RED ZONE OFFENSE

>> I've never seen any other team just lay down and not adjust using excuse of personnel.

yea but i have seen teams without talent suck before. not saying that it's an excuse for us not try to get first downs and score. just wanted to point out our lack of talent on offense in case it hadn't been brought up in discussion before.

i'm still trying to reason through this with myself. be patient with me.

 

>> That's not synonomous for "well we just shouldn't pass anyway." And that's far from the only way to get a team to adjust out

i'm gonna disagree with you on a small technicality. The way to get a team to adjust out is to pass deep "successfully" or catch and run for a bunch or yards a few times. if you're trying to pass but are throwing incompletions and INTs and getting sacked, my guess is that teams will continue to crowd and blitz us. i think, earlier in the year we had some success completing long passes. in the last three or four games i don't think we have. we get guys open occassionally but we drop the ball or throw off-target. i think one of the reasons that Atlanta and Tampa crowded and blitzed us so much was due to who we had at QB.

 

certainly success in other things are good ways to get teams out of stacking the run. There are other ways to make them adjust out, or you could simply take advantage of the mismatch and run with it. Passing against an 8 man front has more uses than just forcing teams out of 8 man, and you can force teams out of it without being good at passing (formation, motion, extreme formation change before the snap, some of the other things I'd mentioned before).

 

>> formation, motion, extreme formation change

well we tried some of those empty back sets against Atl which got the defense spread out but i don't think we had much success with it (think we did have success with it against Dallas, but my memory is getting blurry). henning probably stayed away from it against tampa since he was down to his last QB and that formation invites a pass rush with pretty much one v one blocking.

we do use a lot of different formations and motion. at a glance, our offensive sets looked a lot like Tampa's to me.

 

I take it offense is a relative thing for you all, because I haven't seen any since september, red zone or otherwise.

 

When the defense gets the ball inside the 20, Henning better find a way to get the Panthers in the end zone. I don't care how, but he's the OC and it's job ultimately.

Call it play calling, mental mistakes, stupid penalties, blown assignments, poor execution, lack of talent, whatever, but Henning's offense is a failure, and it gets worse in the red zone.

 

>> Call it play calling, mental mistakes, stupid penalties, blown assignments, poor execution, lack of talent, whatever, but Henning's offense is a failure, and it gets worse in the red zone. he's the OC and it's job ultimately

of course the problem with holding him responsible is that he inherited the talent he's got to work with right now. they didn't really do anything significant to upgrade our offensive talent in the offense. they concentrated on the defense and the run game in the draft and FA and couldn't afford much after that. and they improved our QB situation and run game, although nothing to brag about. in hindsite, they probably could have used our 2nd, 3rd and/or 4th picks last year on some receivers and we would have been much better off this year. not saying that i don't like the guys we got. give him at least a year to go out and get some talent and then evaluate him. gruden is in a similar situation in Tampa, although they could afford more and did more to upgrade their offense during the offseason and it still sucks.

i think to be fair we should call it what it was in the tampa game . . . penalties and poor execution . . . and leave out the insinuation that it was playcalling. if you want to blame henning for a delay penalty by a rook QB, a personal foul after the play was dead by a cheapshot artist, a questionable holding call on an undersized FB, and a rook QB with all day to throw missing a wide open Walls in the endzone, then i guess you can and we will just differ in opinion. i have simply presented a factual view of what happened. if you choose to ignore that and continue with your unmitigated bashing of henning then, well, i guess it is a free country ... so have at it if it makes you feel better.

 

I don't think Henning was here in I think it was '99 but may have been '00. Our QB was either 2nd or 3rd to last in the entire NFL in Red Zone stats. Just seems we can't put it together, not enough "playmakers"... we've always been short on playmakers IMO.

 

>>well we tried some of those empty back sets against Atl which got the defense spread out but i don't think we had much success with it (think we did have success with it against Dallas, but my memory is getting blurry).

Well, that's a good way, but the problem is it's extreme but a basic convention. The idea there is to give five receivers a chance to be isolated, and therefore find one or two matchups that are good for us. It's not bad, but it has no run option other than the QB, and for the most part the remaining second level player (whether he be the sole LB or a safety, depending on personnel) will be on top of that one. So you can spread them with it, but it doesn't aid the run, just the pass, and that tends to be of the short variety.

