Panthers/Giants game thread

I liked the play where some defender went air born to block Basanez"s throw and Shelton knocked him on his ass.

 

So when we see the OLB lined up directly in front of the TE, it's non-eagled?

 

yeah, esentially that's all it's used for anymore other than giving an outside blitz look

 

That's the Carr I remember. What the hell did Houston and Mike McCoy do to him?! He looked like team captain for special olympics football out there.

 

Yes.

 

My thoughts are pretty much in line with everyone else's:

-Offense

• Jake's mechanics looked much improved
• Smitty is still Smitty
• New blocking scheme looks fantastic (especially on Foster's longest run -- that was incredible, compared to years past). As good as Foster and Goings looked, I can't wait to see Williams in it.
• King looks good already (although has much room for improvement) and deserves to be TE1. In fact, IMO, Rosario should leapfrog Gaines from what I saw.
• Colbert is still worthless
• Robinson is better at WR than I expected
• I'd love to see Colbert cut and his roster spot given to Biddle. Good Lord, he can't be any worse.
• Steven Jackson is worth keeping around.
• Carr still gets jittery under pressure (to put it mildly), but with time I still have hope he'll mellow out and find his arm again (referring to throwing motion, not power). That point aside, he's still night-and-day better than Weinke.
• I still like Basanez (always have), and like him just fine at QB3.
• Kalil didn't play as strong as I expected, but still better than Hangartner did last year.
• I'm very glad Hartwig is back and playing C.
• Wharton impressed me. He's got a fantastic drop in pass protection, and yet doesn't give ground like Gross. Losing him last year was a lot more painful than I thought.
• We are paper thin at OT. Mathis sucks even worse at RT than he does at RG, but Butler is absolutely horrible. He is so bad, I was actually happy to hear we signed Walker today.

- Defense

• Predator looked even better than I'd hoped. I'd be perfectly fine if Rucker never took another snap. Not that I don't like Rucker, it's just that I think ATP, McClover brings more to the table.
• Anderson is still nowhere near starting caliber, and I fail to see what the coaches see in him.
• Beason showed some athletic ability against the scrubs, but I'm anxious to see how he does against the 2's, and eventually the 1's. He can't be any worse than Anderson.
• I think Thomas Davis is playing out of position. He should be making more plays, even though I realize he was the 2nd leading tackler on the team last year.
• Seward looks like solid depth, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with him starting for any significant amount of time. His break on that one pass was pretty, though.
• Did we have any safeties playing? I don't think I saw any.

- Special Teams

• Kasay is still Kasay.
• Baker is still Baker.
• Kyle is still Kyle, but he's getting long in the tooth and we need to be thinking about replacing him in the next few years.
• Robinson will be a very nice PR for us, but I think we've got better talent for returning kicks.
• We need a kickass gunner. Badly.
• We need to learn how to block on returns. Badly.

 

Yeah, the motion has gotten worse.

I liked watching that, though. I expect to be better than Kiper at evaluating QBs, since he said that neither Carr or Harrington would be busts, but it was reassuring to be better at it than Jaworski as well. There's no way to say this without coming across as a narcissist, but there just isn't anyone out there at ESPN or elsewhere who can rival my ability to evaluate quarterbacks. Even I doubt myself from time to time, but seeing old clips like that where people I respect (Jaws, not Kiper) make mistakes that I didn't is exciting. And we're seeing another example with Kellen Clemens in New York, although I believe that Jaws was high on him as well.

My biggest reaction, though, was from thinking how screwed we would have been if Houston had done the smart thing and taken Peppers (in which case, I favored a trade down to get John Henderson).

 

It's fun to watch. I wish we had more sideline angles. If we can do this stuff against solid fundamental defenses, we could have something big.

King runs nice routes. That's about all I've really seen so far. He doesn't look like he gets abused run blocking, but most of the time he was running a combo block.

erratic. He was 2-7 other than the one really nice play, a gift.

he did well v/s Osi.
Gross doesn't give as much ground as he used to, as of this game. But he still lets people get him on his heels.

whoa there.
McClover looked decent. He brings some rush, he's not just an outside guy. But wow.
I almost despise how little people think of Mike Rucker anymore. Don't know if it's Peppers finally reaching expectations or what, but his sack numbers dip a bit and everybody's been ready to throw him away for a couple years now. We've been lucky to have Mike Rucker, a "diminished" Rucker giving us "only" 25+ quarterback pressures a year compared to Pro Bowl Rucker.

Plus, McClover runs around and that's neat, but he doesn't stay at home, and wasn't he facing the 2nd string LT? I thought I heard Diehl wasn't in. He's exciting, and I was excited. But does he play the solid fundamentals? on the reverse, Ken Lucas played his block and beat it for a stuff. McClover sold out.

He's like a lot of our young LBs. They can read run plays and formations, but they're not quite as instinctive as you'd want and don't make a ton of plays in zone pass D. Granted, I still don't think Anderson is that talented, but he showed he could play the run.

ehh. There were games last year where he made plays in space. We want more out of him for coverage, but other than that, I like what he's doing. I like him blitzing the edge more this year.

camera angles are awful for preseason DB play, but the most I can say I saw consistently was

not as worried about LS as I am kicker, long term. We've literally had one guy. Nationally, no one knows Kasay, just like nationally no one knows Mike Minter I guess. But whoever gets in that job, whenever, has huge shoes to fill. But yeah, we inevitably spend on a veteran LS one day a year or two from now. Since Kyle literally has no other responsibility, he could play for years.

We really don't have any of the coverage spots nailed down. Not a soul I can think of.

 

Our return guys look bad and our coverage seems even worse than last year.

I'm sure that once our starters are in there for more than a few minutes our D will look just fine but i hated watching whatever that was on saturday night. For a team that is supposed to have such great depth we looked very disappointing on defense IMO.

Is this year going to be one of those flip-flop years where our offense will be improved but the defense takes a significant dip?

 

Keep in mind that a lot of the faces have changed. I have no faith in Crossman, but even a good coach would take some time to form these new guys into a cohesive unit.