Panthers/Giants game thread

No.

I have no idea why he decided to wear two white gloves. Maybe he lost a bet or something.

 

I noticed them at Fan Fest, he looked like a freaking butler..

 

Carr did well enough. I think I kinda expected more from a guy who can start as a backup, but it's one game. He made some good throws just like Jake did. I feel better about backup QB, certainly.

I figured the second line would be better, because they really just weren't good. It's like the guys with functional strength made first team, though Bridges blows as a puller.

But yeah, his pocket savvy is a completely mythical thing and he just doesn't seem to have a clue in the pocket. He doesn't seem to get good, consistent, or even just urgent drops in the pocket, any pressure and he's lost his focus, and bad things happen at that point.

I thought he looked erratic and got all his yards on a gimme. I wish we knew a little more about Biddle's actual skill, because two TDs is really great but remember when Colbert used to do that? Burning a backup because they stopped on a fake isn't great. Beating a guy outright's kinda neat.

Granted, whoever gets Jarrett, Biddle, and Robinson in the second half of games toward the end of preseason should feast.

This reminds me of the time that something happened while playing/resting after playing/something I did/somewhere I went/somewhere someone I know/something that happened...oh and this guy's from a little school called Notre Dame too, heh heh, wonder who else went there?

another thing that just isn't that hard to do. You don't need to go five wide to do that - you could always tell, 5 wide ended up meaning a mismatch for Kris Mangum, and you had to kinda wonder why we needed to go 5 wide to set up Mangum. Now granted, I don't know if that was a Jake tendency or if that was the goal by design, but that's silly.

Either way, yeah, it's a nice little wrinkle. People start covering that, you make them choose which you cover, and hope Jake makes the right choice. I think that option routes with Jake were a problem (re: him yelling at a receiver, pointing in a direction that he felt they should've gone), but I think mutliple routes keying off a defender are a good fit.

I do think the WCO style clear route that Hoover got 3 yards on, that was ill-advised. He was going to get picked up, you could tell that. He was going to have position but he wasn't going to get a lot out of it. Everyone knows I like WCO principles (particularly with a receiver there) and it's a great design but that just wasn't a great decision. You know that it's going to be broken up, tackled near the line, or popped into the air where bad things happen. But when that play's a little more open, it's great, and it's not easy to transition out of that route to another route.

they really do suck.
What the O gives us is a little more option for our runners, who want to break things deep. But, at times, we're going to be no-gain and it's going to look ugly.

I'm also a little worried about our goal and short yardage running offense. Zone teams don't really excel there.

Wasn't impressed with him returning, but I was underwhelmed with some of the Robinson hype too. It's like our RS are taught that if they stop and wait for a blocker going nowhere to do something (which won't happen), that suddenly they're going to have this big hole. Instead, pursuit simply closes and they get clobbered. Still, Robinson looks like he could make things happen in space.

 

My first thought on the gloves was that he was giving the center an exam or something.

 

I thought the same thing, but when they showed the number of sacks he had, that seems like a whole lot, I'm not sure what it compares to and I knew he'd been sacked a lot in Houston, but those numbers seem huge to me. I have to wonder if that is going to take a while to get over.

 

Deshaun Foster used to stutter at the line and screw himself.

He doesn't anymore. He hits the hole and goes, something we've wanted out of him pretty much every snap since the touchdown in 2002.

That doesn't blow.

Jake Delhomme throws, it seems, with good mechanics overall right now. Better footwork, plant, throw.

That doesn't blow, either.

And as if we had intentionally set up a number of third downs, we came out ready for them and executed them, and simply converted. No big plays, no bad plays. Just conversion. Which leads to more runs, more time of posession. And more time to throw out a 2nd down bomb from shotgun to Smitty that doesn't have to work for us to be in OK shape.

We also just came to the line ready to snap the ball instead of waiting for the play clock to dictate. Which is nice. And also might account for the "on one" business. It put a little more life into the OL, which is never bad.

It's one game, a quarter really, but these things are nice. It can be easy to reach guys early, and harder to keep their focus, but it looks like this approach is a solid one right now.

 

I noticed on the shot of Davidson in the booth that it seemed as if he were looking at a stopwatch. Great idea. Take the info back to practice and let them know to hustle up to the line.

Is it a hole in the cover two or do our linebackers just drop too deep on third down? We always seem to give up stuff underneath that lead to drive sustaining 1st downs.

 

We run cover 3, and I think it's mostly just a factor of our LBs sucking in pass coverage. We have never covered TEs or RBs well, and those are the guys who usually come underneath.

 

Thanks.
Damn I was hoping it was something other than suckage

 

In fairness, as you might guess, Cover 3 means one fewer guy in the intermediate and short drops than Cover 2 since the extra one is deep.


Edit:
I'm a little surprised that no one mentioned Grigsby. Sounds like Ball has been having a good camp, and we may not keep more than 4 DEs anyway, but Otis made plays.