Why The Hell Do We Keep Talking About "TE"?

[AU-panther]

So we had the best offense in the league in 2015.

We returned pretty much the entire offense. 

QBs- stayed the same

RBs - stayed the same

WRs - Lost Cotchery (who most people on here complained about) and added KB (who most people thought was a #1 type receiver).

TEs - stayed the same

OL - didn't really lose anyone major, added a FA backup center, Norwell, Remmers, and Turner all young enough to still be improving.  Williams entering his second year so should be an even bigger improvement.

But we didn't draft Hunter Henry and our offense fell apart. I don't think it is that simple.

And before someone brings up the SB, even with the problems for the OL, we still probably win that game if we can do some of the basics such as not fumbling, catching easy passes, and hitting open receivers. 

You don't go 17-1 with some major absence of talent on a team. 

 

[panthers55]

57 minutes ago, top dawg said:

More so-called "pundits" are migrating to the other side. Sure, Shula had an excellent 2015 season, but you can't hang your hat on one season of greatness when so many others point to mediocrity. 

Yeah, you'll disagree about his entire body of work, but sometimes an infusion of new ideas and blood  is warranted because the status quo is simply stale. Shula's act is arguably getting old.

Werent you the one just aaying that he lobbied for a change realizing that teams would catch up with his scheme last year.

That suggests to me not only can he adapt and adjust but can anticipate the opposition and try and change to keep ahead.

Or was that someone else.?

[panthers55]

15 minutes ago, AU-panther said:

So we had the best offense in the league in 2015.

We returned pretty much the entire offense. 

QBs- stayed the same

RBs - stayed the same

WRs - Lost Cotchery (who most people on here complained about) and added KB (who most people thought was a #1 type receiver).

TEs - stayed the same

OL - didn't really lose anyone major, added a FA backup center, Norwell, Remmers, and Turner all young enough to still be improving.  Williams entering his second year so should be an even bigger improvement.

But we didn't draft Hunter Henry and our offense fell apart. I don't think it is that simple.

And before someone brings up the SB, even with the problems for the OL, we still probably win that game if we can do some of the basics such as not fumbling, catching easy passes, and hitting open receivers. 

You don't go 17-1 with some major absence of talent on a team. 

 

It is pretty amazing what a good scheme and healthy players can do to make you better than we should have been based on talent. Or do you think all the.pundits saying we had the worse group of receivers in the league when Benjamin went down were all wrong?

[FootballLivesMatter]

2 hours ago, sanjay_rajput said:

I don't have a  wifey yet , but I don't think you meet the "height" requirement to ride that ride! 

BTW I guess it must be awesome to take pictures of all the hot models, your eyes must  satisfy all your need.  

Wifey? Holy cow you so corny

[top dawg]

10 minutes ago, panthers55 said:

Werent you the one just aaying that he lobbied for a change realizing that teams would catch up with his scheme last year.

That suggests to me not only can he adapt and adjust but can anticipate the opposition and try and change to keep ahead.

Or was that someone else.?

Yeah, sure that was me, but I still prefer a new OC. I wouldn't bet my house on Shula getting canned though. Perhaps he can restore some goodwill with Kalil, D-Jax, Fournette, Butt or some others though. 

[panthers55]

54 minutes ago, stbugs said:

Nope, I am saying that Dickson did better in Baltimore and I don't think anything of Shula's request to get more talent since he was able to scheme around the lack of talent in 2015. If he was so good to squeeze out the #1 scoring offense out of a mediocre set of players, he shouldn't be running the exact same stuff this year.

Do you think that Olsen, Cam and Stewart suck? How about the OL that was consistently ranked in the top 5 in 2015? During preseason everyone was talking up our WRs with Benjamin back and Funchess looking great, but then with all the OL injuries, we ran the exact same plays again and again. I don't think I saw anything that was creative this year.

Have you watched any of the games since the bye? Have you heard all the announcers, lots of guys who played in the NFL, saying that our plays fooled no one and joking about seeing the same plays. I honestly don't think I've read a lot of pundits describing Shula as good and creative. If you have any quotes from this year, I'd love to see them.

I'll give you an example of creative. KC runs the read option as well, but they also bring the TE around for a shovel pass. Do you know why? Sometimes the unblocked player gets a good enough jump. Against us, it turns into bad play, but Smith has that extra outlet. Again, see the thread about Roethlisberger and his evolution comparing him to Cam. If Shula was creative, wouldn't he have made an adjustment to get the ball out faster with a banged up OL like the Steelers did with Roethlisberger? Bell averages almost 5 receptions per game in his 4 year career with Roethlisberger. We have less than 3 receptions per game (43 total) for all 4 of our RBs combined this year while the Steelers average 6 per game. Do you know how many receptions Stewart had in his only full year with Cam before Shula was the OC? 47. He has 7 this year. Seems that Cam can throw it to a RB when it's part of the game plan.

Sorry, but I believe my eyes and what other better OCs have done to combat OL issues/protect the player who made them look good before.

We have gone over this ad nauseum but one last time. Shula is not an offensive guru. He knew that teams would get film on his schemes and make adjustments like Denver did. That is how it works in the NFL. You have to keep evolving and changing. Shula knew that and wanted to do what we are talking about now which was go to more two TE sets and rely less on Cam. I bet he wanted some upgrades at right tackle as well.  He got nothing he asked for.

If you think that having Olsen Cam and Stewart are enough to carry the day, I bet you thought our front seven would make up for our back 4 on defense. Yeah we saw how that worked. As for the.line, the scheme.made them look better than they were. The run game made  playaction work and the passing worked fairly well. We never really got to see our scheme in effect. How long did Oher last? 2 1/2 games? Add all the other  injuries and mad scrambles to start guys from the practice squad and off the street and you know why we couldn't run the same scheme or be complicated on offense. Again when you are shuffling pieces each week and going back to the very basics on offense you have to dial everything back and go very basic. What is a very basic concept of coaching at any level with injury seems to be ignored on this forum for some strange reason.

