DIVISIONAL ROUND: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS #3 @ PITTSBURGH STEELERS #2

[Tugboat]

Just now, .Buzz said:

Unless we see the Blake that played in Seattle of course. But yeah, hopefully we can do things in the run game.

We gotta get Grant in there. He always makes plays. It's so weird how he isn't a part of the offense really at all.

Does he really always make plays?  Seems like mostly when he's been in there to make his plays, has been blowouts where plays don't really count for much...or surprise curve ball effect or something gimmicky.

[.Buzz]

Just now, Tugboat said:

Does he really always make plays?  Seems like mostly when he's been in there to make his plays, has been blowouts where plays don't really count for much...or surprise curve ball effect or something gimmicky.

Not always, but the majority of the time I've seen him in there (and I'm not just talking about games like HOU where he went in there when we were up by 30+) he is. He's so shifty and quick that one of those screen passes he could just as easily break it for 80+. On runs I rarely see him go down behind the line, he usually squeezes through for a couple.

He provides a much different threat than any of our other RB's. It'd be a great change of pace.

[Tugboat]

1 minute ago, .Buzz said:

Although this is true generally and has at times been the case with Blake earlier this season, he clearly looks much better/more comfortable when he isn't forced to make a play in a 3rd and medium/long and get shots on 1st or 2nd down.

It's just how he is. I've noticed that as well. Especially from midseason on when our run game has fallen off a bit with Fournette's injury. Our run game wasn't always working when he'd get on good stretches. Those stretches usually occurred when Bortles was allowed to pass the ball on earlier downs.

Now and then, absolutely you want to take some shots with Bortles airing it out on 1st down.  Keep 'em somewhat honest.  But you have to come out and establish that run game even when they know it's coming.  Have to impose that on the opposing defense and ram it down their throats.  Pretty much everything this offense does well is predicated on it.  Sometimes, it's an ugly slogfest and it'd be more "fun" to see them air raid it up and ball out...but that's winning the battle in the trenches.  It's often ugly and un-glamorous.  And it's this team's ticket to the next round of the playoffs.  Sometimes you're gonna have to suffer through some short drives that sputter out...because that's going to happen no matter what with this offense.

If you come out and start just regularly tossing it around on 1st downs...in the likely event that you don't get Seahawks game Bortles...you're backing yourself up to situations where you can't realistically run the ball on later downs.  So you get failpass/failpass/desperate failpass pick six.  Which is so much worse, and so much more frustrating than the run/run/pass thing, even when that fizzles because passing on 3rd down can be tough for Bortle and teams can and will sell out to stop those early down runs.

 

This is our team's identity.  Pound the ball, play great defense...let Bortles take some shots here and there and try to break a big one when they're not expecting it.  Not..."come out and toss the ball all around the field throwing on a bunch of first downs" or whatever.

[.Buzz]

1 minute ago, Tugboat said:

Now and then, absolutely you want to take some shots with Bortles airing it out on 1st down.  Keep 'em somewhat honest.  But you have to come out and establish that run game even when they know it's coming.  Have to impose that on the opposing defense and ram it down their throats.  Pretty much everything this offense does well is predicated on it.  Sometimes, it's an ugly slogfest and it'd be more "fun" to see them air raid it up and ball out...but that's winning the battle in the trenches.  It's often ugly and un-glamorous.  And it's this team's ticket to the next round of the playoffs.  Sometimes you're gonna have to suffer through some short drives that sputter out...because that's going to happen no matter what with this offense.

If you come out and start just regularly tossing it around on 1st downs...in the likely event that you don't get Seahawks game Bortles...you're backing yourself up to situations where you can't realistically run the ball on later downs.  So you get failpass/failpass/desperate failpass pick six.  Which is so much worse, and so much more frustrating than the run/run/pass thing, even when that fizzles because passing on 3rd down can be tough for Bortle and teams can and will sell out to stop those early down runs.

 

This is our team's identity.  Pound the ball, play great defense...let Bortles take some shots here and there and try to break a big one when they're not expecting it.  Not..."come out and toss the ball all around the field throwing on a bunch of first downs" or whatever.

I'm not saying to throw it on early downs every time, but this last week was pretty much all runs on early downs and screens/short passes on either 3rd and long or sometimes 2nd and long.

Just gotta pass more on early downs and let Blake get in a rhythm. Can't expect Blake to get going when forcing him to play god on 3rd and long time after time after time. Run game just hasn't been good enough. It's consistently 3rd and 6-7+.

