well said my only criticism, from yesterday, of the playcalling is going into halftime with Breece Hall only getting 6 touches. 4 of them on the last drive before half. This offense needs to run through Breece Hall. It did in the 2nd half and is probably why they won. (Although the Browns made it pretty easy) Tough to fully evaluate Engstrand with how poor Fields is though I agree.
What are you basing your skepticism of Tanner on... the execution of the plays? Because the film is showing really good play design and pretty good execution by everyone but the QB. I'm not gonna pretend it's all the QB but there's way more pointing to that being the issue than the OC. It's certainly more than 50/50 so I'm wondering what you're NOT seeing that makes you say you aren't convinced. And the team just isn't going to bench the QB when we're winning. That's not a realistic expectation and it's not something you can get on them for. It's not like the Steelers who already named a starter and only had Fields in there because he was the backup.
I don’t know all the circumstances of these games obviously. Did he get hurt in them? Were they snow or wind storms? Idunno. But he has a history of laying absolute eggs randomly. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/F/FielJu00/gamelog/ I think he’s gotten somewhat worse here and I’m not entirely sure why. But yeah it’s pretty normal for how his career has gone it seems.
We only ran 18 plays in the first half. The first drive started with a 1 yard run and then an incompletion, can't run on third and long. Then we had two return TDs. Second drive starts with a two yard run, then a penalty. So you're in 2nd/3r and long... can't run. The next drive started with two Breece runs and then they went hurry up with Davis. I can't get on Tanner TOO much for the lack of Breece early on but I am still absolutely baffled at us not designing screens or short passes for him. They must not trust the OL or (more likely) don't trust the QB who is last in the league at throwing catchable balls behind the LOS. That is a real stat: https://x.com/ScottBarrettDFB/status/1986120324128383339?s=20
I think that part of this trial run is seeing if he can be a more traditional QB to make him more of a well-rounded QB and a potential part of the future. The more he's forced to do that, the worse he is.
I already mentioned a lot of it. Not necessarily for this specific game as I have to watch all 22, which I will later, but overall. I want more screen passes, more Breece in passing game, I want more QB rollouts, more play action. I mentioned the point about better protection where I see us lose schematically, whether it is QB/C/Coaching, all of the above. Smith is winning at #1 rate in the NFL, I want to see him as 2nd or even 1st option sometimes. Feels like also sometimes we are too compact, the players are too close to each other. I don't think Tanner is doing completely awful overall, but also he hasn't been very good. We can shit on Fields all we want, but he did better under Arthur Smith, who is not exactly known to be a top OC in the NFL. Taylor when he played also looked like below what I saw from him before. Can Tanner develop a QB, given that he hasn't gotten the most of what we have? I think the jury is still out. What's more surprising is that you seem convinced he is the guy when the offense hasn't been great under either QB. At the very least it's logical to want to see more data on him given the offense hasn't been good - #25 overall. Why are you so confident in him?
Well for starters, Tyrod is a career backup for a reason. He's about as average as humanly possible and now he's older, more injured and playing with one of the worst rosters in football. Again I can't possibly blame Tanner Engstrand for Tyrod Taylor not looking good. And I pointed out above that Fields has the worst catchable pass rate behidn the LOS in the entire league and by a pretty good margin. I still say you run screens because more often than not they'll work but I can't rag on the staff for not playing into one of the QBs many weaknesses. I also didn't say I'm convinced but I am confident. And I'll point again back to the film. There's a LOT that says what he's designing and calling should be working with better execution from the players. With a QB that can throw and WRs better than Tyler Johnson and Josh Reynolds, I expect this system to work. We have the OL to be run heavy, we have the RB to be run heavy. Looking at stats for Tyrod Taylor and Justin Fields is about 1/10th as significant as looking at the big picture.
My take We can analyze and over-analyze and review and on and on. You’ll get to the same answer. Fields fucking sucks. He is NOT a QB. He is a gifted runner with a strong arm. That’s fucking it. It’s why guys like this are Coach-Killers…because people see the physical talent and blame the coaching for not getting good QB play out of him. But the guy is NOT a QB. He can’t do ANY of the basic QB things well, or even at all. I hate this player. I hated the signing from the get. At this point, I’d rather see Taylor or even Cook and see…you can’t even begin to evaluate our young receivers when the QB has no idea how to get the ball to them…just watching on TV, I saw open guys in front of him and he didn’t throw the ball. Don’t know why. He is a lost cause and the more we play him the more the coaches will look ass…
One thing I haven't heard mentioned, which is entirely on the QB, is the 5yd. slant. When you are going up against a team, like the Browns, with a pretty fierce rush, the 5yd. slant is like bread and butter. Where is it? Wilson is actually quite good at those. The QB is the problem. At least, in that particular play. The Browns were bringing down 7 and no slants. They've tried to run that over the course of the season and the ball is either high, behind or in the dirt. Almost never one step ahead where Wilson et. al. can take the ball and do something with it. There are so many things to unpack with the offense. Problem is, all roads lead to Fields. At the end of the day, you can be as imaginative or bland as you want the QB handles the rock on every single play that isn't a direct snap or wildcat. Face it, Fields is the common denominator. Not a whole lot more to say on the matter. Until there is a serviceable QB behind center that can hit a damn 5yd. slant pattern, on a consistent basis, this is an academic discussion. They've got to be able to do the basic damn offense before then can get all creative.
