Offensive Line

Zooey wrote:

I want to know what is going on.

They have been pretty stable in terms of injuries this year, and there were higher expectations this year.

Rankings:

Sacks allowed: Rams are 8th, meaning only 7 teams have allowed more sacks.
QB hits: Middle of the pack. Ranked 17th.
Rushing: 3.3 yards per carry. Only Minnesota is worse.

That isn’t getting it done. I don’t have any individual stats, and don’t know how much they would tell us. I went to PFF, but that’s a subscription site.

Something is off this year.

They were playing better at the end of last year.

I suspect it amounts to this–all the distractions, time off, and lack of cohesion from moving has them not gelling right as a unit. That, and add a 1st time coordinator implementing his first instal during a move.

It can’t be that overnight they all dropped in quality from the end of last year, or that the coaching hit senility in one off-season.

I think on things like this people look for the wrong things. This strikes me as being a cohesion issue.

And btw the sack rate was much lower before Goff.

I believe it is a coaching issue.

Yet, how much can be pinned on the move?

Teams that move normally earn a poor record the next year. Teams that draft a QB normally earn a poor record the next year.

But

This was not a normal team in those circumstances. They were 7-9 last year, not 3-13. They were young, kept most of the team together and should have grown.

The online is by far the most disappointing unit to me this year. They should have been better and that should have led to 4 more wins.

I don’t get it.

wv wrote:

Seems to me its either personnel or zn’s ‘distractions lead to lack of cohesion’
or both.

I dunno, but i ‘lean’ toward both. Which is bad.

w
v

Well then why the hell doesn’t zn stop distracting the o-line?!

I mean, I know he is a Seahawks fan and therefore wants the Rams’ o-line to fail, but you would think in the interest of sportsmanship and fair play he wouldn’t interfere.

I guess I just grossly overestimated zn’s level of integrity.

personnel and coaching.

get rid of grob. or slide him over to guard. if you slide him over get rid of saffold. get a real left tackle. that should be their first priority above anything else.

possibly find a new center.

replace boudreau. need a new oline coach.

Zooey wrote:

ut the Rams showed all the signs of being a team on the rise last year. And the defense hasn’t been bad this year. Erratic, maybe. A few bad games. But overall, they seem to have been pretty good. Fewer sacks, fewer turnovers, but in the same ballpark.

Defense = same system.

Offense = new system.

Easier to maintain continuity on defense.

JackPMiller wrote:

It is not really a new system. It is still a Jeff Fisher offense. All it is, play calling. You just switch OCs, with Fisher’s type of coach, is just being masked. Unless he has an experienced OC like Norv Turner, per say, I’ll say it again, you are just masking it with a Fisher guy, and he is running Fisher’s plays.

It is a new system. How different it is from the previous system I can’t say, but it is new.

I could be wrong but I don’t think Fisher has an offensive system that he uses wherever he goes. He has a style. And regardless if the system in place is based on a WCO, Coryell, Erhardt, etc system, the playcalling and overall strategy will reflect his style – which is to use the run to set up play action.

nittany ram wrote:

the playcalling and overall strategy will reflect his style – which is to use the run to set up play action

That sounds like a Norv Turner offense to me…strive for run/pass ratio of 50/50.

I actually think Turner would be a good fit with Fisher and wanted them to hire him when Cleveland let him go.

BTW…For the “I love Mike Martz” guys…Martz was an assistant coach under Turner.

sanbagger wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

the playcalling and overall strategy will reflect his style – which is to use the run to set up play action

That sounds like a Norv Turner offense to me…strive for run/pass ratio of 50/50.

I actually think Turner would be a good fit with Fisher and wanted them to hire him when Cleveland let him go.

BTW…For the “I love Mike Martz” guys…Martz was an assistant coach under Turner.

Turner is a disciple of the Coryell system as was Martz. But Turner’s style is more balanced with the run:pass ratio as you note whereas Martz liked to feature the pass.

I would love to have Turner as the Rams’ OC.

nittany ram wrote:

JackPMiller wrote:

It is not really a new system. It is still a Jeff Fisher offense. All it is, play calling. You just switch OCs, with Fisher’s type of coach, is just being masked. Unless he has an experienced OC like Norv Turner, per say, I’ll say it again, you are just masking it with a Fisher guy, and he is running Fisher’s plays.

