Fichtner
- Thread starter johngaenzler
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To be Blunt, you're going to need more than penicillin,, you're going to need someth No that makes it so every time you see a pile of ****..................... You actually see roses.!!,!!
Salute to the nation
Acid huh nah last time I dropped I had a Modern Problems episode.
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Fantastic!
100% truth. Fichtner isn't going anywhere as long as Ben is here. Plus, like Tomlin, he is getting a pass on this year because Ben left in game 2 and was actually injured in game 1.
Randy Sphincter (I can't believe I'm the first guy to call him that, am I?) is truly an anus.
Everybody and their grandmother knew the Ravens were going to be blitzing the duck **** out of the Steelers' quarterback all day. They even mentioned on the broadcast that Baltimore had blitzed 62% of the time in the first half. Yet, did this clown attempt to counteract the rush with a simple draw play? No. Not. Once.
Ridiculous.
Everybody and their grandmother knew the Ravens were going to be blitzing the duck **** out of the Steelers' quarterback all day. They even mentioned on the broadcast that Baltimore had blitzed 62% of the time in the first half. Yet, did this clown attempt to counteract the rush with a simple draw play? No. Not. Once.
Ridiculous.
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I called him that from about game 7 of the season hehe
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He is Ben's buddy so they will keep him but I would demote him back to QB coach to keep Ben happy and hire a new OC. I'd be shocked if MT has the stones to do it though. I think the only coach he's ever fired was Joey Porter and that was as much over off-field issues as anything. Everybody else, they just let their contracts run out.
If MT didn't fire Danny Smith after LAST season, he ain't firing anybody.
So how many OCs do we have to deem incompetent before Tomlin gets some of the blame?
We did have one of the best offenses in the NFL last year.
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We did have one of the best offenses in the NFL last year.
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All of them from now until infinity. If you're critical of Tomlin it means you're a racist.
On Monday in a Steelers FB group I said that 1) Tomlin would not be fired (note that I said "not"), and that 2) we could get a better coach.
Someone immediately told me to "take your racist azz home if you think a white coach would do better".
How many playoff wins did we have last year? Oh wait....
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The same number of wins as we had when we were sporting two "generational" & a HOF QB players. Arguably the most talented teams of the last 10 years and yet............. Nothing.
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When I was an OC for a youth football league I had THE highest producing offense in the conference...Until my RB got hurt. He exposed the truth that it wasn't my system or the play calling, it was him that made it all work. Big Ben is Randy Fichtner's key and without him the offense just doesn't work. We don't have the personnel to back him up. As much as I loathe Baltimore you can't deny that they developed an offensive system around Lamar Jackson and then brought in RG3 and Trace McSorely who can also run that style of offense. Ben is a special talent with his John Elway gun slinger mentality and he makes plays that most QB's cant. If you don't have a back yard football type of QB backing him up, then you failed as a GM.
Tomlin and Fichtner both decided not to change the offense during the season. It was in one of the PG chats this week. Hindsight is they should have. But, it's not just hindsight, it's good coaching to adapt or bad in the Steelers case. You adjust and adapt during the season and obviously (maybe not so obvious to our coaches) during a game. That is why Belicheat has been so successful. He is constantly adapting and changing to the players he has and how they are performing as a team. The Ratbirds have been doing a good job of it as well. Why Tomlin and our coaches under him don't understand that is beyond me.
That attitude of forcing the player to match an established scheme is eventually what forced Dan Rooney to help show Noll the door after only 2 playoff wins in the 80s (2 W - 4 L from 1980-1991). Cowher's primary objective stated in his interview and on the job was to match the game plan (scheme) to the players he had. The result his first season was an 11-5 record, winning the central and a first round bye with a stable full of Noll's players. (they were then crushed in the playoffs against the Bills--I still remember that game like it was yesterday). There is definitely something to be said for the coaching staff that can see what they have to work with from a skill standpoint and then build a game plan around it.
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I think, to an extent, you have to. Sure, you can build a system and try to plug and play with that but, you still have to be able to adapt as things will always change. It's inevitable. We are not that many years removed from running the ball well. That is why I am so surprised at how hard it was for our o-line to need to run block more than pass block. A line needs to be able to do both well and if you have a bad line, everything else starts to crumble. It all starts with the big uglies on both sides of the ball.
