JayhawkMike":2nbzw4z9 said:
So we have one halfish of looking good doing it Pete’s way. And the next teams aren’t going to see that and (I know it’s weird but) adjust? If we do against the Saints what we did 2/3 of the second half we will likely look more like we did at the end of the game after they adjusted. I loved when we picked up Collins and how he ran Sunday. I just don’t think it’s enough.
If they do adjust we have a counter. The issue to date is that the counter to the 2 deep safety looks has been... crickets. We have yet to commit to the run the way we should. Instead, we've continued to try to drop back and rely on big plays from DK and Lock. If / when defenses do decide to bring a safety down, well then we can exploit the opening that creates in the secondary, and we have a beast of a TE to do that, plus DK and Lock.
I do think part of what's been holding the offense back is an adherence to the big play over logical play. Against the Steelers , we started the game trying to nickel and dime against a team that had a great pass rush and wouldn't allow us to get settled. I think we stayed there as long as we did because thats the way the offense has been drawn up when Russ is in in terms of how much we lean on the run. The difference when RW is playing though is rather than getting a reliable rushing play of 4 or 5 yards, we will take a pass and if it's covered, Russ will extend and make a play. But this makes us reliant not on a strategy, but solely on Russel's talent. And the challenge there is that Russ can't win us every play to sustain drives and that kind of play doesnt force defenses to do anything else but contain Russ and take away the longer developing deep plays to basically 2 of 5 potential wr targets (Tyler and DK).
In every game we've played, our offense has either played well but been either figured out by the half, or hasn't functioned unless Russ has manufactured magic off script - the 9ers game comes to mind ( the scramble TD and the spin / escape and TD pass). That's why there's been the talk about the lack of identity. We don't have one. We need one. Pete just waited too long to change it Sunday night.