Talk of our offense has me thinking...

I know this is sort of an old topic, but I think it's relevant to bring up because a lot of talk lately has been about our lack of scoring on offense... Which is tied to our lack of red zone efficiency.

I wondered which teams were the best at scoring TD's when in the redzone this past season, and why... Here's the top teams, and what I think a lot of those teams have in common...

1. Detroit - Calvin Johnson (6'5")
2. NY Jets - Plaxico Burress (6'5")
3. Green Bay - Jermichael Finley (6'5")
4. New England - Rob Gronkowski (6'6")
5. Tennessee - Kenny Britt (6'3")
6. New Orleans - Jimmy Graham (6'7")



Now Ben does have Heath Miller who's 6'5" and I love Heath, but he's not an athlete who can go up and pluck the ball like the guys listed here. Maybe Saunders COULD become that guy...

But I'd love to see us grab a "red zone specialist" either at the WR, or TE position.

 

You forget that Kenny Britt went out very early in the season so forget him completely. Also, New Orleans throws a lot to Lance Moore in the redzone and he's not exactly huge. NE runs the ball quite a bit in the redzone and they are usually successful in pounding it in.

I see your point, and a tall receiver would help, but there's far more to it than that. We weren't successful in passing or running when in the redzone.

 

Hopefully with a year back in football saunders turns into a beast. He is a huge target and showed he can make a athletic catches on his td this year.

 

Heath used to be way more of a RedZone threat in years past. He has been phased out of this offense the past 2 years and I think it has to do with bad offensive line and bad playcalling.

 

You're right about Britt... but the rest still apply. You can nit pick the numbers but it'd be a pretty huge coincidence that 5 of the top 6 have a guy that's 6'5+ with jumping ability.

 

I don't feel like looking it up, but I bet teams in the bottom part of the league also had a 6'5 guy with jumping ability. Most teams in the league have that guy. There's so much more to redzone efficiency than just a tall receiver.

 

I don't think it is about height necessarily. I think it is mostly about having tight ends which are considered a threat in the red zone. Look at the top 5 scoring teams on the year:

Green Bay - Nelson was his #1 target with 15 TDs, but Finley had 8.
New Orleans - Jimmy Graham is the #1 target.
New England - Gronk...goes without saying. In fact their TEs had 24 of their 39 receiving TDs.
Detroit - Johnson was first, but their 2 TEs combined for 11 TDs (5 and 6).
San Diego - Ever heard of Antonio Gates? Yeah he is a threat at all times.

Heath had exactly 2 of our 21 passing TDs. 2. I bet if you looked at his targets in the redzone it would be small.

 

I agree.

 

Sure there's more to it than that... but I'm saying if we want a "quick fix" that can cover up some of those other things (like that fact that we're a big play offense and Mike Wallace's best weapon is useless inside 20 yards) that this is a good place to start. And to say "most teams" have a receiver that's 6'5 with jumping ability is probably not true at all. Plus, they've got to be able to catch the ball on top of that.

You can look at the worst teams, but most of them are just bad offenses in general. Here's the bottom 5...

1. KC
2. STL
3. San Fran
4. Washington
5. Cleveland

 

it's all a matter of exploiting what they cover. yes those tall receivers were benificial,because they used them efficiently and not just in the redzone. using all your weapons is the key. gronkowski was effective. they covered him to take that away after a while. they would then go to someone else in those situations, whether it was the other TE, or welker or whomever, but the threat of gronkowski made the other parts open up. same with williams , used enough to make defenses have to cover him down there and brees would then go to sproles. a big athletic target is not a bad thing whether it's as the go to guy or the season long set up guy. you have to make him successful enough to use him as a decoy for another guy to be more effective. NE does run the ball well in the redzone because they are defending the effectiveness of gronkowski. they make it a big guessing game for the defense by setting them up to guess wrong. you have to first show them a guys effectiveness though. something we never did with our TE's RB's or WR's. we only showed wallace's deep threat in the middle of the field because he was faster then anyone else. we didn't have a guy that made the catches or runs all the time and in the redzone enough to make the defense have to cover just one aspect. when you then empty the backfield it takes away another aspect. we tied our own hands and cut the defense in half of what they had to cover. add, that they had already taken away the deep threat down there of wallace and it tied our hands even more.

