I didn't mention tackle efficiency which is something they track on PFF as well. Wheeler's tackle efficiency definitely took a turn for the worse last night. He had been decent in that category prior to last night.
I am just not really getting all the praise heaped on a defense that was on the field for 90+ plays and saying they can't be expected to perform being on that long.....when it's their own inability to get off the field...i.e. Long 3rd down conversions..losing people in coverage. Etc. They were gassed...no doubt about it...but because of their own fault
Well stated. The 93 plays defense is all but irrelevant because it's the defense's own fault they were on the field 93 plays. If you don't want to be on the field for 93 plays then you probably should make stops on 3rd and 4th down. They allowed conversions on 3rd & 10, 3rd & 10, 3rd & 10, 3rd & 8, 3rd & 8, 3rd & 16 and 3rd & 7. Get off the field on those downs where the odds are stacked in your favor, and you don't have to play 93 plays.
To be fair, Helen Keller should have caught that ball, if not you need to retire from the NFL immediatley. That said, I rewatched the game, without alcohol in my system, and I was unfair to the LBs. Long winded game, they bended didnt break. Great win.
I zero in on Ellerbe a lot and his play really confuses me. He lines up very deep from the line of scrimmage and he always has that slight hesitation on his first step. He very rarely if ever is moving forward or downhill. He gets screened off a lot and I cant recall one of our LBs making tackles so far down the field since Channing Crowder. There was one play where the Bengals ran Bernard right off the snap on a sprint to the flat and Ellerbe jumped slightly in the air on the snap but was in the exact same place when he landed and saw Bernard. By the time he got there Bernard was was the ball and by him. Granted Ellerbe can not match up speed wise with him but the slight moment of hesitation..that slight moment of not recognizing right away where Bernard was going..makes him look and play so much slower than he is
I think Wheeler has been mediocre this season. He provides pressure constantly, which is a huge plus. Better than any of our LBs and 10x better than Ellerbe at providing pressure. He's not that slow, got some wheels and flies to the ball. Problems I have with him is his tackling becomes awful during some games and he can't shed blocks that well. Many of the times in coverage I agree its because he is being set up to fail, but at the same time he loses his responsibilities in zone too much. Jones is just...I can't even put words for it. On that last play when Wake had his sack, he ignored Clemons, waved him off, and then proceeded to ignore Grimes. If you watch the replay Clemons visibly gets upset with Jones. Jones then waves him off and Grimes tries to tell him something. I assume it was that he (Grimes) was going to blitz and Jones to drop back when the play starts. Watch what happens next. Grimes starts to blitz then sees Jones blitzing with him. He drops back immediately to recover ground. If one were to judge what happens here, Jones ignored the call from Clemons and Grimes. He then did his own thing and messed up Grimes blitzing and Grimes had to drop off to cover the part Jones was supposed to cover.
As I have said I came away happy to win I didnt come away thinking the issues we saw over the previous four weeks were gone and we were going to be ok. I also think the same about Tannehill as I did before the game. He played well but the diff was he had good protection. Which makes me feel stronger in my belief that RT can be a great qb but is young and is still growing and what he will end isnt determined but shows he has great ability. He isnt luck, none of teh young qbs are IMO. He isnt Russell Wilson. what he is is a young qb that needs experience and grooming but can be really good. Have to be concerned with him being broken, have to worry that Sherman wont be able to get him there. But RT can make plays, can win and can play. But I digress, we beat a good Cinci team, and have teh opportunity to turn it around, but I saw flaws that scare me. I see dbs outside grimes and patterson as a huge issue, I see 3rd down defense as down right scary. I didnt get this big huge shot of confidence that we are ok.
That was my read on what happened as well. Obviously we don't know, but that was one of the knocks on Jones when he came into the league. He had a tendency to freelance. He was good at attacking moving forward but often let up the play behind him when he guessed wrong.
