That is the Martz system to a T. When you have Warner, Bruce, Holt and Faulk you get “the Greatest Show on Turf”. When you run it with Cutler, Hester, Williams and Forte, you get last night.
The Greatest Show on Turf had Orlando Pace, Ryan Tucker, Adam Timmerman and Andy McCullom. You could put Kurt Warner behind the Bears’ line and he’d look just as bad.
The point is that Martz Does. Not. Alter. His playcalling.
7 DBs? Deep pass.
Crap Wideouts? Deep pass.
Swiss cheese O-Line? Deep pass.
Hall of Fame RB? He pass protects on the deep pass.
Can’t scapegoat the O line with this one. Cutler had time and the line played pretty well. It’s difficult to tell without being able to see the All 22 cameras, but it’s starting to seem like defenses have the system figured out. They are able to call defenses that close all those gaps that are supposed to be created. It’s like the Bears are in a 3rd and 8 situation and the defense calls a defense that closes all those 8 yard windows while leaving a bunch of the other ones open. The Rams were so effective on 1st down and were so rarely forced into predictable situations that it worked, on teams that play conservative it just doesn’t make sense.
Then again, maybe Cutler isn’t seeing the gaps that he should or WRs aren’t running clean routes on schedule and aren’t creating the gaps that ought to be there. Without being in the film room it’s tough to know just what’s wrong, but there are FAR too many plays where Cutler seems to be standing there not seeing anything open and either forcing a ball or eating it.
I heard an interesting platitude on some sports talk station the other day. Some coaches use plays, other coaches use players. Martz is absolutely the former. I think that it’s probably smarter to use players in most cases, finding matchups, exploiting weaknesses, highlighting your players attributes and leaning on your studs. The Bears have some really fast guys and some really quick guys, but their playbook doesn’t seem to emphasize that. Martz’s one-size fits all philosophy seems like a waste. It works great for the Earl Bennetts of the world, but isn’t very smart for a team with unique talents.
However you want to do it, Beef, is cool with me. I am going to feel really bad for you when Andy Dalton, AJ Green, Jerome Simpson, Jermaine Gresham and Cedric Benson run all over you guys!
That’s not how it works.
His offense is built to exploit gaps in the coverage, primarily vertical gaps. The only way to create gaps is to run routes that stretch the defense. There’s almost always a receiver running a deep pattern on any given play call, he has to run that route in order to force the DB to vacate a zone to be filled by an underneath receiver.
The west coast offense is primarily built to exploit horizontal gaps in coverage, which is why it uses so many crossing routes and and personnel packages.
The catch with Martz’s system is that a given play call has about 15 different combinations that can be executed. The WRs and QB are all supposed to read the defense identically and choose the route combination that fits it. If 1 WR reads the defense wrong and runs the wrong route that usually means no gap ever opens up. Complicating matters further is that the QB isn’t even able to read that mistake since he’s supposed to be getting the ball out before the routes have even formed.
Cutler has resorted to simply eating the ball when that happens. Other QBs in the Martz system, notably Kitna, simply chucked it deep when a play was broken because there was always a deep receiver in the pattern. Pick your poison.
This. In the Martz offense the goal is to put Ball A and Reciever B a point C at the same time and to do it by opening the window for the pass after the ball is in the air. If you do not have a QB with pinpoint accuracy and recievers who can both shake covereage and hit thier marks on time, while having a running game option that defenses have to respect and plan for on every down IT WILL NOT WORK.
Fine. Replace “deep pass” with “long-developing routes.” Martz’s stubborn refusal to change what he calls based on what his player are capable of, and what a defence is doing, will make it trivially easy to stop the Bears.
Which is one of the reasons I can see the Bengals having some success this season even despite growing pains. They have an incredibly weak schedule after playing the hardest schedule in the NFL last season. Bob Bratkowski, former o-coordinator, was just like Martz, stubbornly refusing to conform his playbook to the skill sets of his players, forcing square pegs into round holes. Thankfully he’s gone, yet we do have the unproven brother of Jon Gruden, Jay, calling the offense now…but the WCO he’s installing is a perfect fit for Andy Dalton, Jordan Shipley and Jermaine Gresham, all very talented players.
And I see the Bengals defense being somewhere around 15th in the league this season. They aren’t lacking for talent on either side of the ball except for oline…but there’s a lot of youth in many critical positions that played well at the end of last season (ruining the Chargers playoff hopes was a bright spot) so it remains to be seen if that carries over this year.
Its so hard to judge a team based on preseason, especially this preseason, with shortened or non-existent training camps, practices, etc. All the teams need reps that they didn’t get before and are only now getting in preseason games.
Cam Newton just scored his first NFL touchdown on a beautiful run against the Bengals. One play earlier he threw a beautiful corner pass to Smith in the end zone, but he only got one foot down.
Other than that one play, Newton has looked like shit other than his runs. Bengals are dominating…but its preseason so who knows WTF…
Less than a 33% completion rate. That’s not too good is it?
Andy Dalton’s stat line is looking pretty good. As does Bernard Scott’s. Carolina must have a crappy defense.
They didn’t used to. And watch that name…Bernard Scott…I am on him like SenorBeef on Jerome Harrison…
Meh. The Panthers and Bengals are both going to finish last in their divisions. Hard to get excited about that.
Its going to be an epic battle for second to last in the AFCN between the Brownies and the Bengalis…
Could be, but no matter how good the Panthers’ swiss cheese secondary made Dalton look last night, he’s still a rookie QB and will struggle against actual NFL defenses.
Didn’t you say that last year too? And he only got double digit touches in one game.
I actually know that because I drafted him in my money league last year, thanks to your mancrush.
[sub]And, don’t tell anyone, but I’ll probably grab him this year too.[/sub]
I am sure he will struggle some, but he’s got really good (albeit young) skill players for targets and a good running game to help shoulder the load. He just looks really poised out there to me. And the Bengals first team played well against the Jets first teamers last week too. At the half it was only 10-7 Jets.
I think he’ll see a lot more touches this year. Benson has been piling up the wear and the old coordinator Bratkowski didn’t know how to use Scott appropriately. 3rd and short? Run the little scat back up the middle. Many :rolleyes: moments over calls like that last season. Gruden’s not going to do that…Scott needs to be given the ball where he can make people miss in space. He’s like a poor man’s Chris Johnson.
In news guaranteed to shake up the NFL, the Eagles waived none other than Derrick Locke, the best runningback in the history of the game. Or would be if he wasn’t tiny and could help pick up a blitz. Either the Eagles made the biggest mistake in the history of their franchise or, much less likely, I may have been overestimating Locke’s ability to play in the NFL.
Eric Steinbach may be out for the year.
Ugh.