A_Biased_Fan wrote:
I would agree with you, but Russ did include himself as someone who needs to play better. If he just came out and said everyone else needs to get better then yeah, that's bad. But this is saying that everyone, including him and coaches, need to pick it up and be better and make adjustments.
Let's not forget, DK also said teams figured them out and they didn't make adjustments. So between him and Russ, and what Brandon Marshal was saying, I'm thinking more than a few players want adjustments from management on how the offense is run.
That's true, he did include himself and to be fair to Russ, I think him trying to say 'I'm tired of being hit' might have been his way of trying to somewhat change what was originally reported as a specific criticism of the O-Line into sort of a general commentary against failures of the entire offense (which is what I hope he was trying to do even if it still kind of comes off as a crit of the O-Line).
And as I said, the primary culprit for our problems, to me, still lie with Pete. That doesn't change what Russ failed to do (and some of the takes I see trying to protect his failure to complete accurate and timely short and middle reads by referencing their magical spot in the progression or his failure to make pre-snap adjustments to his reads as if that's something a HOF level QB shouldn't be expected are ridiculous), but our entire offensive philosophy has needed change for multiple seasons now.
That's going to require Pete to develop the humility to finally accept that he doesn't know how to run an offense and never has and I think Russ is also going to have to accept some changes to an offense that hopefully will not be asking him to make highlight reel plays on such a regular basis.
Overall, I personally just think the O-Line has been too much of a scapegoat for our problems this year. I'm not saying we shouldn't want better than average (which is what our O-Line mostly was, slightly better than average during the early part of the season before every team started dropping two high safeties on us every play, every game) but we also can't act like average OL play leads to some of the worst QB pressure and hit rates in the league. The difference needs to be laid at the feet of our scheme and yes, to some degree, our QB.