That's simply not realistic in the context of this specific game. All defenses allow 80 yard drives. They aren't rare. It happens. To stop one with a pick 6 in the redzone is amazing and rare. Problem was, that gave the ball right back top the offense so they had to immediately play them again. That is also tough for any defense and they were sloppy at that point. This is no different than the arguments that bad calls don't hurt teams. A perfect game has NEVER happened in the history of the sport, yet many of you are judging performance based on perfection.
If that play looks as self-evident as you describe, I might feature it on Bleacher Report this week, with your permission. That's egregious.
Sure, by all means go ahead. Watch it yourself too. Its all there. http://www.nfl.com/big-play-highlights Go to 3:06 and watch from there on the Week 9: Bengals vs Dolphins highlights. Don't blow up the screen as you cannot see it all then.
It's exactly right. Jones seemed to either not know where to line up or for some reason totally disregard the call. He slightly hesitated and thennjust blitzed. You seem Grimes react and try get back
I think we can admit that we were fortunate Dalton played an awful game as he is wont to do being young and inconsistent. By far his worst game in a month. But our Defense is responsible for some of that, of course. We were very fortunate that Bernard got dinged. That kid just loves SunLife stadium, apparently (2012 UNC@UM: 27car for 177, 36yds rec, 2TDs). I love the fact that we had the mistake-free QB this week. Goes to show that Cincy's array of nice skill players doesn't mean much when their QB is off - though AJ Green makes Dalton look really good every now and then - that 3rd down catch in OT is just unguardable. We did a lot of things well. Run game is clicking, Wake is dominating, the defense was opportunistic given that Dalton was shaky, Wallace got very involved and did a lot on 8 targets - that's good usage for him, imo. Oh and we have a long week before getting to play the Mighty Bucs .
I think the run game and mistake-free football should have resulted in about 20 points scored. We should have scored a touchdown if not for the ball being tomahawked right out of Lamar Miller's hands on his way to the end zone. That's what I take as encouraging. They got that ground game going, it directly contributed to a mistake-free passing game, it showed the capability of scoring enough points to win games as long as the defense becomes the top tier unit we all thought we were getting this season, and in fact the ground game probably contributed to the defense playing better.
I don't agree that Dalton played much differently than he has all month. He's had about the same number of throws that were slightly off-target in all of his games. Usually his receivers are good enough to catch them anyways or he's just lucky. This week the Dolphins just made those plays and Dalton's luck evened out a bit. So his play was about the same, but his numbers were different. The difference was the Miami D.
I brought it up on post #48 of this thread. I was watching and thinking "i hope the hell you know what you are doing Jones!!!" Jones just looked like he wasn't listening to any instruction and he was going to do his thing no matter what. It had blown assignment/coverage play written all over it for a few seconds. For Jones to be freelancing at that moment of the game was dangerous at best. If he was in the wrong i hope he gets chewed out for it. It didnt look good.
The Dolphins are lucky Wake got in there as well as he did because it looked like Dane Sanzenbacher was wide, wide open on the play as a result of the blown assignment.
I actually don't think Sanzenbacher (I think its Jones? The guy Grimes was initially one) was wide open on that play. I initially thought that based on that view. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et8g6sgskmc Look at that view. Clemons shoots downfield to pick up #82 doing a drag route because Jones was a clown. I think even if he got it off to him it would have been short. Now, if the play was to develop for another 2-3 seconds, someone may have gotten wide open due to Jones messing up.
I didnt see them double team the Wakenado much last night and he made them pay often, eventually cashing in on the big play. Respect the man
CK...just to throw an idea out to you.....wonder if you could break down why teams are continuously converting 3rd and long on us. Its funny, but if you actually look at it, I think quite possibly that one aspect, not getting teams off the field in 3rd and long is the single biggest reason we are 4-4. I was listening to Sal Palantonio on Cowherd today, he was asked what is the one reason why the Chiefs are 7-0. And Sal Pals answer was no question, killing the money down for other teams. They are first in the league in 3rd Down efficiency allowing teams to convert 3rd downs only 25.3 percent of the time. One of the big things was they have like 12 sacks on 3rd down alone.
