Matt Canada hired as QB's coach

You have to be willing to establish the run and my point is with or without Ben,Fichtner hasn’t shown that. If we don’t find a way to be more balanced we’re not winning anything. So it’s not if you can’t run then throw. They have to be able to run the football effectively.

I agree the OLine needs fixing but so does the pass happy mindset

 

2018 300 rush att. Almost 4.6 per.
2019 364 rush att. Way under 4 per.

o line went from one of the better lines to one of the worst. When you have a franchise qb, you use him. We led the league in passing yards in 2018. Ben has a lot to do with the emptying of the backfield. You will never see a Tennessee type run game as long as he's here. Not going to happen.

 

Ben lead the league in yardage but also lead the league in attempts and INTs and didn’t lead to the playoffs. Where did I say I expected a running attack like Tenn. I said we need more balance. Our Pass/ run in 2018 was also 68% pass and that got us nowhere. I don’t know the exact % off the top of my head from this past season but it was also heavily passing and that’s with basically rookies at QB. Which is why I said I’ll believe it when I see it....

 

don't forget the kicker that went in the tank in 2018 or we make the playoffs. So the passing wasn't the biggest problem. The red zone efficiency went up too with Randy that year. You can't blame him for this year. Dear God.

 

Have the #1 receiver coming out of the backfield. A home run threat on both the run & the dump down. Connors to back him up.

 

Don’t forget the kicker was money in the bank the year before that and won us a handful of close games as well. If the kicker is the excuse for not making the playoffs, you have bigger problems than just your kicker. Ben also lead the league in RZ INTs so maybe running the ball a little more would of helped that. I gave you the % 68% pass. Look at all the teams that have made the playoffs the last few years they are tops in rushing and balance. That’s what I’m trying to say...balance. Are we even having the same conversation? Am I blaming RF for not making the playoffs? No.. My point is even without Ben he didn’t believe in balance. That has to change because pass happy isn’t getting it done and God isn’t gonna help either....

 

Yes the kicker was money the year before that and we went 13-3. I'm saying the next season we could have easily won 3 more games and easily been in the playoffs. It wasn't the unbalance of pass to run under Randy that year that made the difference.

believe me I agree that emptying the backfield in the red zone of inside the 10 is the stupidest thing I have ever seen and the deep ball on 3rd and 1. Much of that is ben. You live with him or did with him. He does what he likes. Right or wrong. To late to change him now, he doesn't listen. This is a big reason Canada is not here for ben.

You also can't have an o line that goes from top to bottom and just keep running the ball for 2 yards per carry and blame the O C for not running the ball. He did, there were no holes.

football 101. They load the box, you throw the ball. They play coverage, you run the ball. Your line has to do their job in either instance. Ours did not.

Let's also not forget, we fired the rb coach and brought in a college guy. We lost our wr coach. We lost the best o line coach in the business. We lost our franchise qb. We lost the top wr in the league. So yea blame the OC. Wonder why we were out of sorts last year..

 

I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. I don’t agree that Fichtner has made a concerted effort to run the ball. We played in a lot of close games this year and he has abandoned the run early and often. Look at the attempts per game. It was unbalanced and that’s without Ben. You don’t think teams are lining up to stop Derrick Henry? You don’t think teams lined up to stop Jerome? That’s where I agree we need to improve the OL at the same time when you’re not even giving your guys a chance to establish the running game,that’s a problem. So far Fichtner has proven he’s a decent OC with Ben and kinda lost as a OC without him. This was his time to prove himself. A QBS best friends are TE and play action. We barely saw any of it because we didn’t put enough emphasis on running the football this year and all the close games dictated we could of and should of stuck with it. RF basically showed he can run a dumbed down version of Ben’s offense and didn’t prove what he can do on his own with what he had.

 

nix and the o line and injured rbs had a lot to do with it this year. That's really not on randy. I'm not sure why OC would have raised much better. We did pretty well with what we had in the field this year. Many teams that had a lot more fair worse then we did. Dallas, SD, rams, browns, jets, all had stud rbs.

 

thesteeldeal, you and Mac daddyo are both right but both wrong on different things. Your right Fichtner didn't make a concerted effort to run the run but they couldn't run well due to some extent the offensive line but we were also not very good at it because teams stacked the boxes and dare us to pass which we also were not very good at.

Mac, our OC did not make it easy on our QB's, his play calling was not very good and lacked any new designs or innovative plays. If you watched the good OC's in the playoffs they design plays like tackle eligible or like when the Titans had Henry take a direct snap and ran into the line and threw a jump pass to a wide open receiver. Plays like that which would take some of the pressure off the QB's. He just kept calling the same running plays into a stacked box and didn't have a QB that could throw it deep down the field. When you have weakness on your team you have to develop plays that hide your weakness and he did none of that except the wildcat which worked one game and then teams got used to it. Then what does he do, he kept running it game after game and it went nowhere but never came up with anything different or creative.

The offensive line didn't help with their blocking in the run and pass plays. The OC didn't help because he was not creative and designed plays to offset our QB's weaknesses, and our head coach, well not even getting into that at this time

 

Absolutely agree. To go along with your point. More creativity could of opened up,the running game as well. I understand they were up against stacked defenses but I’ll take a run for 2 yds over a sack or INT. Our defense was our strength and we didn’t play enough complimentary football to help them. Many times a punt would have been the best outcome. I believe it was 5 or 6 games where our young QBs attempted close to 40 passes. Our run/pass was still heavy pass that didn’t do any favors to our QBS or our defense.

 

didn't we try a pass out of the wildcat that got intercepted? Another thing, we were to our rookie udfa qb, you could get real innovative if it wasn't during the season. There is only so much time during the week. There was also travel time in there to many times. It may have been a little different if we had a vet back-up but we didnt. Rbs hurt, ps wrs, no fb, so many things were against him. These innovations you talk about are being done by guys that played together all year. That's asking an awful lot from what we were fielding. We still went 8-6 after our franchise went down.

 

But, but, Fichtner wasn't very innovative when he did have a veteran QB in Ben. They just did plays that Ben wanted to run.