I learned that this team has resilience and heart lurking inside, something one could rarely say for a decade now.
i learned that we can absolutely end the regular season 9-3 if we show up like we did today.
Raiola isn’t perfect, he certainly missed a couple back breaker throws, but the dude is an absolute gamer and we are fortunate as hell to hopefully have 2-3 more seasons with him under center. He’s learning first hand that you need to capitalize on your opportunities when they present themselves- the decision when to loft, inconsistent footwork and setting your foundation are all learning opportunities- it remains to be seen if we have the coaches in place to work on this properly.
I didn’t learn anything in regards to our OC. The only thing he is consistent and successful with is incompetence. The screen calls are an abject failure- whether the wide outs/TEs are incapable of blocking or the coaches are incapable of coaching them up- it’s a play concept that should be completely thrown out of our game plan. We are constantly putting this offense in 2nd and long, often behind the chains, it’s an absolute momentum drain and puts raiola in a tough situation.
we continue to miss use our skill players. Slants were there to be had. The drive we finally had something cooking, satt thinks it’s a great time to bring in HH- it’s pretty clear we have an OC who overthinks the offensive play call- when you mix this with a team who still can’t execute basic offensive concept you get let down losses like today and almost every Saturday for 20 games now. The drive where we marched down field was mixed with great runs and motion plays with our speed guys-- why is this not a more consistent part of our gameplan?
I’d love to know what exactly we are doing with kick off returns. At this point I’m not sure why we are not just fair catching every time and getting the ball at the 25. We are lucky the defense bailed us out again- this is now back 2 back weeks of us screwing up royally to start the game. You don’t see this level of incompetence with freshman high schoolers.