My thoughts on regular season wk 4

Speed perhaps. He looks incredibly slow.

 

He could be so much more if OC could figure out how to use him
Especially in goal line situation. He is a mismatch nightmare or should be.

 

Could have just left it at that.

 

The loss was bad but worse because of it being Flacco. Agreed

 

Is that even his call. I do not know the logistics of challenges but perhaps those replays and calls come from another member of the staff?

 

With all that being said and it’s a legit list, if a highly paid receiver does not drop the ball he had caught at the 4 yard line we likely score and win the game. Or if there is not a premature snap at the worse time possible, we have a shot. We lost Herbig and didn’t have Highsmith. Hell, if Patterson dosent go down. And if you noticed, an old name popped up in our secondary (Edmunds) and he got burned. We are still growing as a team and I don’t think we are far off. We laid an egg, not as bad as the Bills, but an egg none the less.

 

No surprise it happens all the time. They did neutralize him and had no other answer for a consistent pass rush. Herbig going out with an ankle didn't help then coming back had a sack on Flacco. Highsmith as mentioned was missed.

The secondary looked putrid. Exception is Elliot. He came to play.

Cam Heyward needs to lay off the twinkies. Ogunjobi had a decent day. Benton made a few plays. A few.

And the ILBers were soft.

Bad day for the defense as a whole.

 

Did Herbig get hurt or did they just yank him?

 

I read an article that he injured his ankle in the first half.

 

https://x.com/SteelersPRBurt/status...big-questionable-to-return-with-ankle-injury/

 

I didn't really buy into our good start to the season being 3-0

Still had feeling this team is 9-8 or maybe at best 10-7

For paying a $130 million on defense, it can't get gashed as bad as it did.

Too many mistakes all around. But, they did show some grit trying to get back into it.

Getting down 17-0 early and even getting back into the game late is hard in the NFL.

Just move on to Dallas, try to clean it up, wasn't the best effort out of this team.

 

Thanks. I missed it. I couldn't watch it live, so I was stuck with the NFL+ replay. I may have fast-forwarded through some of the discussion between plays. It's odd that Tomlin didn't even mention it in the post game. He only mentioned Daniels and Patterson. I hope that means Herbig is okay. He wasn't great Sunday, but things get even worse behind him.

 

I didn’t know he was hurt while watching it live. I didn’t know till I read something later. Usually they follow everyone to the tent, but apparently not this time. It don’t sound too bad but ankles often come with the dreaded “high ankle sprain”

 

He's not slow at all, he ran a 4.65 40 yard dash at the combine which was the 6th best time of any tight end tested. Especially impressive when you consider that Washington is 6'7 270lbs

 

Yes he has a say in the game planning, I was talking about making the game day defensive calls.

 

get that stupid Raven> Queen <out of here-- he's an infiltrator put here by Harbaugh to F us over and so does Queen and take crybaby Broderick with him. And this center QB has gone on long enough STOP IT. HENRY IS GOING TO GET 500 YRDS against us watch Queen will say there you go buddy run right past me.WATCH

 

I can only say this a few dozen more times...., but when You spend a whole week on working on keys, and things a Qb likes to do at certain situations, and how they will defend it, and practice this , and go over it during the week, and then the same Qb that you practiced for all week goes out on their 2nd drive of the game. All of that goes out the window......, and on top of this.....the Qb that you are now facing is not only a better Qb, but a totally different type of Qb that You have game planned against all week... it can be a problem.

 

I told my wife when Tomlin threw the red flag that there is no way we win this challenge and should have just called a time out and saved the challenge....but saving them and getting them right are not on Tomlins resume'

 

[QUOTE="Actually, several of the sacks Justin took, he only lost 3 to 5 yards. Of course that was that glaring fr decision he made in the fourth quarter.[/QUOTE]

On the replay for the game.

At about 10:30 in the first, sack for 7 yards that was negated by a roughing the passer call. 7 yards back is reasonable to me.

At about 7:50 in the second, he was under center, went back about 10 yards and was in trouble, ran forward and did a shuffle pass to Patterson for a gain.

At about 5:00 in the second, under center he dropped back about 8 yards and was about to get crushed. Barely dumped it off to Washington who then had his hurdle run.

At about 1:10 in the second, Fields in shotgun sacked for a loss of 4.

At about 1:05 in the second, Fields in the shotgun almost sacked for a loss of 8, but scrambled for a big gain.

At about :18 in the second, Fields from the shotgun back as far as 8, sacked for a loss of 3.

At about 13:50 in the third, Fields under center, back as far as about 6, sacked for a loss of 3.

At about 8:46 in the third, Fields in the shotgun, back as far as 10, was tackled, barely got a dump pass off to get back to the los.

At about 7:50 in the third, Fields in the shotgun, the fumble sack. It was about 20 yards back.

At about 12:55 in the 4th, Fields in the shotgun, back as far as 12 yards in trouble threw it away.

At about 6:00 in the 4th, Fields under center, back about 10 yards, pass batted down by defenders in his face.

At about 1:36 in the 4th, Fields in the shotgun, the muffed snap that ended the game.

My conclusions based on this game only, and I am sure that I missed something as I was skipping thru the replay.

He was not back as far as often as my memory recalled after the game. Probably near to 20% of the pass plays had him back 10+ yards from the los. I don't know what normal would be considered.
Fields is far more comfortable in the shotgun than under center.
Under center, his first action is to always sprint back to where he would have been standing for the shotgun or a bit further and it is going to be a pass play 95% of the time. I think there was only 1 or 2 handoffs from under center, but I was not specifically counting those.
In the shotgun when he has protection, he will stay there or at most take an additional step back before passing. But when he has defenders coming, he tends to run back and try to roll out of it. He seemed to do pretty well finding someone to throw the ball to when under this pressure.
When Fields in in trouble, he still has his eyes downfield. He got a few really nice gains when it looked like doom was on him.
It seemed like the offensive line broke down faster when Fields was under center than when he was in the shotgun.

Overall, I still think Fields performed well.

For any of you football brains out there, what is the advantage of being under center rather than in the shotgun for anything other than a less than 1 yard to go play?

 

Fixed it for ya lol
Coach Tomlin needs to lay off the twinkies

 

Didn’t make any adjustments?
We outscored them 24-13 the last 3 quarters of the game.

 

What I will say about the conservative nature of the offense to this point is remind yourselves of what you thought of Fields before the season began. There were some who were cautiously optimistic but a lot of fans thought he was pure garbage. What could you have possibly expected out of the offense? I would think it's safe to say that so far Fields has exceeded expectations but given Tomlin's history with Pickett and Canada, how in the world could one think they were just gonna open the playbook and light the world on fire.
This is how Tomlin wants to win games. Play good defense, run the ball and don't turn the ball over. Fail, fail, and then fail. It's not hard to see why they didn't win.
I don't see a wide open offense but I do see improvement from Fields every game. It may not be a lot but every little bit helps. He made some big mistakes. That'll happen. Even Mahomes makes some mind numbingly stupid throws and he's got 3 times the talent of Fields.

 

Just got home from Indy and some time to think about the game.

First off, hats off to Colts fans. They were definitely a hospitable bunch. They're great people.

The defense just looked lost regardless of which QB the Colts had in there. I just think Austin's scheme really throws our MLBs under the bus.

Offensively, it's just hard to sustain anything with how many injuries they have upfront and the RBs, and the fact they scored 24 is kinda a testament to the growth of Justin Fields.

Speaking of Fields, I won't jump on his bandwagon because he played a far from perfect game, but I have to respect the way he put the team on his back and battled through the adversity.

 

With the way the team is constructed how else are they going to play?