Thread: No Excuses Like "We Won Didn't We"; The Offense is Just Plain Bad.......

Originally Posted by soulman

Jay sends his regards and asks the same question about you.


Maybe when you're record is 23-9 since 2010 and you've just won 11 out of your last 12 starts and have the best W/L percentage in the NFL of late we should just let him be as much of a dick as he wants to be.

I'll wouldn't trade those wins off for "Little Suzy Cream Cheese" and a whole pack of Baptist Deacons for a QB but you can if you like. Try becoming a KC Chiefs fan. I hear Sam Cassell is a nice guy.

LOL

Not really seen it mentioned,but,keep in mind Cutler was playing with sore ribs.
The play calling didn't really seem to reflect that,but you can bet it hurt to throw.
That's more damning to me then not running the ball enough,when you should be.
Tice's playcalling is certainly not his strong suit,it is what it is;
a rookie OC getting his feet wet in the midst of the season.
I would hope that Bates has a fair amount of input into game planning and play calls.
I'd say 2 weeks in a row has proven that Jay is one tough hombre.
Question his decision making or holding the ball too long,but not toughness.
Execution is sorely lacking on offense,it's not so much the play that is called,but how well it's done.
On the plays that didn't work,it wasn't a matter of being outplayed,so much as out executed.
Even when a team isn't,or hasn't played well;they are still fairly equal athletically.
There are obvious exceptions,i.e. Peppers;but for the most part,the talent levels are close.
On a level playing field,it comes down to being in the right place at the right time,
using proper technique;and playing full speed at every snap.

Thanks, Soul, for starting this thread. Great discussion all around. Even at 6-1 we need something to bitch about and this thread has hit on pretty much all of the ones I have been thinking about. Read my mind. The offense has been a major bummer starting with week 2 in Green Bay and these are my biggest rants about that:

DISAPPOINTMENT #1: Playcalling/Mike Tice
I'm really losing faith faith in Tice as the OC fast. He said he "learned" after the Lambeau laugher but damn his memory must be short. He continues to abandon the run and go pass heavy way too often and way too early. I just don't get what he's thinking at all. We have an OL that's improving but still is shaky on pass pro. Our #2 WR is out. We DO have two damn good RBs. And still Forte and Bush are being under-utilized (an average of 20-25 runs & 5-10 pass targets per game between them sounds about right to me). We are nowhere near that. Last game, I don't think Bush touched the ball at all in the first half and was never thrown to once the entire game. The playcalling has pretty much sucked and a lot of it has to do with ignoring or under-using the run game and our RBs.

DISAPPOINTMENT #2: Devin Hester
Not ready to give up on him yet, but DH really is not earning his contract out there. I know he made a couple of highlight reel diving deep catches earlier in the year, but that has been overshadowed by three things. First, his bread-and-butter, the return game, has disappeared. Second, he continues to have inexcusible drops on short passes that have killed drives. And third, the vaunted "Hester Package" we were told of has become a mirage. And to top it off, he's taking snaps away from Bennett right now who's a much more reliable possession receiver.

DISAPPOINTMENT #3: The Tight End Corps
Some of this falls upon the players themselves and some of it falls upon Mike Tice again for mismanaging them. ERod has been cast as a fullback (which he isn't since he's a much better receiver than backfield blocker) when we already had a damn good one in Clutts. He hasn't caught a single pass to my knowledge all year. Kyle Adams (who should be on the practice squad) has caught a few balls but is no speedster and apparently can't block. Kellen Davis, despite his nice TD in the 4th v. Carolina, has been a drop machine pretty much all year. And Spaeth is all but useless as a receiving option (he had a bad drop too this week). I would also note that the 2 main TE's seeing playing time, Spaeth & KDavis, haven't excelled at blocking either. They each have whiffed on key blocks at the line that led to sacks/TFLs this year. I know we don't have a Gronk or a Witten or a Vernon Davis on our roster, but is it too much to ask our TE's to block adequately and catch 4-5 passes a game? I don't think so.

HONORABLE MENTION DISAPPOINTMENT: Jay Cutler
I'll probably catch hell for this but I'll say it anyway...I expected Jay to be putting up better numbers than he has this year. A fair number of Cutler's sacks lately have (when not due to TE whiffs) been Jay holding the ball too long and moving too little. And he's thrown too many avoidable picks. I'd like to see what he can do with a good gameplan, a ~ 50/50 run/pass attack, and his 3 BEST WRs (Marshall, Jeffery, and Bennett) on the field together much more often, but he's been downright BAD too often so far this year.

I just can't agree with sweeping generalities... how do we know that drive was a sure TD? How do we know that the Panthers wouldn't have shutdown the "high-percentage" play-calls? Throwing the ball to Marshall in a 1 on 1 situation is not terrible odds... you have to take some risks or you end up with a John Shoop offense... if you continue to call safe plays, you make it much easier for the defense to adjust. Sooner or later you have to take a shot, even if it's just to keep the defense honest.

I understand that you didn't like the play-call, but it worked perfectly from a strategic point of view. The play-call took the Safety out of position and set Marshall up to be successful, allowing him to run right past the guy. The play also set Culter up to be somewhat successful, it removed the Safety from over the top coverage, meaning that an over-thrown pass can't be intercepted and giving him a larger margin of error on a tough throw. Unfortunately, Cutler failed to execute and under-threw the ball (regardless of the reason, be it late timing or wind or whatever the case may be).

Ultimately, the play worked exactly as it was designed (which is why I consider it a good play-call), except the players failed to execute it fully. It was a more difficult play to execute than say a "dive", but very few teams have the talent mismatches to simply run "dive" repeatedly and expect to win games. Even at the HS level (where the talent disparity is much greater than the NFL), a clearly better team will eventually get stopped if they only run conservative plays. At the NFL level, where the talent is so similar, you have to use play-calling to create mismatches that you're players can take advantage of.

All that said, I'm not saying Tice is amazing as an OC, he isn't... but the players need to take their fair share of the blame too. I just pointed out the INT play to show that Tice does make some good calls occasionally, but the players can fail to execute and make Tice look a lot worse than he actually is.

Originally Posted by Warlock

Bush touched the ball in the 1st half, he gained 3 yards total on back to back carries. I believe it was the 3rd or 4th offensive series.

The run/pass ratio wasn't terrible in the first half either, it was roughly 40% run to 60% pass, a little closer to balanced if you don't really count the last couple of plays (which were obvious passing situations due to the amount of time remaining in the half).

If Bush got 2 touches in the first half, I stand corrected.

But I must strongly diagree otherwise...60-40 pass/run is NOT what we should be doing early in games, especially without our #2 WR and giving up multiple sacks to a very medicore DL.

60-40 isn't bad when you only run 26 plays or so in the half, it's really only like 2 plays being runs instead of passes to get close to the 50-50 ratio. Also remember that situation dictates some of those calls (like the final two plays being passes due to time remaining in the half), if you subtract those plays, it was like 10 runs and 14 passes.