As for the rest is Shula the best OC out there? No one has said that ever. I have said he can do a good job with the personnel to run his scheme and the offensive decline was not largely due to his fault which is why he should get another chance to coach next year. So how about sticking to the conversation instead of going down your usually bunny trails and red herring stats to try and  prove what no one is debating.

[panthers55]

10 minutes ago, top dawg said:

Yeah, sure that was me, but I still prefer a new OC. I wouldn't bet my house on Shula getting canned though. Perhaps he can restore some goodwill with Kalil, D-Jax, Fournette, Butt or some others though. 

There are some OCs I would prefer as well but none that don't have proven experience. I don't think a team one year removed from the Super Bowl needs to be experimenting with unproven guys. That is for teams that perennislly suck it are rebuilding. 

Funny thing but most great OCs are not out of work right now. Plus I don't really want a 1 or 2 year adjustment period where we suck again.

[AU-panther]

18 minutes ago, panthers55 said:

It is pretty amazing what a good scheme and healthy players can do to make you better than we should have been based on talent. Or do you think all the.pundits saying we had the worse group of receivers in the league when Benjamin went down were all wrong?

How many of those pundits would have thought our offense would have been better without KB?

Sometimes its not about the talent you have but the talent you do have playing better.  Sometimes that falls on the players and sometimes on the coaches.

Also the number of injuries that we had on the offense can't be ignored.  There isn't 32 quality starting left tackles in the league let alone 64 but people expect quality depth.  If the depth was quality they would be starting for someone.  If the draft was full of them everyone would have it.  We had people playing out of position and third stringers out there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FootballLivesMatter]

3 minutes ago, AU-panther said:

 We had people playing out of position and third stringers out there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bc we like to ignore other positions in particarly OT. Keeps drafting LBs and DTs bc theyre the best player available. 

[panthers55]

7 minutes ago, AU-panther said:

How many of those pundits would have thought our offense would have been better without KB?

Sometimes its not about the talent you have but the talent you do have playing better.  Sometimes that falls on the players and sometimes on the coaches.

Also the number of injuries that we had on the offense can't be ignored.  There isn't 32 quality starting left tackles in the league let alone 64 but people expect quality depth.  If the depth was quality they would be starting for someone.  If the draft was full of them everyone would have it.  We had people playing out of position and third stringers out there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agree with you on most points except for depth. Not that what you said isn't often the case just that it doesn't have to be. For example if we had brought in a veteran at corner and drafted Bradbury as depth then even with injury we could have had a decent replacement instead of when Bradbury went down we were starting a UDFA rookie. And if the starting right tackle is your backup left tackle as folks debated a few days ago, it might work better if your right tackle didn't suck to begin with. 

[FootballLivesMatter]

4 minutes ago, panthers55 said:

Agree with you on most points except for depth. Not that what you said isn't often the case just that it doesn't have to be. For example if we had brought in a veteran at corner and drafted Bradbury as depth then even with injury we could have had a decent replacement instead of when Bradbury went down we were starting a UDFA rookie. And if the starting right tackle is your backup left tackle as folks debated a few days ago, it might work better if your right tackle didn't suck to begin with. 

or we could've at least just kept Norman under the tag. I don't remember once Norman told anyone he wouldn't play under the tag or planned on sitting out. Gman fugged that one up big time. 

[panthers55]

1 minute ago, stbugs said:

We'll never agree and man, I don't want to tell you what I think about this quote. I remember an article in the preseason by the other Newton about how Shula said he had to adjust so that other teams didn't figure us out. I don't think I've seen anything this year that tells me we have made any progress in that. Going into 2017, I feel much better about the defense than the offense in terms of adjustments and dealing with injuries. Were we perfect on defense? No, but pre-bye we gave up 29 ppg (against worse offenses, #15 on average) and scored 27 ppg. Post bye, we gave up 23 ppg (against better offenses, #10 on average) and scored 21 ppg. I feel like the offense will continue to struggle under Shula, which is why I want changes.

You clearly have an agenda to argue without considering anything said to you. We already discussed that Shula wanted to change and didn't get his personnel. That he is good when he gets his personnel and isn't a miracle worker. Injuries occurred early to the offense and the poor defense was most responsible for the early losses. Later as the defense got better the offense regressed as the injuries mounted and lots of personnel including Newton seemed disinterested and even lazy like Benjamin. We just disagree on the degree that the OC is responsible for making players perform. I figure that players making millions of dollars would be self interested in doing well for fear they might be traded or replaced. Other here seem to always blame the coaches for everything and give the players passes on everything. If the offense sucks next year I would give serious consideration to making coaching changes. Just not one year removed from the Superbowl given all the issues. But the again I think this is like 2004 and next year will be 2005. Minus Smitty of course.

[panthers55]

6 minutes ago, FootballLivesMatter said:

or we could've at least just kept Norman under the tag. I don't remember once Norman told anyone he wouldn't play under the tag or planned on sitting out. Gman fugged that one up big time. 

Now you did it. Now we are going to have 5 pages of Norman fighting about whether he planned to sign the tag or not. You fishing or what? Count me out on that one. LOL.

[FootballLivesMatter]

1 minute ago, panthers55 said:

Now you did it. Now we are going to have 5 pages of Norman fighting about whether he planned to sign the tag or not. You fishing or what? Count me out on that one. LOL.

lol it's on. 

 

JOSH 24 NORMAN