That comes with a big assumption, which is that Miami is especially bad on those downs. If you read earlier in the thread, I think NU_Gap kind of shows that's not necessarily the case. I think last night was honestly the first time I thought it was BAD.
Thanks for that video. Great to see the reaction from the fans and the team running down to the endzone in celebration. Gave me chills.
Boy that's an excellent view of Chris Clemons trying to tell Reshad Jones what he's supposed to be doing on the play and Jones eventually making a "forget you" hand motion and blitzing the passer at the snap just as Grimes tries to do the same. Grimes clearly sees Jones also blitzing and then awkwardly tries to recover. That's terrible.
That is exactly what I saw last night. Overshadowed by Wakes play. Jones has really been so up and down and freelancing like that just puts his teammates in a bad position
There was nothing wrong with what Reshad Jones did there. When the Fins are in Cover 1, Reshad Jones "has the ball" which is jargon for calling the "flip" or "B-Side" which are words they use for Defensive Audibles. Reshad Jones recognizes the play the D-Line is putting on...and tells Clemons he is gonna occupy the HB2 (#30). , Clemons then disagrees and asks him to go in the short zone and stay with #30. Reshad Jones CORRECTLY recognizes that the game the D-Line is putting on will NOT WORK if #30 is not occupied. So he decides to ENSURE that #30 becomes occupied...so he blitzes. It's an aggressive play. the CORRECT play, and in the defensive Meeting, I am sure that Reshad will get kudos from Coyle and all involved. That was a VERY VERY VERY SMART play.
Yeah. Clemons got PISSED. Look at his body language. He even makes an aggressive move towards Jones followed by another aggressive movement with his arms. Jones then waves him off and he gets pissed off again. Watch Grimes then. He is almost pointing at himself as saying he is one blitzing (could be reaching here, but thats what I saw). That can't be good if our safeties are fighting like that.
One more time. Clemons was WAAAAY out of line. He didn't trust Reshad Jones' read of the play and was second guessing him presnap.
Really. How do you know EXACTLY what Jones and Clemons were discussing? And what happened with Grimes? Why is he blitzing then dropping back off? If it is Cover 1, Grimes shouldn't be blitzing unless he was supposed to be. He left his man wide open. The way it looked was that Jones was supposed to buzz to flats or cover #82 and Grimes was supposed to occupy the HB. Hence why Grimes blitzed and once he saw Jones blitz he buzzed back to the flats. Instead we could have had 2 DBs blitzing with the right side completely open.
very simple. Dolphins have the same looks every single week by formation. If the guy that "HAS THE BALL" says he is blitzing...if you are Grimes, Clemons, whoever...you play it accordingly. Maybe Reshad didn't communicate it early enough, what he was thinking...but he sure ended up with the right decision. He occupied #30. Notice he never tried to get around him. He just made sure he stayed right there in front of him.
The reason he didn't try to get around him was because Wheeler was taking his man wide. You don't go wide if you have someone else taking a lineman wide. Jones tried to go inside where Dalton would have to step up. He wasn't occupying the HB, he was blitzing. He messed up and its evident through Clemons and Grimes. Unless you are trying to tell me that Jones is right and Grimes and Clemons both messed up the play.
Check out how Jones just starts to walk away after seeing the safety. The rest of the D and the sidelines begin rushing to Wake as he heads the opposite way. You have to really not care at all to not even through up the hands or start clapping. Something definitely appears to be going on with him.
very simple. It's Reshad Jones call in that formation. Period. If he wants to throw a shoe at Andy Dalton..he is allowed to do so. If he wants to bark liek a dog..crawl...do the robot..the macarena..etc...It;s his call. He recognized the play...made a call..and Clemons started to disagree and second guess him. Grimes was trying to see what Reshad would do.
The guy that should get some **** is Clemons. WTF is he doing arguing when he has the simplest assignment on the field at that point? TWO people have the ball on this team in base and nickel. Reshad, and Ellerbe. Clemons calls dime sets, and quarters.