Week 3: Ravens @ Cowboys (The Regular Season matters edition)

[Ray Reed]

28 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

OK - so your idea is that the 2x MVP with the $260 million dollar contract needs to be protected, and not put in passing situations because he missed that one?

You need to give Lamar as many reps in the passing game as possible. He was 12/15 for the game, I'd say he was mostly hitting his targets.

At this point I just don't think Harbaugh understands basic risk calculations and strategy in the contemporary game. He can coach his team up and bludgeon you to death, but he gets so routinely out manipulated in the 4th quarter that it can't be a coincidence at this point. The league knows him, they know he'll fold up every time.

Not passing situations the whole game, but passing situations to ice games, yeah mostly.

On a 3rd and 5 with the game on the line in the 4th Q and 2 min left i’m much more confident in Lamar getting a first down with his legs than his arm at this point. And that’s not a slight to him. I just think those option/power read plays (like the one we iced the game with today) are nearly impossible to stop 3-6 yards at a time. I also think his short/timing passing can be very erratic and inaccurate at times. So with the game on the line, yes, I’d prefer him running more than passing.

Throughout the game let him air it out all he wants. But at nut cutting time I want 8 running for five yards to seal the game. Hes generational in that respect. When you pay the $260mil 2x MVP you’re allowed to use everything in his repertoire to win games. Protecting him in those passing scenarios isn’t shelving him. It’s leaning into what he’s arguably the GOAT at doing.

Edited Monday at 01:28 AM by Ray Reed

[AngusMcFife]

11 minutes ago, Ray Reed said:

Not passing situations the whole game, but passing situations to ice games, yeah mostly.

On a 3rd and 5 with the game on the line in the 4th Q and 2 min left i’m much more confident in Lamar getting a first down with his legs than his arm at this point. And that’s not a slight to him. I just think those option/power read plays (like the one we iced the game with today) are nearly impossible to stop 3-6 yards at a time. I also think his short/timing passing can be very erratic and inaccurate at times. So with the game on the line, yes, I’d prefer him running more than passing.

Throughout the game let him air it out all he wants. But at nut cutting time I want 8 running for five yards to seal the game. Hes generational in that respect. When you pay the $260mil 2x MVP you’re allowed to use everything in his repertoire to win games. Protecting him in those passing scenarios isn’t shelving him. It’s leaning into what he’s arguably the GOAT at doing.

I understand you, but I think that kind of mentality limits the ceiling of Lamar's career. It might lead to regular season wins but doesn't really prepare you a postseason run where he'll have to do it. He needs reps in order to improve those plays. 

I loved seeing Lamar on the closing drive hit that outbreaking route on 3rd down. He also had a similar route to Agholor for the big play. If he is going to hit those outbreaking routes regularly the defense is going to have problems. I'm fine with losing the game on Lamar's arm, it should motivate him to maximize his ability as a passer.

[SalvadorsDeli]

6 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

I understand you, but I think that kind of mentality limits the ceiling of Lamar's career. It might lead to regular season wins but doesn't really prepare you a postseason run where he'll have to do it. He needs reps in order to improve those plays. 

I loved seeing Lamar on the closing drive hit that outbreaking route on 3rd down. He also had a similar route to Agholor for the big play. If he is going to hit those outbreaking routes regularly the defense is going to have problems. I'm fine with losing the game on Lamar's arm, it should motivate him to maximize his ability as a passer.

Feel this in general but particularly in regards to these 3rd down closeout situations, put Lamar in play-action bootlegs there where he can either pass or keep/run and force the defense to make a decision, it can and should be deadly with a player of his skillset and we basically never use it. 

[AngusMcFife]

28 minutes ago, Ray Reed said:

Not passing situations the whole game, but passing situations to ice games, yeah mostly.

 

2 minutes ago, SalvadorsDeli said:

Feel this in general but particularly in regards to these 3rd down closeout situations, put Lamar in play-action bootlegs there where he can either pass or keep/run and force the defense to make a decision, it can and should be deadly with a player of his skillset and we basically never use it. 

The play that got me going was we had a 28-6 lead, 3rd and 5 at the DAL 31 with 11:26 left in the 4th Q.

We didn't even have it in Lamar's hands, it was just a run up the middle with Henry, then Tucker missed.

Taking it out of Lamar's hands there is just insane to me. Although not as insane as punting at the DAL 43 on 4th and 1 with a 14-3 lead when you are averaging 8 yards/play. That was objectively wrong on every level. Harbaugh just can't go for the jugular, he has an irrational confidence in his D that keeps getting shredded in late game scenarios time after time.

 

[AngusMcFife]

Just to recap, we had a 28-6 lead with the ball 1st and 10 on the DAL 36 with 12:42 left in the 4th quarter and it came down to the last possession.

