I've basically said the same thing as you. He's a middle of the pack coordinator. Nothing special. Why the jump to defend him at every opportunity then?
It's important to understand what is going on. Absent bringing in another Bill Parcells, this thing is not getting fixed with the line in the state that it's in. Changing coaches will be re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic. Again, look at the guys hired this offseason -- Marrone, Bradley, McCoy, etc. They have no skins on the wall for being able to do any better at this level.
And I'm generally someone who believes good coaching and good management begets (and is more important than) good talent. But in this case, the OL is so god damn pathetic, it's just not reasonable to ask someone to perform under these conditions. Even taking Garrett out of the equation, we are getting a fraction of the effectiveness of Murray, Romo, Witten, Bryant and Austin every season because the OL lets them down and doesn't live up to their end of the deal.
The OL's complete ineffectiveness is the #1 issue on this team, by far (well, other than Jerry Jones). That's not defending anything -- that's just the problem.
Frankly, I'm not fond of a middle of the pack offensive coordinator. I'm not sure how the hell Lovie Smith came into the equation because I don't really want him as a coach either.
His name has been thrown about previously as a guy we could get that would be an "instant upgrade."
I'm with you. No thanks.
Eh, neither of has any sort of expertise to say this definitively one way or the other.
When you see basic run plays called and over and over again the defense is in the backfield before the back reaches the line of scrimmage, you can be pretty sure it's the personnel.
There is only so much trickery you can call as a coach. At some point your guys have to be able to push the other guys out of the way. Ours were routinely incapable of that last year. There were way too many games where we couldn't average 3 yards a carry because the defense kept tackling the backs for losses. That's not on the playcalls. The line MUST be able to give the backs more time than that to find a crease. It's a prerequisite to being an offensive line.
Did you see that Phil Costa video that got posted a couple weeks back? The guy was a sieve. He single handedly destroyed drive after drive, where his whiffs alone blew up important plays. You can't put that at the feet of the playcaller.
I certainly don't see it that way.
I can't see it any other way. I watch it, I see the defense coming free on run plays and pass plays. This isn't stuff that the defense is keying in on because we call it too much, it's just straight up getting whipped. The solution to keep the defense off balance is to call stuff like draws and delays more, but that only works in situations where the defense is expecting pass. It doesn't work in the redzone or in short yardage and that was even moreso our Achilles heel. It's one of the reasons our yardage totals don't match our points. Lack of ability to convert short yardage/red zone.
When you are throwing your week's game plan out the window to move the ball down the field, I tend to think either aren't making good situational play calls or aren't a very good game planner.
I tend to think that it's very difficult to come up with a good gameplan that includes no ability to run the ball and not very much ability to pass protect. What plays do you call? You can't run it consistently, you can't call downfield passing plays consistently.
Bob documented in another article what we did against Atlanta -- Garrett tried to shorten things up, run quicker plays, shorter passing routes. It was a disaster. Atlanta picked up on it and camped on the routes. They had no fear of our run game, they had no fear of our deep passing game, so they just smothered our receivers in the short passing game. We scored 13 points that week.
What exactly should be the game plan? Run heavy? Not possible. Short passing? Didn't work against Atlanta. You want Romo taking 7 step drops all day with this line? He'll get murdered.
I mean, I have asked over and over again, what's the solution? There aren't any. You can't do anything with this OL. Good offense starts with good QB play, good pass protection and good run blocking. Our offense is incapable of two-thirds of those things.