Good point and I know it's been brought up before, maybe not about the slant specifically, but anything that involves timing. Fields can't do it. Combine that with the fact he can't even be trusted to throw a screen pass and it's no wonder there's yet to be an offense he can thrive in.
I just don't think there is enough evidence either way yet. There is some hope, I will say this. But at the end of the day the coaches have to give us the best chance to win, and that includes playing the players that will do that. I think we can agree that on the offensive side scoring 13 and looking the way we did against a team that gave up 24 per game is way below expectations. I understand it's a tricky situation, but we are in week 11 now. If the coaches think Fields is the main reason why we are underperforming they either should have made the change already or make it very very soon. Perhaps after this Thursday, since it's like a mini bye. But there is no excuse to continue underperforming on offense for much longer for the coaches not to look ass. There is another possibility. Fields is pulled and we still look just as bad with Taylor and Cook. As we kinda did for a stretch when he was hurt. We need to find out for sure what we got in these coaches too, not just players. Heck even AG needs to find out, he might need to tag someone else for the rookie QB next year, we don't know. Again, Fields' evaluation has been completed, no one cares who plays QB, as long as the offense looks solid. That's the coaches job and it's not a crazy expectation for them to do their job.
It might be too soon to accurately grade the coaches but we have an overwhelming amount of evidence that Fields is awful. Engstrand has been the least of our issues so far. We should know by now not to scapegoat the OC if the QB is bottom 5 in the league. As for Glenn - I'm still alternating between totally out on him and not quite out on him (but close). If we're being completely honest, we only won yesterday because of two freak special teams touchdowns, and that was against a very bad Browns team. Gabriel was just awful and we still barely squeaked it out. The Browns also had two of the dumbest penalties at the end to fully eliminate any chance they had to tie. If I'm being charitable to Glenn - he does keep guys accountable and the penalty issues have been improving since earlier in the year. I've still seen a lot more bad than good from him though. One final note is we've lost a lot of one score games this year. One score games tend to revert to the mean, so we're probably slightly better than our record indicates.
Do you remember when MILF was here when we had some semblance of OL, he was able to make it work with other QBs? That gave some confidence he was actually a good OC. Tanner so far hasn't proven that. Jury is still out on him. Granted Fields missed only game and a half, but we didn't look good then either. So, I can't quite tell if he is a MILF or not. All 22 shows some good things, but some issues also. There is one major difference though. Zach had to play because he was just drafted and was expected to possibly be the future. We already know Fields is not it. So, why can't the coaches play a QB who will give a better chance for the offense to be decent if Fields is indeed the biggest issue? We are at the point where there should not be any excuses for 40 yard passing games. Play your best players in all positions. At this point, 11th week, if you look like ass, and you are not able to change that, it's on you.
Yeah I liked MLF a lot, he got a really raw deal with us. He was the most creative play caller I can ever recall us having. Having said that, our non-Zach QBs were still really bad. They had the occasional good game but they were still bad QBs overall. Overall, MLF had about as much to work with QB-wise as Engstrand has. I agree with you that Engstrand uses play action less than I'd like. PA is the rare free lunch in play calling - it helps your passing game even if your running game isn't good, so it's not great that we do so little of it. I don't think Engstrand has been bad overall though. Receivers are getting open and our running game has been very good all year.
At least we had something historic offensive explosions like this with MILF when Zach got hurt: https://jetsxfactor.com/2021/11/05/mike-lafleur-ny-jets-offense-history/ . That was with White and Johnson who are barely NFL players. Tyrod Taylor is much higher level, and yet nothing exploded when Fields got hurt and benched. Again, this is not to say Tanner is a bust, the jury is still out. But he is no MILF quite yet, we will have to see. And like I said, Fields is not a rookie we drafted who has to get reps and be developed. They can bench him at any time for a very good capable back-up who is way better than Johnson and White (he is not even in NFL any more) and who started plenty of games and did well if they think it can improve the offense. At this point, to take a page out of @Jets79 book, as a coach if you keep looking like an ass for the rest of the year, you are an ass.
That’s how I look at it…I don’t care that AG isn’t calling the defense, or isn’t the OC or the QB coach. I don’t care. He’s the fucking HC. It’s on him! He CHOSE all these guys. Sorry, but the HC owns it.
Keeping Glenn obviously unless we lose out but here's an idea, don't flame me because I just thought it and figured I would throw it out there. If we are saddled with Glenn what if we bring in Daboll this off season as assistant HC in charge of developing the QB? Terrible coach but excellent OC and QB guy from what I know, plus it might be attractive because he wouldn't have to move.
