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Kyle's play calling against Seattle. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.


s0crates

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I know there will be a flurry of post game threads here, but I think this warrants its own.

Let me preface this by saying that I think Kyle has done a good job building this offense and calling plays this year, no question about it. The pistol and read option have been so effective teams are copying us. We had the fifth ranked offense and the #1 ranked rushing offense.

But that brings me to my topic, which is what happened to that rushing offense this week? My opinion: Kyle abandoned it. If there was ever a game to commit to the run, this was it, but Kyle didn't.

Think about this. We enter the game with the best running offense in football, thanks in no small part to our star rookie running back, Alfred Morris, who is second in the league in rushing. Its the playoffs. Its cold. The field is a mess. AlMo is coming off a career 33 carry, 200 yard, and three touchdown game. Our offensive line is opening huge holes for the Butler in the first half, and he is averaging a nice 5 yards per carry. Our star quarterback is obviously hobbled with injury. We have a two touchdown lead. Our defense continues to make stop after stop after stop. We are losing the field position battle. We are losing the time of possession battle.

All this is to say, if there was ever a time to feed the #2 ranked running back in the league, then this was it. So how many carries does he have?

16 carries. That's it. A measly 16 carries. He should have had twice that many.

I love what Kyle has done this year, but the play calling in this game really bothers me. I think our failure to call more running plays cost us the game.

Anybody disagree?

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He had to. The Seahawks played dirty, hurt RG3, and then knew all they had to do was stack the box and play the run. His only option was to throw the ball in an attempt to show we could if we wanted to. Unfortunately, RG3 couldn't get it done. And that's that.

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You got to look at where we had the ball for most of the third quarter, inside our 5. The defense is expecting you to run. Let's just except the loss, hope everyone gets healthy for next year and quit second guessing.

No, no, no, we have to second guess everything. There's no middle ground if we don;'t. Wah wah wah.

That's not directed at you by the way, socrates. :)

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Yes, I do agree. We had success running the ball, but I think the idea was to get some completions and then feed Morris again. We just never made those completions, and we had no rhythm. All I can say is that this loss is more about what we couldn't do, mostly due to Griffin's knee, than what Seattle did.

Yup, as soon as we picked up one first down we would run the ball again. We just couldn't get them to back off enough because we couldn't convert.

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I think he wanted to run but after RG3 got hurt they just manned up on our receivers and played the run on every play. They saw that RG3 couldn't run or pass, kind of put Kyle in a bad spot. Had a defense playing the run on every down and a QB that couldn't effectively pass. Wanted this season for Fletcher and Moss the most

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Agree with OP and he not only abandoned the run when it clearly worked for us on the two opening drives, but then he turns around when our QB is clearly at his hobbled worst and ask him to air it out? And throw off a back leg he could barely set? Ridiculous play calling.

It was pathetic. I mean Morris disappeared practically after those first few drives. I am so confused.

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To those who are saying that RG3 being limited really hurts the run game, I would certainly agree. The read option obviously is much less deadly. We still could run those zone blocking stretch plays though. In fact, it looked to me like they were working when we were calling them. I think we should have kept calling them.

And while it is true that Seattle was stacking the box, it looked to me like our line was still doing a good job, and we were still able to run. Morris did get 5 yards a carry even with the stacked box.

I think we should have just fed Morris. We didn't. How many times did Morris have consecutive carries? Three carries in a row? I'm betting not many.

Not to be too hard on Kyle, as I really do like what he has done this year, but I would have called this one differently.

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They should have definitely abandoned the read option. When Griffin is healthy, he's the last guy you want to see running with the football if you are a defense. The guy has 4.3 speed. Now that Griffin has a bad right knee, you crash down on the RB every time and you force a gimpy Griffin to run. The guy couldn't cut and take advantage of running lanes because of the knee. The terrible field conditions didn't help either. So, he's not as dangerous as Morris at that point. They definitely should have leaned on Morris more in this game (unless he was injured too). The Seahawks had no answer for him early on.

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When we were up 14-13 it reminded me of a Gibbs coached team. With Brunell we couldn't pass in the playoffs so we had to run the ball and play defense. Unfortunately our defense wasn't strong enough to hold them when our offense struggled. Bottom line is.. Kyle will learn how to switch up the game plan as the game scenarios change. If Joe Gibbs is coachin this team we probably win this game because Morris would've had 30 carries for 100+ yds and we keep our QB safe.

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