Quote:
Originally Posted by Kray007
It seems like you’re blaming Reich for Ballard’s failure to sign a competent backup QB. Like it or not, the fact is that Reich was stuck with starting Wentz. The Colts were in the hunt for a playoff spot, and plan B was Ehlinger.
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Well there is that, and I agree Ballard has a lot of culpability in Wentz / team failing to make the playoffs.
But that's not what I am pointing to. We are just a bunch of fans, and of course we are going to rant about all his failures to get rid of the ball- but we didn't / don't have access to coaching film etc... so our view / understanding of calls, of routes, of play design, leaves out a critical part of the analysis that tells whether it was really Wentz sucking that bad or if there was such a void of playmakers that he was hamstrung and it made him look worse than he was.
But NOW the postmortem is complete- there has been plenty of study of what he was doing by real football analysts - AND IT IS UNIMAGINABLY EVEN WORSE than what all of us were saying.
I went ballistic after the game where we threw it 26 straight times and Reich talked about how he didn't realize it and that "usually" someone on his staff will say something to him but nobody did. Forget the incredulous stupidity of that statement, forget his smuggy comment about how we must have been doing something right because of the yards we amassed, it's way deeper than that.
I fully get we had no suitable replacement so replacing him was very difficult and largely not possible. That said, we did have a guy in charge who had the reins to DEMAND he stop, to DEMAND he quit checking out of the plays called, to DEMAND in film review that Wentz throw the damn ball to where the play was called for it to go, to simply take the level of RPO's available to him way down. Was it Nelson that was caught on camera at one point saying to Reich- "can't we just run the fucking play called"?
That's my point in that post. It was Frank's job to stand on him and make him quit doing the shit he was doing, but he didn't, he let it continue all the way to the end when Wentz was performing so badly it cost us a playoff spot. That is 100% on Frank, not Ballard. The Wentz gamble didn't work, and it's very likely to fail in DC as well. I don't blame Frank and Ballard for trying though- they were left with few options. I don't blame them for Wentz just not being very good, they don't control his talent. I DO HOWEVER squarely place the blame for him being renegade hero boy week after week after week entirely on Frank. Good / great coaches adjust, he didn't seem to adjust, he seemed to accept. I believe he didn't adjust because he was too personally invested in proving Wentz was the guy, that if Wentz did magical things his pushing to have him as our QB, would be justified. That's why I dislike him so much, to me he comes across as wanting to prove he is the smart guy and his decisions are why we win vs letting his team turn him into a winner.
06-18-2022, 05:23 PM
Hybrid Mode
