GHH's Observations: The Good, The Bad and The 'Well Hell. We Got Ourselves a Football Team Again!' W3: Punch-up in Philly.

[Voice_of_Reason]

You're right on the time, we took over possesion after the Philly punt with 2:25 left. I suppose Gruden could've used a timeout after the Morris run on 1st down, but my point was that I was fine with the call to run in that situation. With 2:25 left, down three on their 41 yd. line and two TO's + the 2 minute warning remaining, everything was on our side to come out of that drive with at least a tie game. I still can't believe we couldn't move the ball at least ten yds. to set up a game tying FG try and I really think that game 3 or not, that loss on Sunday is going to haunt us all season long.

The problem with a run there is that the OL had gotten 0 push all day. The run game was struggling to be consistent.

I wouldn't have had a problem with a draw or something like that, especially with Helu.

But I hated the call.

I also hated the next 2 calls. Why test outside the numbers? You have 3 TOs. Test the middle.

I think I probably would have thrown on 1st down, run a draw on second down, thrown on 3rd and 4th, but in the middle both times.

They only needed 10 yards, but I would have attempted to get behind the defense. Eagles were playing for the shirt stuff. Get behind them.

I thought Gruden called a great game until the last few plays.

I also liked that he stuck with the running game, trying to get it on track. But it never did. At some point you've got to realize when something isn't working and try something else. Maybe running less stretch zine plays, using Helu more, something.

[RandyHolt]

The problem with a run there is that the OL had gotten 0 push all day. The run game was struggling to be consistent.

I wouldn't have had a problem with a draw or something like that, especially with Helu.

But I hated the call.....

 

I did too. While Cousins was clearly struggling compared to the first half, Morris was having a tough day as well. Sure he got his yards, but basically via break tackles more than usual, for even him. Morris in the game telegraphs run, and run we did, and got nothing. I hate how teams predictably open every 2 minute drill, with a run. 

 

Burning time is not what we needed to focus on. We needed one first down as a priority.  If Gruden was worried about milking the clock, that was a mistake. Coaching afraid. Our D rose up to stop drives quite a few times late in that game and he saw it. We were losing, we needed points!  Barring the perfect drive scoring on the final play of the game, they were getting the ball back anyways.

 

That is the time you put Helu into the game. If you want to run, spread it out and run Helu.  At least show pass first, why not.

 

Fresh off of burning them deep with DJax, we had Philly and their fans on the ropes. We kind of let them off the hook by running Morris. I would have liked to send him deep on 1st as a decoy. You KNOW there would be 3 guys on him opening up the underneath. I bet fans breathed a sigh of relief to see we didn't go deep to DJax at all after that. We had a pocket and time almost the whole day. Go for the throat more. Don't play for the tying FG. If we score quick, maybe our D catches a break, or they score quickly too, and we get the ball back again.

 

We are simply not a polished enough team to score AND milking the clock, while losing.