"Coach Shurmur loves to throw the ball downfield" -Greg Little

[Brown Warrior]

Watching the games, the heat on McCoy hasn't been a main thread of the narrative, either in my head or from the announcers. It hasn't been the story of any one game. The protection hasn't been perfect... nor has it been awful. It's just been "pretty good," or above adequate. It's not what Tim Couch faced or anything.

Pinkston has played pretty well. I think the right tackle play has been generally bad... but Pashos was having a good enough game until I tuned out from frustration to watch all the comeback attempts around the league.

McCoy hasn't played very well so far. There are almost ALWAYS excuses, if you wanna find them... but mostly he's been wild, especially past 15 or so.

[Riffer X]

I gotcha, and I posted in some other thread, lots of other QB's look like pure D shit right now, including Dirty Sanch and Bradford.

Not every QB in the league is lighting it up, it's just the ones that are going ballistic are making it seem that way.

[golfer704u]

Not sure where exactly to put this so I'll put it here.

I think Riff you tried to talk about this but it's so hard to specificly point to examples that it becomes a hard arguement to make and sounds like you are making excuses. But I'm going to try anyway.

There are MANY factors that are contributing to the offense looking bad. and not one of these is more important than the others. and they all affect each other. This is likely to be a rambling post, hopefully at least Tom will read it since I always read his.

The O-line has not played well, but they are not the worst in the league. But the fact they haven't played well probably gives Colt some of those "happy feet" that you are talking about Riff.

The WCO is about precision routes and timing throws. As Shep will enjoy me pointing out, our WRs are NOT all that great. But it goes even deeper than that. When you look at our Top 3 WRs you have a converted college QB who's biggest role with the team was as a special teamer. Then you have a rookie WR who didn't play any competitive football last year. BOTH of those guys are physical specimins and great with the ball in space. But they likely aren't natural crips route runners, and it probably takes them longer to perfect their routes in a system as complicated as the WCO. Heck even our #1 WR isn't know for his route running.

So the WCO is based on precise routes, precise spacing, and precise timing. Sometimes throws are supposed to made BEFORE the WE even makes his cut. Sometimes, a WR may LOOK open to those of us watching in the stands or on TV, but if he wasn't open where he was supposed to be, the QB may not see that. So when your O-line has your QB hearing footsteps even when they aren't there, and your QB isn't 100% confident that the WR will run their route precisely enough that he can throw the ball to that spot he's supposed to BEFORE they are there. Well then you see him patting the ball alot waiting for a guy to come "open". Fact is sometimes they were open already and by the time the QB is confident they are, they aren't for long. So the QB hold the ball longer, which makes the O-lines job hard, which gets more pressure to the QB which makes him hear more footsteps.

The fear is that Colt will start makig that a habit, and not trust his throws. And while he has enough arm strenght, he has to trust his own arm strength to make those throws. One thing I hope that happens in this by week is that Shurmur talks to Colt about these things. I also hope Shurmur coaches Colt to improve, and not to just avoid mistakes. Because it's that kind of coaching that I think hurt Brady Quinn's development. the example ahead of him was DA a guy who took too many chances and made bad throws. So I believe Quinn was coached to "not make mistakes" which turns your QB into a dink and dunk QB too quickly. Colt needs to be told "trust your read, trust your WR, make those tight throws, if you throw an INT, no one is going to take your head off"

Hopefully the longer they are all in this system together, that trust will come and you'll see Colt start making those NFL type tight throws. If it doesn't, it will mean bad things for Colt. But it's about the WHOLE OFFENSE improving, not just the QB not being able to make the throws.

[Brown Warrior]

Great post, Golf.

[nickers]

Originally Posted by golfer704u

Not sure where exactly to put this so I'll put it here.

I think Riff you tried to talk about this but it's so hard to specificly point to examples that it becomes a hard arguement to make and sounds like you are making excuses. But I'm going to try anyway.

There are MANY factors that are contributing to the offense looking bad. and not one of these is more important than the others. and they all affect each other. This is likely to be a rambling post, hopefully at least Tom will read it since I always read his.

The O-line has not played well, but they are not the worst in the league. But the fact they haven't played well probably gives Colt some of those "happy feet" that you are talking about Riff.

The WCO is about precision routes and timing throws. As Shep will enjoy me pointing out, our WRs are NOT all that great. But it goes even deeper than that. When you look at our Top 3 WRs you have a converted college QB who's biggest role with the team was as a special teamer. Then you have a rookie WR who didn't play any competitive football last year. BOTH of those guys are physical specimins and great with the ball in space. But they likely aren't natural crips route runners, and it probably takes them longer to perfect their routes in a system as complicated as the WCO. Heck even our #1 WR isn't know for his route running.

