Week 5 thoughts

[Mid Iowa]

Well, there's no arguing with a shutout. I don't care how crappy a team is, shutting anyone out is a great feat, and clearly our defense was on point!

I wasn't able to watch the game, and I won't have time to watch the replay, so I'm going to take ya'lls word for how things went.

I know we were much more run heavy, even before we hit garbage time, I looked and I think we were at like 18 rushing attempts and 21 passing attempts, and obviously kept that going to finish off the clock. Unfortunately we only averaged a little over 3 yards per carry, which isn't great.

What did you see?

[JMG5]

OFFENSE

-The offensive line is improving, especially Penning. Hurst is still the weakest link and Peat needs to replace him when healthy. 

-The offensive playcalling was better. We used motion, finally. We ran to the outside more often and eventually used some play action, which worked well. I'm still skeptical, but Pete can build off of this.

-Juwan Johnson needs to get healthy. We need more from our TE. Juwan can actually get separation, unlike Jimmy and Moreau.

-Carr was solid. Could've been better, but he didn't make any big mistakes and played within the flow of the game. 

-Too many penalties. Gotta clean that up. We killed a lot of drives by getting a hold of a false start.

-This was against a beat up, deflated team. I want to see us actually score against a competent defense.

 

DEFENSE

-Adebo isn't fully healthy yet. He looked a little slow coming back from the hamstring.

-DLine showed up for the first time in 2 weeks against a weak OLine.

-Secondary as a whole played well, but this is one of the worst WR corps in the league. They were expected to play well. 

-Our LBs are amazing. Davis and Werner are a great duo. I wish Davis could play forever.

-The Patriots have a terrible offense. I'm happy with a shutout, but they were horrendous on Sunday.

 

SPECIAL TEAMS

-Grupe looks good. Multiple kicks from 50+ on the road is a great performance, especially with the weird wind conditions in that stadium. 

-Still not a huge fan of Hedley. He just doesn't have the consistency you want from the position, but he played better this game.

 

 

[Kingram]

My only takeaway is remember how many Raiders fans said Jimmy G was Sn upgrade over Carr?

 

like I’ve been saying… grass isn’t always greener

[JMG5]

Underhill is super down on Penning. I'm going to be honest, all I've been focusing on is his pass blocking and that has improved. Haven't noticed that we aren't running to his side often and that he's struggling to be effective in the run game. I don't think they need to make a change because we don't really have any better option, but it's discouraging that the one thing he was supposed to be good at he is having the hardest time with. Hopefully with more reps he improves like he's done in the passing game.

[Dome]

On 10/9/2023 at 12:26 PM, JMG5 said:

Still not a huge fan of Hedley. He just doesn't have the consistency you want from the position, but he played better this game.

Hedley has two punts…

 

1) what an Aussie legend, awesome control of the ball 

 

or 

 

2) what the **** was that my grandmother could’ve done that 

[Mid Iowa]

On 10/11/2023 at 8:00 PM, JMG5 said:

Underhill is super down on Penning. I'm going to be honest, all I've been focusing on is his pass blocking and that has improved. Haven't noticed that we aren't running to his side often and that he's struggling to be effective in the run game. I don't think they need to make a change because we don't really have any better option, but it's discouraging that the one thing he was supposed to be good at he is having the hardest time with. Hopefully with more reps he improves like he's done in the passing game.

When have we had a good run blocking line? Our run game hasn't been very good for the past 5 years (3 years of about 1300 yards for the year, and a 1400, and 1500 year in that span). This season we're at 486 and only 3 TDs, so we're on track to do a bit better than 1600 yards, so that's improvement over the last 5 seasons. So we're currently 18th in the league in rushing yards, and 21st in TDs.

Frankly, our entire offense is abysmal. We're in the bottom 1/3 of the league in almost all stats relating to offense. Our defense is why we're at 3-2, where we could easily be a 1-4 team right now.

Summary, you can't pin all this on Penning. The whole line is struggling. Thank God we have Carmichael.

[JMG5]

1 hour ago, Mid Iowa said:

When have we had a good run blocking line? Our run game hasn't been very good for the past 5 years (3 years of about 1300 yards for the year, and a 1400, and 1500 year in that span). This season we're at 486 and only 3 TDs, so we're on track to do a bit better than 1600 yards, so that's improvement over the last 5 seasons. So we're currently 18th in the league in rushing yards, and 21st in TDs.

Frankly, our entire offense is abysmal. We're in the bottom 1/3 of the league in almost all stats relating to offense. Our defense is why we're at 3-2, where we could easily be a 1-4 team right now.

Summary, you can't pin all this on Penning. The whole line is struggling. Thank God we have Carmichael.

Oh, I know. Just pointing out what I read after praising Penning's improvement. We have flaws everywhere.

[jcvoodoo]

16 hours ago, Mid Iowa said:

When have we had a good run blocking line? Our run game hasn't been very good for the past 5 years (3 years of about 1300 yards for the year, and a 1400, and 1500 year in that span). This season we're at 486 and only 3 TDs, so we're on track to do a bit better than 1600 yards, so that's improvement over the last 5 seasons. So we're currently 18th in the league in rushing yards, and 21st in TDs.

Frankly, our entire offense is abysmal. We're in the bottom 1/3 of the league in almost all stats relating to offense. Our defense is why we're at 3-2, where we could easily be a 1-4 team right now.

Summary, you can't pin all this on Penning. The whole line is struggling. Thank God we have Carmichael.

Love the sarcasm at the end... nice touch

[Jlowe22]

Not giving up 40 a game is nice, but man, I'd forgotten how painful it is to watch bottom league offense every week.  At least we got some excitement out of the 40-30 losses.