Russell holds onto the ball too long. I don't think there is any question about his. The only question is how much of it is his fault. This is a multi-pronged question.
For a team with poor protection, you would think that the answer would be to get rid of the ball quickly, right? We have two problems with this. First, we don't have receivers that consistently "win" off the ball. A slant is a trust throw. You make the determination to throw a slant pre-snap. You trust your receiver to win his route, and you're going to throw the ball regardless. You don't have time to see if he won first, then throw later. I don't think Russell trusts his guys to win a slant. He started to a little bit with Golden, and that even burnt him a few times.
The second problem, is that if a team knows you're going to try to get rid of it early to compensate for protection issues, they're going to instruct their defenders to take away the short stuff, right? So you've got a slant route, to a receiver who has a hard time getting separation on a slant route, with a defender that is going to jump the route. Not a good combination. I will also concede, that there are far too may times where the receiver DOES win his route, but Russell chooses not to throw the football. It can't happen. My personal theory is that he is having trouble diagnosing defenses pre-snap, but it would take someone much smarter than me to know that for sure. If that happens a lot, and is the major contributing factor for Russell holding onto the ball too long, I think we just shot ourselves in the foot by paying him.
So, if a team is pressuring, and jumping shorter routes, you've got to kill them with the fade and the back-shoulder. Fade if the receiver gets off the ball and is even with or past the defender at the time Russell needs to get rid of it, and back shoulder if he isn't. However, we don't really excel at either of these. So we're left with two options. Run the ball into defense that has more people in the box than we have to block, or watch Russell go into his Tarkenton routine.
Frankly, I'm getting sick of watching it. Football is supposed to be entertaining at the pro level. Russell is in his fourth year, and we've still yet to even get the basics right. I know, I'm a relic. I like a pretty, rhythmic offense. I like an offense that diagnoses where to throw the ball, where the winning matchup is going to be, and complete the darn pass. I should be able to notice by now that however unconventional, we win games. I just can't, however, get myself to a point where I can see it being sustainable.
