Where Is The Pressure On Fields Coming From......

[soulman]

8 hours ago, Madmike90 said:

I think at times we all get bogged down with Power vs. Zone blocking...the truth is basically every team in the NFL do both...like I said Baltimore, Tampa, Dallas & Cleveland who are the best OL in the NFL use both schemes and do so with big physical linemen...we don't have that inside...Daniels might be listed in the 320lbs but I doubt he is that heavy and doesn't play that strong...same with Mustipher to an even worse extent...Whitehair I would suggest is actually under 300lbs...he looks tiny in his uniform...we need to get bigger and more physical and I think the picks of Jenkins & Borom show that...both are good athletes who could play in both schemes but more importantly both are physical and tough...no one runs the Gibbs zone scheme any more where all the linemen were expected to be under 300lbs...look at Kubiack in Minny...entire line are big physical guys...the game has moved on and we have to change our OL to one that can run elements of both schemes which would also really help the backs due to the fact teams don't know what's coming their way.

That much I agree with but the rest I do not.  Certainly not Whitehairs weight or Daniels or that no one runs Alex Gibbs zone schemes any longer.  That's like saying the screen pass is passe'.  No uses screen passes anymore.

In the '90s 320lb OL were rare.  Today they're not.  You can run zone blocking schemes with 320lb OL.  In fact if you watch some game vids you'll see we use a lot of it now that Lazor is calling plays again.  It's what's opened up our run game and we even use it in pass protection at times.

I'm gonna leave this here Mike.  We seem to have a different point of view I don't believe can be reconciled.

[Madmike90]

2 hours ago, soulman said:

That much I agree with but the rest I do not.  Certainly not Whitehairs weight or Daniels or that no one runs Alex Gibbs zone schemes any longer.  That's like saying the screen pass is passe'.  No uses screen passes anymore.

In the '90s 320lb OL were rare.  Today they're not.  You can run zone blocking schemes with 320lb OL.  In fact if you watch some game vids you'll see we use a lot of it now that Lazor is calling plays again.  It's what's opened up our run game and we even use it in pass protection at times.

I'm gonna leave this here Mike.  We seem to have a different point of view I don't believe can be reconciled.

As much as we disagree I can see where you are coming from with your point...hell your point used to be my view as well...

I am fully aware that the zone plays we are running are helping our run game no end...I just think it would be helped even more with bigger more physical linemen running it compared to what we have just now which is a soft and IMO undersized...

The one thing we can agree on is we both hope whatever we do with the OL we hope it is as successful as possible.

[soulman]

3 hours ago, Madmike90 said:

As much as we disagree I can see where you are coming from with your point...hell your point used to be my view as well...

I am fully aware that the zone plays we are running are helping our run game no end...I just think it would be helped even more with bigger more physical linemen running it compared to what we have just now which is a soft and IMO undersized...

The one thing we can agree on is we both hope whatever we do with the OL we hope it is as successful as possible.

But they're not little mini OL guys.  Look at the roster.

Alex Bars: 334lbs

Larry Borom: 333lbs

James Daniels: 327lbs

Sam Mustipher: 332lbs

Jason Peters: 328lbs

Cody Whitehair: 316lbs

Elijah Wilkinson: 322lbs

Germain Ifedi: 344lbs

Teven Jenkins: 321lbs

The OL averages 328lbs.  That's not small and they are a whole lot bigger than the Bronco OL in the '90s that averaged less than 300lbs.  If you have bigger OL how much less athletic might they be.  OTs need to be athletic and have quick feet or speed will eat them alive.  Aaron Donald is only 280lbs yet he eats bigger slower OG for lunch and spits out their bones.  Bigger doesn't necessarily mean stronger either.

I'd make an educated guess that size wise our OL is at least average or possible slightly bigger than average.  I still believe the problem comes from Nagy's insistence on convoluted schemes his OL either don't get or can't execute will and his constantly moving guys around from one position to another because he believes they can play everywhere equally well.  It's much easier to replace one HC than nine OL.