At some point, Biscotti has to bring somebody in from the outside to help Harbaugh manage late game situations. 

EDIT:

All other teams need to do against us is stay within 14-21 points against us until the 4th quarter. Then Harbaugh will turtle up the offense and give the opposing teams to hit big plays down the field against big blitzes. Fortunately the Cowboys were 22 down and missed their 2pt conversions so they needed 4 scores instead of 3.

Edited Monday at 12:48 PM by AngusMcFife

[wackywabbit]

Looking at the drive chart and play-by-play I find it hard to pin blame on the offense strategy or execution. The 2nd half on offense:

5 play 70 yard 3:02 off the clock TD: great result
8 play 17 yard 6:16 off the clock Punt: ruined by penalties, but at least took a good amount of clock off. Good punt by Stroud resets the field
7 plays 33 yard, 4:06 off the clock, missed FG: Setting up for the FG (running on 3rd and 5) was the right or at least fine move here. Inside 40 you think Tucker is 95%+ and it would have made it a 4 score game. Good drive from the offense perspective.
3 plays 7 yards, 1:41 off the clock Punt: Ran twice and missed a throw on 3rd. Poor drive, but not as like turnover bad and burned a little clock with the runs. Great punt by Stroud put Dallas back inside 10
7 plays 22 yards, all the time and timeouts off the clock: ended the game

I don't think the offense collapsed at all. That's good football results if you ignore the FG result. Not perfect, but when you consider the goals for the offense with a big lead including not turning it over and burning the clock, I think they were at least fine at their job. One short drive in a half is not something to we can expect to avoid.

For context on expected offense: 5.88 plays, 29.9 yards, 1.88 points  with 11.6% resulting in a turnover was the league wide average last year (5.89, 29.9, 1.90, 10/6% this year, so these are stable metrics).

The collapse was entirely on the defense and ST (not Stroud) today. The last three Cowboys drives:
6 play 64 yard TD, 1:48
<recovered an onside kick>
7 play, 56 yard TD, 1:46
<one Ravens offensive possession>
11 play, 91 yard TD, 2:33

No timeouts burned by them on offense

^ There is no offensive plan or aggressiveness that we can expect to hold a lead with that. Even with one hypotehtical long TD in the middle (perfect offense) that's still a script for blowing a 2 TD lead in less than a quarter.

Edited Monday at 02:54 PM by wackywabbit

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

@wackywabbit hit it on the head, and I had to reiterate that several times on Reddit yesterday as well. This loss was not on the offense. The last 3 drives they had were:

• Tucker missed FG (inexplicable)
• Punt after Lamar missed a wide open Mark Andrews on 3rd and 3 (questionable play call at best)
• Iced the game on the Lamar run

Meanwhile on defense / ST's you've got:

• Dallas TD
• Onside recovery
• Dallas TD
• Dallas TD

Like, I know some of those drives were bailed out by horrible flags (I think there were 3-4 individual 3rd down phantom flags) but at some point these 4th quarter collapses have to fall back to John Harbaugh. There's just no other common denominator besides him. How does our defense go from suffocating Dallas all game to giving up chunk play after chunk play after chunk play for an entire quarter?! Like, it just doesn't make sense. This team just finds a way to collapse in the 4th quarter with a 2+ score lead. It's actually incredible and anyone saying it's anything other than Harbaugh is lying or a fool.

However, the one thing I will say about the offense is that Todd Monken is still doing an absolutely horrible job of designing an offense where any 2 of our weapons are threats on a given play. Let me give you a fantastic example of how our offense should look 90% of the time:

On this play you have Likely, Lamar and Henry in the backfield. Henry gets the read option look which holds Parsons and allows Lamar to pull and get to the edge with Likely lead blocking. Immediately on this play you've not only put Dallas' best defender into conflict, but you've presented the defense with the choice of defending Henry, or defending Lamar.

As a result, Lamar walks in for an easy touchdown because defenses HAVE TO fully commit to one of them.

Another great example is the last 3rd down run by Lamar. On this play it featured jet sweep action to Zay Flowers and the defense had to choose between committing to him or committing to Lamar. They chose Zay, Lamar keeps it, easy 1st down. Why can't most of our plays be designed like this?!

Now, let's flip to the complete opposite of this:

This should be the 3rd and 3 incomplete pass to Mark Andrews. In this play, not only is Derrick Henry not on the field so the threat of a run at all decreases significantly, but we motion Justice Hill out wide, so now there's almost 0% chance we're running the ball and the defense can just play pass 100%. On 3rd and 3, you don't even make the defense have to think about who they need to commit to?

I understand Mark was open and Lamar missed him by 5 and a half miles on what should be the easiest throw ever, but my goodness what a god awful decision and play call for 3rd and 3 to potentially stop Dallas' momentum!

