Next Day Thread (Same Day Edition): The Team vs. Chargers

[drowland]

I have a feeling this is going to be another 4 different starting QB kind of season.  It worked out with the east being so bad last year but it won't fly this year.  Ron and co have to fix QB and LT in the off-season.   

[Voice_of_Reason]

General thoughts:

 

1. I used to CRUSH Jay Gruden for running on first down consistently.  So, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.  Scott Turner fell into the same trap, with basically the same results.  And it stunk.  I grade Scott Turner's game-plan/play-calling at an F-.  It was putrid.  It stunk.  It was jut absolutely hideous.  

 

One thing I thought about: does Scott not trust Fitzy yet?  Because when Fitzy was in the game, every play was a Gibson play.  Either a run, or a throw to Gibson.  I think 1 other receiver got a target.  It wasn't until Heineke came into the game where other players started to get involved.  That was a bit weird.  I mean, I love Gibby also (we're going to get to the fumble in a minute), but gads, there are other players on the field, and while Fitz was in, it was like he only had eyes for Gibson.

 

They finished with 27 runs and 22 passes, I believe.  that's great for 1990 football.  That's absolutely horrifically bad in today's NFL.  You are just not going to score points if you call a game like that.  It's like they were terrified of throwing the ball.

 

Anyway, the jury is out on Scott Turner.  And it's possible Brandon Staley just has his number.  So we'll see.  But they had 6 months to come up with a plan for this game, and this is what they came up with?  It was putrid.  

 

PS: I'll add that the Chargers had a really good WR in Allen.  And they found ways to get him the ball and target him all over the field.  McLaurin might not be as good as Allen, but he's a weapon.  And it looked like we were more interested in getting Gibson touches than trying to target McLaurin.  That's just absolutely 100% backwards.  In today's NFL, if you have a top WR, you feed them.  And having a good RB is great, use them, but the offense should not run through the RB.  It needs to run through the passing game, which the Chargers did and we did not. 

 

Our play calling also did not help the OL.  Because a lot of our passes were in known passing down-and-distances.  Why? Because we ran the ball entirely too much.  (If you're a member of the "run the ball, then run it some more, then when you're done with that, run some more, then I believe there isa Delorean time machine sitting on the National mall. Go back to 1985. It doesn't work in today's NFL.)

 

2. I know it's hard to go 4-4 on FGs, and hit a 51-yarder, but it sure would have been nice for Dusty to hit the long one. I'm absolutely not crushing him for missing it, its 50+ yards, it's hard. But it would have been nice.  Going 3-4 was a good sign, though, because he was really struggling earlier.

 

3. Chase Young saw up-close what a dominant DE performance was, by a former teammate.  He needs to be that dominant.  He wasn't.  It was a problem.

 

4. I don't know what's up with our blitz packages, but they ALL got picked up, as far as I can see, and they're all slow developing.  

 

5. Having said that, they lost the game by 4 points, the defense only gave up 20, and the Chargers are loaded on offense and have a legitimate top-10 QB.  So, there's that.  An elite defense would have been able to get off the field more.  I don't understand why they play so much soft-zone.  I am worried that they have a mis-match of personnel: one CB who is better at zone, the other who's better at man.  JDR has to get this figured out, because what they threw out there today was not good enough, given the investment in the defensive side of the ball.

 

6. Good Lord, the Offensive Line was offensive.  Scherff CANNOT have penalties.  That's absolutely unacceptable.  I thought Cosmi actually showed some promise, for a rookie playing his first game and drawing Bosa, that's a tough assignment.  He has the physical skills, he's going to get better.  Leno, eeeee.  He's got to get better.  Or they need to go back to Lucas and see if he's better.  To my eye, it looked like Lucas played better last year than Leno did today.  