[Tugboat]

7 minutes ago, .Buzz said:

Not always, but the majority of the time I've seen him in there (and I'm not just talking about games like HOU where he went in there when we were up by 30+) he is. He's so shifty and quick that one of those screen passes he could just as easily break it for 80+. On runs I rarely see him go down behind the line, he usually squeezes through for a couple.

He provides a much different threat than any of our other RB's. It'd be a great change of pace.

I get why people want to see more of that element.  When it does work, it's explosive obviously...which is sweet.  But i still think it's a lot more complicated than that.  Same as the above rant about setting a tone and imposing the physical run game on them...In order to get Grant more involved, you have to get him on the field for a lot more snaps.  Like...3x-5x the snaps that you actually want to increase his touch count by, to keep it from being an obvious "tell" that he's getting the ball every time he steps on the field.  Which means snaps you're taking away from physical backs in Fournette/Ivory and that tone-setting, or snaps you're taking away from Yeldon who is a solid all-around 3rd down back and generally does pretty alright as a receiver out of the backfield himself.

I'm just not that into the idea of selling out some part of what this team wants to do in establishing a physical run game and play action and some deep shots off that, just to get Grant a couple more touches.  Keep using him sparingly like they have imo.  Sneak him in there once in a blue moon when you need a spark, or in those weird gimmick or trick play or fake punts situations and the like...where he can still impact the game with a big play out of absolutely nowhere.

[Tugboat]

5 minutes ago, .Buzz said:

I'm not saying to throw it on early downs every time, but this last week was pretty much all runs on early downs and screens/short passes on either 3rd and long or sometimes 2nd and long.

Just gotta pass more on early downs and let Blake get in a rhythm. Can't expect Blake to get going when forcing him to play god on 3rd and long time after time after time. Run game just hasn't been good enough. It's consistently 3rd and 6-7+.

I mean, sure...if the run game isn't good enough, it's a problem.  But frankly...if the run game isn't good enough, the offense in general isn't going to be good enough.  Just can't go out there and presume Bortles throwing it more is going to be the cure for everything offensively.  That's the mentality that gets us into danger zone for vintage Bad Bortles.

[.Buzz]

1 minute ago, Tugboat said:

I get why people want to see more of that element.  When it does work, it's explosive obviously...which is sweet.  But i still think it's a lot more complicated than that.  Same as the above rant about setting a tone and imposing the physical run game on them...In order to get Grant more involved, you have to get him on the field for a lot more snaps.  Like...3x-5x the snaps that you actually want to increase his touch count by, to keep it from being an obvious "tell" that he's getting the ball every time he steps on the field.  Which means snaps you're taking away from physical backs in Fournette/Ivory and that tone-setting, or snaps you're taking away from Yeldon who is a solid all-around 3rd down back and generally does pretty alright as a receiver out of the backfield himself.

I'm just not that into the idea of selling out some part of what this team wants to do in establishing a physical run game and play action and some deep shots off that, just to get Grant a couple more touches.  Keep using him sparingly like they have imo.  Sneak him in there once in a blue moon when you need a spark, or in those weird gimmick or trick play or fake punts situations and the like...where he can still impact the game with a big play out of absolutely nowhere.

Fair enough, to each their own.

As far as Grant, I'm all about getting him that many more snaps. Fournette clearly isnt 100% and although I want to see him the most, running a guy constantly that clearly can't cut like he did earlier in the season is problematic and has shown to cause issues the last several weeks with our run game. Yeldon is solid in pass pro so on 3rd down in a passing situation I get him getting the majority of the snaps, but besides that...

[.Buzz]

1 minute ago, Tugboat said:

I mean, sure...if the run game isn't good enough, it's a problem.  But frankly...if the run game isn't good enough, the offense in general isn't going to be good enough.  Just can't go out there and presume Bortles throwing it more is going to be the cure for everything offensively.  That's the mentality that gets us into danger zone for vintage Bad Bortles.

Not about being the cure for everything offensively, but more so being the cure for being a black hole/completely inept of doing anything, which is what we've seen for two straight weeks until Blake put the offense on his back and ran it several times prior to half to get the FG and that whole 2nd drive of the 2nd half damn near.

Again, no one is saying to just throw it. Just throw it more on early downs to let Blake get in a rhythm/not be forced to pass in just obvious passing situations. That is generally when we see vintage bad Bortles. When he is forced into poor situations that he obviously doesn't do well in and not many QB's do well in.

[Tugboat]

Just now, .Buzz said:

Fair enough, to each their own.

