KiwiHawk
New member
What part of run-first philosophy do people not get?
Yes, it's a passing league, so yes our OL is constantly judged on pass protection, but come on people. We have a running head coach who hired a running offensive line coach to produce an offensive line that blocks for the run.
And people still trot out pass protection stats to judge the OL.
You know why the OL wasn't effective last year? Because the running back was playing with a hernia and because the QB trusted a receiver to make a play in the Super Bowl and it came back to bite him on the ass.
There's the freaking elephant in the freaking room that everyone chooses to ignore. Wilson held the ball for ridiculous amounts of time waiting for receivers to get wide open so that he wouldn't have to repeat the Super Bowl experience, instead of throwing to tight windows and trusting his guys to make a play.
Once we officially moved on from Lynch, and once Wilson had a heart-to-heart with Bevell about trusting the guys around him, suddenly everything got better.
We have a mobile QB so that we can have an OL that makes an undrafted free agent look like a freaking rock star. Wilson's mobility eliminates the need for an elite pass protection OL, or even an average one. He's unarguably elite in his ability to avoid rushers. He destroys the scale in that regard. It's not even natural.
Investing in pass protection for a guy like that is insane. Within 2 seconds, he's well off the page and into his own thing, and he's the best in the business at it.
So we don't. We put our money where it has the biggest impact, and we use our OL where it has the biggest impact, which is the running game. And seriously, if you look at Rawls' numbers from last year, they are the stuff of fiction. Sure, you can say 32 teams simply got it wrong more than 7 times each, but when you have a run-first head coach who hired an offensive line coach celebrated for run blocking - well, I'll let you work out the maths on that one.
So when some wanna-be media talking head says our OL is poor because of pass blocking, all I can say is there goes a guy who either didn't do his homework, or sucks at maths.
Yes, it's a passing league, so yes our OL is constantly judged on pass protection, but come on people. We have a running head coach who hired a running offensive line coach to produce an offensive line that blocks for the run.
And people still trot out pass protection stats to judge the OL.
You know why the OL wasn't effective last year? Because the running back was playing with a hernia and because the QB trusted a receiver to make a play in the Super Bowl and it came back to bite him on the ass.
There's the freaking elephant in the freaking room that everyone chooses to ignore. Wilson held the ball for ridiculous amounts of time waiting for receivers to get wide open so that he wouldn't have to repeat the Super Bowl experience, instead of throwing to tight windows and trusting his guys to make a play.
Once we officially moved on from Lynch, and once Wilson had a heart-to-heart with Bevell about trusting the guys around him, suddenly everything got better.
We have a mobile QB so that we can have an OL that makes an undrafted free agent look like a freaking rock star. Wilson's mobility eliminates the need for an elite pass protection OL, or even an average one. He's unarguably elite in his ability to avoid rushers. He destroys the scale in that regard. It's not even natural.
Investing in pass protection for a guy like that is insane. Within 2 seconds, he's well off the page and into his own thing, and he's the best in the business at it.
So we don't. We put our money where it has the biggest impact, and we use our OL where it has the biggest impact, which is the running game. And seriously, if you look at Rawls' numbers from last year, they are the stuff of fiction. Sure, you can say 32 teams simply got it wrong more than 7 times each, but when you have a run-first head coach who hired an offensive line coach celebrated for run blocking - well, I'll let you work out the maths on that one.
So when some wanna-be media talking head says our OL is poor because of pass blocking, all I can say is there goes a guy who either didn't do his homework, or sucks at maths.
