Point Blank – November 22, 2016
What a “Bettor Better Know” – NFL #11
I am going to break the NFL review into two parts this week, starting today with topics for the non-Thanksgiving teams, and then a follow-up on Wednesday to delve into issues that pertain to those games, with the NFL getting a bit lucky with division showdowns of Vikings/Lions and Redskins/Cowboys this time around.
The theme this week is not good news for any of the teams involved. Injuries are a major issue for multiple teams, and now we all have seen why the Rams were in no particular hurry to get Jared Goff on the field. It is a day for cynical realities, so as the Leonard Cohen cycle continues it will be the master poet at his lyrical best with “Everybody Knows”. I’ll dial back a couple of decades with this one, because the energy comes across better with a middle-aged man still in midst of it all and having to cope, rather than an elder statesman looking back on it, this from an Austin City Limits appearance back in the mid-90’s –
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
There are few better opening lines to be found in the annals of contemporary culture…
Item: What now for the Bengals
The good news for the Bengals is that they play the division rival Ravens this week, and a win would bring them to within a half game of first place. That kind of motivation is greatly needed on what would otherwise be a tough week. The bad news is that in taking on that Baltimore defense without A.J. Green and Giovanni Bernard their chances to win are diminished, and if they don’t win it will be season over.
Green is one of the best players in the sport. Bernard is among the most versatile, and how about this for a balance – 337 rushing yards and 336 receiving as his 2016 comes to a close, with also the acknowledgment that he is of the best pass blockers among NFL RBs. What it does is bring something front-and-center that was discussed back when it was Cincinnati time across the summer preview series – Andy Dalton is simply an average QB. That is not a bad thing in the grand scheme, but for now the team needs more.
Dalton was made the focus point because of what appeared to be a break-out 2015 campaign, one that had him on the statistical verge of stepping up towards elite status. But what if last season was more about having a great surrounding cast than anything special Dalton had done. Let’s see the perspective -
Andy Dalton Passer Rating
2011: 80.4
2012: 87.4
2013: 88.8
2014: 83.5
2015: 106.2
2016: 91.2
Some of that 2016 decline was having to play a long opening stretch without Tyler Eifert, after losing Marvin Jones in the off-season. Now the challenge becomes greater, and not just because of the quality of players lost, but the style as well, which takes not just pages, but perhaps chapters, out of the playbook. Jeremy Hill is a good runner, but not nearly the receiver Bernard is. Now either Tyler Boyd or Brandon LaFell is going to have to beat the top cover CB of the opposition, instead of finding room vs. lesser players, and often taking advantage of Green being double-teamed. And of course it will all force Dalton to have to be a playmaker, instead of a game manager, which isn’t likely to work out very well.
Item: What now for the Dolphins (it may have been a coming of age for Ryan Tannehill, but that OL is ???)
Those final two Miami drives on Sunday may have represented a major turn for the franchise, perhaps the coming-of-age for Ryan Tannehill in getting two TDs on the board, especially given what he was working with. Not only were Brandon Albert and Mike Pouncey missing from the OL for the entire game, but the final two marches were without Laremy Tunsil as well. And you should know those names by now, because they are the three members of that OL that had previously missed time, when the offense struggled in a major way without them.
So there is good news, Tannehill stepping up to lead drives of 77 and 75 yards for TDs under the end-game pressure. But there is also a reality that the Dolphins only had 118 yards with 7:00 remaining in the fourth quarter, and Tannehill was sacked four times. And it also must be noted that each of those late TD drives were aided by personal foul penalties on the Rams defense.
Pouncey is not expected back this week, and for now Albert and Tunsil are question marks. To shore up depth Bryce Harris was signed, but it has been a while since he has taken the field in an NFL game. This will be something I will be watching closely during the week, and of course there is the patchwork grading of past Miami games that has been a topic here multiple times. If there is a silver lining it is that they get to face the inept San Francisco defense, at a time in which distractions may be setting in for the 49ers.