 

7. I get to the QB all the way down this list.  Fitzy looked uncomfortable from the start.  I don't know why. Jitters?  Bad game plan?  Not fully comfortable with the offense?  Dunno.  Taylor looked a whole lot more comfortable.  They need to give Taylor games to see if he can really do this.  Unless Fitz is operating at a top half of the league QB (which he wasn't), then you need to find out about Heineke.  (As a note, the PHENOMINAL catch by McLaurin on that moon ball didn't have to be phenominal.  He was screaming open, and the ball was thrown as high as it was long.  I am not sure why.  I didn't see pressure in his face (though honestly,  it could have been there and I missed it), but you've got to get the ball there more quickly.  

 

8. I'll close with this: The Chargers MIGHT just give the Chief's a run for their money in the AFC West.  They are really, really good on both sides of the ball, and are well coached.  Herbert is good enough to keep them in every game.  That was a damn good team. 

  

[Malapropismic Depository]

4 hours ago, KDawg said:

Also,

 

I didn't say it in the OP, but I'll say it here: The OL stunk. Scherff's false start was a drive killer. They looked porous at best. I just don't know how to even start singling out any of them without watching the film. 

 

After you re-watch, I'm curious what, if any, changes you propose.

I currently don't know either, as I didn't watch the O-Line closely.

But I'm curious if swapping Schweitzer for Flowers, or any other substitutions might make sense.

[757SeanTaylor21]

I'll say like I've probably said 15 times before. Scott turner is not a good oc. 

[Stadium-Armory]

They looked better prepared. Herbert is good. We can't tackle. 

[IrepDC]

Your money play on 3rd down can't be a basic dig. Offenses today are using motions, using route combinations, and intently scheming to get their best players the ball.

 

The quick passing game is going to be the go to attack against our defense all year. You have to match up across the board or else we will see what happened today. We should have flooded the LB room with competition this offseason because when we rely on #53 and #55, they are the weakest links on our defense.

 

Holcomb can be a better player, but he needs someone to push him to fight to get on the field. His coverage is bad and his run support is okay. 

 

Bostic has to understand, in zone coverage, if he's standing with no one within 10 yards of him, SOMEONE is wide open. He sits in grass like a receiver disappeared or something. Oh there's someone outside him wide open again... and then he missed tackles. He should have been fighting for a spot on this team last camp.

 

We will be spending some money on the LB position again. You need 3, at least 2, in today's NFL. We have 1. Jamin looked fine to me.

 

The gameplan on defense lacked a some mindfulness to my liking. We should have kept certain match ups instead of allowing LA to scheme Keenan Allen up against every defensive back on our team at their leisure. Mike Williams as well. We can have certain assignments as a base, but when teams have obvious weapons they are going to use, match up. It's 2021.

[PartyPosse]

I’ll add, Landon Collins and McCain were useless. I can’t see Landon here next year and now we know why McCain was cut.

[NoCalMike]

The Chargers looked really good out of the gate but honestly, I felt the defense righted the ship for a big portion of the game.  They never became dominant, but they slowed the Chargers offense down for ample enough time to give our offense a chance to get back into the game, which they ultimately did.

 

It's only 1 game, against a pretty good team, but I am already getting the fear of another season where we are watching games as they get to the 2nd & 3rd quarter down 6-13 or something similar where the offense is just not doing anything and desperately hoping the defense can go the entire game without making a mistake. 

[BleedBNG]

The Chargers capitalized on 14 of 19 third down plays which was tied for the most third downs Washington has surrendered in franchise history. 

 

 

 

[PartyPosse]

How many (if any) 3 and outs did we hold them to?

[Xplosive]

17 minutes ago, PartyPosse said:

How many (if any) 3 and outs did we hold them to?

Like 1 or 2?

[Fan since a Fetus]

I don’t say much, but this just looked like typical Washington Football. There wasn’t any energy, especially with Fitz in there. Does he not know the playbook like Heinke? The game plan seemed to open up with Heincke in there. If Fitz doesn’t know as much, then why is he starting? At least Heinke may make something happen when everything breaks down. 
 

