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Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
He was on WNST this afternoon...I would highly recommend everyone check it out.
LinkAlthough Walsh's system of offense can compensate for lack of talent; however, defense is a different story. According to Walsh, talent on defense was essential and could not be compensated for. What did Walsh do in 1981? He acquired physical and talented players on defense.
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12-12-2012, 06:13 PM #2Regular 1st Stringer
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12-12-2012, 06:32 PM #3Hall Of Fame Poster
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
Nothing you've never heard before from plenty of posters on this board who are watching the games and actually comprehending what's happening. Here's a point by point summary:
Flacco is a good QB but the scheme makes him inconsistent. The receivers can't beat man coverage, which they see a lot of. The passing game is mostly intermediate and deep without short, easy throws. Flacco does not have one of the best internal clocks of any QB in the league and the combination of deep routes with his internal clock cause him to hold the ball.
The receivers only run isolation routes. The scheme makes no effort to help them beat man coverage with stack concepts, etc. The receivers lose the one on one battle more often than not. All the concepts and schemes to help the receivers beat man coverage are in the playbook, but they aren't being called.
The response to the OL's inability to pass block has mostly been to keep more eligible receivers in to block and reduce the number of receivers out in routes. This makes it much easier for the defense to defend only a few eligible receivers with lots of defenders.
There is not just one thing wrong with this offense, but if a few things were adjusted and corrected the offense would look much better.
"I have watched every throw Joe Flacco has made in the NFL, and 7 or 8 games of his last year in college. He is an extremely talented passer. His internal clock needs to get better, and his blitz recognition needs to get better. You wouldn't put him in that "elite" (whatever that means) category, but he has the strongest arm in the league and can make every throw. He is a good quarterback who needs to continue to get better."
He doesn't know what Caldwell's play-calling will be like because Caldwell's never called plays.
The Ravens have 2 good running backs, one great running back and one complementary back, and it might make sense for the Ravens to work off the run game to set up matchups in the pass game. That plays into this as well.
It is totally possible for the Ravens to both use the no huddle effectively and to control the clock with the run game (for example, the Patriots have the 3rd most rush attempts in the NFL.)
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12-12-2012, 06:43 PM #4Veteran Poster
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
bmorecareful and JBK, thank you for taking the time to summarize that.
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12-12-2012, 06:50 PM #5Veteran Poster
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
"I have watched every throw Joe Flacco has made in the NFL, and 7 or 8 games of his last year in college. He is an extremely talented passer. His internal clock needs to get better, and his blitz recognition needs to get better. You wouldn't put him in that "elite" (whatever that means) category, but he has the strongest arm in the league and can make every throw. He is a good quarterback who needs to continue to get better."
This sums it up for me.
PP
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12-12-2012, 06:58 PM #6On The Practice Squad
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
Thanks for the summary. Gives some hope that the transition to Caldwell with the same playbook could work out extremely well for the offense and the team.
The stuff about Receivers vs man coverage and not beating the matchup sounds like when the team explains away the problems with saying players need to execute better. Players often do need to execute better but the coaches should also design/choose plays to help makes things easier for the players and to mask deficiencies as best as possible.
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12-12-2012, 06:37 PM #7Veteran Poster
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
EDITED to only add the points that bmorecarelful may have missed in his excellent write-up:
Quick notes:
> Hard not to say Flacco is a "good" QB, only "what level of good"?
> Offense needs to be tailored to the type of QB and receivers on the Ravens.
> Flacco has a strong arm, but does not have a good "internal clock".
> Deeper throws to receivers who are not winning in man coverage = a not-very-mobile QB standing in the pocket waiting for receivers to get open. This leads to the inconsistent results.
> Can always help receivers vs. man coverage, and what he never saw, were those kinds of things (bunch formations, stack releases, shifts, motion, etc.)
> Instead saw isolation routes (which required receivers to win their matchups, which they frequently didn't).
> Suspects that the bunch formations, stack, releases, etc. are in the playbook (all teams have them). So it comes down to how and when to use them, which should be based on game-planning versus an opponent's tendencies and making in-game adjustments.
