According to FootballOutsiders, Panthers Offense 9th Best in Week 1

[Zod]

Was it in Shula's gameplan for Olsen to develop a case of the dropsies and for Williams to fumble on Seattle's 8 yard line during the game winning drive? 

 

What would have been the acceptable points threshold for you against one of the best defenses in the league?

 

Good QB rating, Good YPC

 

If you have those things, but score only 7 points.... your game plan was a poor one.

 

 

You can spin away, I am done discussing this. Its boring.

[rayzor]

It is.

 

What is the ultimate goal of the offense? Get yards or score points?

 

Spin away....

 

i've been thinking this same question for the past couple days.

 

if the goal of the offense isn't to score points then what is it? to look effective?

 

the way i see it, the goal of offense is to score more points than the other team. the goal of the defense is to stop the other team from making more than your own offense.

 

is it simplistic? maybe, but maybe it needs to be just that simple. after all, the only thing that matters at the end of the game is who won and who lost.

[CatMan72]

Good QB rating, Good YPC

 

If you have those things, but score only 7 points.... your game plan was a poor one.

 

 

You can spin away, I am done discussing this. Its boring.

 

I think your argument that a good QB rating + good YPC + 7 points = bad game plan is pretty shallow.

 

All those YPC are great, until you fumble the ball on the 8 yard line during the game winning drive against a quality opponent... that definitely was not part of the game plan. 

 

Shula may ultimately turn out to be the village idiot, we'll just have to wait and see... but it's silly to immediately conclude the game plan was bad when the overall execution was so poor. 

[Delhommey]

Was it in Shula's gameplan for Olsen to develop a case of the dropsies and for Williams to fumble on Seattle's 8 yard line during the game winning drive?

What would have been the acceptable points threshold for you against one of the best defenses in the league?

Because Seattle didn't drop the ball too.

If your game plan requires the offense to make zero mistakes, it is not a good game plan.

Our TD drive was extended when Williams fumble fortunately rolled out of bounds. Our last drive was extended when fortunately Seattle's D Line put their hands on Cam's facemask. Shula's game plan got as many good breaks as bad (this is being dutifully ignored of course), and still failed to produce more than the measly 13 points needed to win the game.

[Zod]

If your game plan requires the offense to make zero mistakes, it is not a good game plan.

 

How is this fact not completely obvious to everyone?

[CatMan72]

Because Seattle didn't drop the ball too.

If your game plan requires the offense to make zero mistakes, it is not a good game plan.

Our TD drive was extended when Williams fumble fortunately rolled out of bounds. Our last drive was extended when fortunately Seattle's D Line put their hands on Cam's facemask. Shula's game plan got as many good breaks as bad (this is being dutifully ignored of course), and still failed to produce more than the measly 13 points needed to win the game.

 

The purpose of enforcing penalties is to compensate the opponent for whatever opportunities were missed as a result of the infraction, right? 

 

You contradict yourself in pointing out the good fortune of Williams fumbling out of bounds on our TD drive... so Shula's game plan should have accounted for DeAngelo fumbling the ball? 

 

Seattle made mistakes too, but the timing of our mistakes (especially the fumble on Seattle's 8 yard line during the game winning drive in the 4th quarter) were particularly damaging. 

 

It was clear that Olsen was a major focus of our game plan, the only real weakness in Seattle's defense is in the middle of the field and they struggle against good TE's so those drops were also particularly damaging. 

 

There's a HUGE difference in making zero mistakes and making the volume of mistakes we made on Sunday... Bill Walsh couldn't overcome drops, fumbles and poor blocking especially at key moments in the game. 

 

If I told you before the game that one of our receivers would develop a case of the dropsies, would you have guessed it would be Olsen? 

[MuMouey]

Offense ranked 9th

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/2013/week-1-dvoa-ratings

Defense was 21st.

Well...well......well. :)

[teeray]

I see. Now you are saying 2 touchdowns in a home game is not realistic.

 

Or hell, how about a touchdown and 2 field goals.

 

I guess I am just not realistic then.

 

 

Well, in a game in which you have only 7 possessions and an average starting field position of your own 20 yards, a realistic expectation is that you are only going to have 2-3 scoring opportunities.  Maybe even less against a well coached defense

 

We had probably three.  One resulted in a TD, one resulted in a fumble, and one was handicapped by a critical drop.

 

So the offense, as far as playcalling and perceived aggressiveness achieved reasonable expectations by putting us in scoring positions a reasonable amount of times that can be expected.  Variables caused us not to capitalize on those limited scoring opportunities.

 

If we don't fumble at the end we may score 14 points.  If we don't fumble that punt to change the field position game, 7 points may have indeed won the game.