IF we did it three wides and motioned a TE or back out, or simply four wides, we'd still have the ability to pick up the blitz and run the ball some. I'm not looking for something more radical like

>>henning probably stayed away from it against tampa since he was down to his last QB and that formation invites a pass rush with pretty much one v one blocking.

Plus, if you're coming out in a basic defensive call, and you check out into five wides, you still have Derrick Brooks and Quarles on a TE and a back, and that's not always a good matchup. Generally it's better for them.

>>I take it offense is a relative thing for you all, because I haven't seen any since september, red zone or otherwise.

Basically, Vor.

>>of course the problem with holding him responsible

the problem with holding him responsible is that he's responsible for the coaching. He's responsible for it all, but the coaching is the most directly responsible.


>>they didn't really do anything significant to upgrade our offensive talent in the offense.

Still, Henning was pretty high on who he got, and was the one who pushed for guys like Fasani, Kyle Johnson. He obviously had to put a lot of work into getting Peete here. If not, we were looking at Scott Mitchell and Mark Rypien. I can laugh now, knowing it's no longer possible.

Lamar Smith came for Boudreau. Foster would have helped us. But we had chances at receivers and passed. Talent is a problem - something I hope we do something about, no doubt - but as well, what we have has Henning's hands on it.

>>i think to be fair we should call it what it was in the tampa game . . . penalties and poor execution . . . and leave out the insinuation that it was playcalling.

But it wasn't all what it was in the Tampa Bay game. We haven't been penalized that much - we've had some drives killed, but that still doesn't get us up to that many decent drives. I didn't find the execution to be that terrible in Tampa Bay, compared to a good defense. Penalties hurt - the problem is, in Henning's offense, there's about zero room for mistakes. We apparently think being up by 6 is all we'll ever need, and never try for more save the Detroit grudge match. We play so conservatively that you can sit back and expect one mistake - one turnover, one fumble, one defensive slip up - will cost us the game. At some point you've gotta start playing for the win rather than giving up.


>>i have simply presented a factual view of what happened. if you choose to ignore that and continue with your unmitigated bashing of henning then, well, i guess it is a free country ... so have at it if it makes you feel better.

This isn't toward me, but it does get oh-so-tired when you try to do things like this. This and the scapegoat thing - the thing you don't seem to get is that nobody here's out to get Henning the way you're out to defend him. So naturally it does get tired to see you trying so hard to position your statements as right by saying they're factual and trying to paint what the opposition is saying as foolish and irrational. It's not.

 

>> what we have has Henning's hands on it

not enough of what we have has his hands on it because his hands were basically tied when he got here. if you can tell me that you know for fact that it was henning's choice alone to not get us a legit receiver in here, then i'm your sde. but i think th GM probably had a lot to say about that.e

>> But it wasn't all what it was in the Tampa Bay game

if you read what the posts, my response was to the three series in the red zone. his insinuation was that play calling is what stopped us in the red zone and it was not.

>> So naturally it does get tired to see you trying so hard to position your statements as right by saying they're factual and trying to paint what the opposition is saying as foolish and irrational. It's not.

i think my statements were factual. we missed a wide open TD due to poor execution. we then had are only other 2 drives that reached the red zone that were thwarted by penalties. those are the facts IMO and they address the subject which is "red zone offense." they are something specific that i point at to support my argument that has at least some merit and sence of truth to it. And i get tired of reading this posters bashing henning that can't defend their side with some kinda intelligent argument. I'm open to hearing something that i can purt my arms around and say yea maybe i agree with ya that henning sucks. but so far all i have gotten is fiction and when i dispute it then what i get is that it's hennings fault for all the mental mistakes, stupid penalties, blown assignments, poor execution, lack of talent, and whatever else. I don't buy it. If these were hennings players maybe i could blame him for idiots like steussie and not having talent. but the simple fact is that most of these players were here before he came. and IMO there's very little talent there. facts are that the defense got the priority in the draft and in FA. hennings hands, i think, were pretty much tied this offseason. In the end, unless you can support your position with at least some kind of intelligent argument then it seems to be pretty much irrational jibberish. I'm not saying this about you mag or any other poster in particular. It's just an observation.