mistertim

Nice nice pick

Yeah I noticed that as well. I don't think that would have ended well whether he slipped or not.

Oof, Brown slipped. Good that wasn't a pick.

Got gashed a bit but at least held them to 3

Ok then I misread it. But do we really think that Heinicke selling fakes well is really a big cause for the run game working? I mean...honestly, on the list of things that are critical for a successful run game, how high up on the totem pole is selling fakes after the handoff? I'd guess not very high. OL, play design, RB talent, outside blocking (WRs, TEs) would all play a much bigger role in that. It's just weird that some people for some reason want to try and tie everything back to Heinicke, whether it's the OL being good, the running game working pretty well, even the defense playing better. Why is that so necessary?

Can you give me a detailed explanation for what putting extra effort into a handoff looks like? Not talking about play action. The handoff itself. What exactly does extra handoff effort entail?

I think the arm strength thing is more game planning vs specific execution. If the defense knows that a QB doesn't have the arm to make certain types of throws consistently, they can either try to force him to hit those shots by defending the others as well as possible, or mostly leave it out of their game plan since they don't respect the arm talent he has. There are certainly WCO style QBs who did more short and intermediate as their bread and butter, but there's a big difference between a QB having the arm but choosing short and intermediate because that's what the defense is giving him, and a QB choosing short and intermidiate because he has a below average arm and struggles with those bigger passes. Tom Brady has done plenty of dink and dunk when that's what the defense gave him, but they also knew that he had a good enough arm to make them pay if they left too much of the intermediate and long stuff open, so they still had to respect that. The dink and dunk long drive thing works really well when the run game is strong and the defense is playing well. It probably won't be as viable if those two things aren't working as well. If the opposing team jumps up to a big early lead you're basically forced to take more shots due to time constraints.

@Fresh8686I think I remember reading something about that moderate humidity "low and slow" 2-3 drying being superior to the faster and lower humidity method, but also being something that's not usually great for noobs to do since you're also straddling that line between getting the buds just right and potentially inviting in things like mold and rot. Is that true?

My issue is that when Heinicke was struggling, the hive blamed everything else: OL, receivers, coaches, etc. Now that things are going better, almost everything is somehow because of Heinicke. Running game doing well? Must be because of Heinicke. OL playing great? Heinicke makes them better. Defense playing much better? Must be because Heinicke is engineering long drives. Of course it is, 100%. But at the same time the amount of praise and criticism the QB gets is often overblown. QB is the most important position, but that doesn't mean that everything good and/or everything bad stems from him. There are only so many things the QB can influence.

Can you give me the link you're using for your stacked box rate vs us? I can't find one.

So if everything is ideal we could see him put up more yards and points? Every QB has pass catchers out at some point. Even with injuries our OL has been excellent overall in pass pro pretty much all season. One of the highest rated. It seems like this might be heading back into "When things aren't going well it's everone's fault but Heinicke's" territory here.

Has nothing to do with 4th quarter drives. It has to do with the whole game. If you know the run game isn't working, or your defense has **** the bed and you're way down early, or for whatever other reason, you know, and the defense knows, that you're going to have to throw the ball and it still works because your QB has the skill to do so. That's what I mean. Right now the run game is working, the defense is playing really well, so Heinicke doesn't have to deal with that sort of situation. Earlier in the season he did somewhat (mostly because the defense was playing poorly) and the results were "meh". IMO for him to separate himself from the 15-20 tier QBs he'd need to show the ability to do that if need be. He didn't earlier in the season, but it was early so he gets a bit of a mulligan. I'd be interested to see what would happen now.

We're running the ball more effectively because of Heinicke? Is he handing it off in a specific way? Our OL is excellent, the play design is pretty good, and we have some good talent in the backfield. The defense is playing better for multiple reasons, partially because we lost Chase and Montez and now have to actually do interesting things on defense instead of just be plain vanilla. Sure, the long drives help, but I doubt that's the biggest reason. Not everything is somehow caused by Taylor Heinicke, you know?

