of picks coming in the next couple of years things could really take off for the Dolphins. They need to find a franchise quarterback, and Dan would very much like them to re-sign Ryan Fitzpatrick as a mentor/capable backup, but if the Dolphins get the picks right they could be peaking as the Patriots enter into a new phase of the franchise.

Given the Pittsburgh Steelers lost their franchise quarterback to injury in week two, their 8-8 record is very creditable, and Mike Tomlin answered those who suggested that the Steelers might need to make a change at head coach. However, now having fixed the defence it is the offence that needs attention now, and given this franchise’s record of finding receivers in recent years you would like to think this is possible.  However, the Steelers are another franchise who will need a new quarterback sooner than later, but we shall have to see if Ben Roethlisberger has another trip to the playoffs in him.

The Cleveland Browns had a horrible year full of dysfunction and disappointment that ended with the firing of both Freddie Kitchens and GM John Dorsey. I wrote that there were warning signs before the season, and having created a roster full of character issues and not been prepared to change his role after a discussion with owner Jimmy Haslam, Dorsey lost his job for it. There is a lot to put right in Cleveland and it feels like they need a coach capable of building a winning culture at the Browns and sorting out Baker Mayfield. Given their track record it’s hard to have faith that Haslam will get this decision right but the fans in Cleveland definitely deserve better.

The results for the Bengals may have been hugely disappointed, but the culture in Cincinnati certainly seemed to hold up through the season and the players were saying good things about Zac Taylor. It looks like Joe Burrow is going to be the Bengals selection with the first overall pick, which is exciting because of both the player he is and the person he seems to be (Heisman Speech). I always hoped that Andy Dalton would get the right team to prove people wrong as under the right circumstances he was a really good quarterback (that 2015 team will forever haunt me because of his injury) and I hope he gets to enjoy success going forward, but I am ready for a new leader and hopefully a better team. It will need to be given the how good the Ravens are likely to be for years to come.

The Indianapolis Colts had their plans for the season thrown into the air with Andrew Luck’s surprise retirement, but further burnished the credentials of head coach Frank Reich by going 7-9 with Jacoby Brissett as quarterback and with some different injury luck could have won more game. I wonder if they will be looking at quarterbacks in the off-season, but given their franchise progress over the last couple of years under GM Chris Ballard I see them being competitive again next season. That said, the other reason they struggled this year was that after a Hall of Fame career, kicker Adam Vinatieri had a bad year before having knee surgery that ended his season. It’s hard to see a forty-seven year old man coming back next season, but you would have said that for a number of seasons before now and it has been an incredibly impressive career that should not tarnished by a difficult season.

The Jacksonville Jaguars had a disappointing year where a sixth-round rookie Gardner Minshew outplayed their prime off-season signing at quarterback. The Jaguars have provided a structural conundrum for a while and really need to establish an identity, but it is interesting that after a second season of missing the playoffs they are keeping GM Dave Caldwell and head coach Doug Marrone in place having fired Tom Coughlin once the players’ union announced that the Jaguars accounted for 25% of all their filed grievances. I’m really not sure what to expect next season as there are a lot of questions surrounding their roster and we shall have to see if they can get everyone pointed in the right direction next season.

The Denver Broncos finished the season with four wins out of five and in Drew Lock may well have finally found a quarterback to follow Peyton Manning. It may have taken some time for Vic Fangio to get things working for the Broncos in his first year, but if they can build on their late season success in the off-season then the Broncos can be back in contention next season.

The last year of the Raiders playing in Oakland saw them improve by three wins from 2018, but Jon Gruden still finished with a losing record and questions will continue to be asked about quarterback Derek Carr. The Raiders lost their first round safety early in the season, but rookie running back Josh Jacobs established himself as franchise back until he was injured and if the Raiders can continue to add talent they can compete for the playoffs in their first season in Las Vegas. There’s still something that is making me hesitate to say they will do this, but if Mike Mayock and Jon Gruden have a second good off-season and don’t have the distractions of Antonio Brown they could easily do so.