> Was "struck" that the no-huddle has "waned" since the success at the beginning of the season. Not sure why.
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
I had previously suggested that the scheme (i.e., forcing Flacco to stand in a pocket and wait for the nine-route to be unfurled) leads to getting hit in the pocket and leads to claims he has no internal clock. I don't know the answer, but I wondered if the playcalling was ignorant of the clock more than Joe was.
This is not a defense of Cam, but I found it curious to hear Derrick Mason's comments on 105.7 FM this morning. When asked if the offense was too vanilla, with the definition suggested by Steve Davis being the same predictable routes over and over again, Mason sort of defended Cam by suggesting that Torrey is limited in the type of routes he can run effectively, and Cam limits the play calling to work within those constraints.
Maybe Mason is biased/egotistical in thinking few others have his talent to run all the routes in the route tree. Maybe Mason's view is based on a raw Torrey Smith when he was fresh out of college. Maybe he knows something we don't want to admit. (He also mentioned that in his opinion Brian Billick refused to consider the limitations of his receivers and was trying to install the kind of vertical passing attack he favored, without consideration of the fact he had receivers who were not capable of executing it).
We kind of heard the same suggestion in the past that Joe Flacco was not being allowed to throw between the hashes because Cam didn't think he could be trusted. Eventually that changed, but I do wonder if one of Cam's problems was not trusting his playmakers to make plays. Maybe Cam thought he already knew the negative outcome of going in a certain direction, and was too stubborn to try it. We have been led to believe he wasn't good at receiving input.
I'd rather he try and fail than never try at all.
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
I along with others have long railed against this scheme which is based on really long developing routes/QB drops. The infamous "all 9" play call has kind of taken a life of it own...it's called way too much, but it's not called as much as we like to assume...but they are long developing routes. Cam called a lot of double moves, 15 yard in/out and comeback routes...sometimes off of 7 step play action with Joe's back to the defense for up to 2 seconds. Those plays, while they have a place in many offenses, were too much of our base. Cam...and Harbaugh (it remains to be seen if Harbaugh tries to stick with this) were huge proponents of "chunk" plays. All of that hurt Joe.
That being said, I don't think there is any question Joe doesn't have a great internal clock (it remains to be seen how much this can be improved), blitz recognition (I think this can be improved quite a bit) and ball security (he will need to improve his internal clock to really improve this)
Regarding Torrey, I don't think he is a very good route runner. I think while he can definitely improve, he isn't a guy who is going to consistently beat his man in man coverage a lot unless it involves pure speed. I think the world of him, but that's why when some people were talking about him becoming a #1 WR, I seriously have my doubts...not a defacto #1, but a real #1.Although Walsh's system of offense can compensate for lack of talent; however, defense is a different story. According to Walsh, talent on defense was essential and could not be compensated for. What did Walsh do in 1981? He acquired physical and talented players on defense.
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12-14-2012, 11:04 AM #10Veteran Poster
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
Re-reading Cossell's quotes really don't do justice to what I think he was trying to communicate in the interview. You have to go back and listen (if you've not already).
I get the strong sense from many fans that they feel Flacco is an "elite" QB with talented receivers just waiting to be unleashed by a new OC. Listening to Cossell, I get the sense that he feels that both Flacco and the receivers are "good", and can be better, but I never got the sense that he thought that Cameron was squandering an "elite" unit.
I'd rather he try and fail than never try at all.
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
The comments I attributed to Mason somewhat support this. His claim was that the receivers aren't good enough to run anything different, and Cam simply limited them to the one or two things they could do (Torrey, nine-route and out pattern; Anquan slant route). Mason seemed to think there wasn't much room to get better.
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12-12-2012, 06:42 PM #12
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Re: Good stuff from Greg Cosell on Cam after his dismissal
I think he was fair. And he think he summed up why Cam was fired without saying why he was fired. There are things that can be done to make our personnel more effective, Cam just wouldn't do it for whatever reason.
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