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Is Ron Rivera washed up?


mar29020

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Seems like he wont make changes to a failing defense. Our defense gets toasted week after week and what is the change? Where do we go from here? Would you guys prefer to move on after this season or what would your approach be? I think Alex Smith covered up how bad we were last year. We are still a bad football team, Having an abysmal LB core is really rearing its ugly head this year imo and Landon Collins seems to be awful.

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Rivera is going nowhere for the remainder of his contract. Anyone suggesting otherwise is either not paying attention or has convinced themselves into being willfully blind.

Rivera is Danny's cover. After all the off-field stuff the last few years, he's the "Good guy cleaning up things on the field, in the locker room and in the Front Office." As long as he does an adequate job in trying to look like he's competent (and is just unlucky), he will serve out the entire 5 years.

Of course with some of the new stuff popping up that might be associated with him (re: his hires that are being investigated), that could change. But absent us going 0-17 for the next two years, this mediocrity is going to continue being on our sidelines.

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Maybe he is just going blind? :)

Seriously, Rivera is a disaster right now.  I expect the coordinators to be making in game adjustments and adjusting game to game per game planning.  But I expect the head coach to initiate systemic adjustments when needed.  5 games, the same problems and no real change.  He preaches competition but sits by and lets guys show themselves exposed week after week and doesn't bench them.  He sees players constantly out of position, but sticks with the same style scheme.  While wearing his GM hat, he signs guys who are adept at one style of play and then lets his coordinator use him in another manner.  I am sorry, but at some point (and at 5 games that point has been well past), this isn't on Del Rio, it is on Rivera.  The best coaches adjust to their conditions.  

Sadly, somehow Scott Turner is actually looking like a better coordinator than Del Rio.  Rivera is a defensive coach.  Time to step up.  You are throwing away the season Rivera by sitting on your hands watching this train wreck and refusing to make an adjustment.

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9 hours ago, taylor made said:

He's not washed up but he needs to be on the hot-seat after this year. The problem is he is also the de-facto GM and has way too much power. 

He had a decent off-season last year but this year all his moves have backfired. Bringing in Hurney and Mayhew is accepting mediocrity. 

This is why many of us argued against the coach-centered approach. Absent BB, it does not work 

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He’s not washed up. He was just never that good to begin with. He was on the verge of being fired multiple times in Carolina. Cam Newton saved him for the majority of his time there and when Cam started to break down they started to lose. Guice basically made them look like a JV team. 

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I hinted, maybe even flat out said that Alex Smith was one of the main reasons our season turned around last year. It’s not just that he was more efficient as a passer than Haskins & Allen, it was the leadership and knowledge that he brought to the offense, the team and how driven he was to prove the doubters wrong who thought he’d never take another snap behind center again - including Ron Rivera who, if what Alex said was true about last offseason and I have no reason to believe Alex would lie about that.

I don’t think that Rivera is washed up, but I do believe he needs to make changes to personnel on defense & on offense they have to get Heinicke to take the open shorter routes sometimes instead of always pushing it downfield when first downs are available right in front of him.
 

Rivera absolutely has to bench Collins & McCain for the safeties we started last year who may not have been flashy but knew their assignments, followed their assignments and did their jobs to the best of their abilities. Collins & McCain certainly have more physical gifts than Curl, Everrett and Reaves, but Curl, Everrett and Reaves were smarter, knew the calls and the defense better, had better recognition and executed better on everything from coverage to just fundamental tackling.

There’s absolutely ZERO reason that Jeremy Reaves shouldn’t be our starting FS this year. He played well enough last year to earn that spot and the more I see McCain play, I have to imagine that he was just given the FS job bc he was a veteran that they signed in free agency bc he sure hasn’t earned his spot on this team let alone starting spot on this defense, and the same goes for Landon Collins.
 

Collins can’t cover in space, he can’t cover deep and he doesn’t getting deep enough in his drops if they play him as a true SS or as a hybrid S/dime LB. The only thing Collins seems to be good at is being an unblocked freed up strong safety who can fill from 10 yards deep as a run stuffer, but the NFL has changed in the last 5 years so that kind of safety isn’t needed anymore. Today even a SS has to be at least average in coverage and that’s not Collins.

I think the way to make this defense better is for Rivera to bench Collins & McCain and if they won’t accept it, then he needs to cut them. Their mistakes and awful coverage where they don’t even know what to do in their zones or whey are responsible for is inexcusable. YOU CAN NOT BE THE DEEP SAFETY AND LET ANYONE BEHIND YOU!! Apke got benched for that last year, and it’s time that Collins and McCain get benched for it too.

Beyond that, they need to have Jamin Davis on the field with Holcomb for 100% of the defensive snaps. They also need to start Khaleke Hudson at WLB and when we have 3 LBs on the field - which is like a 3rd of the game - Hudson needs to be on there with Davis & Holcomb. 
 

I think simply making our defense line up look like this will improve it w/o even making major changes to the scheme:

RDE: Sweat, Toohill

DT: Allen, Settle

NT: Payne, Ioannidis 

LDE: Young, JSW

SLB: Holcomb, Norris

MLB: Jamin Davis, Mayo

WLB: Hudson, Kunaszyk

RCB: St. juste

LCB: WJ3

SLOT: Fuller

SS: Curl, (Collins or McCain)

If they don’t want to be a back up here, cut them or trade them for peanuts & then bring up the rookie Darrick Forrest to back up Curl & play special teams.

FS: Everrett or Reaves

Someone suggested when they called into the Team 980 this morning that maybe Belichick would trade a late round draft pick to get Landon Collins bc we’ve already paid most of his salary and his guaranteed $ and then we could get back a late round pick. That could be good for Collins, bc Belichick is creative enough to know how to use Collins as a true box S/WLB and never put him in deep coverage.

As for the offense, I honestly don’t think anything is wrong with our offensive scheme. Our OL is solid, we run the ball well - maybe not enough, especially in the redzone but, we do run the ball effectively and we have open Receivers on every play. What we need is for Heinicke to be more consistent & to make better decisions/not force things downfield when they aren’t there and instead sometimes play like Alex Smith when there’s a guy wide open for 5-10 yards who can move the chains bc the goal is to move the ball down the field, not just throw up yolo balls every quarter to see if our guy can get it.

Taylor is a smart guy, he needs to learn to take what the D is giving him sometimes instead of trying to get us the lead back in just one play which, it seems like he does too often.

We should’ve won yesterday. We shouldn’t have given up the long TD pass where Collins blew the deep coverage. We shouldn’t have given up the Hail Mary and Scotty should’ve run the ball more in the Redzone in the first half like he did in the 2nd half, and of course Heinicke should’ve been better in the Redzone/more accurate/made better decisions.

We should’ve beaten the Saints 35-20. 

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