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Thoughts and Observations: Week 5 Raiders


WindyCity

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2 hours ago, JustAnotherFan said:

I don't have time tonight to get into this, but we need to separate Nagy's responsibilities as a head coach and play caller here for a moment when judging him right now because I feel like fans are combining both of them and passing judgment as head coach based on the offensive failures thus far. Hell, I may even be guilty of this from time to time.  

IMO, Nagy is a hell of a head coach who had a big hand in changing the culture and giving us fans real hope at a title for the first time since Lovie stated that beating the Packers were his first priority and we have lost 7 games in the last 2 years by less than 8 points.  Let's not forget that. 

However, he is not what we expected as a play caller so far. That said, we also need to remember that last year he had personal on the roster that didn't fit his running scheme and Mitch was NOT his pick at a QB as well. And all head coaches (especially those who are considered offensive minded coached) prefer to pick a QB of their choice who they believe fit their scheme the best. Mitch has the physical tools on paper to match Nagy's RPO but the mental tools and technique are not something you can teach over night and are a concern at this point. 

I don't believe he should get a pass for that. He took the job knowing Tru was here, Pace no doubt had developing him and installing an offense as two of Nagy's top priorities. Knowing that he jumped on this job rather than wait for one where he got to pick his QB, which there would have been a chance in the 2018 offseason or this last one. If Nagy stayed in KC he would definitely keep a massive appeal with Mahomes motoring on. Obviously they couldn't know a 50 TD MVP season was in store, but by then he knew Mahomes was special I'm sure. Him and Reid are both smart enough to see that.

 

As for losing 7 games by 8 or less points, that is true but there are 4 of those where the offense scored under 20 points. That says more about his offense occasionally being the reason why they are in tight games rather than taking them to a win. In his 2 seasons Nagy has won 8 games with the offense scoring under 20 points too, 2 this year and 6 last year.  Out of his 15 wins over half his offense has scored under 20 points. As an offensive mind that is big red flag to me. His win/loss ratio is massively supported to to the defense, not because his offense has been noteworthy.

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7 hours ago, JustAnotherFan said:

I don't have time tonight to get into this, but we need to separate Nagy's responsibilities as a head coach and play caller here for a moment when judging him right now because I feel like fans are combining both of them and passing judgment as head coach based on the offensive failures thus far. Hell, I may even be guilty of this from time to time.  

IMO, Nagy is a hell of a head coach who had a big hand in changing the culture and giving us fans real hope at a title for the first time since Lovie stated that beating the Packers were his first priority and we have lost 7 games in the last 2 years by less than 8 points.  Let's not forget that. 

However, he is not what we expected as a play caller so far. That said, we also need to remember that last year he had personal on the roster that didn't fit his running scheme and Mitch was NOT his pick at a QB as well. And all head coaches (especially those who are considered offensive minded coached) prefer to pick a QB of their choice who they believe fit their scheme the best. Mitch has the physical tools on paper to match Nagy's RPO but the mental tools and technique are not something you can teach over night and are a concern at this point. 

As long as he holds the play calling duties and the offense sucks it cannot be separated and he needs to be held accountable for the pathetic offense.

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19 hours ago, Nads786 said:

This is an interesting way to look at things. I've seen very good coaches fail at other organizations primarily because of a lack of talent. How good was Chuck Pagano's defense in Indy during his time here? I think you are expecting Nagy to create something out of nothing. 

He deserves heat for the following:

  • Switching Cody from center to guard - failure 
  • Inaccurately accessing the offensive line 
  • Putting too much on Mitch's plate when he isn't ready
  • Having the team unprepared for playing in London 

A) I think Daniels at center is 100% right move.  I think they should have done it last year which hurts us this year.  I think/suspect the failures for them this year are three fold 1) growing pain from position switch 2) poor player prep in off season (Whitehair was starting a family and Daniels went back to school) 3) bad o line coaching.  Nagy delegates coaching Olinemen to O line coach.  Ultimately on Nagy, but O line coach is one failing along with the players.  They both have regressed in fundamentals from last year to this year.  

B) It was clear O line was struggling in camp.  I can see working through Daniels and Whitehair, but Long should have never been starter. You have to make tough calls. You also have to work stunts if that is a problem.  That is 100% on Nagy for not recognizing and addressing the problem to date. 

C) I think Mitch didn't get too much on plate. I think he struggled under pressure  and just played poorly.  That's on Mitch and O line.  Nagy has no other option but to ride Mitch.  I think Mitch would have looked 10x better this year with better protection and we would be largely happy, but he still has not been good. 

D) I think team was prepared . They got hurt on Dline very early and got out physicaled led by a very physical O line.  Plus they were engaging and cutting, which is illegal. Oline and TEs have been whooped by everyone all year.  Nothing to do with prep.

 

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My take on how to move forward is this... 