[MadHatter]

Well, in a game in which you have only 7 possessions and an average starting field position of your own 20 yards, a realistic expectation is that you are only going to have 2-3 scoring opportunities.  Maybe even less against a well coached defense

 

We had probably three.  One resulted in a TD, one resulted in a fumble, and one was handicapped by a critical drop.

 

So the offense, as far as playcalling and perceived aggressiveness achieved reasonable expectations by putting us in scoring positions a reasonable amount of times that can be expected.  Variables caused us not to capitalize on those limited scoring opportunities.

 

If we don't fumble at the end we may score 14 points.  If we don't fumble that punt to change the field position game, 7 points may have indeed won the game.

 

I actually like the game plan...if they had sprinkled in just a few shots down the field.

 

If they use that going forward, we are going to win in this league.

[Delhommey]

The purpose of enforcing penalties is to compensate the opponent for whatever opportunities were missed as a result of the infraction, right?

You contradict yourself in pointing out the good fortune of Williams fumbling out of bounds on our TD drive... so Shula's game plan should have accounted for DeAngelo fumbling the ball?

Seattle made mistakes too, but the timing of our mistakes (especially the fumble on Seattle's 8 yard line during the game winning drive in the 4th quarter) were particularly damaging.

It was clear that Olsen was a major focus of our game plan, the only real weakness in Seattle's defense is in the middle of the field and they struggle against good TE's so those drops were also particularly damaging.

If I told you before the game that one of our receivers would develop a case of the dropsies, would you have guessed it would be Olsen?

And y'all act like Olsen was dropping easy passes too. Almost all of his drops would have been considered great catches if he got them.

Forgive me for having no patience for rationalizations after three years of excuses. It's irrelevant really. Either Ron is given the game decision prowess of Solomon in the night by an angel of The Lord or we'll be looking at a new coach soon enough.

[CatMan72]

I can hear Shula now: 

 

"Okay DeAngelo, we think you're going to fumble twice in this game... including one on the opponents 8 yard line during the game winning drive... so here's the plan" 

 

"Oh and Greg, you're going to be a major focus of our game plan since the tape shows that the only real area of weakness in Seattle's defense is in covering TE's so as long as you hang on to at least half the balls that hit you in the hands, we should be ok."

[teeray]

How is this fact not completely obvious to everyone?

 

It is not obvious because it is bullshit.

 

We didn't need to make zero mistakes.  In order for that to be a legit argument you would have to be saying that one mistake cost us the game.

 

No one mistake cost us the game, an accumulation of mistakes cost us the game, so by definition we didn't need to make zero mistakes to win the game. 

 

We had 50 snaps.  we had two drops at least.  we had one fumble.  And we had a couple of plays where we made mistakes either blocking guys on running plays or Cam missing the more open guy.

 

That is more than having to make "zero" mistakes.  Hell that is already 10% of our snaps and I am being generous.

 

That isn't even taking into account penalty mistakes and such.

[MuMouey]

How is this fact not completely obvious to everyone?

As multiple others have stated to u in this thread, this logic is beyond wrong. There are many people on the forum that I expect VERY little from everytime they post. U on the other hand, u have been around football FAR to long to not notice how the game works.

There have been 3 others in this thread that stated how u are wrong on myltiple claims, but u always only have have one defense to everything "7 points." Theres not one person in here saying 7 points is "awesome" as u like to say. So keep pretending people are saying that. Let me clear this up for u once and for all:

A GAMEPLAN is a strategy. Its NOT used to score points. Its used to PUT TEAMS IN POSITIONS to score points/ run the clock/etc. An example of a great gameplan is "Well Seattle came out very often in cover-3, and with the CBs spying Smitty, we are going to dump it off to Olsen since he should be wide open." That PLAN worked perfectly. Another gameplan was not doing the option all day, so we call it ONE time at the end of the game and we actually did a fake option and DWill went weak side. Guess what, Seattles D was not expecting that at all, and DWill had his biggest gain of the day, and took us inside Seattles 10 yard like with a chance to win the game.

EXECUTION of the gameplan is what cost us. After that great fake option play, DWill fumbled the game away. Much like CatMan said a few posts ago, was it part of the gameplan for DWill to fumble? No it was the exectution. One play that had the gameplan and execution working perfectly was the TD pass to smitty. They drew up the play so Olsen would have the outside linebacker following/looking at him while smitty found a hole in the zone. It worked, cam made a good throw. Easy points.

Theres not one person on here saying 7 points is enough to win so im not sure why thats your only "go-to" comeback. The gameplan put us in position to score on multiple occasions and the players blew it.

[fieryprophet]

Look, if we don't roll on offense against Buffalo my concern factor will explode, but I'm not going to go crazy losing a low scoring affair involving two strong defenses. This isn't the 30-3 Titans score line from 2011.