On a handful of occasions, Zach, Mike Rob, and Lynch had blocking assignments they did very poorly on. I know that isn't max protect, but it kind of tells why we didn't go more that direction. Also, and this is my theory only, I think STL had one or two players(sometimes one on each side of the formation) who had the assignment of watching Russell, and they had immense freedom to come after if he tried to execute play action or run an option look keeper. I think a habit of max protect would have only played right into freeing those guys up to come after Russell even more, the only thing keeping those spy's honest sometimes is having to pass guard an area.
The more I watch, the more I think the biggest failure was just not putting the game on Lynch. Ride or die with Lynch. McQuistan and Bowie were getting their ass kicked, letting them do some attacking would have been a good thing, continuing to ask them to do things they just physically can't was an error. There has been an ever increasing trend of layering in offensive looks that will feature Harvin, and for the most part there has not been a lot of success with those looks because defenses don't have to play them as if Harvin is actually there. I am sure it has been good for the team to practice those looks at game speed, but in this particular game being more spread played into the hands of the Rams. A lot of the missed assignments were from those looks, and in space. The team speed of that Rams front 7 put our players at a serious disadvantage in space. Simply dialing the offense back to a focus on the run might have been enough to get the Rams out of attack mode, which would have freed up play action.
As the two teams are constructed right now, I don't think we can have anything but difficult games with Rams. Last year and this, their speed has really messed up the sync of our offense. Max protect would have done little to negate their speed advantages. in my opinion. which is worth precisely dick.