So the WCO is based on precise routes, precise spacing, and precise timing. Sometimes throws are supposed to made BEFORE the WE even makes his cut. Sometimes, a WR may LOOK open to those of us watching in the stands or on TV, but if he wasn't open where he was supposed to be, the QB may not see that. So when your O-line has your QB hearing footsteps even when they aren't there, and your QB isn't 100% confident that the WR will run their route precisely enough that he can throw the ball to that spot he's supposed to BEFORE they are there. Well then you see him patting the ball alot waiting for a guy to come "open". Fact is sometimes they were open already and by the time the QB is confident they are, they aren't for long. So the QB hold the ball longer, which makes the O-lines job hard, which gets more pressure to the QB which makes him hear more footsteps.

The fear is that Colt will start makig that a habit, and not trust his throws. And while he has enough arm strenght, he has to trust his own arm strength to make those throws. One thing I hope that happens in this by week is that Shurmur talks to Colt about these things. I also hope Shurmur coaches Colt to improve, and not to just avoid mistakes. Because it's that kind of coaching that I think hurt Brady Quinn's development. the example ahead of him was DA a guy who took too many chances and made bad throws. So I believe Quinn was coached to "not make mistakes" which turns your QB into a dink and dunk QB too quickly. Colt needs to be told "trust your read, trust your WR, make those tight throws, if you throw an INT, no one is going to take your head off"

Hopefully the longer they are all in this system together, that trust will come and you'll see Colt start making those NFL type tight throws. If it doesn't, it will mean bad things for Colt. But it's about the WHOLE OFFENSE improving, not just the QB not being able to make the throws.

Awesome read Golf,Thanks!

[Flugel]

Originally Posted by Vegasdogg

I would like to see what Colt can do with this WR corps, to be honest. He had so many windows he missed. The time is over when you say "he wishes he had a bunch of plays back" or "I wish I had a bunch of plays back." Hey no shit pal so do I. What are you going to do about it?

He doesn't have piss poor WR's. There are players there to work with. But for instance - you can't hit a crossing Cribbs after he runs open for 15 yards only to finally feed him with 5 yards of boundary left. You just can't have this. Another time he had the TE to the left and he hits him short without leading him, allowing the D to defense the pass. There are plenty of times this has occurred.

He doesn't need better WR's right now, he needs to develop the WR's he has. Cribbs is no Greg Jennings and Little is no Calvin Johnson and MoMass is no Wes Welker, but he needs to start using them as if there are.

Pull the trigger.

The ONLY QB I've seen benefit from holding onto the ball forever is Ben Rape'n. His experienced WRs seem to know the pass play that gets wired into the huddle rarely ever ends up being the play they improvise to. The QB escapes the pocket and either hits WRs that know what to do or he runs and pretends he's fatally injured until he takes off again a few plays later. As we speak, he's pretending his foot hurts as he's shopping for the shoes Usain Bolt uses for races. Who's kidding who with that any more?

I realize Ben Rape'n doesn't have the BEST oline these days but he's the tallest QB in the league so he sees things others often miss - especially those with lesser experience. He gets sacked alot though. What people ALWAYS want to conveniently forget is HOW MUCH margin of error a defense that SCORES points while it ranks among elites at limiting points keeps every game winable for the QB when/if necessary. Pretty nice when you can go 15-1 as a wide eyed rookie while Bettis and Ward are throwing many of the TD passes on gadget plays and the defense outscored half their opponents. That QB draw play was a Godsend for the 3 polluted Rivers in PA. I don't think we need to pretend Bruce Arians or Ken's Whizzenonit is the second coming of Don Coryell/Lindy Infante though. Jimmys and Joes not Xs and Os. They aren't outsmarting anyone there on offense. And I think we beat their defense minus Polly with a sandlot football game plan right? You need the difference makers.

Like it or not, QBs with under 16 games of experience tend to hold onto the ball too long. Aside from that, guys like Flacco and Ryan had sophmore slumps on talented teams. One of those slumps went hand in hand with Michael Turner getting injured in his 2nd season at ATL. One more time, isn't the 2010 NFC Offensive Rookie of the Year (Bradford) undergoing a soph slump? You bet he is and there's countless examples of him holding onto the ball too long while not being on the same planet with his WRs even the All Galaxy Mike Sims-Walker. This doesn't get easier for team calibers trying to better 5 wins.

