Hartline's Zona receptions. Follow the White Guy. (images of every catch)

Catch 9
Drag across the middle vs zone. No press to beat.
Matched up against a LB.
Another easy throw & catch for 11 yards.

 

and the INT of Kolb on our own 2 yard line that prevented a TD?.... or the Kolb INT we got in FG range on our own 34?... or our own 4th down TD? Guess those didn't matter, huh? We both got 10 points from turnovers so quit your whining about 'em.

We got an 80 yard TD verse botched coverage (after a Sean Smith INT in our own endzone) and a gimme FG drive off an INT on Zona's 34.... but when we were actually on their side of the field, we did nothing outside of JTrain's touchdown on 4th & 1.

They took us away from out strength (running the ball) and we lost, period.
The 80 yarder was completely blown coverage; if anything the DBs cared more about Bess downfield than Hartline on the play. Zona gave us the 19 yarder underneath, and he was essentially tackled upon contact, so stop trying to make it seem like Hartline made some crazy plays, blew by defenders, and ran around defenders for the 80 yarder and the 19 yarder on 3rd & 20. He had an outstanding game, but it certainly wasn't the kind of 250 yard performance like the yards would indicate. You know why Calvin Johnson has never had a 250 yard game? B/c defenses actually pay attention to him. I'm listing all the receptions, so please show me where it looks like Zona is actually concerned about stopping him or even slowing his game down?

 

which I'll take any day of the week...... if in doing so its success is not preventing our running game from being effective. I don't have a problem with Hartline having 250 yards. I have a problem with, that in doing so, Zona was able to take away our strength, and I think they'd do it over and over again despite knowing Brian catches 12 for 253.

If we add a playmaking receiver next year who forces defenses to respect the pass and in turn less able to focus on the run, then I'll happily make a Hartline avatar if he can continue posting Welker-like numbers. Like I said in another thread, what Zona did to us, IMO, was essentially make us rob Peter (Reggie Bush & the ground game that had been incredibly productive & was scoring TDs) to pay Paul (Brian Hartline, who previously had just 5 TDs in 47 games). That's a fair trade off for Zona, one that I'm guessing they're happy to make, would you not agree?

 

I never said otherwise, did I.

Wait, you just said what I've been saying all along, so now why are you telling me I've lost it and will only look foolish as the season goes on? Make up your mind, will you.

All I've done is show the plays, which put the performance in proper perspective. He had a huge game, but it wasn't b/c he dominated the competition the way the stats and fan/media response would indicate. I'm watching people get massively excited about it, which is understandable, but what about Reggie Bush's 67 yards (3.9 avg), no catches, and no TDs? There was a give and take involved.

Personally, I'd rather have a defense focus on stopping Hartline and in turn allow Reggie an opportunity to have another huge game b/c he poses a better threat to score and makes more plays with the ball in his hands (like the 2 huge TD runs vs Oakland). The difference between Reggie's huge day and Hartline's is Reggie put the ball in the endzone more often and b/c a lot of what Bush does is b/c he's a playmaker and creates on his own.

 

actually, he was running quite well vs Houston before all the turnovers made us 1 dimension, and he looked on his way to a big game vs NY before injury.

 

yeah, when have you ever seen Hartline make plays on his feet like that?
If you're trying to make Hartline look like Jerry Rice by downplaying Reggie Bush's playmaking ability, that's your prerogative.

 

I agree completely.... but as long as it wasn't Naanee catching the ball and fumbling w/o contact, you could've substituted X, Y, Z receiver and still gotten the same result b/c Zona gave up the underneath.

Now, if Hartline had caught the ball on the 10 and actually broke some tackles or eluded defenders to get it down to the 1, then I'd be praising his name on the play.

 

He's trying to use "poor tackling" to make it seem like Reggie's runs & TDs were "given to him" in order to argue my point about Zona's coverage making Hartline's 253 yard day possible. just saying. Bush is a playmaker, so it's a little ridiculous to reduce his playmaking ability & TD runs to happenstance. Doing that is no different than trying to say Hartline caught 253 yards b/c he possesses elite, Jerry Rice-like route running & and pass catching ability.

 

It's a spin off of another thread. I was simply putting it into perspective based on some overreactions that were going around.

 

Out of those 250 yards, how many TDs?

Question: If we had a 250 yard offensive game (as a whole) would you be happy if those 250 yards only resulted in 7 points?
That roughly equals 10 points for a 400 yard day? Sorry, but that doesn't seem very scoring-efficient to me.



Have you watched other teams play? You make it seem like no team in the NFL has a vertical threat capable of creating on their own and actually making a play behind coverage w/o it being due to botched coverage. Cmon man.

 

Not moving it from the 5 to the 1 would've required him to simply fall down upon reception, which he has done before I might add.


Sorry, couldn't resist that one, Clean.

 

... that's not answering the question.
Do you consider 1 TD per 250 yards as scoring efficient?

If you remove the blown coverage 80 yard TD and the FG thanks to Smith's INT on Zona's 34, and focus solely on the drives themselves, we only had 11 points, so he might've been a key component of EVERY scoring drive, but that isn't saying much when you only have 2 actual scoring drives.

 

Oh no, alert the press, Reggie Bush didn't score in 1 half of play verse Houston and NY. Thank goodness there's 4 quarters in a game.
He didn't score in the first half vs Oakland either, but he scored twice in the 2nd.

 

and I wouldn't take away from Hartline's day if we actually did score more points from all those yards. I'd be ecstatic. But it bothers me that we couldn't do squat on their side of the field all game.

 

I'm not cherry picking anything.
When our ground game is effective, we score points, but when we're 1 dimensional (like against Houston in the 2nd half, NY in the 2nd half, and Zona), we don't.

We're currently more scoring-efficient when we're successful on the ground verses in the air, and until that changes, teams will likely continue trying to take away the run. It's not hard to understand with all due respect. And please don't bring up the turnovers vs Zona b/c they were apart of them making us more 1 dimensional. How many TOs would we have had if we didn't have to throw it 41 times despite being ahead 21-14 in the 4th quarter?