[JAF-N72EX]

22 hours ago, soulman said:

This is what I've taken to calling Nagy's Coaching Carousel of the OL.

Initially Daniels had neither the size/strength or experience needed to play OC at an NFL level.  But he was only 20 years old and still developing physically.  According to his rookie measurables he weighed 305lbs and that may even have been gracious.  Now at age 24 he weighs 325lbs and while it's possible he may have eventually grown into the position Whitehair had the current experience and ability to take over at OC and did.

Basically Daniels at LG with Whitehair at OC worked.

We lost Daniels to that pec injury in 2020 but when he returned this year it was at RG with Whitehair moving back to LG and Mustipher at OC where he never been more than barely adequate at best.  Daniels was playing his best at LG when he got injured and then gets moved again to the RG spot this year and after just 9 games some are so set against him they don't believe we should extend him?  Gimme a break....or at least give him a break.  In fact the entire interior of the OL should catch a break from playing musical chair OGs and OC.

Whenever I've gotten lost in something my course of action has always been to go back to the point at which I wasn't lost.  The point at which it was all working as planned.  So....now that Borom can start and apparently hold his own why not return to what worked?  Next week, move Whitehair back to OC, Daniels to LG, Ifedi or Bars plays RG and Borom plays RT with Peters at LT.  By now there is no excuse for keeping Mustipher as a starter.  He added bulk and muscle in the offseason yet he still can't handle size and power.  He's a backup caliber guy and no more.

If the objective of any OL is to play your 5 best guys, and Nagy has always agreed with that, then Mustipher has to be the odd man out and it's not as if we screwed without him since Whitehair has played as many or more games at OC as he has OG.  This along with several other personnel decisions is what makes no sense.  Why are guys who have proven some ability to get more snaps sitting while guys who should be sitting are starting?  IMHO this is just one more reason why Matt Nagy should lose his job.  He has never put his teams in the best position to win.

I think Daniels had the intangibles to play center right out the gate (albeit going through a learning phase) and would have eventually been good. But we'll never know because they kept moving him which only hurts his development. I wasn't mad at him moving to LG at all (especially since we were in dire need of a guard and knew Kyle Long was leaving). So moving him to LG...fine. But what I didn't get was why they spent so much time developing Whitehair at C, and actually did some good there, and then turned around and moved him too?! Pick and choose and go with it.

I have to believe Whitehair and Daniels would both be top players at their positions by now if Nagy had just let well enough alone.

Constantly moving OL players around is not how you develop them. Atleast not with starters anyhow. Backups or swing tackles......fine.....you want versatility in the event of an injury....I get it. But not the future cornerstones of your OL.

 

Quote

Next week, move Whitehair back to OC, Daniels to LG, Ifedi or Bars plays RG and Borom plays RT with Peters at LT.  By now there is no excuse for keeping Mustipher as a starter.  He added bulk and muscle in the offseason yet he still can't handle size and power.  He's a backup caliber guy and no more.

Yes, please and for the love that's all that holy....keep them there!! And I'm not a big fan of Bars either. But again, I'm even against using Mustipher at RG in heavy sets. Send out Bars to play outside and move Mustipher in his place inside. This kills 2 birds with one stone. You remove the weakest link from the OL (Mustipher) while also seeing if he is possibly good enough to be a future backup guard.

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Daniels was playing his best at LG when he got injured and then gets moved again to the RG spot this year and after just 9 games some are so set against him they don't believe we should extend him?  Gimme a break....or at least give him a break.  In fact the entire interior of the OL should catch a break from playing musical chair OGs and OC.

I'm not one of those of those people (not saying you did, just stating). I'm with you 100% on this. We need to keep Whitehair and Daniels. Those two are the only 2 starting OL players I would be truly upset about leaving. Both are still good players despite being dealt a bad hand in terms of development (I.e moved around).