The same stupid mistakes were there that have been there forever. What gives? Yeah, you make a bad play. It’s going to happen, but the whole team just deflates after a bad play. It’s like we have a penalty and everyone just says, “ok, I guess we’re going to lose again” there is no rebound with them. No fire. So, in order for them to win, it seems like they all need everything to go perfectly.

 

there is absolutely no creativity in the play calling on either side of the ball. It seems like we are just lining up and acting like we can beat you without any scheming. We’re not that good. In fact, we haven’t been that good in the past 30 years. It seems a lot of the creativity around the league is coming from the younger coaching staffs. 
 

anothergame where the opposing team needs x many yards and 9x out of 10 the team wouldn’t make that play against anyone else in the league. But, it seems against us, the probability switches. They can make it 9x out of 10 against us. Why are we always on the wrong side of these situations. 
 

 We threw deeper passes, what like 3x? 2 were completed and the 3rd was a penalty which gave us massive yards….yet, we limited our deep play calling . We were 3 for 3 IMO. Dial it up more. 
 

we still can’t stop a tightend.

 

I hope this was just a bad 1st game. Maybe Ron was using this as our final pre-season and playing vanilla so we don’t show too much. Not likely, but I hope. But, that really doesn’t make a bit of sense.

 

It seems Ron has mostly been a middling coach throughout his career. I honestly thought he just needed to separate from Hurney….

 

im not giving up, just this doesn’t look much different to me. 

 

[Going Commando]

We're obviously not one of the good teams of the league, that was really palpable from watching several of the good teams over the last four days.  Their level of energy, innovation, excellence, scheming, talent, confidence, aggressiveness, and intelligence were just on a wholly different level than ours.  What's been demoralizing for me is the slow realization that we don't really have a realistic path to getting to the level that the good teams are at.  We need to overhaul the coaching staff and build an elite group that has this vision for finding competitive talent and putting together an innovative and workable offense and defense to maximize it, and frankly, I do not think Rivera is good enough to do this.  Even if he were willing to make the changes necessary to build this, which he isn't yet, I don't think he's good enough to pull it off.  I think he was a mostly mediocre coach who failed upwards into a job that gave him absurd amounts of power--power that absolutely no other team would have given him--but power that he received without question or qualification because he walked into a dumpster fire and there was no one else at any of the wheels.

 

I hope I'm wrong about him and he makes the changes that he needs to make over the next year.  I know I'm not wrong about the offensive coaches though.  Turner was a catastrophically bad hire.

[fearlessNelms]

As bad as the D was, we were still in control to win the game. After the Jackson INT. we have the ball up 3 with 11-12 minutes to go in the game and an opportunity to put together a sustained drive to potentially close out the game. Obviously, the Gibson fumble on the first play took care of that and we lose.

 

There were plenty of reasons across the board for the loss, but Gibson was involved in three key plays that cost us. The first was the no call face mask in the red zone when he got his head tugged and the refs missed the call. We got some favorable calls yesterday, but this missed call was huge. This would've gave us 1st & goal and a big shot at a TD instead of a FG on our first score of the game. The second was late in the 3rd quarter when he was tackled by the collar, but he grabbed the defenders face mask for offsetting penalties. The horse collar call would've gave us a 1st down inside the 10 with a 3 point lead and a big chance to add to it. We eventually had to settle for a 51 yard FG attempt early in the 4th, but that was badly missed and another golden opportunity went wasted. The third was obviously the fumble at our own 5 and that was a killer.

 

Two of the three were no fault of Gibsons. Obviously, the missed call when he got his head ripped isn't his fault and the offsetting penalty where he got called for a face mask, he was giving a straight arm and grabbed the defenders mask- it happens. Putting the ball on the ground is his fault, however, and that just can't happen in that situation. He also fumbled earlier in the game, but was saved by the ball going out of bounds. He ran the ball well yesterday, but concerns of him being a fumbler have crept into my head.

