Siouxhawk":212h6qbo said:
Belickhick actually has some cognizance of what his guys are good at and not good at and puts them in better positions to succeed. Also, it's not a binary evaluation, it's being freaking cognizant of your own strengths and weaknesses as a team. You don't expect your O line to fail miserably but you can't be absent minded about the potential negative outcomes of what you're choosing to do and adjusting your choices based on risk factors you can identify with the personnel on the field.
I mean, if I take up the complete opposite side of your argument wholly, they're calling plays as if they expect everyone to do their job every time and damn the consequences if they don't, they'll just try it again, harder, with more feeling next time and who cares if it fails again. It's all part of the process but the process is inscrutable because the results all come down to execution.
Obviously I don't know the process of how Pete and Bevell evaluate themselves but if they're even half as gung ho about it all being on the players not executing an infallible game plan, its difficult to see sustained growth in weak areas of playcalling and personnel packages. Again, if the only problem you can identify on a failure is lack of execution, what growth can you have as a play caller? And they have made adjustments to personnel weaknesses before but they don't seem to enjoy it enough to stick with it. They seem to value the psyche bonus of doing it 'their way' successfully than doing it some other way successfully and they have enough validation that they're on the right track with some of their concepts, they just can't piece together all the proximate causes for outcomes that well.
I'm working on a project now of categorizing all of Kearse's red zone plays that I'll make a fanpost out of on fieldgulls some point this spring. What I'm hoping to identify is where the weakness came from. So far, just 4 plays in (chronologically) Kearse has been the first or only read on 3/4, these are designed plays to him or read evaluations where RW likes the matchup more than any other on the field. This is prior to Lockett going down by a fair amount. It would be a huge task to go back over past seasons and evaluate how often he was the first/only read on a play and the relative success and we'll see if this initial trend winds up holding throughout the season, for the red zone at least.
But that trend raises a few questions on how to improve. Does RW need more direction on how to evaluate matchups pre snap? Does he need to utilize more look offs even if he's made up his mind pre snap on where to go? On designed plays to Kearse, are there other players who can consistently execute those types of plays better than him like JFG catching in traffic and how does the defense respond to it and what are the downside risks? (Like I said, the early results indicate that RW threw contested balls to Kearse as a primary read)? Are there routes that he runs better than other players and has more success on and vice versa? How does the offense operate on the whole when he isn't on the field for passing downs? I know it seems like I want to reinvent the wheel with these questions but I'm not, I feel like there are fairly easy actionable answers that could taken without upending the overall philosophy of what they want to do.
Mind you, if Kearse was even just average this year, I could be way more sympathetic to the idea he merely had just an off year but this feels like systemic problem by virtue of by holding the lion's share of fail by a huge amount while almost every other WR had a year similar to 2015's effort. There was a previous post where someone said Kearse was taking snaps that Lockett was getting post injury and even if that's absolutely valid, even without the hindsight of an entire season, you could evaluate effectiveness of playing Lockett's role on a per game basis as it fills out an entire season.
Bottom line, RW to Kearse was a sub optimal use of a play throughout the season and it doesn't feel like anyone from Pete on down cared that it was, the play is the play and thats all there is to it. Get em next time. The key difference between me looking at this problem and you looking at the problem is I've already accepted that players can always play better on what is assigned to them, that's a truism of the sport. You're constantly arguing that execution is the only possible realm for improvement on offense and use 5 years of results to bolster your side. It is beyond your imagination that maybe, possibly, the personnel isn't being put in the best position to succeed at times, that the off the field coaching and guidance can result in suboptimal outcomes even if the process and underlying beliefs have merit.
Just on a lark, can you identify anything on the coaching side of the equation that could use improvement, both micro and macro? Can the coaches help RW and Kearse get back to form and if so, how so? If not, why not? Is there anything on the GM side of the equation vis a vis talent and depth that can be improved upon?
And one of the reasons I bristle at this "its all down to execution" or talent and ability fluctuation is that the talent is pretty much locked in at a certain point. Kearse, ADB, RW, have all played for years together and had their roles expand and change.
It's like cooking in a way - if you get all these ingredients at the store, get home, realize you forgot something, or a veggie has a blemish once you peel the skin off, you make adjustments to the recipe to compensate. You don't go "Wow, this semi past due ingredient just needs to be of higher quality and be more fresh, then the dish would be terrific. ". No, your final output of a meal is a marrying of what you have in ingredients and what you do with it.
If this is the best meal they could provide given the ingredients available, which is a distinct possibility, then we are staring at the ceiling of their coaching and play design capabilities.
Pete Carroll et al seem to have a great recipe when the ingredients are all above a certain threshold of quality. They don't seem capable of dealing with their own recipe when having to make adjustments for lack of ingredients or slightly off ingredients. Bellichick looks at all the ingredients available and builds a recipe around it (And to be fair, Tom Brady is a solid foundation to start any recipe off with but he didn't know that when he first got him, it's been an evolution, but he makes due without Tom Brady occasionally and the results are unexpectedly good). To put it another way - Pete et al are good home bakers, BB is a Michelen chef.
