The real reason why we struggle on offense.

D Line first. Seumalo has struggled since coming off injury. Signed through 2025. Need to draft there. And can Jones move to the left? I hope so.
Dan "Less" Moore's last season in B&G.

 

Too many fails on the line:

Jones
Moore
K Green previously
Cole
Okorafor

i dont know if other teams have this many guys struggling on the line. I doubt the good ones do. It could be a coaching/player evaluation thing.

 

Not just the o-line, but the play calling knowing your o-line is weak. Slow developing routes (or runs) are the last thing to try with a porous o-line, and we seem to have a lot of those in the playbook.

 

fkn TOMLIN

 

Maybe at least in part because the OC can't figure out how to use the tight ends we've used 2nd and 3rd rd. picks on. This style of play certainly makes them look like wasted picks.

 

And 2 yard Najee didn’t help

 

You missed the more glaring issue. As bad as we have been in pass protection we have been worse in run blocking in my mind. We can not convert short yardage or in the red zone.

 

Well there is a 6’8” 360 lb behemoth at kentucky that can actually move that would help us out alot if we can get him next year. I have never liked Ogunjobi. I thought when we got him he was a one year gap player then we resigned him to a ridiculous contract and have been stuck with him ever since. He wasn’t good enough for the Browns or Bengals why in the world would we think he would be good enough for us.

 

O-LINE coach needs to go, we have invested heavily in recent years on the o-line and it's still awful.

 

I’m sure they were but when your OL is awful it’s either get the ball out now or get killed. Russ had his head taken off atleast 3 times that game. He has no time to let plays develop. Everyone calling for Fields but it’s only because of his legs. That’s not a good sign when your QB has to run for his life to be a productive offense.

 

Truth be told, in my opinion, this team is overachieving from what I thought we had at the beginning of training camp. The same issues I had assumed we'd have, we still currently have. I think the things that afflict us in the red zone, are the same things that afflict the offense overall or in general.

1. Offensive line is sub-optimal. Hit and miss in pass pro and not consistent in run blocking. Not surprised, it was terrible last year and I didn't thinking adding rookies was gonna create a huge upgrade in year 1, but injuries and Jones regression hasn't helped.
2. Line issues coupled with some predictability in play calling on 1st and 2nd down has kept us behind the chains in my opinion. What's odd is it seems more rampant in some games vs others.
3. WR. We have no true route runners who win on route with CONSISTENCY. This contributes to our inability to convert 3rd downs at a good clip, and is a significant reason why we're so bad in the red zone, in my opinion. Our WRs are vertical threats and the only "route" guy we have is Austin...and it's really only because he has short area quickness...but he wouldn't be mistaken for running great routes.
4. I've seen the vids pointing out receivers being open. This was the case for Fields and Wilson. The honest truth is when the QB is attempting to evade the rush consistently, you're gonna miss open guys. How do you beat that...quick passing game...but we don't consistently win on routes. One problem feeds the other. Which is why you see stat lines like 21/28 for 270 passing a TD and O INTs...and think...Russ had a pretty good day. And he did...unless you watched the game and realize it was sporadic and not fluid....couple nice chunk plays...but we still struggled to sustain drives and win plays consistently (sure ...you can say weather...but the O looked better when the weather got worse...was god awful in the first half).

This has been this teams plight all season. We're 11 games in. We are what we are. We're going to be an inconsistent offense with the ability to hit chunk plays and look great at times...and at other times think Matt Canada has snuck back into the stadium...particularly when we play good defenses. I'm just enjoying watching some winning football after the complete offensive ineptitude we had the past few seasons.

 

I agree, I think we've in general got a solid run game, and we have had some really good games running the football, the pass protection is awful every week, and again yes, short yardage and the red zone are an utter disaster (RZ I think I heard we were 30th) - that's not beating KC and Buffalo.

We've invested heavily in the o-line is has not paid off, after a while you look for the common denominator, and that's the coaching. Time for a change, the line has sucked since Munchak left.

 

This, I've seen enough, we're not going to be a team that can consistently sustain drives, we need short fields and chunk plays, and then a miracle inside the 20.

 

You can summarize our offense with a few thoughts.
1. When facing 3rd or 4th and short - we tend to get the ball to the running back 5 or 6 yards deep in the backfield. Why?

2. We have 3rd and one or two, we tend to go for a bomb instead of a designed play for what we need.

3. We have to accept the fact that Wilson is a between the 20's QB and Fields is short yardage QB (RedZone), and he has a good arm.

4. The OL is going to struggle fue to injuries and inexperience. Our OC has to reflect that in his play calling.

5. Blame the OC all you want for play calling, but have you noticed we argue over these same issues no matter who the OC is? It seems to me this is coming from Tomlin.

 

And we had no real D at that time. We were losing games 30 something to 30 something a lot during that time.

 

I would only if You told me we would ....try 58 yard field goals in the bad wind, go for it on 4th downs, and keep trying a Qb carousel package. Otherwise I wouldn't believe it either.

 

We're also starting to see what RW looks like behind a bad o-line and the ensuing pass rush compared to how Fields looked where he as able to scramble out of trouble at timers, anyone with any sense knew there would be a down side to the switch, and RW does not get the ball out quickly either, and the wheels he once had have cledarly fallen off. We've only got half a good QB, whichever way we go. Next season? I'd try and bring both back, because the draft looks awful at QB, and the chances of upgrading next season on what we have via the draft are extremely low IMO.

We'll see what happens next week because I think a lot of us saw Thursday's **** show in the mail. It was a less than ideal game set up for us, no excuses in Cincy however.