Week 4: Grading Brissett & Other Notes
 

Here's a thread with my notes from Week 4. https://twitter.com/VeveJones007/sta...956463110?s=20

A few call-outs here:

Overall, this was the worst of the three games I've reviewed for Brissett. He made 3 poor reads and the egregious error on the Pick-6 by staring down Pascal the entire play. Still, he made a couple plays that showed real progress. He also wasn't the reason they lost. Grade: B-/C+

A few specific plays:

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This might be the worst read I've evaluated from Brissett so far this year. 3rd and long and he misses an easy completion to Cain past the sticks at the bottom of the screen. He forces it to Doyle in a tight window. Incomplete. 3 and out.

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Here's a better read from Brissett that showed progress. He missed the deep out behind the corner a couple times against TENN. Here, he reads it and drops it to Rogers at the top of the screen for 20 yards.

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2nd misread of the half from Brissett. He doesn't identify the blitz from the slot. If he did, he has Rogers for an easy 15 with a chance to break it to the house. Still, he put it on Cain's chest, who dropped a would be 1st down.

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PA with two man route. This is the one Campbell gave up on. You can’t do that when it’s a two man route. But more importantly, Brissett missed Cain on the shorter option. The far corner was following Campbell through the play, so it would’ve been an easy 25+ yards.

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On the 1st TD drive of the 4th, Brissett and Hines did a good job attacking underneath vs the Cover 4 from OAK. Then Brissett delivers this beauty to Pascal, which Brissett set up by eyeing the underneath route and pulling up the LB. This was a next-level play from Brissett. We need to see more of this if he's to take the next step as a QB.

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It’ll probably get lost in people’s minds, but the TD to Ebron was a fantastic play from Brissett. That was an Andrew Luck-style evasion of pressure while keeping his head downfield and creating a big play.

A few other notes on the game:

-Glowinski was atrocious in pass protection.

-Not the best game from Kelly, either.

-All too often, either one or both of Walker and Okereke are out of position. EJ Speed was the best LB on the day and it wasn’t particularly close. That's not to say Speed was all that good. It's more of an indictment against the other two.

-If the DL doesn’t keep the LBs clean, they can’t make a play. I think this goes into the new free agent signing. They need someone to eat up two blockers since they aren’t getting enough penetration from the current line.

-Kenny Moore isn’t giving them any playmaking. Also, he can’t get beat around the edge by a TE.

-A few of those 1st half penalties called on the offense were really soft and had zero bearing on the play. Hurt the Colts in a couple instances and probably took points off the board.

-Eberflus called a lot of blitzes in the 2nd half. Still resulted in very little pressure on Carr.

-Why is Campbell extending the ball from his body on the fumble? Easy play for the defender.

-Milligan with another nice tackle on kickoff


Winners: Willis, Pascal, Castonzo, Nelson, Sheard. EJ Speed if we’re being generous, but that’s a reach.

Losers: Glowinski, Walker, Okerek, Geathers, Ebron, Cain, basically the entire DL except Sheard, Ya-Sin. Kelly (but to a much lesser degree than Glowinski).

This one bothers me. I've never been a big proponent of moving a guy out of his natural position to cover for injury while moving...especially a rookie into his position. Those 2 have just not played well together.

I hope to god that Leonard hasn't become Bob Sanders, in the fact the defense completely falls apart when he's not in there.

It sort of seems that way unfortunately. On the converse, if he is Bob esque, we should win the SB this year.

I’m this close to concluding that Walker isn’t good enough and never will be. While Okereke isn’t good enough right now, there’s more potential there.

If it were me, I would start Okereke next to Leonard when he comes back. Take some growing pains now and hope Okereke develops throughout the year.

1000% agree. Walker is constantly constantly constantly out of position. Yep, I have been touting it for a bit- Speed, DL, Okereke and THEN Walker. Speed and DL together would be blazingly fast sideline to sideline and spectacularly long.

It was concerning when they fired DeGuglielmo after the offensive line had played its best in years. They got rid of a guy who apparently wasn't nice and got a nice guy to coach our line. So far this has been hands down the worst decision by Reich so far as this line has regressed. DeGuglielmo's personality seemed to mesh with how the line played last year when it looked like the offensive line might be where this team got its identity. Not so much now.

I'm not sure about this, through three games Mack had the 3rd best yardage total. I get a similar vibe as you, that the OL isnt playing as well as it did last year, but at the same time I think also that were Looking at the Raiders game and drawing conclusions that are perhaps too general.