 

wait the new oc , the things will change

 

I understand what you are saying, but I believe that CJ and Gronk are the guys that support your theory. There is obviously a lot more that goes into scoring in the red zone beyond just having a big guy who can jump and catch the ball. What about guys like Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates? Their teams weren't in the top RZ scoring O's. Look at GB - they had 10 different guys catch TD passes. Heck, Gronk is a stud, but NE also had 18 rushing TD's. N.O had 16 rushing TD's. The main thing I'm taking away from this thread is a re-affirmation that BA sucked at calling plays in the RZ and he sucked at using his players to their strengths. These top RZ scoring teams have more important keys to their efficiency. Mainly OC's who can call effective plays at the right time, and QB's who are better at reading the defense correctly and getting rid of the ball quickly.

BTW, here are the top receiving scorers for regular season:
Gronk = 17 TD's
CJ = 16 TD's
Jordy Nelson = 15 TD's
Jimmy Graham = 11 TD's
Laurent Robinson = 11 TD's
Dez Bryant = 9 TD's
Victor Cruz = 9 TD's
Vincent Jackson = 9 TD's
Greg Jennings = 9 TD's
Wittle Wesley Welker = 9 TD's

Gronk, CJ, and Graham are definitely big athletic targets who can score. But look at the offenses they play in and tell us what's different. I'm pretty sure they don't run a 5 wide empy backfield set every time they get inside the 10. I haven't seen any delayed draws straight up the middle to a midget RB like mini-memo. Their teams have solid OL's, so you don't have to leave those TE's like Gronk and Graham inside pass protect. The whole 5 wide / empty BF in the RZ just makes me sick. Yes, those guys are good go-to guys, but their RZ play-calling is miles ahead of the Steelers. And they have QB's who can read defenses better and get the ball out quicker. I think another thing that may have made our RZ offense more efficient a couple of years ago was Ben's ability to take it himself. He had 0 TD's this season. Obviously he had some injuries to deal with later in the season. But, he is getting slower as he gets older. And Ben seems to be hot or cold. This season he made more mistakes than a $100M QB should. Ben coughed up the ball 22 times (14 INT's, 8 fumbles), which is his 3rd worst season out of 8 in the NFL. One of these problems will hopefully be fixed with the addition of the right OC. And hopefully the coaches can get Ben with the program to fix the other problem.

 

I'd be interested in seeing the numbers on where those TD's came from. I know guys like Jordy Nelson, Laurent Robinson, Victor Cruz... a lot of there's probably came from more than 20 yards out.

 

Yeah, I think you're right. I don't really have the energy to go back through the drive charts though! It would be awesome to have a RZ threat like Gronk, CJ, and Graham. Maybe Saunders could be that guy, I don't know. I think we need to have more of a RZ running threat though. I want to get back to a power run game in the RZ - especially inside the 10 with a true Kreider-type FB and a RB who hits the hole hard like Redman. the other thing that is hurting us right now is Ben's inability to scramble. Even though he didn't have a ton of rushing TD's, he was always a threat to take it in himself and the D had to respect and guard that. This year, Ben hasn't been a threat to take it into the EZ himself. I think it is less about the OL and more about Ben wearing down and becoming less mobile. We even saw it more this year with less ability to avoid the sacks. Maybe it has to do with decision-making too. Good example is when he got the high ankle injury in the brownies game - that was all on Ben and he could have run for at least a couple of yards, but didn't, took the sack, and got jacked up.

 

The redzone problem is there because we can run plus there are more defenders than recievers. The reason for that is the TE situation, he has to stay and block or the QB is running for his life as the eith the tackle gets beat or the guard whiffs on his block, it happens every redzone possession. The other problem is beside Brown, our recivers really aren't that good, I'll put Ward in there too as he and Brown can catch, the rest is like flipping a coin. 11 TDs dropped this season, that was a high I believe, Miller, Cotchery, Wallace, Sanders, Johnson and a few others. They all dropped TD passes and most of those resulted in FGs so it wasn't all play calling.

 

Interesting post. How do you know that Heath can't go up and "pluck" the ball. Heath has excellent ball skills but the problem was that BA was too stupid to realize that he was the best red zone threat they had and NEVER UTILIZED HIM IN THE RED ZONE! Glad BA is gone!

 

Where is the "I agree" flag guy now?

 

It does look like he may have picked up a few pounds. Look at that gut!