At long bloomin' last it was nice to see Jason Fox in there and the guy held up well. It's been a pain to see so many injuries this season but if there's a silver lining it's how so many of the second-stringers showed up and made a case for themselves where maybe they would never have seen the light of day. Only question with Fox is, was that a one-shot performance or can he keep that up?
He started vs MN right? Thought i saw him on first play of game. I think in a perfect world, albert and james man both tackle spots next year, and if Fox keeps it up, keep him as a quality backup tackle, and still look to upgrade both guard spots, with pouncey back at center and Satele as another quality backup.
Man, I was about to try out for right tackle. Granted, I'm 6'1" and 210 pounds, but I'm pretty sure if I layed down in front of my guy, I'd buy more time for Ryan Tannehill than Dallas Thomas ever did.
Didntthink it wouldve made a difference, but it seemed like it did and who knows where we would be right now if they made the change three weeks ago instead of waiting till week 16.
I thought Fox did much better of course. It was obvious. One question though is level of competition. In Thomas's first game at RT he went up against Mario Williams. After that, he was across from Von Miller, and then Elvis Dumervil. Those are 3 elite pass rushers. Fox only had to block Brian Robison. Most here probably never heard of him. How well Fox would have fared against those 3 is anyone's guess, but doubt he would have handled them as well as he did Robison.
Why did that dude stop uploading the vids of all passing plays? I'm a ball watcher but what was great about those videos is they were short enough that they could hold my attention enough to concentrate on specific players on the o-line.
Was the utility player Garner ahead of Thomas for the RT position when Albert got injured, or was Garner already having his head issues at the time of Albert's injury?
I'd suspect it was degree of difficulty. Regardless it was good to know he showed well. Hope we keep upgrading in the offseason. Aw man, Philbin the cowardly zombie. He's a sure fire sign of the apocalypse. He's the phuken turduken Sci-Fi zombie coach whose psychic waves entrain the lackeys who encompass him... Gimme a next generation facepalm meme stat!
Fox clearly played better. Thomas has been a complete joke. The question is really why the coaching staff has been so reluctant to let Fox onto the field. Does he completely suck during practice? Did he piss them off in some way? If they start Thomas against the Jets, you have to figure that there's some non football related reason.
Trying to salvage something from having used a relatively high draft choice on him, maybe? Giving him a chance to show something before they give up on him? You never know what politics is going on in that building.
It's all about competition. Thomas played alright at times and got abused by better, more elite players. I'm not sure that in this one game against Minnesota that Fox went up against an elite player. In time, Fox will probably turn out to be quite average. Wait until he has some real competition in front of him.
If they made the change three weeks ago Fox would probably have gotten abused by elite pass rushers the same way Thomas did.
Exactly. It pays to know a little about the teams we're facing, they have NFL players too last I checked. Williams, Miller and Dumervil are the best in the business, give them some credit instead of crapping on your own guys.
I am sure he did not go up against an elite player, at least as a pass rusher. Robison has 4 sacks on the year, and is a well below average pass rusher. While I approve of the idea of keeping Fox at RT this week, let's not sight of the fact that Thomas's struggles were mainly against 3 of the most elite pass rushers in the league.
The main reason I think Fox would have fared a little better than Thomas did against those 3 pass rushing studs is because in the Denver game Fox got 40 snaps at LT against Ware and allowed no sacks, only 1 hit and 1 hurry. Ware may not be what he once was, but he is still a double digit sack man and a pretty good test for any LT. All things considered, IMO, the best course of action after Albert got hurt would have been plug in Fox at LT and left James where he was at RT.
Well, neither of these guys are part of the future. We're talking about one game this week and keeping RT17 upright for 60 minutes.
I'd definitely roll with Fox and hope we got what we got last week. Totally agree though that it's not a huge issue long term. Fox--at this point--appears to be the lesser of two evils. He's hasn't been tested like Thomas has though, so we'll see if there's any upside. One thing I pointed out in the Hickey's 2014 assessment thread is that my only knock is in regards to the longevity of the O-linemen that we brought in: Colledge, Smith, Fox, etc. I was really hoping that amongst all those guys, we'd see 1 of them step up and become a viable long-term player. At this point, Colledge has injury concerns, Smith isn't that good and Fox is still relatively untested.
Fox played pretty good for Detroit last year. He should have been brought in at LT when Albert went down therefore not needing to move anyone else on the line. Dallas Thomas was finally playing decent at his natural LG Position and should have been left there. They tried him at tackle last year and it did not work so why do it again. Some guys can only handle 1 position and Dallas Thomas is one of those guys,and Jason Fox plays pretty decent at either tackle spots when he is healthy.
I just watched the first half of the NFL Game Rewind coaches' film of the Minnesota game, paying attention solely to the line play, in super slow motion. It was enlightening; I recommend it. I don't know if the difference is schematic, talent, time playing together, coaching or all four, but the difference between Minnesota's OL and ours was night and day. They executed their double teams, pulls and traps far better than we did ours, and pushed the DL around almost at will on running plays or blocked them out totally for more than sufficient time to let pass plays develop. Their spacing was tighter, their coordination as a unit was near-perfect and they seemed to always get the necessary push into the second level, attacking the linebackers consistently. The only way I can account for the final score is that they must have gotten tired. We are not going anywhere until we have an offensive line that plays like Minnesota's. I don't care what skill players you get. The ones we have now are to be admired for getting the yards they get, playing behind our line. We have no cohesion or coordination on the OL. They look like freshmen learning an offense.
So the question is how so many other teams in the league, both good and not so good, seem to achieve this all of the time, while Miami can't seem to ever get it, no matter the coaching.
Maybe someone who coaches OL and knows something about a zone blocking scheme and what it takes to execute it effectively can explain it. We have people like that on this board. What occurs to me is that we had Albert and we were decent. Now the right tackle is playing left tackle and our all pro center is playing right guard, and the new right tackle, Fox, just started playing with the rest of the line. Probably not on the same page. I did see Fox drive a defender and open a mammoth hole that sprang the RB loose for a huge gain in the second half. Hopefully we need a couple of guards and time together.
Ireland was amazing, he found the 4 absolute worst tackles in recent memory, Colombo, then Clabo, Jon Martin and finally Dallas Thomas. That level of ineptitude is actually impressive when you think about it.
Thats fair. I'm not big on second guessing these types of decisions bc there is so little info to go on. Thomas won the job in camp and I'm ok with with him struggling vs elite rushers. He did OK vs Detroit, NY and NE, the teams that didn't have elite rushers.
He took that struggling to a whole 'nother level though. Mario Williams had his best game of the year against Thomas. Dumervil had his 2nd best game. You are okay with that? Wow. Just wow. Heck, when Jon Martin was a rookie, in 56 pass rush snaps blocking Mario, he allowed only one sack. I would not say he did okay against Det, NY and NE. He just sucked less. He was still below average.
I don't understand why you guys are so hard on Ireland. After all, when he was given the first overall pick in the draft, he drafted a really good offensive lineman.
