Field position cost us this game

Berry had a terrible game. The Broncos started several drives at the 40+ giving them a short field and our D still held them to FGs. Wheaton cost us field position in the return game. We lost the field position battle badly and I think that ultimately cost us the game.

 

It sure didn't help. We didn't get one single break in this game and still had a chance to tie with two minutes left.

 

Yep...all game long...

 

Field position, Wheaton didn't show up today. ( I think he was thinking too much on punt catching ). Along with the fumble are the 3 reasons we lost. Just too many injuries too overcome.

 

Wheaton and even Brown on punts - too many fair catches inside the 10...let the ball go. odds are you start at the 20

 

First post here! Steeler fan since I was 10 in the mid 70's.

I agree field position was poor. Two other things jumps out at me. We played way two soft on defense for many of Denver's pass plays. Did not catch the name but on one play Denver had a 2nd or 3rd and 10 and the d-back was 11 yards off of Sanders. 11 yards! Take a tape measure and string out 33 feet. That is half my house! When you have that much room to catch the ball and pass it there is zero pressure on the offense. Quarterback knows the d-back can't jump the route. Also lets the receiver build up running momentum after the catch to make cuts or stiff arm like Sanders did one play.

Peyton threw a few ducks and not giving him so much room might have made him overthrow and create a few more wobblers which then makes it easier to jump the route or have a few more drops.

I would have thought that seeing all these rookies and 2nd/3rd/4th string qb's torch us for 300+ yards playing the soft zone we would of learned. I know Peyton is a vet but we all know he does not have the crisp passes that he did 3 years ago. I think he would of thrown 2-3 extra wobblers if we would of not given him such easy targets. The other thing soft zone does is kill field position. When you give all those easy yards up the other team is always on your side of the field. We do a good job of making them kick field goals but if we do stop them before a field goal it is always around the 50 or our 35 so guess where the punt ends up. I would love to see a stat on the teams in the NFL that are the worst on getting off the field on 3rd and five and longer. I would bet we are in the worst 3 to 5 teams in the entire NFL.

The second part that upset me was that we had way to many 1st and 2nd down runs that went for 1-2 yards. It seemed we were 3rd and 7 or 8 the entire game. We had 19 rushes for 80 yards or so and 65 of them (give or take) were on the 2 end around plays. So we basically had 17 rushes for 15 yards when we hand off to a running back. I wish half of those would of been play action. We averaged 14 yards a pass.

Hate to say it but our game plan should of been like the Patriots. Use one of the first two downs for play action or short safe passes. We were averaging 5-7 or more yards on those. Much easier to convert a 3rd and 2 or 3. Defense then cant't forget their lanes and all out rush.

The fumble was big as we did have momentum at the time but it was on their side of the field and they had the ball the entire game around that yardage as starting field position.

Sorry for the long post but I had to vent. I have to be honest that I thought the game was going to tougher for us than it was. We had a very good chance to win that game.

 

Agree. And the sad part is that I really thought we'd stand a good chance of winning at New England next week. Now we'll never know.

 

If we want to get Lombardi #7, we absolutely have to get better on special teams. We give up too many big returns and never seem to get them. Twenty yard punts don't help, either. In this game, good starting position for us was our 20 yard line; for Denver, good starting position was our 30 yard line.

 

I thought Mitch Berger sneaked on to the field. Those punt, pass, and kick kids were laughing at Berry!

 

Yes field position was rough.... But I'm thinking a lot of us don't understand the impact of the wind at field levels. Denver wr's were dropping passes too.... And those stiff winds can make that ball shift slightly. Berry did mess up, but I think he misjudged the wind

 

Poor, poor special teams play, I hope they bring in another punter to compete.

 

One bad game doesn't spell the end of a career for Berry. He's done pretty well this season, all things considered. Remember that you only tend to notice what a punter's doing when he messes up.

The shanks were bad, and certainly contributed to the loss. But as @Ender says, despite all that, we were still in it all the way.

 

FWIW, big legs don't always equal pinned opponents. Here are some punting stats:

Average yards: NFL 45.3; Berry 42.6 (NFL rank: 30)
Net average yards: NFL 39.9; Berry 39.1 (NFL rank: 24; tight data grouping)
Return, average yards: NFL 8.4; Berry 8.7 (NFL rank: 18)
Inside 20 (percent): NFL 35%; Berry 47% (NFL rank: 3 (leader is 49%))
Touchbacks (percent): NFL 6%; Berry 3% (NFL rank: 4)
Fair-caught (percent): NFL 25%; Berry 36% (NFL rank: 1)