It felt like Philip Rivers was saying goodbye after the LA Chargers last game, and the franchise seems to be in flux having failed to build on last year’s success, hampered again by injuries and seeming short on fans in LA. I don’t know what is going to happen to this franchise in the off-season, head coach Anthony Lynn seems safe but the Chargers need a new quarterback and something to bring the fans in. To be honest I’m not sure they are going to make a success of life in LA and whilst I think a possible move to London is a non-story (as their owner colourfuly explained earlier this year), I do think they could rue the day they left San Diego, even if Dean Spanos is unlikely to admit it.

That’s it for today’s post – check back tomorrow for a round up of the NFC teams as Competition Thursday swings into gear.

Super Bowl Preview

01 Sunday Feb 2015

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It has been a very strange build up to the Super Bowl, with the news dominated by the seemingly endless leaks regarding deflated footballs, except we don’t actually know yet if the balls were deliberately tampered with, just that they were under the regulated pressure. Right now I can’t bring myself to care too much about it as I want to be looking at the upcoming game which should be a fascinating contest. What I will say is that yet again the NFL is demonstrating that even though they are a billion dollar business, that regulation and investigation does not seem to be their forte. I cannot understand why this investigation is being allowed to go on for so long and overshadow the showcase game of the football season.

The Super Bowl will be fascinating contest between contrasting teams and coaches, who will approach the games in different ways, but there are also a number of similarities.

The Patriots are famously adaptable, and it would be foolish for anyone to attempt to pre-empt what Bill Belichick has planned for this game. The Patriots dynasty has been built on Belichick’s attention to detail and the way he prepares his team to do whatever it is that he believes will win the game that week. It was interesting to her Ross Tucker on his podcast talk about one of the ways that this attention to detail manifests itself, in that rather than talking about the need to say run the ball against a particular team, Belichick would say there were three key things to win a game such as stopping a particular receiver running crossing routes on third down. Not only would he identify these specific key battles, but the players would be drilled so that when this situation occurred in the game, the players knew precisely what they had to do.

If Belichick’s teams are defined by their adaptability and tactical ingenuity, then Pete Carroll deliberately keeps his system straight forward as he believes in keeping his players unencumbered by the system so they can play faster. That’s not to say that he isn’t running a modern playbook, but part of the philosophy that he believes is key to success is to limit the number of reads a player has to make so they can be free to play.

However, even though they have their philosophical differences, there are similarities between Belichick and Carroll as both are defensive minded coaches, who’ve worked through a similar era, and have failed as head coaches before they attained success. What’s more, discussing Pete Carroll made Bill Belichick unusually verbose during this year’s media day, as he said that looking at Carroll from afar had made him a better coach, a rare complement from the famously tight lipped Belichick.

This should be a tight game as we have two very closely matched teams, who both had slightly stuttering starts, but as their personnel coalesced and got healthy managed incredibly strong runs. They have differing personalities that reflect their coaches, with the Patriot players staying tight lipped on message, where as the Seahawks are given the freedom to be themselves and so are a much loser group as a result. Neither are necessarily fan favourites with the repeated wining and various pushing of the rules by the Patriots leading them to hated in a lot of quarters, whilst the brashness of some of the Seahawks can rub people the wrong way and there have been a number of PED suspensions for this team. However, both are undeniably well coached, and whilst the game may not be the offensive spectacle that some would desire, there should be some fascinating football to watch.

Perhaps the unit to discuss in this game is the Seahawks defence, who if you stop to listen to its players is the best of all time. It is so hard to compare units across the ages, and so I’m not sure I would go that far, but this unit is very, very good. They ended the season on top of the DVOA stats and led the league in both points and yards allowed through the regular season. The defining part of this unit is their secondary, the legion of boom, three of whom are as good as any player in their league if not the best. They are most know for their three deep zone coverage, with Earl Thomas roaming the field as the deep safety, both corners locking down their respective sides of the field and Kam Chancellor stalking the centre of the field looking for the big hit. The front seven do not blitz that often, but by default align as a 4-3 under defence, meaning that the lineman slide to the side so that the strong side linebacker can line up over the tight end. From this alignment they will be aggressive, with the majority of the front seven have one gap assignments, meaning they can push up the field to make the play, but they won’t be trying to trick the Patriots with complex pressure packages. They will trust their system to cope with what the Patriots will throw at them.

