my thoughts, in order:

Posted on: October 28, 2024 at 11:32:50 CT

1) Cook has been a Jekyle & Hyde QB his whole time here. For most of his career he's been Bad Brady, unable to read defenses or anticipate a blitz, unable (or unwilling) to go through progressions, and unable to make good decisions when given the option with the ball in his hands.

The last half of last yer he turned into Good Brady and we saw the offense flourish. He handed off when it made sense, he found open receivers when they got separation, and when nothing was available, he tucked the ball and made plays with his feet. It was great to finally see him living up to what many hoped was his real potential.

And now Bad Brady is back. Tentative, inaccurate, too often panicked, and ultimately failing. It sucks, but we've certainly seen this version before. Whether we see another metamorphosis or not will determine how this season ends.

2) Our OL is good this year, but last year, the left side in particular, was dominant at times. Especially in the running game. If we needed 3 yards, everyone knew an inside run to the the left side was coming. And it worked pretty much every time. That means a lot of drives continued and the offense was much more successful overall. We were able to mask a lot of weaknesses.

Pass blocking last year and this year are pretty much the same. I know people like to make ridiculous complaints that because of the OL "Brady is running for his life!" But that's just not true. Back to point #1, Brady panics and bails out to the right every chance he gets. He NEVER steps into the pocket and looks to the middle of the field. Never. This isn't the OL's fault. This is on the QB not the OL.

3) The OC. Because of the limitations of our QB and the fact that we can't absolutely count on positive rushing yards from the left side of our OL, the playcalling has been limited and ineffective.

I didn't give Moore all the credit for last year, and I'm not going to give him all the blame this year, but there's no doubt that he benefited from a dominant OL and RB last year that he simply hasn't figured out how to make due without that luxury this year. It's fair to complain about #1 and #2 above, but it's his job to figure out ways to overcome those and get the ball into the hands of his playmakers (of whom there are plenty). The OC has to get better.

4) The receivers don't look right. I think they're frustrated and it's showing in their play. Routes don't look crisp, they're not getting separation or making extra-effort plays, and overall they just look like a bunch of dudes, not the stable of horses we thought we had.

Burden has shown flashes at times (mostly against lower-level opponents with inferior athleticism) but he's also absolutely disappeared for long stretches. I expected Wease to have a breakout year, and he really hasn't had the season I think we expected. Mookie Cooper seems to be pretty limited in what he can do. Marquis Johnson seems to have disappeared. Norfleet has been underutilized (see #3 above). Hell I've actually been most impressed this year by Josh Manning. No knock on him, but with the others in this list he shouldn't be the one we're excited about.

5) The drop-off at RB after Schrader was greater than we'd like to admit. Noel has actually been a really nice surprise and it looked like the'd just pick up the torch and carry on, but that hasn't happened. Blame injuries, or the OL, or the one-dimensional nature of our overall offense, or whatever, but our running game has not been the grind-it-out-all-game-long style that we were able to run with Schrader.

I like Noel but we clearly lose something with him out. Maybe the other guys will continue to improve and maybe the OL will get better and maybe things will come together, but with Schrader it clicked and we moved the ball. With Noel it looked like there was potential. But we're struggling to find an answer at RB now.



In summary: Everything is broken fire everyone burn it all down gold pants.