The team needs to bring the hammer down and make sure the OL gets the damn message that this level of play won't be tolerated.... 

Kyle Long and Charles Leno have both been downright pathetic this year, and in an ideal world both should be benched until they get it together... 

But we don't really have a backup to Leno so my move this week is simply kick Long to IR or just outright CUT him (depending on what's better financially). 

The offense is better without him and we have Coward and Bars waiting in the wings... Or worst case scenario we can get a FA guard... It's the easiest spot on the line.  Long has been kind of the face of the offense for a while and I think that as a result, he's also the one where the"sit the hell down, we're not tolerating this level of play" message hits hardest to everyone else.

Next I bring Leno into a private meeting and tell him that he's got one week to get his *poop together, stop committing so many damn penalties and start playing like Tarzan instead of Jane before he gets his *butt* benched too. 

Those two are the majority of the issues right now with the OL, imo.... Swapping Whitehair and Daniels back to last year's spots is a situation I monitor going forward, but I'm not yet ready to pull the plug on it just yet, but I'd absolutely replace and be done with Long immediately, and absolutely put Leno on notice that he's on the edge of being replaced. Frankly the lack of an ideal backup to Leno is probably the only reason he wouldn't have already been benched if I where running the team and while I'm not sure that either Bars or Coward are going to be an overall improvement at LT since that's the hardest position to play on the line, at least Id be confident that they'd make an actual effort to not suck....which is more than I've seen out of Leno /Long this year. 

 

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On 10/8/2019 at 3:57 PM, Sugashane said:

This was my argument last year and it's only being magnified this year.

 

Though admittedly I was more than happy to give him more time but seeing this kind of regression and ineptitude is crazy.

During the off season I thought this about the offense also, I also thought he should be able to get the offense to progress from last season. So far it is a massive regression, one that I don't see changing but we'll see going forward.

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5 hours ago, Epyon said:

Frankly the lack of an ideal backup to Leno is probably the only reason he wouldn't have already been benched if I where running the team and while I'm not sure that either Bars or Coward are going to be an overall improvement at LT since that's the hardest position to play on the line, at least Id be confident that they'd make an actual effort to not suck....which is more than I've seen out of Leno /Long this year. 

 

I'm almost at the point of letting Coward start at RG and Coward at LT if they can get more push in the run game. Cowards passblicking can be aided by a TE like Shaheen or even Sowell chipping the EDGE into him. Takes a bit of concentrated effort there but might be able to exploit a time or two in playaction as well. Something has to change though. This isn't working. 

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13 minutes ago, Sugashane said:

I'm almost at the point of letting Coward start at RG and Coward at LT if they can get more push in the run game. Cowards passblicking can be aided by a TE like Shaheen or even Sowell chipping the EDGE into him. Takes a bit of concentrated effort there but might be able to exploit a time or two in playaction as well. Something has to change though. This isn't working. 

Coward might be a decent prospect but letting him start at two positions would be putting too much on his plate

;)

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Right now Bears are going nowhere which is a huge, huge disappointment after the excitement of offseason.

They have to get O line fixed if they want to salvage the season in some fashion.

Even if they do that the road is tough because with 3 of your top 5 DL out or hurting badly and something unknown wrong with your ILB (Smith) the defense is no longer invincible.  Your QB is going to be hurting the whole year even if he plays.

Things don't look good right now at all.  It's tough to say that when we haven't lost a game by much in a long time.  But its just the reality.

I think the O line is fixable, but you are going to have to through growing pains of new players.  And you can't really afford growing pains, but you can't afford to just keep status quo of suck either.  

Like when you have a mediocre veteran QB and a talented but mistake prone young QB.  Veteran QB can probably do okay in present, better often than young QB, but you are going nowhere in longer run.

Offense keeps stalling and frustration and complaining from within as well as without will start in earnest.  WRs cannot not complain.  It isn't in their nature for long.  RBs too.  It will feed on itself in a negative way and snowball.  

So here is what I would do:

  • Holtz is just a guy and nothing special, but right now he is playing harder and more physical than any TE on the roster.  He needs more playing time at expense of Burton and Shaheen.   Tell him what to do in huddle if you have to if he doesn't know, but play your best players.
  • Coward and/or Bars need to start getting reps at O line.  A fire needs to be lit as guys aren't getting it done.  RG needs to be replaced yesterday at the very least.  Long would never start another game for me starting 3 games ago at least.  Probably starting season.  If Leno keeps sucking then Bar would be breathing down his neck.   I think you have to ride Daniel and Whitehair even if they are playing subpar.   Massie too.  
  • Our O line coach needs to be second guessed and not left alone anymore.   He hasn't proven he can get the job done.  His decisions on personnel (if his) have not been the correct ones.   Whoever is making the calls needs to look in mirror and make different ones.  Insanity is doing same thing over and expecting different result.  Our O line (and TEs) have been a) heavily penalized, b) missed many pick ups and assignments and c) been out physicalled again and again.
  • Our receivers and Cohen are dropping too many balls.  I think that is anxiety to make something happen and isn't really something that can be fixed with coaching other than psychological coaching.  We need a do YOUR job mentality.  Stop worrying about everyone else.  

