TwistedHusky":3fgkebr2 said:
I see your point but look at this offensive personnel and tell me if you believe that this roster should be producing these offensive #s. If you want to say bottom 3rd? Sure. But what we saw in Chicago was not just from facing a great defense. A lot of it was bad play calls.
I can only speak for myself, but I simply don't watch closely enough (or even really have enough knowledge even if I did watch closely enough) to make evaluations about play calling.
That just takes a ton of work. Like for a single play to evaluate play calling you gotta fire up the all 22 and watch a play 10-15 times.
First time: Okay, the offense is running a sail concept on one side and levels on the other. Got it.
2-3 time: Okay, so the defense is in Cover 3, so that means the QB should be looking sail side.
4-6 time: Wait a sec, that doesn't look like Cover 3, it looks like Cover 3 Mable (zone on one side and man on the other), and the defense has diagnosed that this route concept is coming. Did they get lucky or is there a tell based on formation or down and distance? Man, I have to go back and watch offenses' last three games play-by-play like this to know that. Oh well, can't answer that one, but I can look at individual performances and see if someone messed up.
7-10 time: watch the o-line and d-line for any wins and losses in one on one matchups.
11-14 time: Watch receivers on the man coverage side to asses who wins in one on one matchups, and then the zone side to make sure nobody messed up on the defense in their assignments.
15th time: watch the whole play again and try to figure out what happened.
To be clear, none of this is in DEFENSE of play calling, I'm just saying that beyond some really, really basic stuff, I treat play calling as mostly unknown. I mean heck, from the TV angle it takes work to even figure out the play side route concepts, let alone anything else.
TwistedHusky":3fgkebr2 said:
And yes, we replaced coordinators but we both know that if you change the assistants and the dictates from the HC do not change - you very likely won't see a change. The change we have seen is the defense is worse, though that is mostly due to the loss of most of our best defensive players.
I am the last person to make excuses for Wilson, I know his flaws and issues. But I also know his strengths and we are forcing him to do what he does not do well in order to execute Pete's game plan which is ill-conceived and unlikely to work with our current roster.
I totally understand all this. My point was that truly great ______ makes everyone around them look better.
A truly great coordinator like McVay makes a lump like Goff look a lot better. In his prime Adrian Peterson made his lump QB, O-line, and WRs look better. Brees, Rodgers, and Brady make a bunch of mediocre WRs and Olineman look like pro-bowlers year in and year out.
What we're seeing is Russell Wilson with the deck stacked against him. What we're learning from that is that he might be in the class of very good QBs like Rivers, Ryan, and Rapes who just look kinda okay with the deck stacked against them, and who only look like the great QBs when the decks are stacked for them.
To put more fine of a point on it, and to say something rude about some of my 9ers that other 9ers fans would HATE: I STRONGLY SUSPECT that Joe Montana and Steve Young were both just very good QBs, not the great HoF QBs in the best of all time conversations they're put in. Both those guys got to spend almost their entire careers with decks stacked impossibly in their favor. In the rare instances when they weren't in those situations, they were both just good QBs of the Rivers, Ryan, Rapes variety, not great ones.
