Thread: Mike Tice overrated?

we looked a shit ton better than LAST pre-season... that's for DAMN sure.

Tice does have options to shuffle things around--and he needs to make adjustments. I do think it was dumb of him to "annoint" his starting OL for Week 1 when everyone knows that we have nothing like a "clear cut top 5" entrenched in their proper positions.

The running game shows a lot of promise (pray hard that Martz doesn't get too pass-happy, esp early in the RS, when we have a solid RB corps and our OL is clearly better at run-blocking than pass-pro.

Garza is a fairly decent RG (esp. on runs)--END THIS RIDICULOUS EXPERIMENT OF HIM PLAYING CENTER! Either Spencer or EWill needs to get going as C for the remaining PS games. Gotta figure Spencer is gonna get the nod there with EW being his backup. Move Garza back to RG and bench LL--he ain't ready no matter how "athletic" he is. This instantly upgrades 2 positions at C & RG.

Speaking of "raw athleticism", Webb should get ONE AND ONLY ONE more shot at LT in PS game#2. Unless he really impresses all of a sudden (doubt it), flop him back to where he did best late last year at RT and put Carimi in his collegiate position at LT. He may not be quite as "athletic" as Webb but he sure has better mental knowledge and technique for the position.

I'm hoping we start the RS with:

Carimi -- CWill -- Spencer -- Garza -- Webb

Originally Posted by soulman

He shouldn't be fired just criticized for what may be wrong thinking that's all. I had my misgivings about this "there is no competition, these are my five guys" thing from the start. I can understand his thinking behind it but maybe that thinking is proving wrong. His offseason decisions about who to play where may have looked good on paper but are the sound in practice.

It's not so much about panic as it realizing that we do have a very short time to fix this thing and wasting time on a theory disproved won't help. Maybe he's just a little too enthused about the potential of Webb and Louis to see that they need to bake on the bench a little longer before they're ready for the starting table. Raw lineman that aren't ready to be served yet.

We have 2nd year LT who played RT last year. We have a young LG who is actually a LT. We have 14 yr vet RG playing center. We have a second year RG, and a rookie RT, who played LT in college.

We gave them 10 days of practice.

Why did we expect them to work together as the perfect unit again?

Let the preseason play out. If Webb and Louis tank out they will still be auditioning Spencer and E.Williams. If they are that bad then hope they show it early and often which will demand a change more than trying to cover up a porous line. I'm glad we can run block better though.

As far as the topic of is Tice overrated -outside of Carimi he really hasn't gotten FA help, only drafted a 7th rounder last year and try to make a gourmet meal out of Kraft dinner.

Originally Posted by MPBears68

Tice does have options to shuffle things around--and he needs to make adjustments. I do think it was dumb of him to "annoint" his starting OL for Week 1 when everyone knows that we have nothing like a "clear cut top 5" entrenched in their proper positions.

The running game shows a lot of promise (pray hard that Martz doesn't get too pass-happy, esp early in the RS, when we have a solid RB corps and our OL is clearly better at run-blocking than pass-pro.

Garza is a fairly decent RG (esp. on runs)--END THIS RIDICULOUS EXPERIMENT OF HIM PLAYING CENTER! Either Spencer or EWill needs to get going as C for the remaining PS games. Gotta figure Spencer is gonna get the nod there with EW being his backup. Move Garza back to RG and bench LL--he ain't ready no matter how "athletic" he is. This instantly upgrades 2 positions at C & RG.

Speaking of "raw athleticism", Webb should get ONE AND ONLY ONE more shot at LT in PS game#2. Unless he really impresses all of a sudden (doubt it), flop him back to where he did best late last year at RT and put Carimi in his collegiate position at LT. He may not be quite as "athletic" as Webb but he sure has better mental knowledge and technique for the position.

I'm hoping we start the RS with:

Carimi -- CWill -- Spencer -- Garza -- Webb

If Webb can't handle LT this is what I would do no later than next week as well. I think Carimi is far better equipt to handle the mental aspects of the position than Webb is right now. Forget about who's the better athlete and play the better football player there. End the Garza at OC experiment (yeah cause that's all it is) and play a guy who has actually played the position in the NFL for 5 years at OC. He can't actually be worse at it than Garza looks so far.

I can't believe that the above configuration wouldn't come closer to playing the five best at their best positions. What we're doing now isn't that.

I hope the coaching collective will choose plays that will give a more complete picture on what these guys are capable and not capable of doing. So I'm all for Martz for passing more in the preseason if it exposes lack of progress-just make sure Jay's not there when they are doing it.