 

I'm not putting the loss on Gibsons fumble, as there was a whole lot of bad out there by everybody- including the coaches. But despite all the bad, we still had a big chance to steal a game where we were totally outplayed and outcoached.

 

   

[KDawg]

7 hours ago, Skinsinparadise said:

No coaches tape yet, just highlights, so hard for me to see what techniques they are playing and couldn't see enough plays to call a pattern.  

 

A guess based on what I saw from a small sample.  Mix of 1 gap and 2.  2 gap on plays where they expected a run.  more 1 gap on passes.  They moved around Payne in some ways that I don't typically recall seeing. Payne is often on the left.  They had him play some on the right, even had him play edge on a play on the right, though maybe that was just a stunt and missed that part of it. 

 

One one play, talk about max protect, everyone was doubled except Sweat, that's the bottom clip.   Again, small sample but they seem to especially focus on doubling Allen.  Chase didn't have hs best game but rewatching some highlights I'll give him he played with a lot of energy, he was certainly trying hard, that wasn't hard to see. 

 

 

So your working hypothesis is that we are 2-gapping on run plays… plays where our backers should be coming downhill and our DL should be firing off the ball and clogging a single lane.

 

And we’re one gapping on pass down, where our DL could/should have a two way go to pass rush.

 

 

[Skinsinparadise]

1 hour ago, KDawg said:

So your working hypothesis is that we are 2-gapping on run plays… plays where our backers should be coming downhill and our DL should be firing off the ball and clogging a single lane.

 

And we’re one gapping on pass down, where our DL could/should have a two way go to pass rush.

 

 

 

Only guessing based on seeing a play 3rd and short distance where it seemed that the defense was geared to stop the run, the tackles held 2 and it looked to be in the gaps right-left.  but then again it could have simply been a power run and the offense dictated that versus the other way around.  That's why I typically like to seethe coahces tap becuase you can see much better how a play evolves.  You can 2 gap against the run, swallow double teams, don't allow the guards to break free forward and bring a LB up to flll the gap.

Edited September 13, 2021 by Skinsinparadise

[KDawg]

4 minutes ago, Skinsinparadise said:

 

Only guessing based on seeing a play 3rd and short distance where it seemed that the defense was geared to stop the run, the tackles were double teamed but then again it could have simply been a power run and the offense dictated that versus the other way around.  That's why I typically like to seethe coahces tap becuase you can see much better how a play evolves.  You can 2 gap against the run, swallow double teams, don't allow the guards to break free forward and bring a LB up to flll the gap.

 

I am 100% aware how 2-gapping works.

 

I am also 100% against us using it. Our backers don't play downhill and its likely because of the 2-gap non sense.

[Skinsinparadise]

Just now, KDawg said:

 

I am 100% aware how 2-gapping works.

 

I am also 100% against us using it. Our backers don't play downhill and its likely because of the 2-gap non sense.

 

I know you do of course.   I was responding in that way because I guess I mistakingly took your post as suggesting that I couldn't be seeing what I thought because it made no sense to 2 gap against a run.  So I responded to that specifically. 

[BobGriffin]

There were too many lay-up uncontested completions. It made me wonder if Del Rios defensive scheme is dated vs modern NFL offenses. The NFL has changed a lot since he was in Denver and just off memory it seems like we struggle against new gen offensive minds if they have adequate talent. 

[KDawg]

6 minutes ago, Skinsinparadise said:

 

I know you do of course.   I was responding in that way because I guess I mistakingly took your post as suggesting that I couldn't be seeing what I thought because it made no sense to 2 gap against a run.  So I responded to that specifically. 

 

No. My post wasn't aimed at what you were seeing made no sense. It was that what this D is doing makes no sense.

 

Like having success with man and then going back to zone to get abused. Or leaving Kendall Fuller in the game when we are playing more man coverage. I'd even put Curl down there, take Fuller out and let McCain play free.