Taking over a game with an arm doesn't just mean arm strength but that could be part of it, as that usually requires the ability to hit pretty much any route at any level at any time. At the moment TH is more of a game manager. Which, again, is ok. But I don't think anyone is especially scared of our passing game. To me if the run game isn't working, and you know it, and the opposing defense knows it, and you basically have to rely on your QB to get you a win is what I mean. Or if your defense is terrible, you get behind, and you have to make up for it by airing it out (since running and ball control won't help you), and it still works. Basically if a defense knows you're going to pass a lot and it doesn't matter because your QB is great. Sure, you can throw out a completion percentage or whatever, but I don't think most people here would claim that Heinicke is a guy who has done that sort of thing or who has proven that he can go out and single-handedly shred a defense ala the top QBs in the league. Big plays, plrenty of air yards, plenty of TDs. We don't have that and haven't really seen it. Currently we're winning with defense, a good running game, and good game management quarterbacking from Heinicke. Mostly shorter and intermediate stuff inside the numbers. And that's fine, because it's working, and his OC is mostly playing to his strengths. But what happens when it stops working and we have to tell TH to go out and win the game with his arm? That's what I'm curious about, and something we've not really seen. For me personally to move his up in my head to the next echelon I'd need to see a couple of performances like that.

People have talked about how TH would basically "level up" in their eyes. For me to think he's gone from a 15-20 type QB to a potential top 10 type QB I'd need to see him truly take over games with his arm and shred defenses. That's the kind of thing you see top QBs do...certainly not all the time, but at least on occassion. Heinicke hasn't shown himself to be that guy at this point. So far we've been on a winning streak with a combination of a vastly improved defense, running the ball effectively, and having Heinicke play efficient football. And there's nothing wrong with that. But to bump him up to the next echelon I'd want to see that he can actually be a guy who teams truly fear when the ball is in his hands. I'm a bit dubious about whether he has the arm talent to actually be that guy, but I'd certainly like it if it happened. So it's not so much "expectations" as it is explaining what I'd need to see in order for TH to move up to the next level in my view. I don't expect him to go out and throw for 400 yards and 4 TDs on Sunday, but if he did it would certainly impact how I view his potential.

I love how they're talking about this basically being a regular occurrence. "Oh ****, Andre has his flamethrower out again. Just ignore him, kids."

This is a very shrewd maneuver by Lindell. Everyone knows that the secret to getting SCOTUS to hear your case is to simply flood them with copies of what you want them to take up. Should work like a charm.

Since we've been winning recently is what I'm concentrated on, because our game has changed since the bye. Defense is playing well, we're playing much more control the clock ball. Either way, our offense may need to step up this game unless our defense is lights out. We have one of the worst red zone TD percentages in the NFL. So yes, scoring points isn't out of the question, but our inability to punch it in enough could be problematic, especially if we end up in something closer to a shootout.

No we haven't. We put up 29, 27, 17, 17.

I can see that, but for me it would depend on how it happens. If we win with a successful rushing attack, super stingy defense, and solid play from TH (basically like the last 4 games) then I doubt my opinion would change much. But if Dallas jumps to an early lead and/or our running game isn't working as well as we'd like, and we have to basically rely on TH's arm to propel us to victory then that would probably move the needle for me. Top QBs are the ones who can do that. Other things aren't working so the team has to basically say "ok, we have to rely on your arm to get us a win." and it happens. I haven't ever really seen TH be that guy yet. I think TH is a good player and seems like a really good dude, so I like him. But I can understand the theory of the sentiment. It was like the Cult of Colt. The people were just so over the top. Like when someone you know is trying to get you to like something they do (could be anything, not just football related) and they're annoying and overbearing about it and so that almost gives you a negative predisposition in your head about whatever they're pushing on you, regardless of whether you actually end up liking it or not.

To be fair, you did basically disappear from this thread when Heinicke was struggling earlier in the season. You seemed to re-appear after he found his groove again.

To be fair, what would you expect the players to say after their coach said that publicly? Not like they can go out and say "Man, coach shouldn't have said that" or something. He kind of put them in a bad spot there.

The NFL should institute a mandatory league-wide Thumb War between opposing QBs prior to the start of every game.

Good point about the early lead. If Dallas comes out hot and goes up by a couple of scores and we have to start trying to get more big chunk pass plays, that probably wouldn't be a good thing, especially against a team that gets as many turnovers as they do. We've been able to win recent games by a combination of our defense playing great and a ball control offense. But pretty much no defense is going to be able to shut down everyone. Eventually someone will get the better of them, even if it's for one or two games. Then we'd have to get away from ball control offense and move towards high scoring chunk pass offense, and that's probably not going to work very well for us.

Yeah, I understand where it comes from. It's a QB league, and the QBs are the "faces" of the teams. Plus, it's also something "clickbait-y" that can get their articles hits. Again, this has nothing to do with TH. If Tampa beat us and people said "Tom Brady beat Taylor Heinicke" I'd say the same thing: "That's stupid, no he didn't. QBs don't play each other."