GDT Week 8 TNF Edition: The GOAT vs. Ryan Succop

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

14 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

Making sweeping generalizations of what a team can and can't do based on a Thursday night road game is ill advised. The games are always slop, I'm grateful we played a dominant second half and came out with a win. 

Well it's not like we've been able to pass the ball effectively the last 4 weeks, either. It's just that this week we appear to have clearly gameplanned and emphasized passing the ball against a weakened secondary and we completely failed to do so.

Teams know how effective we are when we stick to our identity, but once we're away from that, just like in 2019 and 2018, we struggle.

[DreamKid]

We all know Madubuike's pedigree at this point, but how about Broderick Washington? I'm not going to call it a pure double, but splitting a Shaq Mason block where he's being helped by Tristan Wirfs is beyond legit. Add in the what... three PDs?... bro had himself a nice night. Scrappy young player on the rise for us. Our DI room is crazy right now. 

 

[Ray Reed]

5 minutes ago, DreamKid said:

We all know Madubuike's pedigree at this point, but how about Broderick Washington? I'm not going to call it a pure double, but splitting a Shaq Mason block where he's being helped by Tristan Wirfs is beyond legit. Add in the what... three PDs?... bro had himself a nice night. Scrappy young player on the rise for us. Our DI room is crazy right now. 

 

Madubuike/Washington/Jones (Pierce?) the next 3ish years is a very good group. Even Mack on the PS is a player. Feel like we can focus our energy now on defensive drafting on corners and ILBs and not even have to bother with S/DL outside of the occasional late round flier

[DreamKid]

4 minutes ago, Ray Reed said:

Madubuike/Washington/Jones (Pierce?) the next 3ish years is a very good group. Even Mack on the PS is a player. Feel like we can focus our energy now on defensive drafting on corners and ILBs and not even have to bother with S/DL outside of the occasional late round flier

Agree, short of some crazy BPA situation similar to Buike & Jones both still being available in the 3rd- I don't see us hitting DI early. 

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

34 minutes ago, DreamKid said:

We all know Madubuike's pedigree at this point, but how about Broderick Washington? I'm not going to call it a pure double, but splitting a Shaq Mason block where he's being helped by Tristan Wirfs is beyond legit. Add in the what... three PDs?... bro had himself a nice night. Scrappy young player on the rise for us. Our DI room is crazy right now. 

 

I love that we're back to having a strong interior DL with quality depth.

[diamondbull424]

2 hours ago, Ray Reed said:

Just watched the rebroadcast on amazon. I legit think Andrews going out snapped Lamar out of a funk. He couldn’t just rely on spamming double covered prayer throws to Andrews in the 2nd half and he looked a lot more precise.

I had the exact same analysis watching the game on DVR.

I think the other thing is that Roman FINALLY got Lamar some easy throws to get into a rhythm. Lamar is a rhythm thrower IMO and so when he connects on a few passes he starts to get into a groove.

Its like in basketball when certain players will “get to the free throw line” when struggling, so they can see some baskets go into the rim to get into a groove.

Roman usually just sort of expects Lamar to spin it and calls plays that he wants to call vs taking into account his personnel and how to best gameplan for his personnel.

Those short passes to Robinson were easy short gimmes that I also think got Lamar some confidence and then from there his playmaking instincts took over.

If Roman could do a better job of scheming up the running game through the passing game (Buffalo does that very well and he should copy, cheat, & steal) to get Lamar some cheap completions for rhythm, as well understand his personnel, he’d be a great OC.

However I think too often he’ll call plays that “work” but aren’t properly executed because he doesn’t take into account the energy of the squad. Which is possibly because he’s up in the booth.

[AngusMcFife]

2 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

Well it's not like we've been able to pass the ball effectively the last 4 weeks, either. It's just that this week we appear to have clearly gameplanned and emphasized passing the ball against a weakened secondary and we completely failed to do so.

Teams know how effective we are when we stick to our identity, but once we're away from that, just like in 2019 and 2018, we struggle.

It was a slow start, but we were moving the ball effectively through the air from the 2nd quarter on. We didn't score in the 2nd quarter due to drives messed up by penalties, a 4th down miss, and a missed FG. 

Lamar's passer rating for the game was 104.9, mostly without Andrews and Bateman. I'll take that all day. 

I understand the criticism but think this offense has awesome upside once Andrews and Bateman are healthy, Stanley is playing every snap at LT, and Gus and Dobbins come back.

Last game was the first game that our WR screen game was really popping. If we establish that, it will free up the middle of the field even more for Andrews. I think that is pretty encouraging.  

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

28 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

It was a slow start, but we were moving the ball effectively through the air from the 2nd quarter on. We didn't score in the 2nd quarter due to drives messed up by penalties, a 4th down miss, and a missed FG. 

Lamar's passer rating for the game was 104.9, mostly without Andrews and Bateman. I'll take that all day. 

