A fine question. I wish I thought I knew the answer.

It may be as simple as having Keenum at QB instead of Foles, and an o-line that’s actually gotten to play together for a little bit. Havenstein’s healthy, Barnes and Wichmann know what they’re doing and Reynolds is where he’s supposed to be instead of RT. I think CoachO’s observation about Keenum’s better timing was dead on.

Boras used a counter run announcers last year called a “wrap” run a lot successfully his first two games but I didn’t notice it as much against Seattle. It seems like they’re running left more, and behind Harkey more, but those are unfounded suspicions. I don’t notice the guards pulling as much, which slows the play down and neither of the current guards are athletic enough to do it ideally. I don’t think there are as many fake end-arounds to Austin, either, which also slow the play down. I thought Cignetti was getting a little carried away with those. Mainly I’d speculate Boras has simplified the running game and lets his blockers do what they’re better at.

Boras didn’t even get an “interim” OC tag, did he? If they’re going to keep Fisher (sigh), there’s little point trying to bring in Whisenhunt or somebody. Boras is a perfect fit thus far for Fisher’s philosophy of how to win (6 to 8) games and for how the team’s built. I don’t think there’s a bring-Martz-to-Vermeil moment to be had.

–Mike

I agree. If one believes in such a thing, I’d put this game in the good loss column.
–Mike

On the roster projection, I forgot to cut Marcus Forston (I’m sure he doesn’t mind).
Take him out and put Dunbar back in.
–Mike

I like it.

LOL, I blame Schottenheimer then. That should have been a return left, then Brown would obviously have kicked himself.

–Mike

joemad, interesting you brought up Eric Dickerson – I was going to compare Murray to Marcus Allen. Whichever, we both hope the Rams don’t send Murray to the Hall of Fame this weekend.

–Mike

“Programming note”: the next game being on Monday night probably means I won’t have the next recap out till next Thursday or Friday.

–Mike

zn wrote:

MIKE: From time immemorial, the worst thing to call in that situation has been a slow-developing run. Hell, the Cowboys barely even had anyone lined up over LG; Davis could have fallen down for a first. But no, let’s pull with slow Joseph and open up a lane for the LB to burst through while we do what looks like a delayed handoff to Stacy. I’m fine with the Rams going for it there, but they needed a much better play call.

FISHER: It was the play we needed. It wasn’t blocked properly. (G) Rodger (Saffold) was supposed to seal the run-through on the middle linebacker and he didn’t. He stayed down on the three-technique. It’s potentially a big play. It was a mistake.”

–

I see this all the time. A playcall complaint that begins by saying what you never, ever do…according to the True Football Guide to What You Never Do. And, invariably, when you find out more, it’s an execution issue fans can’t see because they don’t know assignments. This is one reason I just don’t judge a coordinator by boiling the discussion down to a single play. One of my favorites from years ago was a badly blocked shovel pass in the redzone that got blown up. The OC was Shurmur. The discussion centered on the fact that you never, ever, ever, EVER run a shovel pass in the redzone–it’s unthinkable, it’s not done. And then Thomas wrote the play up and it turns out a blocker blew an assignment. Plus it was easy to find examples on youtube and in google searches of teams successfully running shovel passes in the redzone. In the end the entire genre of “true footall knowledge tells us this play in this situation is never never called” is bogus, and best avoided; and the whole idea that you can judge a coordinator based on your read of one play is also always bogus. If you try the one key play analysis of a coordinator, you usually end up just begging the question about execution issues. Most complaints about Schott I see, for example, just routinely fail to separate execution issues from playcall issues.

I said positive and negative things about Schottenheimer in that paragraph that covered more than just one play. As for the play, I thought Hitchens got through because Saffold missed him, and mentioned it in the o-line rundown, but vaguely, not being very sure. So I wasn’t completely clueless about execution issues on the play, and wrote about it well before knowing Jeff Fisher’s explanation of the play. Not knowing for sure that Saffold had blown the block doesn’t change my opinion that a QB sneak would have been a better call. You don’t need to pull one guard and need the other to make a second-level block to gain an inch. These are some of the complications that lead to the conventional wisdom not to call a slow-developing handoff in that situation, I expect.

YouTube can’t vouch for the safety of the Shurmur Shovel for me because the play wasn’t part of the Rams’ 2010 offense and they hadn’t run the play all season. For them that was a gadget play. Including the idea of keeping things simple at the goal line, it flew in the face of several pieces of conventional wisdom and even common sense (and I’m not counting relying on Adam Goldberg to make a block). You want to come away with points down there, run plays you know you can run. Steven Jackson in his prime and the Rams don’t give him the ball on two plays from the two yard line. Bad luck for Shurmur, sure, because he had Atlanta completely faked out. But I’ll always feel that play’s a ladder he easily could have walked around instead of under.

–Mike

• This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by mfranke.

I could have tried to be fairer to Long because I had never thought he was going to be ready for the regular season. I do believe he was put in a bad spot. My gut says the Rams think they’ve still got this franchise/Pro Bowl tackle when not only 2013, but 2012 even, should have told them different. It’s always felt to me like Long was being rushed back, which seems completely unnecessary when you have Saffold and you spent the #2 pick overall at tackle. I’ve been leery at times with those options, too, but Saffold or Robinson has to be preferable to a guy coming off a knee injury and who’s barely played.

The ease of Bradford’s re-injury makes you wonder if he came back too soon, doesn’t it? Everybody can’t be Adrian Peterson.

–Mike