The Buck Stops With Pete

[Maelstrom787]

Waldron came from the Rams.

The Rams are an outside zone running team, that runs playaction boot off of it, with floodzone concepts over the middle to the slot receiver and TE. They look nothing like this.

Instead, they are running up the gut, ignore the middle of the field, throw deep outside the numbers.

It's not hard to figure out the problem here.

Zac Taylor came from the Rams and runs an offense that looks fairly dissimilar to the Rams offense outside of frequent 11 personnel (which is kinda widespread across the league), and he's the head effing coach and primary playcaller of the Bengals.

Waldron's first gig was as an offensive QC in New England. These guys have varied backgrounds and obviously aren't going to run a 1-for-1 of the philosophy of their previous bosses.

This is Waldron's first job as anything other than a positional coach or assistant coach mainly involved with play design. This is his first job in which he calls plays.

As much as you want to be reductive and point at a single source for all ills, the real world is nuanced.

 

[Maelstrom787]

How much longer does a 72 year old coach have to go on one of these runs? How many more times are we going to blow up the coaching staff to get similar results? How many more guys who are barely qualified for their jobs are we going to hire?

There is only one person that has the ability to fix what is going on and he's shrugging his shoulders and going gee golly folks I don't know what is happening. These same offensive problems by the way have been an issue for years now. Long developing routes going up the sidelines isn't something unique to Shane Waldron.

There is some degree of truth to what you're saying, but you also have to concede that guys like Coughlin are a rare edge cases.

The Hawks are not playing up to their talent level and it's time that Carroll answers for that. It's time the his seat get at least a little toasty.

Once again, Carroll is 72 -- I think it's time we start looking out for the future instead of clinging to a Super Bowl win we had 10 years ago.

He probably has a few more years.

As much as people want to tell me I'm deluding myself, I'm not. The time is obviously running out, which is why I'm saying he needs to act now if he wants to have another chance. That means building a new staff, having to nail the hires, and finding a quarterback. There's no alternative. Those need to be done sooner rather than later.

Unless those things happen and are successful, we'll probably languish about where we're at without much chance of evolving. I'm not hoping for a random run, I'm advocating for action that'll reframe how certain aspects of the team are run to unlock some of the hidden potential on this roster. We've got some stars waiting to ascend, and that can change our outlook expeditiously for the better.

 

[NoGain]

I don't say this lightly, but it does seem that PC is losing this team somewhat. I can't point exactly as to why I feel this way, but it seems like what's best about PC, his coaching style and the positive culture he creates, isn't having as much of an impact now as it did for years and in many instances in the past.

A team has to feel the HC has the team's best interests at heart and in action. I have this feeling that there's growing doubt about the latter, though I can't convincingly document it.

I've been a PC defender more often than not, but I'm becoming less so now. For one, I still can't believe they still haven't drafted a true QB prospect since RW. I also feel the team's offense has badly underachieved this year and failed to make necessary adjustments when it was obvious they needed to do so. This is even before you get into the team's consistent lack of discipline in terms of penalties and the like. That Ram loss brought a lot of the feelings and thoughts to the surface

I don't exactly know how to proportion the blame for the team's underachievement so far this year, but PC is the organizing principle around which this team revolves. So there's that.

Anyway...