Anyways, that's the only thing that annoys me with this offense at the moment. That, and continuously rolling out Daniel Faalele at RG...I am simply in disbelief that he continues to get playing time while Ben Cleveland rots on the bench.

Edited Monday at 03:32 PM by AFlaccoSeagulls

[AngusMcFife]

1 hour ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

I understand Mark was open and Lamar missed him by 5 and a half miles on what should be the easiest throw ever, but my goodness what a god awful decision and play call for 3rd and 3 to potentially stop Dallas' momentum!

I disagree with this analysis: to me it looked Lamar locked on to Andrews and decided to throw to him, and 13 saw it an cut across Andrews face. Lamar adjusted by throwing it out wide so the defender couldn't make a play on the ball.

The fact that Lamar did NOT make the right read here (although he did on the final drive) to me is evidence that we need to put Lamar in MORE situations like that to give him reps.

Or else we can just run our way to the playoffs and get bounced when Lamar has to make those plays when Harbaugh has been shielding him from those plays during the regular season. You just stunt Lamar's growth by babying him like that.

[AngusMcFife]

1 hour ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

 

• Tucker missed FG (inexplicable)

Is this really inexplicable? Or is the whole league bombing 50+ yard FGs with high precision and Tucker is completely psyched out because he knows he can't compete with them any more?

For kickers, when it goes, it goes.

[AngusMcFife]

4 hours ago, wackywabbit said:

I don't think the offense collapsed at all. That's good football results if you ignore the FG result. Not perfect, but when you consider the goals for the offense with a big lead including not turning it over and burning the clock, I think they were at least fine at their job. One short drive in a half is not something to we can expect to avoid.

Nobody said the offense collapsed, just turtled up.

You go from scoring TDs on 4 out of first 6 possessions, to punting 2x and missing a long FG (46 yards is not under 40). It's a clear and obvious decline.

Quote

...
^ There is no offensive plan or aggressiveness that we can expect to hold a lead with that. Even with one hypotehtical long TD in the middle (perfect offense) that's still a script for blowing a 2 TD lead in less than a quarter.

I mean, you can keep scoring TDs.

At this point Harbaugh has to know that teams will be able to score TD at will at the end of game in very little time. Grinding 3 minutes off the clock is just not going to cut it if you understand that our D will just get shredded in these situations routinely.

Dallas D sucked and we owned them through the mid 3rd quarter, and we just stopped trying to score. We should have scored in the 40s IMO but Harbaugh is just extremely risk averse.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

4 hours ago, AngusMcFife said:

I disagree with this analysis: to me it looked Lamar locked on to Andrews and decided to throw to him, and 13 saw it an cut across Andrews face. Lamar adjusted by throwing it out wide so the defender couldn't make a play on the ball.

The fact that Lamar did NOT make the right read here (although he did on the final drive) to me is evidence that we need to put Lamar in MORE situations like that to give him reps.

Or else we can just run our way to the playoffs and get bounced when Lamar has to make those plays when Harbaugh has been shielding him from those plays during the regular season. You just stunt Lamar's growth by babying him like that.

If we had an offensive scheme that was built around allowing quick and easy completions - sure. But that's not our identity. I get what you're saying but this team isn't going to win by throwing on short yardage situations. Furhtermore, we don't have the OL this year to be a passing team. Lamar had 5 pure dropbacks and was pressured on 3 of them lmao this OL is not build to win passing games.

4 hours ago, AngusMcFife said:

Is this really inexplicable? Or is the whole league bombing 50+ yard FGs with high precision and Tucker is completely psyched out because he knows he can't compete with them any more?

For kickers, when it goes, it goes.

46 yards for any kicker, let alone a HOF kicker is inexplicable.

2 hours ago, AngusMcFife said:

Nobody said the offense collapsed, just turtled up.

You go from scoring TDs on 4 out of first 6 possessions, to punting 2x and missing a long FG (46 yards is not under 40). It's a clear and obvious decline.

I mean, you can keep scoring TDs.

We were scoring TD's by running the ball, and we continued doing that lol we punted once during the collapse and it was largely because Faalele got pushed into the backfield and tripped Derrick Henry himself.

[Ray Reed]

Was Justin Tucker a Sam Koch/Morgan Cox merchant all along???

[AngusMcFife]

How many points ahead of the Bills do we have to be next week to start the 4th quarter make you feel comfortable in a W?

[Xmad]

2 hours ago, AngusMcFife said:

How many points ahead of the Bills do we have to be next week to start the 4th quarter make you feel comfortable in a W?

50.

[AngusMcFife]

If Harbaugh had half the confidence in Lamar that Quinn has in Jayden Daniels I'd feel better. Talk about letting your QB win the game.