MontanaHawk05":1lghbmks said:
northseahawk":1lghbmks said:
olyfan63":1lghbmks said:
Bailey @100% > Okung@60%.
Okung@100% > Bailey@100%. Not even close.
The problem is that Okung is all too rarely at 100%.
On what basis do you say that? All I see from Okung is penalties and beaten by his guy as often britt is.
2 in Week 3
3 in Week 4
2 in Week 5
1 in Week 15
That is Okung's penalty record this year. He had a 9-game stretch without a single penalty. I won't deny he had an ugly September, but it's probably relevant that he was playing injured at the time.
And as others have said, Okung has given up almost no sacks. Yes, a lot of that is because Wilson escapes a lot of sacks, but if we're gonna go there, we'd have to talk about how often Wilson bails on the pocket instead of staying in and throwing.
^^^ This.
It was obvious even to my untrained eye that the vast majority of Okung's pre-snap were because he was trying to compensate for his (assortment of) injuries. As a LT normally going up against the other team's #1 pass rusher, and not being 100%, he was trying for any and every small edge he could give himself. Not to mention whatever holding penalties he picked up; a healthy Okung rarely gets tagged with holding.
The thing about Okung, is that when he's healthy and doing a great job, we hardly notice him; what we notice is that Russell is playing well, or Bevell is calling a great game. When he's banged up and playing as a shell of himself, we notice that he's sucking really badly, and it's just that Carroll/Bevell/Cable don't feel like the next man up would be a better option. Kudos to Alvin Bailey for continuing to do the work to be a better option than a banged-up Okung. Nothing but respect and love for Bailey. He is a massive upgrade over 2013 Turnstile McQuistan in the LT fill-in role. And I like him a little better than Carp at LG, but Pete/Darrell/Tom seem to go with Carp when he's healthy. Bailey was in for for an injured Carp in the 350-yard rushing game vs the Giants, IIRC. Bailey was in for Okung for last night's 597-yard team record performance.
Even so, (a healthy) Okung is a whole additional level up vs. speed pass rushers compared to Bailey. My sense is that Bailey is nearly as good a run blocker as Okung; maybe even better on "brute force" type plays. It's just that in pass pro, with Okung healthy, vs. edge rushers, there is no comparison, Okung by a lot. Bailey looked reasonably OK in pass pro vs AZ because AZ didn't have any elite edge rushers on the field.
SomersetHawk":1lghbmks said:
You're watching a different game my friend. I'm pretty sure up until a couple of weeks ago Okung had given up among the fewest sacks in the league, maybe even 0? He also had a decent stretch without a penalty. The lapses are annoying and his health more so, but when healthy he's one of the best tackles in the league and was absolutely worthy of his Pro Bowl a couple of years ago.
He makes a very difficult case for retention. Not healthy enough to pay a lot of money, not unreliable enough to cut. If he wants to stay here then I think he'll have to take a low-guarantee/high incentive contract, I just don't think we'd be comfortable extending him on upper-tier tackle money, which is what he/his agent will probably be after.
I, for one, expect and hope the Seattle FO to make Okung a good offer and try to keep him in a 'Hawk uniform for several more years. It's especially hard to dog on Okung that badly after the whole Trent Cole cheap shot and Okung torn pec fiasco. Okung has really had $h!t for luck. I think we could get another good 5 years out of him and have the odds be that he is much more available and healthy those next 5 years than he has been his first 4. Okung has given his full effort and every bit of his health and body for the team. To me, people constantly dogging on Okung is about like them dogging on Irvin the last couple years. When you have guys like that who give their all, physically, mentally, emotionally, and have the NFL-level physical talent, you need to stick with them. In Irvin's case, it was learning to play NFL LB, overcoming the "injury" of not getting earlier development and coaching. In Okung's case, it's working through injuries, including that criminal Trent Cole incident. I just can't see Okung continuing to be as star-crossed as he's been.
pehawk":1lghbmks said:
The offensive line hasnt been as bad as people have been saying. They get put in difficult circumstances, alot. Last night Wilson and Bevell actually exploited mismatches and called blitz beaters. I'm still shocked by it....truly shocked. If the Hawks have that down now, wow, they're unstoppable.
YESSS!!! Bevell finally got with the program and did the things an OC *should* do, plan how to exploit an opponent's weaknesses. I share that shock... makes me wonder if Russell typed up a scouting report for Bevell. If that's how it went down, to Bevell's credit, he at least had the good sense to listen and collaborate with Russell and implement the blitz-beaters we saw last night, and be ready with Luke Willson as the hot-read matchup answer.
To paraphrase historical statesmen including JFK, "Every success has a thousand fathers, but every failure is on Bevell".
I tend to think that Bevell, Cable, and Wilson did an extra-high-quality job of putting their heads together this week and coming up with ways to burn this blitz-happy AZ defense, and put the OL and Russell in fewer likely-failure situations.