Last year it took several games for the OL to develop into the top-notch unit they ended the season as. This is the biggest gripe I have about coaching. The team should be prepared from week 1 to dominate, it should not take them 5 weeks to figure out.

The OL was never this juggernaut that some made it out to be in late 2018. They got manhandled against the Jags and Chiefs, and were only slightly better than the Titans DL. I would say the line has been on par with how it performed last year. Perhaps Glowinski has regressed a bit, but that's all I see.

That isn't coaching. The league set teams up to fail with so few offseason and training camp days in pads compared to years past.

From what I understand this new coach is more of a teacher where the last guy was more of a screamer. I think the line has played mostly pretty well and has been about on par with last year. One major difference is the defensive scheme used against them bc of the QB. You didn’t load the box against Andrew Luck, if you did you knew you were taking a chance. JB hasn’t earned that respect so teams see us as one dimensional and one dimensional teams are easy to stop. JB is going to have to start burning defenses that are lined up to stop the run. That means hitting Campbell on deep passers. It would be easier if Hilton was healthy and Campbell hadn’t missed a ton of camp. But it’s what we got right now.

That was reaction of our fanbase due to having such shit OLines for so long.

That Ebron exchange was very good at the end. Seems to me JB needs to work on being able to find the open guy especially during a blitz. Once he does that and burns some teams consistently, then we may see the running game emerge a bit more.

Fans build things up in the off season and think it’s like madden where everyone’s rating goes up automatically

That was negotiated in the deal with the players.

Hm... That doesnt make sense to me. Why would such affect the OL more than it would an opposing defense? One would presume that the defense spent the same amount of time (or lack therof) in pads prior to the season?

Because an offensive line needs to behave like a single organism with supreme coordination and the ability to adapt quickly and cohesively to whatever the defense does. It takes time for 5 guys to develop that kind of cohesiveness, so you see an impact when you limit the number of days in pads to expose them to the array of stunts and blitzes they'll see in live action.

I generally hate military analogies with football, but think of it as giving one group of marines half the combat training as the other half. Would you expect them to be equally prepared at the start of live action?

sure but that was supposed to be an advantage of getting the same group back as last year, working together all through TC.

Still takes time.

Glowinski has been pretty awful, so a weak link doesn’t help matters either.

But, in a new system.

Interesting, I guess it's also similar to a WR having an advantage over a defender in that the WR knows his route and the defender doesn't. a DE will have a similar advantage over a OT in that he knows what is going to happen and the OT doesn't.

It's easier for a DL to work as a cohesive unit than an OL.

I disagree. Once we got to full strength last year this line was dominant. They are very young, mostly, and I expected improvement. Instead there is, in my mind, a step back. Now the run defense has taken a huge step back and there is the same coach so maybe it isn't coaching. It's curious that we have essentially the same players physically but have regressed so much. Usually you might say father time has caught up with us but that is not the case here. Hopefully just a bad stretch

I don't think this is supported by the evidence. Here's the 2018 numbers vs 2019 on a few stats:

Sacks: 18 / 24 (pace thru 4 games)
QB Hits: 77 / 68 (pace thru 4 games)
YPC: 4.2 / 4.6

They've had more negative run plays thus far, but I chalk most of that up to defenses keying on the running game w/o Luck behind center.

what new system? It's still the same offense, same coordinator, same blocking scheme. New 0-line coach didn't install a new system...?

I view those stats in a different light. This line showed signs that they might become dominant thru 5 games but did not become dominant until Castanzo came back full time. I believe we have regressed back to where this line was in the beginning of last year, before Castanzo came back. We didn't pick up where we left off. We picked up where we started last year, which wasn't all that impressive. I'm comparing this line to where they ended the year, not where they started out. I think they have regressed.

Alright, I'll calculate the YoY total thru 4 games of 2018 vs 2019:

Sacks: 9 / 6
QB Hits: 33 / 17
YPC: 3.6 / 4.6

So, no. The OL has definitively NOT regressed to where they were at the beginning of last year. They have been significantly better.

To address your comment about how they looked at the end of last year, let's compare the last four games (two regular season, two playoff) vs the first four this year:

Sacks: 5 / 6
QB Hits: 18 / 17
YPC: 4.89 / 4.6

The only difference is the YPC, which again I feel is hurt in 2019 by teams keying on the run.