OFFENSE- OL not picking up blitzes & inadequate pass-blocking protection. Vlad the "Inhaler" showed some progress. Avg run-blocking schemes. Sanchize given a "Sh#tty-Shotty type" game plan. Seemingly played within his skill level & a bit apprehensive of going "outside the box" when necessary. WR's perf'd avg (some dropsies) running patterns that did not fool Cinc 2ndry. Shhhh Greene a bit slow hitting the gaps. "Te-(blow)-me" showed versatility running the ball/escaping pressure but absolutely horrible as a passer. Overall, the O lacked any semblance of firepower. DEFENSE: Couples showed promise.4-3 gave hope at times. Troubling watching the inability of the LBs lack of speed on the edges (Bartman Scott-u need 5-hour energy). Lackluster play by the 2ndary. Flashes of '09/'10 brilliance in 1st half goal-line stand. Spec Teams: J Brown nice on 42 yrdr. Nick hit a 38 yrdr. TJ Conley had a punt blocked (inexcusable).K/O & Punt ret yrdg 13-17 yds. Decent coverage on Cincy returns. OVERALL: It's only preseason game 1....AND....put Te-(blow)me in as rb... Utterly useless as QB! ****BUUURRPPP**** 'scooze me!
Have Faith in the Man that he can get the Job done... Ground and Pound though controls the clock is boring ass football .. I dont want to be winning games 7-0,9-6 etc
From what I saw, the '12 version of the Oline gave Sanchez the same amount of protection against the Bengal first stringers that the '11 version of the Oline did. That is to say, very little. The Ground and Pound? as was pointed out is only to cover the fact that our passing game is only marginally better than our pissing game. There was no Ground and Pound last night and Sparano's overall offense, while purposefully vanilla, was as boring and predicticable as any I've seen since the good old daze of Hackett. We won't go into depth about our slow assed LB's who amazingly enough, are still slow assed LB's. In short, only Coples gives us something to take from last nights game 1. There's still time but I'm not so sure the personnel is in place for any noticable jump from last season. At least not yet.
I'm with CMan on the Oline. They did not open holes nor provide any real protection. Tebow created his own holes because the one thing he can do is run. Sanchez's passes looked pretty sharp though and I loved the way the first team got in and out of the huddle so quickly. I think if the OL can learn to block (big if) than the combination of Sanchez and Tebow will be quite interesting to watch. I think as long as Sanchez is behind center the majority of the time and we use Tebow for what he can do best (ala wildcat) than we may see our Offense on the field a bit more. Keep in mind that the more first downs we have the longer the O stays on the field so Tebow and the wildcat may actually create more plays for Sanchez and not take away opportunities. Back to the OL for the second. Why does it seem like other teams can plug and play people into the OL and get decent performance out of them yet ours seem to think the goal is to let the opposing team get to the QB or RB?
I don't like to overreact to one pre-season game but obviously the OL from top to bottom played poorly. Also, I would play Demario Davis today. Let him learn on the job. Scott'd new slogan should be "Can't Play"
Yeah the problem seems to be the pass protection in general more so than just the o-line. Cumberland getting beat like that is worrisome. Also the play where linebacker flew in untouched. I know that was not the starters when that happened and maybe the TE simply forgot to chip the rusher or just assumed he wouldn't be blitzing and decided he'd go full tilt to try and make a big play down field... I don't know why that happened but it just seems like the pass protection scheme needs work. Seeing as how Miami struggled with their offensive line I think its a fair concern to be worried about protection right now.
I thought the starting 5 0line played to the scheme. Outside of one bad play from Brick..they weren't the reason for the pressure on Sanchez. It was sloppy blitz pick-up, tight ends that simply cannot block & absolutely no downfield threat to put pressure on the defense.
To be fair I don't know if Sanchez had enough time to get the ball down the field for the most part. The Begnals were doing a great job of taking away the dump off from Sanchez forcing him to find a receiver further up... combined with the fact that he was having to step up on almost every play and took a lot of close calls when not getting hit completely he really wasn't given much of an opportunity to show anything. I think he'll be ok if the offense can get him more time... I hope Tannenbaum is analyzing free agent options right now...