Item: What now for the 49ers (will Chip Kelly be a college coach next season)
Sub-Item: Take a good look at the Sunday pace charts
This is not a new speculation here, the fit between Kelly’s style and the San Francisco personnel not a good one from the start, but since 49ers/Dolphins is on the radar for the reasons already mentioned, we might as well get to the headlines that the players and coaches will wake up to this morning in the Bay area. How about Kelly: No Assurance from York he’ll be 49ers coach in 2017 and ‘Ludicrous’: Kelly says he wasn’t bashing 49ers’ personnel.
This bears watching closely, because a bad situation in San Francisco could get worse. Kelly’s style did not wear well in Philadelphia, even when the Eagles were winning games and competing for a playoff spot. Now it has been nine straight defeats, seven of them by a dozen points or more, and there are four road games over the next five weeks. Getting the players to buy in will not be easy.
There may be something tangible to take away from Sunday’s loss to New England – after leading the NFL in pace through the first nine games, a rather ridiculous 23.9 SPS that was more than a second faster than any other team (ridiculous because of the offensive talent), Kelly dialed it back to a 29.8 vs. the Patriots. To put that into perspective. 29.8 would rate dead last across the league on the full season tables. Amidst the rumors and speculation of Kelly’s job status, there may be something real going on from a football standpoint.
Item: What now for the Cardinals
A struggling OL and an aging an immobile QB are not a recipe for a clean pocket, and facing the Vikings in Minnesota is arguably the worst place an offense could play when facing those issues. But you need to go beyond the box score to get the best feel for that 30-24 Viking win, a game that saw a lot of points despite the two teams combining for less than 500 yards of total offense, the home team getting TDs from both their defense and special teams, including a 100-yard Pick Six from Xavier Rhodes that was a major swing on the scoreboard.
The box score will show that Carson Palmer was sacked four times on 42 drop-backs, which is high but won’t necessarily jump off the page – that ratio is in proportion to that particular offense/defense matchup. The deeper dive, and we can thank the folks at Pro Football Focus for their diligence, is that Palmer was pressured on a higher percentage of his drop-backs than any game they had ever charted, their analysis concluding with - Four Minnesota pass-rushers racked up five or more pressures, led by nine each from Everson Griffen (three hits, six hurries) and Danielle Hunter (two sacks, two hits, five hurries). The Vikings pressured Palmer on 27 of his 43 dropbacks.
The problem really is two-fold for Arizona, Palmer’s mobility and the patching having to be done up front – the Cardinals started reserves John Wetzel at LT and Earl Watford at RG, and had to dig down even deeper when Taylor Boggs had to see action at both RG and LG, with Watford and Mike Iupati having to leave the game at times with minor injuries. Boggs had only joined the team on November 1.
What Arizona did not do was offer extra protection for Palmer, something noted in the aftermath by Mike Zimmer - “They didn’t max protect us very much today. They let us rush. I think that’s why a lot of teams don’t let us rush, because we can rush the passer. Everybody has their own way of playing the game.”
This becomes a challenging week for the Cardinals, who go from being Super Bowl contenders to now having their backs against the wall – a loss at Atlanta and the playoffs become out of reach. And things may already be out of reach for Green Bay…
Item: What now for the Packers
OK, so Green Bay is only two games out in the NFC North, and has a crack at the Vikings and Lions down the stretch. But none of that matters if the team simply is not good enough to win the games anyway. It isn’t just about the struggles of Aaron Rodgers and the offense now, but a defense that has simply crumbled.
Over the last two games the Packers have allowed 89 points and 961 yards, those yards being given up at a 7.9 clip. That latter number requires perspective – with the league average at 5.5, it means that the Redskins and Jaguars averaged 43.7 percent more production for their 121 snaps across those games. That is a lot, and it may not be fixable.
