Fin Thirteen
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... are a few very noteworthy points from the Buffalo game (apols if they've been made elsewhere in the middle of o-line rant threads!)
1) Daniel Thomas had a really good game, maybe his best for the Fins. It would have been even better if he'd been given a bit more of a chance to build momentum, but they kept swapping him out for Miller just as he was making headway. Very few zero or negative plays, plenty of burst, good feet, made a few guys miss him on multiple plays, fell forward, I was impressed. Whether he can back it up with another good performance remains to be seen, but the work they did in the bye on the run game seems to have benefitted him the most.
2) Brandon Gibson was really excellent in this game. Went over the middle and took the hits, ran his routes very well, didn't take no for an answer with the first TD, continued his route to get open for the second, several clutch catches, a couple of pinpoint sideline grabs. This, in my opinion, was a tremendous FA signing by the FO, to offset some of the crap.
3) What's killing us isn't the o-line, imo. By which I mean, we'd do better with a better o-line for sure, but what's killing us are the dumpoffs, outside runs, checkdowns and screens that are making a mockery of our front 7 and safeties. Teams are feasting on balls in behind our d-line and they're turning short passes into chunk gains. I lost count of the times we lost contain on outside runs from RBs in the past few games. We're too narrow and too shallow. We need to dial down the blitzing and jamming up the line of scrimmage. I find it amazing that Coyle hasn't fixed this yet. It's literally killing us. Our LBs and Jones in particular need to seriously up their game. I wonder if we should have Jordan in as an every down player - alternating between LB and pass rusher to help with our side-to-side coverage. Players need to get their hand up at the line and make QBs think twice about dumpoffs and checkdowns. If I had to pick one area of our game most in need of attention, it would actually be this, not o-line play.
1) Daniel Thomas had a really good game, maybe his best for the Fins. It would have been even better if he'd been given a bit more of a chance to build momentum, but they kept swapping him out for Miller just as he was making headway. Very few zero or negative plays, plenty of burst, good feet, made a few guys miss him on multiple plays, fell forward, I was impressed. Whether he can back it up with another good performance remains to be seen, but the work they did in the bye on the run game seems to have benefitted him the most.
2) Brandon Gibson was really excellent in this game. Went over the middle and took the hits, ran his routes very well, didn't take no for an answer with the first TD, continued his route to get open for the second, several clutch catches, a couple of pinpoint sideline grabs. This, in my opinion, was a tremendous FA signing by the FO, to offset some of the crap.
3) What's killing us isn't the o-line, imo. By which I mean, we'd do better with a better o-line for sure, but what's killing us are the dumpoffs, outside runs, checkdowns and screens that are making a mockery of our front 7 and safeties. Teams are feasting on balls in behind our d-line and they're turning short passes into chunk gains. I lost count of the times we lost contain on outside runs from RBs in the past few games. We're too narrow and too shallow. We need to dial down the blitzing and jamming up the line of scrimmage. I find it amazing that Coyle hasn't fixed this yet. It's literally killing us. Our LBs and Jones in particular need to seriously up their game. I wonder if we should have Jordan in as an every down player - alternating between LB and pass rusher to help with our side-to-side coverage. Players need to get their hand up at the line and make QBs think twice about dumpoffs and checkdowns. If I had to pick one area of our game most in need of attention, it would actually be this, not o-line play.