So what will the Patriots throw at them? If the Seahawks are defined by their defence, then the Patriots are characterised by their offence, and their quarterback who is playing to win his fourth Super Bow at his sixth attempt. The question is how will they attempt to attack this defence, and a couple of way have been suggested. One thing that they won’t do is challenge the Seahawks on the outside as they don’t have the explosive kind of receivers to do this. In fact, as good as both team’s secondarys are, they’re almost wasted on the receiving corps that they are facing in this game. One way to challenge a zone system is to attack the seams in between the zones, and with a tight end like Rob Gronkowski this would look like a definite possibility. The other thing I’ve repeatedly heard suggested is given that both Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas are carrying injuries, that the Patriots could use the short passing game to move the ball and test their ability to make tackles, this seems to be popular as last time these teams met the Patriots ran over fifty passing plays. That said, as much as Tom Brady loves running long drives of ten to fifteen plays, chipping away at the defence, this is not the team that you want to be trying this against as they are just too good. However, if there is one area that you can attack the Seahawks, it might be in the run game as since losing defensive tackle Brandon Mebane to injury, they don’t have that top level run stuffer in the middle of the defensive line. The truth is though, that perhaps more than any other team, we won’t know what the plan is until we see it, and even then it is very likely to change throughout the game. That is the flexibility that Belichick and Brady to the game.

The Seahawks however, are a lot more of a defined prospect on offence. Although Pete Carroll is not afraid to be aggressive and is fond of the odd trick play, the bread and butter of this team is the run game. This is partly out of necessity as the Seahawks’ receivers are not a dynamic unit, but mainly because the duel threat of Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson is so very hard to defend. In Lynch the Seahawks have an amazingly physical runner, whose yards after contact numbers are almost absurd compared to the rest of the league. The duel threat comes from the read-option that they run, and Wilson’s ability to make the right decision and challenge the edges of the run defence. Like any system, there are benefits and drawbacks to the read-option, and one that I particularly dislike is the punishment it leaves your quarterback open to if they keep the ball and take the hit. However, if you watch Wilson when he runs the ball, he very rarely takes a hit as he is brilliant at getting the yards available and getting down or out of bounds before the hit comes. In fact in general Russell Wilson’s decision making is excellent, and the Seahawks have done a brilliant job of making the most out of his skill set whilst working round his limitations, as given how tall Wilson is you could not make him a pocket passer.

The Patriots defence has been much improved this year despite losing Jerod Mayo for the year in week six and not getting a great year out of Vince Wilfork. They retooled their secondary in the off season, and have caused many teams a problem by using the newly acquired Brandon Browner and a safety to bracket the top receiver, and leaving their other free agent signing Darelle Revis to lock up the second receiver. This is the exact opposite approach to the Seahawk corners playing their sides, and one of the fascinating parts of this game will be watching how the Patriots’ secondary play. The cover two defence, was in part created to defend the read-option attack, but it is not something that the Patriots use, or many teams in the NFL these days so it will be interesting to see what Belichick and his staff come up with. One of the key players in run defence could be Jamie Collins, who runs as well as any linebacker in the league and could be used to spy Russell Wilson, and Collins actually has the athletic ability to chase him down Wilson if he does keep the ball. The problem is that the Patriots have been vulnerable to the run at times this season and this is not the team that you would want to face with that weakness, as Lynch could just keep ploughing the ball up the gut to see if the Patriots can stop it for the whole game.

I am really looking forward to this game as it should be a very competitive, and importantly well coached, that is too close to call. Whoever wins this game looks to secure a legacy with the Seahawks trying to win back to back Super Bowls, and the Patriots looking to get Belichick and Brady their fourth. Neither feat has been achieved for many years. I look forward to watching it live as a fan, and going through the coaching tape next week to write the final blog of the 2014 season.