Fields needs experienced vets and most of all stability at OL. And finding just one of them at any position is hard as it is much less finding two more.

 

 

[JAF-N72EX]

On 11/12/2021 at 3:23 PM, Madmike90 said:

I like Daniels...I have always been one of his biggest fans around here...but for me he is going backwards in his development right now...I completely agree with you that he is getting a raw deal playing between Mustipher and what we had at RT before Borom but for me he is a zone guard above all else and unless we hire someone like Kevin O'Connell as a head coach I think a zone team come and offer him more money than we should be winning to pay if we want to be a power scheme team.

Nagy already runs a zone scheme. He doens't run a power scheme at all and never has. One in a while he may run a variation of inside zone that may look like a power scheme when it's really just a variant (i.e "duo", "lock", "insert") but that's about the extent of it. And quite frankly I don't think he should either since we don't have the personnel to pull it off. Mainly at C, the TE position, and neither Daniels or Whitehair are fit to be pullers IMO (MAYBE Daniels but we haven't seen him doing it enough to judge it either because it's usually Whitehair being used as the pull guard).

Now that's not to say Nagy doesn't ever call power scheme based plays because he does (just like every other coach) but it's few far in-between and it has never shown to be successful either. He tried it in 2018 with a better OL than we have now and it still didn't work. He called 27 plays from a PS in 2018 and we only averaged 2.9 yards per play, and 6 of those 27 plays came in week 1 against the Packers.

I don't have time tonight but I'll get more into this later.

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by JAF-N72EX

[Madmike90]

7 hours ago, soulman said:

But they're not little mini OL guys.  Look at the roster.

Alex Bars: 334lbs

Larry Borom: 333lbs

James Daniels: 327lbs

Sam Mustipher: 332lbs

Jason Peters: 328lbs

Cody Whitehair: 316lbs

Elijah Wilkinson: 322lbs

Germain Ifedi: 344lbs

Teven Jenkins: 321lbs

The OL averages 328lbs.  That's not small and they are a whole lot bigger than the Bronco OL in the '90s that averaged less than 300lbs.  If you have bigger OL how much less athletic might they be.  OTs need to be athletic and have quick feet or speed will eat them alive.  Aaron Donald is only 280lbs yet he eats bigger slower OG for lunch and spits out their bones.  Bigger doesn't necessarily mean stronger either.

I'd make an educated guess that size wise our OL is at least average or possible slightly bigger than average.  I still believe the problem comes from Nagy's insistence on convoluted schemes his OL either don't get or can't execute will and his constantly moving guys around from one position to another because he believes they can play everywhere equally well.  It's much easier to replace one HC than nine OL.

There is no way IMO those guys weigh that much...just look at their body compositions...look at Mustipher the next tine he stands next to Peters...it is clear who is the bigger guy...not only that but lets say they do weigh that much...where is the strength? Where is the explosive power? These guys are doing a good job in the run game but what about their ability to hold their ground in pass pro? They are consistently going back the way because again they are soft and undersized.

[Sugashane]

9 hours ago, Madmike90 said:

There is no way IMO those guys weigh that much...just look at their body compositions...look at Mustipher the next tine he stands next to Peters...it is clear who is the bigger guy...not only that but lets say they do weigh that much...where is the strength? Where is the explosive power? These guys are doing a good job in the run game but what about their ability to hold their ground in pass pro? They are consistently going back the way because again they are soft and undersized.

Yeah, I'd argue the numbers are pumped up too.

I'm not as concerned about weight as play style and play strength. Borom often plays like a 330+ IMO but still seems to need to get his timing for some of his punches (completely understandable), and Peters at times looks like he is the Peters from 5-10 years ago but who else remotely plays like they're bigger and stronger than the defender they're lined up on?