It is a new system. How different it is from the previous system I can’t say, but it is new.

I could be wrong but I don’t think Fisher has an offensive system that he uses wherever he goes. He has a style. And regardless if the system in place is based on a WCO, Coryell, Erhardt, etc system, the playcalling and overall strategy will reflect his style – which is to use the run to set up play action.

Nittany’s right. And Jack you’re just now engaging in posting sheer disinformation. Fisher does not have a system he brings with him. A system involves terminology plus techniques that have to be learned, and in the history of Fisher’s teams, his different coordinators have used both variants on the WCO and on the Coryell offense (which is basically what they have now).

There is no such thing as a “Fisher system.”

And YES they DID learn a new offense this off-season, and in fact the players straightforwardly said so. Boras altered things, they installed it, players talked about it.

AND people who claim to say what a “Fisher offense” is are, in my experience, invariably just plain wrong. For example, they often neglect to notice that taking a fairly high percentage of downfield shots is a regular Fisher thing. Whenever I do the numbers on this the Rams are in the top third of the league in terms of passes of 31 yards or more.

And Jack–look. You;re on a board that values real information. What you’re doing on issues like this instead is subbing personal opinion and speculation for actual information. Well it’s not a good place to do that, because not only can we correct you in an instant, but we kind of resent the mindset that ignores that kind of thing in the first place.

Zooey wrote:

Okay, but I don’t know what “new system” means.

I don’t mean to be flippant, but there’s zone blocking, and man blocking, right? I don’t know these things because the only football I ever played was, “Zooey, go to the corner of the hedge, and cut hard towards the elm tree….”

But how effing difficult can this be? You’re a blocker. Block. That’s your job. Push this guy aside, and create a seam.

The fact that I am deciding between a condo in Malibu and beach house in Santa Monica shouldn’t affect the outcome of that mano a mano contest. Especially 12 weeks into the season when that decision has been made, and I have already got carpet stains in my new place.

We go over this every time the Rams learn a new system.

Yes it’s hard. You learn a new language.

The difference in changing a SYSTEM as opposed to just changing the plays you use is that you have to learn an entirely new terminology, and that’s for a fat NFL playbook.

Players describe it as being like learning a new language. The last time this came up I used this analogy—one day, they change the language on all street signs. You will get used to it but at first it always involves more thinking than acting.

No one in the NFL ever describes this experience as easy.

So no it’s not just you run some old plays you know. You have to learn an entirely new terminology, plus in the Rams system, every variable built in to every play—sight adjustments, for example.

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Zooey wrote:

The QB has to learn an entire new language.

Yes and he’s still playing like a struggling rookie. That’s even with the fact that no one becomes a qb in the first place unless they are mentally set up to learn a system. AND the issue is unit cohesion anyway. Not everyone will be on the same page. I remember Saffold talking about learning a new system in 2011. It puts hesitation into everything. Heck Keenum was talking about this during the pre-season. It was new for him, too.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t get your forgetfulness on this. You can say other factors for you weigh more. But no one can just armchair into existence the idea that it’s easy for a team to learn an entirely new system. This has come up before, in spades, with extensive backing from articles and player comments and so on. I think for example about the switch to the McD system in 2011. It is just simply not an easy process, and that’s especially the case now, when the new CBA limits practice time. None of this is new discussion.

It’s a factor. You decide if it’s a major one. In my own history of watching the Rams I have never seen it NOT be a major factor when it happens.

sanbagger wrote:

However….As Zooey said, we are 12 weeks in now and this should be coming together and I would agree with that. Personally I’m leaning towards this one isn’t about the X’s and O’s but we need to think about the Joes.

If it were just personnel then (I think) they would not have improved as a unit down the stretch in 2015. Which, they did. Not that this would be a top OL but it was playing effectively enough at the end of last year.

Yes 12 weeks in ought to be enough time to overcome the problems of being in sync in a new system. Even a new system installed under the rules of the new CBA, with a first-time coordinator installing a system for the first time. But that was a factor this year, as was moving…and again, in the history of the NFL, only one team has played well after moving. But those problems were real–it would be a bizarro universe if they weren’t.

NOW it seems to me what they’re dealing with is obvious. Rookie qb. For example, teams are now loading up and blitzing like crazy and it takes out both the run game and puts pressure on the new qb.

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