As far as Grant, I'm all about getting him that many more snaps. Fournette clearly isnt 100% and although I want to see him the most, running a guy constantly that clearly can't cut like he did earlier in the season is problematic and has shown to cause issues the last several weeks with our run game. Yeldon is solid in pass pro so on 3rd down in a passing situation I get him getting the majority of the snaps, but besides that...

I'm just not convinced that Grant is a guy who you're going to get much out of if he's taking away those up the gut ugly carries from Fournette/Ivory.  The important ones in getting the OLine and offense as a whole into a controlled, clock-eating rhythm where the big uglies can absolute tee off and get into the game in their own right.  Not really his forte, and wouldn't expect him to excel in that against the stacked boxes.  I think more likely you just wear him out, so there's less in the tank when it does come time to use him as an Ace up your sleeve at some point.

[Tugboat]

2 minutes ago, .Buzz said:

Not about being the cure for everything offensively, but more so being the cure for being a black hole/completely inept of doing anything, which is what we've seen for two straight weeks until Blake put the offense on his back and ran it several times prior to half to get the FG and that whole 2nd drive of the 2nd half damn near.

Again, no one is saying to just throw it. Just throw it more on early downs to let Blake get in a rhythm/not be forced to pass in just obvious passing situations. That is generally when we see vintage bad Bortles. When he is forced into poor situations that he obviously doesn't do well in and not many QB's do well in.

And that mentality is the slippery slope to Bortles breaking that 30+ attempts threshold where things typically go disastrously wrong.  Your whole wish there is predicated on the idea that Bortles is automatically going to get into this great rhythm and ball out with those extra attempts on early downs (assuming the results from a small sample will scale up perfectly).  But ignoring what happens if/when Bortles throws incompletions on a number of those early down throws (because he's inaccurate) and put us just as far behind on down and distance as the stuffed runs...and before you know it, inches us ever closer to that threshold where Bortles is asked to do too much through the air and things typically start to go very badly.

Like, i get that it's frustrating that our run game hasn't been as good as it needs to be to make that work smoothly.  But that's the way it's gotta be.  If they're going to have success, it's going to be on the back of a run game that's grooving.

Philosophically, some teams (like the Steelers in fact) have the horses to "Pass to set up the run".  We don't have that.  Trying to approach the game that way is where you get off track in what this team wants/needs to do to be moderately successful offensively.  Where you find yourself out on a limb praying desperately for Bortles to pull a rabbit out of a hat with one of his rare baller games.  That's a bad bet imo.  Real bad.

[.Buzz]

4 minutes ago, Tugboat said:

And that mentality is the slippery slope to Bortles breaking that 30+ attempts threshold where things typically go disastrously wrong.  Your whole wish there is predicated on the idea that Bortles is automatically going to get into this great rhythm and ball out with those extra attempts on early downs (assuming the results from a small sample will scale up perfectly).  But ignoring what happens if/when Bortles throws incompletions on a number of those early down throws (because he's inaccurate) and put us just as far behind on down and distance as the stuffed runs...and before you know it, inches us ever closer to that threshold where Bortles is asked to do too much through the air and things typically start to go very badly.

Like, i get that it's frustrating that our run game hasn't been as good as it needs to be to make that work smoothly.  But that's the way it's gotta be.  If they're going to have success, it's going to be on the back of a run game that's grooving.

Philosophically, some teams (like the Steelers in fact) have the horses to "Pass to set up the run".  We don't have that.  Trying to approach the game that way is where you get off track in what this team wants/needs to do to be moderately successful offensively.  Where you find yourself out on a limb praying desperately for Bortles to pull a rabbit out of a hat with one of his rare baller games.  That's a bad bet imo.  Real bad.

Not saying he is automatically going to get better, but this game we are going to have to take chances if we want to win. We aren't going to just go into Heinz field and beat the team by doing run-run-pass and not letting Blake take shots. If that does us in, it does us in. But we aren't winning by using that mentality and expecting our defense to shut them completely down imo. 

I'm not into seeing the offense of last week against an elite team like Pittsburgh. We adjust what we do according to who we play from what I've seen. You watch what we did against Seattle and it's pretty much exactly what you described except it worked. It's went wrong before too, but there is going to need to be shots downfield to Cole/Dede if we want to win. This doesn't mean throwing it 30+ times, but it does mean taking shots on early downs downfield trying to get a couple of those "big plays" that are likely needed to win this.

[.Buzz]

???

[pwny]

 

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[JaguarCrazy2832]

So amped! Wont be posting obviously during since I’ll be freezing at Heinz field. Check me out, goaline, visitor side 6 rows up right in the middle. Probably all black with a Jags stocking cap