Kreutz was under 300 but was stronger and more physical than anyone on our OL right now (unless we are going back to prime Peters but still). He could anchor better than most guys 30 pounds heavier than him. Ruban Brown was around 300 but was a serious physical presence. Long at 315 was way more physical than most at 330. There's more to being physical than weight, and there is a dramatic difference between good weight and bad weight being utilized. But to me the most underrated trait is mindset. Kreutz, Brown, Long, and Peters all have shown the desire to bury people consistently. That's why at one time they were great. I want to see someone come in and force that physicality in our OL.

[soulman]

20 hours ago, JAF-N72EX said:

I have to believe Whitehair and Daniels would both be top players at their positions by now if Nagy had just let well enough alone.

As do I and although I have little respect for John Fox's efforts as the Bears HC it was Fox who I believe correctly identified OC as being Whitehairs best position as a pro.  Fox who by the time he'd been hired by us had pretty much checked out of the game but he surely had enough experience to recognize talent and how that talent should be used.

Then along comes Matt Nagy and he coaches his OL like he's someone's wife who has an obsession with rearranging the living room furniture once a month.  I don't think there's any question that has hurt their development.  Both have shown signs of being very good football players if permitted to settle into one positions and remain there.

All players make mistakes but if they're any good after a time they clean up those mistakes and "own" their position.  Each time you move them they now have even more mistakes to clean up at a new position and on it goes.  IMHO that's not the correct way to build a cohesive Pro Bowl level OL or OLineman yet that's what Nagy has done.

Edited November 15, 2021 by soulman

[soulman]

17 hours ago, Madmike90 said:

There is no way IMO those guys weigh that much...just look at their body compositions...look at Mustipher the next tine he stands next to Peters...it is clear who is the bigger guy...not only that but lets say they do weigh that much...where is the strength? Where is the explosive power? These guys are doing a good job in the run game but what about their ability to hold their ground in pass pro? They are consistently going back the way because again they are soft and undersized.

I'm going by how the Bears have them listed and if it came down to it my guess is Peters weighs far more than 328lbs.  He looks as big as Ifedi and he's also 2" taller than Mustipher.  As for the rest I guess you'll have to ask the Bears for some proof because I don't have it.

Strength is an issue but then so it technique.  I would have thought that Castillo could have created a more technically sound bunch than we're seeing but other than Mustipher are Whitehair and Daniels getting beat by bull rushers or are they giving up pressures to stunts or because the line calls are wrong for the fronts they're facing?  That's Mustipher's job.  Is he doing it correctly?  I don't know that either but it's a factor.

Whitehair is a naturally strong farm boy type who I believe should be playing OC.  He has very good technique and he can handle bigger NTs. I also know that the difference in how Daniels looked when he showed up for camp in 2020 was massively different than how he looked in 2019 and even he commented on it.  He's put in some serious work on weights and was at least 15-20lbs heavier than he'd been prior to that.

So if those weights are off IMHO they aren't off by much except possibly for Peters who looked to me to be a little heavier but then I'm not standing there at a weigh in.  I've seen guys who I thought weighed 230-240 that turned out to weigh 260lbs.  My jam buddies son is an example. He was a college OC at Northern Colorado and spent a couple of camps with the Broncos before he quit football.

He's about 6'3 or 6'4" and looks like a LB or a TE.  He told me he played at 280lbs in college and is still 260lbs and there's not an ounce of fat on him anywhere.  So does muscle weigh more than fat?  I don't know but I do know a really pumped up guy can actually be carrying more solid mass than he looks like he's carrying.  The football guys and an OL like Windy can answer this better than I can Mike.

Edited November 15, 2021 by soulman

[JAF-N72EX]

Guessing the weight and size of a football player in pads is not any better than guessing some random persons size on the street. How many times have any of you talked to someone and came away surprised with much they actually weighed? I know I have.

Point is, so many players change weight so many times that its hard to pin point how much they actually weigh. It's a guessing game. And websites and television are no help either. Websites can give a you a rough guide but that's it. Television can give you well....practically nothing....because of camera angles and they're in pads.

Edited November 17, 2021 by JAF-N72EX