(05-10-2020, 05:43 PM)The_Franchise_QB Wrote: (05-10-2020, 01:19 PM)flsprtsgod Wrote: Honest question for you and everyone else who holds this opinion.
Will it be worse than last season? Why or why not?
This offensive line isn’t a fine wine that gets better with age, this one is deteriorating. I feel like Taylor and Cam are out of position to be honest, they have stone feet. They could be monsters at guard. Cam (when healthy) is awful man, like the guy is a turnstile at LT. RG is slated to be a battle between the smoothie king and Cann, it doesnt look good. Norwell and Linder are solid, but aren’t line saviors.
We switched back to Minshew mid season not because he threw the ball better or read defenses quicker... it’s because he was able to run away from the countless defenders running at him. He was battered as the season went on. He started wearing a knee brace and his groin was tweaked. Despite this, they did nothing but draft a smoothie king 4th round.
In addition, sophomore slumps are real and expectations should be tempered. We saw once defenses started to figure out Minshews tendencies toward the end of the season he was below average as a QB. I’m not placing blame on him, that’s expected for a rookie... but I sure do hope people realize developing QBs is something that takes time. Defenses now have a full offseason to prepare for Minshew and there is no additions in this offense. What we saw happening last season is once the defense took away Minshews first read he has no idea what to do (it also doesn’t help he was always scrambling -my first gripe).
My expectations are low, in part because they should be and also they did NOTHING to help this offensive line. So I expect him to be scrambling all the time. Running game is average. Chark is the only current threat, maybe Oliver emerges.
This team isn’t conforming to an offensive driven league and these teams that have low marketability seem to get penalized more. Call it a hate for the Jags or whatever, but I look at it a tad different than the “NFL hates Jags” story.
The focus should have been providing Minshew with the most optimal surroundings for much NEEDED growth at the QB position. It wasn’t put there... so time will tell if it was a mistake or not. But I keep seeing people misunderstanding the low expectations for the team tied to Minshew, when really it’s the FO and the offensive line that are the issue.
Excellent post.
This is a big part of why im worried. The other reason i have is this O really struggled moving the ball and scoring points last season. The W's mainly came from Minshew making something happen.
Its the endless dumb penalties, holding, false start, hands to face. The moment we fell to 1st and 20 and turned 2nd and 7 into 2nd and 17, we really struggled to get a 1st down. We really struggled putting 2 or 3 1st downs together let alone scoring drives. When we got to the RZ we stalled way too many times. How many times did we get stopped at the goaline?
Now you can argue that is system and we now have Gruden and he will fix all those things. I'll let the Oline off for 2018 but they had the whole of training camp and played the whole season healthy and there was no improvements, no adjustments, no playing to strengths. Can Gruden suddenly make that unit click? Can he keep TE's healthy? Can he get us that yard on 4th and 1 on the 1?
Outside of Chark and Dede, this team doesnt have a whole lot of true 'weapons' on O. I like Gruden but it feels a lot to hope hes going to come in and just fix all these problems, even the individual mental mistakes that they keep making.