The Green Bay secondary is a mess. Top cover CB Sam Shields has been gone for over a month, and has been missed. Demetri Jackson won’t play this week, Quentin Rollins and Demarious Randall may not either, and the big plays given up against Kirk Cousins and the Washington offense showed the lack of ability of the remaining cast. The Redskins averaged 11.4 yards per pass attempt in that win, a week after Marcus Mariota and the Titans generated 9.8. If sacks are removed from the equation, the 57 times those two QBs put the ball in the air generated 680 yards, an average of 11.9.
And it isn’t just a problem in the secondary – starting ILBs Jake Ryan and Blake Martinez were both injured against Washington, leaving Joe Thomas and Carl Bradford as the only roster players at the position as practice for Monday’s game vs. Philadelphia begins, Bradford having just been promoted from the practice squad on Monday. So how would you like to be Dom Capers this week? Here is his honest take about the player rotation – “We haven’t even discussed ityet. That’s what we’ll do first thing tomorrow (Tuesday). Tomorrow is our game plan day. We’ll look to who we think is going to be available and look at our alternatives.”
There is one thing that Capers can do at LB – move Clay Matthews inside, which he has done in the past. But that weakens the pass rush, and that rush is even more important now because the secondary is going to be lacking in coverage. But it isn’t just the defense, so let me grab this paragraph from Tom Silverstein in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - During parts of their demoralizing 42-24 loss to Washington on Sunday night at FedEx Field, the Packers were playing with third-, fourth- and fifth-string cornerbacks, a fourth-string inside linebacker, second- and third-string guards, a second-string running back and a fifth-string receiver.
Let’s use the words of Mike McCarthy to put into perspective the strain that creates - “When you get into spots where we’ve been the last month, where you do have heavy injuries with more particular guys’ roles and responsibilities, (the) description of what they’re doing each week is adjusted. How do you max that out? You have a role player that’s usually playing 25 to 30 plays, but now he’s playing 60. We have a number of those situations on defense. How are we offsetting that? It’s a challenge, particularly when you continue to have injuries in the game.”
Item: What now for the Rams (by using Jerod Goff now, Jeff Fisher has clinched the reason for using him the rest of the way)
The Rams did not wait until they were out of playoff contention to finally go to Goff at QB, which would have meant a low-pressure opportunity to get him some experience down the stretch. But now that is what the rest of the season has become, the inability of the offense to produce wasting what was a terrific defensive showing for 3.5 quarters, before the Los Angeles defenders seemed to wear down late (in between the two Miami TD drives there was only a quick three-and-out from the offense).
The difficulty in reading through Sunday’s game was in gauging whether Fisher and the coaching staff really had confidence in Goff, because the ball simply did not get down the field often. Until the final desperation drive only three of Goff’s first 26 attempts were more than 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, and his 32 drop-backs netted just 134 yards.
In trying to get a better feel for things there was only confusion. In the Sunday aftermath there was this from Jeff Fisher - “There was nothing from an offensive standpoint that was minimized because of Jared.” But then on Monday came - “We didn’t take our shots down the field, which, in retrospect, we probably needed to do.”
There also is something emerging that Fisher will have to address in the off-season, if indeed he is to come back as HC for 2017 – is OC Rob Boras a proper fit? Boras was promoted after Frank Cignetti was removed last December, and has now had nearly a full season in the role. His stint in the role has not inspired, and the Rams take the practice field this week having scored only three TDs over their last four games. The personnel isn’t great, but it also isn’t this bad.
The lingering question through the first part of this season was whether or not the Rams may have made a mistake in the drafting of Goff, but perhaps just as important of a question is whether the current coaching staff brings the ability to properly develop a young QB. Hence the microscope is looking closely at both possibilities.
In the Sights, NCAA Hoops…
We can get in play in Brooklyn this afternoon, the markets not having a good feel for where Colorado and Texas are at this stage in each team’s development, which puts #552 Colorado (3:30 Eastern) in pocket, -1.5 available in the morning trading, and this one carrying value up to -3.
