I just re-watched every offensive play of the first half. I was specifically focusing on Vlad and on some plays focused on the rest of the OL. For people calling Vlad a turnstile, they are clearly just parroting old sentiment on the guy. Vlad was as good or better than ANY of the other linemen. Vlad got beat once and it was on a delay LB blitz. The LB got the inside angle and it unfortunately resulted in the strip sack of Geno. Beside that, the guy was a rock and at time he was clearly a mauler (or impaler if you prefer). He did not get beat nor give up pressure, nor give up the runner any other time in the first half. To put it in perspective. While I watched EVERY one of Vlads plays, I did not every play of the rest of the line. Yet, I saw Mangold get turnstiled twice, Colon once, and I watch Brick give up the pressure that resulted in Smiths interception. So unless Vlad shit the bed in the second half, comparatively he was quite good.
vlad had 2 horrific plays in the 3rd and a complete wiff on a run play in the 4th. that said, compared to the rest of the line he was a stud. mangold was putrid and fergeson got pushed into the backfield routinely on runs to the left side. our line is a monumental issue.
They didnt have a good game as a whole. Individual grades had Howard and Vlad as our best, which is surprising. Tampa has a decent DL, lets hope we improve moving forward. I expect Brick and Mangold to play up to their standard as the season progresses.
Hopefully we can chalk it up to the third scheme in three years and they will solidify with a few games under their belts. On a side note, this is always an advantage a stable team like NE has. It is always the same scheme each year, so no adjustment just improvement. Here is hoping that we stabilize the merry go round.
I rewatched the game iso'ing on the OL too. Vlad turnstiled twice deep in their own territory, most notably when he let the guy through for the Geno sack/strip fumble. That said. he was pretty beastly against the run in general and seemed to hold his own pretty well in the passing game outside of the 2-3 brain farts. Was pretty surprised to see that Austin Howard graded out as highly as he did. Does anyone know what Willie Colon got for the game? It seemed like he was really weak out there, but maybe Mangold and Brick were just as bad or worse objectively? Would be nice if we could end up with 4 starters out of this bunch moving forward, then plug in one vet in FA next year freeing up the top offensive pick for TE or WR if necessary.
Saw this thread and decided not to focus on Vlad. I focused on Colon instead. I'm not going to call him trash since he faced a very tough defensive line, but Willie Colon had a bad night. He was pushed back and manhandled for the most part. I think I counted 6 good blocks from him the whole game.
You know...I went back and looked as well. This line needs time to gel...hopefully someone who spent the time and looked can confirm (Byz, Super, Mangold). I paid strict attention to the line calls as I could best interpret them...it seemed like one hand didn't know what the other was doing. Throw on to that Bohannon definitely needs to crack the playbook and learn his pick ups...he whiffed on a couple really bad ones. What I saw was guys not physically getting over matched, for the most part, but guys out of position with the wrong gap coverage and they were over extending to try and compensate/recover. That will get corrected with time. The O-line is the one unit that really benefits from continuity. Hopefully our running game and Geno can survive long enough for them to gel. Ivory too...he absolutely got obliterated a number of times.
I would say that this is pretty accurate outside of Colon. Tampa has a very strong defense and they definitely weren't giving away much without a fight. Also to their credit they threw a lot of blitzes at the rookie QB so the OL definitely had a tough task this time. It seemed like 1/3-1/2 of the pressures should be chalked up to individual blocking failures from Brick/Vlad/Mangold/Colon and the rest would be attributed to various blitzes. Geno did a great job getting out of the pocket and trying to create when they brought straight up overloads that got through. But then as you pointed out the backs did a pretty horrendous job of picking up the free rusher in those overload situations. Maybe more disturbing than Colon getting manhandled constantly was his inability to actually do anything productive when the Bucs brought extra pressure. Instead of picking up the free rusher it seemed like he would end up giving some shitty help to Mangold or Austin that probably did more harm than good. Hopefully these problems will begin to dissipate as the unit gets more comfortable with each other but it definitely doesn't inspire a lot of confidence presently. I'm a little worried that Brick has been losing something from the dominant LT that he was 2-4 years ago although I doubt he'll be anything worse than an above average player even if that's the case. But if that continues to be the trend it may create lasting problems if Colon is actually forced to hold up his end of the bargain if there aren't 2 all world linemen picking up the slack anymore. Tangentially, I know Ivory didn't actually create any production but I wouldn't say that his performance was disappointing particularly. There wasn't really anywhere for him to go all game but he ran fast and hard and was a tough tackle on just about every play. The one time he actually hit the second level and might have broke one he managed to get decked by our own WR (Hill maybe?). I'm optimistic that he can dice up some lesser defenses in the coming weeks, as billed by the scouting consensus on here and tape I watched.