[Skinsinparadise]

5 hours ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 I do not think Rivera is good enough to do this.  Even if he were willing to make the changes necessary to build this, which he isn't yet, I don't think he's good enough to pull it off.  I think he was a mostly mediocre coach who failed upwards into a job that gave him absurd amounts of power--power that absolutely no other team would have given him--but power that he received without question or qualification because he walked into a dumpster fire and there was no one else at any of the wheels.

 

 

I recall well on a thread early on that you last season said you thought he was a good coach and actually posted that but changed your mind about him within a week's time last season because I recall asking you about it, then, when I noticed it.   I recall you cited back then what happened with Haskins, the Trent and Dunbar trade as to why. 

 

I am not trying to be a pain in the butt.  As you know I respect your takes so I am curious to get your full take on Rivera especialy since it changed from the beginning.  Based on your criticism before, you didn't like the GM version of him but did like the coach version of him but then changed your take on the coach version.    So I am assuming something turned your off to Rivera the coach versus your prior take.  

 

I am with you in that I don't love in theory the coach centric model to run personnel.  But I presume you must like it over the previous version with Bruce Allen in charge?  So the way I take it is at a minimum its an improvement over the past.   and it might be the only way to keep our crazy owner in his cage so to speak. 

Edited September 13, 2021 by Skinsinparadise

[Skinsinparadise]

Sadly this is true. could have been much worse yesterday, the Chargers dominated the game statistically.   Obviously we need to find our Herbert.  QB is the curse of this franchise post Gibbs 1.   Maybe Heinicke is that guy, got some doubts on that front but i also don't rule it out -- he needs to stay healthy.   

 

 

 

 

[BatteredFanSyndrome]

@Skinsinparadise

I'll say it so you don't have to, yes - we've seen a huge negative spin on Ron and Scott since Haskins was done away with.  It's been pretty obvious ever since.  That's not to say that some of the criticism about both men isn't valid, but it's rooted in salt for sure.

 

-------------

 

As for the topic at hand, yesterday didn't do much to sway any opinions of the few who've been hard on Ron and Scott.  I was perplexed by them leaving Cosmi out there to get his ass whooped without help.  With this offensive line, I think Heineke gives us our best chance - but I'm on pins and needles every time he lets the ball go further than 10 yards.  I try not to make too much out of Week 1, but my vision for what this offense can be changed dramatically in just one game.  I was willing to give Scott a pass last season because of what he was dealing with personnel wise.  Again, he was faced with a change at QB, but I'm not sure how much that impacted the overall game plan.  I was left rather unimpressed by his inability to get looks for Terry.  In summary, this is a good week to be naysayer on Ron, Scott and of course - Del Rio.  Hopefully there aren't a lot more weeks like this one.  

 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2021 by BatteredFanSyndrome

[Gurgeh]

The biggest question mark to me before this season began was Scott Turner, given that last season he had very little to work with. I can't say I was impressed with what I saw from him this game. I'm not sure what was up with Fitz but he didn't look happy out there before he got injured. The defense looks much the same as last year, with the same problems of putting pressure on a good team. Considering the quality of the players we have I can only put that down to the coaching. Teams know how to beat our defense, and the only times they don't manage to do it is because of the quality of our players, not the quality of the play calling. In summary, I think a lot of our troubles are down to Turner and del Rio.

 

With that said, it remains to be seen how good the Chargers are. If their OL is genuinely good this year (and not just against us) then they could challenge, and perhaps our performance in this game was better than it appeared. And it is only week 1, the sky isn't falling yet.

[markmills67]

8 hours ago, PartyPosse said:

I’ll add, Landon Collins and McCain were useless. I can’t see Landon here next year and now we know why McCain was cut.

When your DL is getting nowhere near the QB you are going to get open receivers all day long. I would give our DB's the benefit of the doubt in this game.