Bottom line is many guys have starting jobs in 2019 based off past performance, draft status or reputation and it isn't deserved this season.  

1) Long

2) Burton and Shaheen

3) Perhaps Leno.

4) Roquan Smith of late.

5) Maybe more with a deeper look.  Our QB if we had a legit option.   

Best players play in football if you want to win.   As a coach you have to make the hard choices or you bring in competition and make it real.   This isn't baseball where a guy with a huge contract can bat .100 for 4 months and you keep trotting him out there. 

The better more talented players will win their jobs back given opportunity, but you can't let them coast or regress.  Pressure in football is constant or it is for the better teams.  No exceptions.  

 

 

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18 minutes ago, Sugashane said:

NFL should be fining the hell out of OAK for all the times they cut Goldman while he was engaged. You can see he was even snapping at the refs for the no calls. The blocking was filthy.

Yes they were illegally blocking Goldman. I think they called chop blocking penalty on the Raiders one time in the game.

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On 10/9/2019 at 5:07 AM, Sugashane said:

I don't believe he should get a pass for that. He took the job knowing Tru was here, Pace no doubt had developing him and installing an offense as two of Nagy's top priorities. Knowing that he jumped on this job rather than wait for one where he got to pick his QB, which there would have been a chance in the 2018 offseason or this last one. If Nagy stayed in KC he would definitely keep a massive appeal with Mahomes motoring on. Obviously they couldn't know a 50 TD MVP season was in store, but by then he knew Mahomes was special I'm sure. Him and Reid are both smart enough to see that.

I'm not giving him a pass. I see your point here and I agree with the sentiment that Nagy knew what he had before he took the job and therefore, the onus is on him to make it work and it hasn't. That's on him, no doubt.

But did he really know what he had in Mitch? Or did he just assume that he could mask any deficiencies Mitch had with his play-calling by striping down his playbook for him and aligning Mitch with skill players to match it? This is a valid question.

Look, I have been very critical of Nagy's play-calling like the rest of you and rightfully so. It has been downright awful. Not counting the TNF game, this offense has scored a total of 52 TD's in the last 21 reg games which are good for T-17th in the league and at exactly the league average. Likewise, for the number of 3 and outs per drive percentage and both numbers are quickly dropping and are projected to be in the 24th range by seasons end at this rate. 

That's a far cry for a coach who is supposed to be an offensive genius. 

But, the reason why I ask this is that if you look at the route schemes in each game that Mitch has played, week by week, you will see how each route for every receiver is getting shorter and shorter as opposed to last year -- with the exception of clear out routes. Why is that? Other than maybe it's because Mitch doesn't feel comfortable enough in the pocket to go through his reads so Nagy is trying to adjust this by keeping things simple. Maybe even a little TOO simple (which I don't agree with either).

Last year, Nagy was confident enough to draw up mid to long-range schemes along the sidelines because I believe he genuinely thought Mitch could make those tight throws with regularity but he is slowly getting away from that with each game by substituting those with quick stick routes and screens based on Mitch's propensity to stare down one receiver after the snap. You can't draw up a long-developing route for a QB who is not able to use his eyes to draw the deep safety (or safeties) away from the play without it ending in an INT. 

This is a sign that Nagy does not trust Mitch to make certain throws that he expects him to make when he's drawing up a gameplan.

Bottom-line, everyone always likes to blame the coaches for everything and Nagy deserves all of the heat that he is taking for the lack of offense as a play-caller. It's well deserved. But We have seen Nagy call some genius play's that have worked wonders in real-time that have ended up working better than he probably expected and he is praised for those. But then there are other plays that SHOULD have been just as good but they don't because sometimes it really is just a matter of lack of execution by the players.

At this point, I don't think players on this offense are as good as he expected them to be. And let's be honest, they are not as good as some of us were expecting either.

I really need to get around to breaking down each play on here and post it -- even if it is only the pass game just to show it. I have so much going on right now though.

On 10/9/2019 at 9:36 AM, WindyCity said:

As long as he holds the play calling duties and the offense sucks it cannot be separated and he needs to be held accountable for the pathetic offense.

Held accountable for the offensives woes and as a play-caller, yes, absolutely. But even if he does turn out to be a bad OC it does not mean he is a bad HC.

Overall, right now, he is a good head coach. Some coaches are better suited for one singular position they can focus entirely on rather taking on multiple responsibilities and that may or not be the case with Nagy. We don't know yet. 

Was Philips better suited for a HC job or was he better suited for DC job? That's what I mean about separating the two.

 

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