Bottom line: We could be worse than 2-2 right now like we usually were. Why don't we try to remember the last 2 minutes of the Miami game where a young QB reminded us of what Brian Sipe used to do to the forgettable first 58 minutes? We needed a QB to guide us to a TD sustainable drive to win in a very short period of time to win. Even better, it happened! These are GOOD signs of what can be once all our receivers, rbs and the QB get used to each other. I'm thinking consistency will improve as they get more reps together in the offense. Alot of room for improvement as we should have expected this early. Teams that have been together forever or had very experienced QBs didn't need OTAs. THIS team did and if we need to discuss why - then it's a colossal waste of time.

[Flugel]

Originally Posted by golfer704u

Not sure where exactly to put this so I'll put it here.

I think Riff you tried to talk about this but it's so hard to specificly point to examples that it becomes a hard arguement to make and sounds like you are making excuses. But I'm going to try anyway.

There are MANY factors that are contributing to the offense looking bad. and not one of these is more important than the others. and they all affect each other. This is likely to be a rambling post, hopefully at least Tom will read it since I always read his.

The O-line has not played well, but they are not the worst in the league. But the fact they haven't played well probably gives Colt some of those "happy feet" that you are talking about Riff.

The WCO is about precision routes and timing throws. As Shep will enjoy me pointing out, our WRs are NOT all that great. But it goes even deeper than that. When you look at our Top 3 WRs you have a converted college QB who's biggest role with the team was as a special teamer. Then you have a rookie WR who didn't play any competitive football last year. BOTH of those guys are physical specimins and great with the ball in space. But they likely aren't natural crips route runners, and it probably takes them longer to perfect their routes in a system as complicated as the WCO. Heck even our #1 WR isn't know for his route running.

So the WCO is based on precise routes, precise spacing, and precise timing. Sometimes throws are supposed to made BEFORE the WE even makes his cut. Sometimes, a WR may LOOK open to those of us watching in the stands or on TV, but if he wasn't open where he was supposed to be, the QB may not see that. So when your O-line has your QB hearing footsteps even when they aren't there, and your QB isn't 100% confident that the WR will run their route precisely enough that he can throw the ball to that spot he's supposed to BEFORE they are there. Well then you see him patting the ball alot waiting for a guy to come "open". Fact is sometimes they were open already and by the time the QB is confident they are, they aren't for long. So the QB hold the ball longer, which makes the O-lines job hard, which gets more pressure to the QB which makes him hear more footsteps.

The fear is that Colt will start makig that a habit, and not trust his throws. And while he has enough arm strenght, he has to trust his own arm strength to make those throws. One thing I hope that happens in this by week is that Shurmur talks to Colt about these things. I also hope Shurmur coaches Colt to improve, and not to just avoid mistakes. Because it's that kind of coaching that I think hurt Brady Quinn's development. the example ahead of him was DA a guy who took too many chances and made bad throws. So I believe Quinn was coached to "not make mistakes" which turns your QB into a dink and dunk QB too quickly. Colt needs to be told "trust your read, trust your WR, make those tight throws, if you throw an INT, no one is going to take your head off"

Hopefully the longer they are all in this system together, that trust will come and you'll see Colt start making those NFL type tight throws. If it doesn't, it will mean bad things for Colt. But it's about the WHOLE OFFENSE improving, not just the QB not being able to make the throws.

Awesome read Golfer! Very insightful! The only thing I'd add is the sooner we can implement Hillis and Hardesty to the SAME backfield - the sooner we put pressure on the defense and loosen coverages on the middle seams and slant routes when we swing pass these backs outside around aggressive pass rushers/blitzers. Infante used Mack and Byner to the point of nobody cared what guy had the FB title. Actually Mack was faster so we need to deep 6 Marecic in lieu of a RB that can HURT the defense in the short passing game. Back in 1986 when Mack and Byner were part of the 122 receptions shared by our RBs, the quickest back out of LSU (Herman Fontenot) had 47 receptions like we could consider if we dared to put Armond Smith as a slot (wingback 1 yard back and 1 yard over from TE) for some 3rd down situations. Where it paid dividends was it made Brian Brennan our leading receiver primarily running slants in cleared out spaces with 55 receptions inspite of the reality he couldn't outrun Slaughter or Lanhorne in a foot race. Slaughter had 40 receptions and Langhorne had 39 in the season we had the best record I've witnessed after the 60s. The IRONY was the RB with the most catches and the WR with the most catches seemingly only played on 3rd downs telling us what? We had a comfortable, established system in Kosar and Infante's 2nd season together where passing game roles were much better designed and defined than the 85 season where we needed at least 1000 rushing yards apiece from Mack and Byner in order to win 8 games. In fairness, this is Shurmur's first year with this group so I expect trial and error misfires in the first month of games because it's inevitable. And folks, Golfer and Riffer X cautioned there would be inevitable growing pains that come with changing staffs and systems regardless of how likeable the head coach is or not.

