WEEK 2 GDT - Chiefs @ Steelers

[jebrick]

I like that Fitchner is NOT just relying on Antonio Brown.

Through two games the TEs have been targeted 15 times. Jesse James is playing the best ball of his career, who would have thunk it? Obviously, something has clicked for him, has Fitchner finally got JJ to play to his potential as a pass catcher?

I have been hard on James. I saw the numbers at both his pro day and combine and felt like, why can't he play better? Why can't he be more dangerous? He ran a 4.66 and 4.71 at his Pro Day. He has a 38.5 vertical leap, he is 6'7" with long arms. He can catch the ball pretty well, doesn't just body catch, he can pluck it with his hands.

But, it would drive me crazy that he would catch the ball and run with these short choppy strides instead of using that long gait and pull away from people.

Now, this season in Fitchner's offense, James is playing himself into a nice sizable free agent contract. 10 targets, 8 catches for 198 yards and a TD? Who knows if he can keep that up but he is clearly thriving in this offense.

McDonald played his first game and he was targeted 5 times and had 3 catches for 26 yards, he sort of had the typical numbers that James USED to put up. But what I found interesting is how often the two were on the field at the same time. Rosie Nix went from 19 snaps the previous game to just 4 this game. Chuks was down to 3 snaps this game from 17 in the Cleveland game.

So, yeah, the running game was going to disappear against KC. They fell behind, they were not going to be able to use their FB or 3rd T, or Pro Bowl guard in DeCastro to give Conner any running room. But they were going to be able to use those two TE sets at times to gouge the KC defense.

James had 45 snaps and McDonald had 37 snaps and Gimble had 8 snaps. The TEs collectively combined for 90 offensive snaps.

In this game Ben targeted the TEs 10 times and it produced 8 catches for 164 yards and 1 TD. There were times when the TEs and Juju had this symbiotic relationship type of thing going on. They were complementing each other, feeding off one another. There was a lot of Chess going on with Fitchner/Ben and the KC defense. It really did appear that in the short and intermediate game that this offense for once was scheming players open, creating 'easy' free plays, and often times they developed into sizable chunk plays.

I wondered if the 2 TDs that Nix scored late last season would carry over into this offense with Fitchner now. I believe Fitchner was the one that got Rosie more involved late last season. In this game, I loved that he was the lead fullback on that one play, and that he was able to squirt through the line, and then pick up a nice lob from Ben and turn it into a beautiful 19 yard pass. That was totally designed for Nix. Every player on offense should be involved, leave no stone unturned. Other offenses include their fullbacks into the passing game, why have we been so reluctant to do so? Am I campaigning for Nix to catch 50 passes? No, but there isn't any reason why he can't have 15-20 over the course of a 16 game season. Nix's last two catches, one was for a TD against the Ravens last season and now his first catch this season went for 19 yards. No reason not to have a fullback who can do that involved in this offense moving forward. Get everybody worried about your big guns, your star players and then you cut the defense with the occasional big play to your FB.

You know what I find fascinating about the RBs this year? How collectively they are outperforming Bell.

Conner, 11 targets, 10 catches for 105 yards, 10.5 yards per catch. That one non catch along the sidelines? The one handed OBJ catch? That was damn impressive. Also Conner caught the 2 pointer from Ben as well.

Ridley, 1 target, 1 catch for 5 yards, Nix, 1 target, 1 catch for 19 yards.

Collectively? The RBs have been targeted 13 times and have 12 catches for 129 yards. They have produced catches of 22, 19, 19, 18, 15, and 12 yards. The RBs have produced, already in 2 games, 6 catches over 10+ yards. Bell last season had 24 10+ yard catches in 15 games. This RB group is on pace for 48 in a 16 game season, and they are averaging nearly 2.5 yards more per catch than Bell from last season.

[VigilantZombie]

3 hours ago, Dcash4 said:

Decoys don’t get 33 targets though. Seems more like a first year NFL playcaller assuming good players will get theirs.

It’s still hard to tell who Fitcher is though. A slopfest and a whacked flow game are not great barometers. 

I put the word decoy in quotations for a reason. That reason being I didnt mean it literal as in a true decoy but that in the sense he is going to see less yardage and receptions potentially because he is going to draw more coverage in the ways he is being used.

[3rivers]

4 hours ago, jebrick said:

You know what I find fascinating about the RBs this year? How collectively they are outperforming Bell.

nice post you had there.  They could continue to easily get nicer stats if we didn't end up with a 21-0 defect in quarter 1.  I was quite pist when we franchised him since I thought there were other options and I didn't believe we needed him like the media claims.  If the 2016 bell was around , I would reconsider, but that is history now. 

Too bad we got into the 21 point deficit last week, because Connor could have had a good game last week .  The bucs have improved their run D, or so it seemed .  Lets see what Fitch has in store to match Fitz.  

[jebrick]

If DeCastro can't go I think the run game suffers.  Finney might be an upgrade over Foster but Foster and Finney as your guards is a major down grade.

[Dcash4]

16 hours ago, wwhickok said:

I put the word decoy in quotations for a reason. That reason being I didnt mean it literal as in a true decoy but that in the sense he is going to see less yardage and receptions potentially because he is going to draw more coverage in the ways he is being used.

Brown has always drawn coverage -- that is not new to this year. You don't pay a guy $17M a year to be a distraction on the field. Working him into better situations helps everyone. If you motion him across a formation it allows Ben to see the coverage, the other team has to communicate the doubles and potentially even drop it, you can set up JuJu/Washington in 1 on 1 situations, you can give McDonald and Connor fantastic matchup odds. 

Simple things with AB drawing coverage can make life easier for AB, open up options for others, allow your offense to dictate coverage, and force communication (in hopes of breakdowns). Our defense is a first hand look at how bad communications destroys a team -- here we are with AB, a flexible option in JuJu, a flexible lineup guy in McDonald, and Bell/Connor who have both been pretty good out of the backfield -- and we line up and just play ball. There is so much damage we can do BEFORE the ball is snapped, but we choose to do nothing. 

The only thing we have seen Fitcher do so far is line AB up on the X outside. Its not forcing the defense to do anything. There is a difference between using AB to dictate coverage and its another to just push him to the side and hope the star is a star.