Austin Howard according to Pro Football Focus had the highest RT grade this week (+5.2) Thats his overall performance run and pass blocking. I didn't pay much attention to Austin I will need to check the game out again. I didn't hear his name called all day that I do know. Vlad didn't look that good to me, as I paid attention to him. Hopefully he picks it up
Give these guys some time to gel together and we'll hopefully see some better results. Two new guards in the equation is going to take a bit for everyone to get used to each other - not to mention going to a different blocking scheme from last year. Vlad showed some flashes of dominance like he always has. Needs to cut down on the turnstyle shit though.
Watch D'Brickashaw closely. If you see him beginning to struggle then the odds are that he's doing to much to help out inside. I don't expect him to have the issues he did in 2007 with Adrien Clarke inside of him but I'm watching the situation some.
Tampa's D-Line is disgustingly talented and was 100% for the opener. We won't face a line that good again for a long time. Claiborne-Bowers-McCoy are three of the best lineman to come out of college in the past 10 years, they've just been injured.
It's fubecause @ the game it seemed like he was always the victim on a bad play... When I re-watched oit there were some plays where he was solid... On 1 screen he totally left the would be tackler alone.. I love screens and it kills me when I see linemen just running downfield without hitting anyone. The other play where he let a blitzer in untouched, I think the line call was shifted to the right and the blitzer came in untouched, if that's the case then D'brick has to pick up the inside guy.... If not then it may have been a blown line check. He still needs to improve but he has made strides...
Don't even try that positivity nonsense! Ducasse always sucked and always will! He's a bust and hasn't improved one iota. Fans say so, so it MUST be true. :rofl: It's like a catchphrase to some people and they act like improvement is impossible. If somebody has a rough year, 2 years ago, they will always suck and be a bust! Too funny.
Totally agree with that... ftr, Coaching has much to do with it. Some of these players come into the NFL raw as meat and take years to improve to being serviceable @ their position. He has gotten better and if he continuse to improve, you never know but the dude was ALWAYs a beast on the run...it was his pass protection that was just so damn awful. Actually seeing him pull now and that would be amazing if he could become a solid pulling lineman...
Thank you for the insight. I thought the OL as a whole including Vlad had a lousy first half. By the 4th Qtr I thought the pass pro drastically improved & was impressed w/ how they finished. Bucs have a lot of Beasts upfront. Let's see what they do against a very different style of DL in the Pats.
Colon isn't as good as his reputation on this board would dictate. Our whole offensive line had a bad night. Looked like the Bucs were running a lot of stunts, which our whole line seemed to struggle with. Haven't rewatched, so hard to assess specific blame.
I've defended Vlad quite a bit, but he had a bad game. He was directly responsible for the sack/fumble and the exact same thing almost happened again in the same area in the 3rd quarter (under 5 mins left, Geno got rid of it in time). He also had his share of misses in both pass and run blocking, but so did literally everyone else on Sunday. What was troubling was that those misses, I think, came from getting beat physically and not from miscommunication or missed assignments, which I thought were his biggest problems in the past. I'll chalk this up to an impressive performance by the Tampa lineman, considering how the entire line struggled, but he needs to play better starting Thursday.
It was the first game of the season, it takes time for even veteran offensive lines to gel (especially now when full on physical contact at camp is limited). In recent years we generally haven't gotten the running game rolling until October, and remember that Tampa was the #1 rushing defense last year. They'll do better in both pass protection & run blocking the more time they play together. Some of you guys are expecting these guys to be in mid-season form right out of the chute and that's just not realistic.