I understand the criticism but think this offense has awesome upside once Andrews and Bateman are healthy, Stanley is playing every snap at LT, and Gus and Dobbins come back.

Last game was the first game that our WR screen game was really popping. If we establish that, it will free up the middle of the field even more for Andrews. I think that is pretty encouraging.  

Keep in mind this offense was at it's best in 4 weeks once Andrews was not on the field for lamar to tunnel vision, as others have alluded to.

I'd like to think this offense has great upside once those guys return, but it is notable that Lamar has been fixating on Andrews at the expense of the actual offense, so I have my skepticism.

Regardless, we will likely not see him for the NO game and then we have a BYE, so it'll be at least 2 weeks until we see something worth discussing with this offense and it's potential improvement.

[Ray Reed]

2 hours ago, diamondbull424 said:

I had the exact same analysis watching the game on DVR.

I think the other thing is that Roman FINALLY got Lamar some easy throws to get into a rhythm. Lamar is a rhythm thrower IMO and so when he connects on a few passes he starts to get into a groove.

Its like in basketball when certain players will “get to the free throw line” when struggling, so they can see some baskets go into the rim to get into a groove.

Roman usually just sort of expects Lamar to spin it and calls plays that he wants to call vs taking into account his personnel and how to best gameplan for his personnel.

Those short passes to Robinson were easy short gimmes that I also think got Lamar some confidence and then from there his playmaking instincts took over.

If Roman could do a better job of scheming up the running game through the passing game (Buffalo does that very well and he should copy, cheat, & steal) to get Lamar some cheap completions for rhythm, as well understand his personnel, he’d be a great OC.

However I think too often he’ll call plays that “work” but aren’t properly executed because he doesn’t take into account the energy of the squad. Which is possibly because he’s up in the booth.

Agree with a lot of this.

I just wanna squash this dumb beef right now. I was super frustrated with the team (especially as a season ticket holder and watching all of our collapses in person) and I let that get the best of me the last month or so. 

I think you bring a lot to this forum and really respect your football eye. This goes for wacky as well. You guys were optimistic when i was pessimistic and the long and short of it is we’re all ravens fans and I want you guys to be right when it comes down to it. Hoping we can all move forward and cheer on hopefully a ravens deep playoff run together. 

Apologies and nothing but good will moving forward.

[wackywabbit]

1 hour ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

Keep in mind this offense was at it's best in 4 weeks once Andrews was not on the field for lamar to tunnel vision, as others have alluded to.

I actually think Lamar's vision is one of his biggest strengths and the Andrews offense is a coaching/scheme issue. Unscientifically, when I watch the Ravens offense compared to any other around the league, I very rarely am able to say "throw to that open guy" in the real time of the play or even a second watch. There are very few viable targets per snap versus the average offense.

If you follow Nate Tice and others who know this stuff on twitter, they regularly calls out how a lot of the Ravens route combinations end up looking dumb on replay (often a bunch of of people in the same spot) because the offensive play is just Mark Andrews wander to wherever he feels will be an opening, regardless of what the other routes on the play are. No one else bothers to run their route correctly in those plays.

My deep belief is that if we ever just put Lamar in a standard offense (60+% 11 personnel) it would totally kill this narrative about how the Ravens and Greg Roman were some divine grace to Lamar and they bent over backwards to build some genius system to adapt to him and what he supposedly can't do. Like every receiver who came and left this team is STILL calling out the scheme and saying that Lamar is not the problem. Hollywood literally yesterday was doing it even though apparently his a Cardinal. How often do we see WRs throw QBs under the bus vs the scheme? Maybe we should believe professional route runners know what they are talking about.

 

Edited October 29, 2022 by wackywabbit

[DreamKid]

Unless our OL is totally overwhelmed or we're going up against some special once every couple years type defense, there's never any justification for an OC to field an offense that looks much worse than what we saw in the 2nd half of that Bucs game. That's how dynamic and special Lamar is.

In that 2nd half he was still not overly accurate and didn't look close to peak Lamar, but was able to make the necessary throws, facilitate a productive running attack, and deliver dynamism with his legs. That's close to the bare minimum we should always get so long as Lamar is healthy and we're fielding a competent OL. Anything less is totally unacceptable and totally on the OC imo. 

Crafting a productive offense around Lamar is not hard, it's harder to find a way to not move the ball with him at QB. Roman shouldn't be applauded for 'opening up the playbook' or 'getting creative with weapons like Duvernay'- he should be reprimanded for not doing it earlier. Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers booted what...? 3 first round picks for Trey Lance because they got hard thinking about all the different and creative things they could do with such a potentially dynamic talent at QB if he develops. Yet we actually have that kind of proven talent, and are conditioned to throw praise G RO's way if he throws some new wrinkle into the running game or actually makes use of Lamar and our other weapons' abilities 😂.

Roman is the issue and should be first on the chopping block, no way around it.