Love like Infante provided here took 2 years to generate for his young QB Kosar plus the margin of error the #1 ranked Defense in the AFC alotted. Nothing better than watching a Miami game where the defense says here's a winable deficit to overcome and that QB turns around and reminds them just how much their efforts mattered ALL game. He does this via a long drive within a time constrained 2 minute period punctuated with a TD pass to MoMass. That's not a team leader created because he plays QB - that's a team created because he WON. Can't fake such a thing. As I told Shep, the difference between a beloved SF QB being 3-1 and us being 2-2 was SF's defense held Cincy to 8 points as Alex Smith could ONLY lead them to 13 points. If our defense held them to 8 points too, McCoy doubled that with 16 points. Meaning? We're 3-1 too. Roethlisberger has had this perk ALL career on top of a defense that outscored countless opponents while they ranked elite at limiting points.

Golfer, for what it's worth I read you alot more than you might think. You ALWAYS do a much better job than I could of explaining Mangini wasn't THE problem. I think you just explained the WCO better than I ever had as well so I'm not surprised. Keep up the good work my man!

[Sez.EJ]

Good post Golf.. I really think the Bye week righ now will really help us. The team has had 4 games. Now will have 2 weeks to get some good practice in. Get ready for a tough road trip to oakland agains a superior team.. They are at least as good as Tennesee on both sides of the ball. (but not as talented at QB).. It will take a near flawless game to win out there..but this ONE game is not the point I'm making.. I just think 2 weeks right now to reflect, watch some film, get healed up.. get some solid pracitices in will help the entire team on both sides of the ball. Especially the OL and the timing with Colt and the WR's.

The next 2 games are ROUGH.. 3 of 4 on the road with 2 on the west coast.. Other than Seattle.. all of these teams are much better than us.. If we can make some improvements and progress these next 4.. then we may be ready for the back half of the season with 5 of 8 games within the division.

Next 4 games

Oct 16	@Oakland	4:05 pm
Oct 23	Seattle	1:00 pm
Oct 30	@San Francisco	4:15 pm
Nov 6	@Houston

last 8 games.3 of the last 4 on the road..we also have a short week after going west to arizona and getting ready for pissburgh. The schedule makers did not do us any favors this year.

Nov 13	St. Louis	2:00 pm
Nov 20	Jacksonville	2:00 pm
Nov 27	@Cincinnati	2:00 pm
Dec 4	Baltimore	2:00 pm
Dec 8	@Pittsburgh	9:20 pm
Dec 18	@Arizona	5:15 pm
Dec 24	@Baltimore	2:00 pm
Jan 1	Pittsburgh

I'm still saying 6-7 wins will be it this year.

[golfer704u]

I'm actually very interested to see how we look coming off the bye week. ONe of my biggest issues with RAC was that in my opinion his teams actually looked WORSE after the bye week.

[Inspecta]

God, I can't believe we're starting to go down this "do we have a QB" road again. My stomach is lurching at the thought.

There comes a point when you kinda know that the QB that's playing on the field is the absolute best version of himself he's gonna be. Saw it with Frye, Quinn, Anderson, the list goes on.

However, Colt is in his 2nd year, playing under as many coaches and different systems. Oh yeah, and there were no offseason activities. And even with those circumstances, he's still thrown twice as many TD's as picks, and hovering around 60% completion. I'd say, not too shabby, and way way too early to pull the curtain and start looking over mock drafts.

but what the hell do I know?

[Vegasdogg]

Originally Posted by Flugel

Ben Rape'n. His experienced WRs seem to know the pass play that gets wired into the huddle rarely ever ends up being the play they improvise to. The QB escapes the pocket and either hits WRs that know what to do or he runs and pretends he's fatally injured until he takes off again a few plays later. As we speak, he's pretending his foot hurts as he's shopping for the shoes Usain Bolt uses for races. Who's kidding who with that any more?

LOL. I don't care who you are, that's funny right there.