Few teams in the nation lost more than the Longhorns did at the end of the 2015-16 season, seniors Javan Felix, Demarcus Holland, Cam Ridley, Prince Ibeh and Connor Lammert using up the last of their eligibility, and Isaiah Taylor opting out for the NBA draft. As such it is almost like starting all over again for the second straight season for Shaka Smart since he moved to Austin, with seven of the nine players in the current rotation freshmen or sophomores, and precious little experience of playing together as a group. That matters, because Smart’s presses require teamwork, and Northwestern had no difficulty slicing through them last night, only turning the ball over 11 times in rolling 77-59. Now there is not just an issue of inexperience but also stamina for young players, this tipoff time coming just 18 hours after last night’s game began.
Experience and stamina are not an issue for Colorado. The Buffaloes start four seniors and a junior, a team already at a higher level of stamina anyway because of practicing and playing at the altitude of Boulder. They got into a hole last night vs. Notre Dame when top interior defender Wesley Gordon picked up foul #2 just 3:30 into the game, and fell behind 50-35 at intermission, but with Gordon back on the floor they fought hard in the second half, building momentum that can carry over here.
Look for the far more developed team to exploit the youth of Texas, and if it is close late the major gap in FT shooting so far (75.2 percent for the Buffaloes to just 63.1 for the Longhorns) helps Thad Boyle’s team to emerge the victor.
Vegas: Monday with the Review-Journal NFL box score page
There is a particular autumn Monday that will be an annual for me – when it is time for the Maui Invitational, and the all-day basketball boards that run throughout the week, the schedule gets extremely busy, and it calls for a culinary double-header. And in fitting with the theme of local success stories, it means a visit to one of Chris Palmeri’s Naked City Pizza spots, my go-to being the one on Paradise.
Palmeri is from Buffalo, being particularly proud of his home region, and brings one of the greatest gifts a chef could ever have to his creations – Chris likes to eat. He was bold enough to break away from working as an executive chef at the MGM to dare to bring his own vision to life and it has worked, beginning with a sandwich shop the size of a phone booth on Las Vegas Boulevard nearly a decade ago, and now has three establishments across the valley. And Palmeri has indeed found the blend of wanting to tickle the taste buds of his customers, while also wanting them to go away having been fed, the latter something that not all young chefs aspire to these days.
So what fits when there is an extra busy schedule? You have Palmeri’s staff make you lunch, and then something to carry you through the evening, and much of the next day as well.
If you want classic Buffalo there are of course chicken wings, which the Naked City properties naturally take pride in and do well. But for a regional experience that you won’t get in many places, opt for the classic “Beef on Weck”, roast beef on a proper kimmelweck roll, served au jus with fresh horseradish, plus hand cut fries. And that is only a half sandwich pictured; the full is more than I can accomplish in a working lunch.
And while you are making your way through that, and wondering if either the Vikings or Lions are going to be able to run worth a damn on Thursday, you can ask them to make one of these –
Palmeri’s pizzas are baked on cookie sheets and cut into squares, slightly less thick than a typical Sicilian pie, but with a little more crunch to the crust. Because they are generous with the toppings these are extremely filling, in this instance a “quarter sheet” being more than enough for Texans/Raiders at night; a proper breakfast (although these things obviously vary by taste, I would submit Naked City as the best “cold pizza” in Las Vegas because of that crust); and a snack sometime mid-Tuesday afternoon.
This visit brought their namesake Naked City pie (cup-n-char pepperoni, in-house hot Italian sausage, roasted sweet peppers, white onion, green olives). You will have an idea of what you have purchased when you feel how heavy the box is, and yes, for those of you that have been around the game for a while, there is the natural charm from our endeavor in asking for a Half Sheet or a Quarter Sheet.
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