I said it before the season began ... the time for excuses is behind us. As a good coach once said .... you are what your record says you are. We've scored too few points each game. Tua came in with a red flag for injuries and we invested a lot of draft capital and a lot of FA money into the OL to protect him. We got him his Alabama teammate to catch the ball. We invested the resources to surround him as we should. But, the OL is not good enough, Tua is injured again, and even with a QB who is statistically outperforming Tua ... we're simply not scoring enough points. Last year the board was consistently saying that we needed to play Tua, even when Fitzmagic clearly outperformed him. I get it ... we were rebuilding and he needed the experience. Now, we're primed to showcase Tua ... and he's injured. At 6'0 and 215 lbs. he is small for the NFL. He came in with a history of injuries. We need to protect him.
Soooooooo, we had our first OL coach who made these guys look good ... and Coach Flo fired him. We brought in the guy who almost invented the offense we wanted to run ... and Coach Flo fired him. We replaced the OC with a pair of guys who have never done it before ... and it's clearly not working. Our new OL coach clearly is inferior to the guy we had last year. At some point Coach Flo needs to figure out how to get good coaches on the offensive side of the ball ............ or maybe he could have just recognized that he had capable people and not fired them. Coach Flo knows defense, and while our defense is taking a beating, it still has some good signs. But it's becoming crystal clear that Coach Flo and GM Grier do not understand offensive coaching .... when they get capable people they fail to appreciate or support them, then they set people up to fail.
What Coach Flo should have done is pick one OC and support him with a veteran who knew play calling and could mentor that person into the role. Then build the offense around Tua but with a back-up plan for if/when Tua goes down .... becuase this is the NFL, and most QB's get injured from time time to time. Jacoby Brissett is fundamentally a different type of QB than Tua .... and the only reason I can see to bring him in is to run the scout team to help your defense prepare for a different type of QB than Tua. It clearly isn't to run the Tua offense. And, Coach Flo should have kept the OL who were performing, and kept the OL coach who had them performing .... but he was too blind to realize that last year's OL Coach did a good job. As it stands right now, Coach Flo looks like a good DC .... but is not up to par as a Head Coach. Let's hope he learns from his mistakes and fixes things.
GM Grier has done well. The rookies he's added have been good, and with the exception of underperformance along the OL, most have been solid contributors to the team. They all need more time, but Jaelan Phillips had a half-sack and 3 of our team's 8 QB hits, with nobody else above 1. Gesicki caught 4 of 5 targets including a short TD pass that was thrown well behind him when he was wide-open that Gesicki rotated against his movement stretched and caught despite the pass being placed in one of the absolute worst spots to catch. There are flashes and building blocks, so Grier has a lot to point towards to prove he has done a good job. But, Coach Flo's process is definitely showing cracks. Let's hope he learns from these mistakes and we can turn this around.
This is not a fun post to write, but we need to start moving in the right direction. We don't have a good enough defense to consistently win games without much offensive contribution. Yes, keep working on the defense ... there are a lot of bright spots upon which to build. But, Coach Flo clearly cannot figure out the offense, and the two-OC system is simply not getting the job done. Just firing everyone who cannot turn your subpar group of players into all-stars is not a plan ... it's a recipe for a toxic coaching situation. Fewer and fewer coaches will take the chance if the end result is everyone gets fired.