You absolutely have to coach like this. The players change EVERY YEAR, even those that return from the previous season. Good coaches assess where each player stands during training camp and preseason, then should develop game plans around that. Not to mention changes during the season and in-game. I just haven't seen that from Tomlin's teams.
The frustrating part is I think Fichtner did a good job planning out the first game for Duck. Problem is he didn't adjust for the following games.
How was that defense last year? 5 4th quarter leads given up. How would that offense look with this defense?
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If they refused to change the offense after Ben was hurt, that's 100% on Tomlin, I'm not blaming Fichtner for that. That's a major decision and that falls on the head coach. Fichtner might be a horrible OC who knows, but if the offense wasn't changed, that's on Tomlin.
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I honestly don't think coaches in the NFL know how to change a playbook after pre-season/training camp.
Everything is so regimented and so rigid in how schemes are taught to a team, starting that very first day of camp I think they just wouldn't know where to start trying to swim back upstream.
Doing major changes in season when the weekly routine of a game week is practically written in stone hour-to-hour.... who the **** knows.
I did some major research on how teams implement and design "THE PLAYBOOK" for a season and it is much more rigid than you think it should be from an outsider looking in.
Playbooks can get "smaller" for games, but they rarely, if ever, get "bigger" for games. And once a play is discarded during training camp/pre-season, it rarely ever sees the light of day again.
To say they didn't "change the PB" is probably a bit of red herring in my eyes. Playbooks have hundreds of plays and many of which probably never get used. Moreover, there isn't a coach in the league that can't draw up plays and add them to three ring binder if it isn't already there. Changing the playbook isn't the issue as much as selecting the appropriate plays from said playbook and putting them together in a coherent package. Each primary play you call generally has some wrinkles or twists to them as well as complimentary plays that take advantage of what the defense does.
For example, if you run a basic off tackle play...lets say 26 G-scheme....so the tailback to the 6 hole (off the TE's hip to the right side of the line) withe guard pulling. If the OLB starts to cheat in to squeeze the play, your complimentary call might be a WR screen. If, instead, the backside backer begins to over pursue, maybe you call a counter. Or, if the backside DE/Contain man crashes too hard (stays to shallow), you might go bootleg or some sort of reverse. Film tells you what you think the D might do and you build a set of plays and complimentary plays as a game plan then go rep it in practice. This is is where I think RF struggles and, believe or not, this is something Haley did pretty well. With Haley, I could see something like an overloaded line in the first and think...he will run a misdirection on that later. Sure as ****, Haley would run that same package a couple more times to get the defense into that overload response and then hit the reverse (or whatever) in the third. I just couldn't see that kind of set up and thinking with RF, but, to be fair, that could have been a direct impact of the QB situation.
I am using running game examples because they are easy. Passing concepts are a lot more complicated. When a young QB is struggling with the presnap reads or executing quickly enough (recognition time), it really does limit what plays you can run. Back to the running example...if your TB can't run a simple 26G, he probably isn't going to fair much better on an outside zone run. I know a lot of fans like to think there is an unlimited well of plays to pick and choose from as a panacea to fix all ills, but there just isn't. The reality is that when you have subpar talent coaching can only do so much. Look at what happened with the wildcat. We popped a surprise for a win one week, but the next time it blew up in our face. Lack of talent can not be overcome by scheme. The concept that there is some scheme to make everyone successful is false. You can maximize talent with schemes, but you can't replace bad talent with schemes. Old saying...a good OL can make a bad back look good. A great OL can make a good back look great. The best back in the world can not make a bad OL look good. Think of scheme as the OL in that saying and RB as the talent.
@deljzc makes a good point about scheme and concepts being installed/taught starting in OTA's. There is simply no substitute for repetition and the last CBA put a lot of restrictions on practice time in the off season, camp, and regular season. It is really hard to get everyone reps and especially at QB. I do recall the Steelers giving Ben a number of days off the last couple of years just to get extra reps for the backup QB's. Frankly, this was probably a pretty good move even if it did not pay the dividends we fans would have liked. Changing overall scheme in September is damn near impossible. For example, you don't just go from being a power running team to zone running team in a week. I know fans think you do, but you don't. It changes everything from OL footwork (which, btw, is a very precise thing) to play development time, reads, etc. It requires repetition by the players...even old hats have to keep repping in. So, when fans keep saying...just change the scheme or concepts (which is what they mean when they say change the playbook) they are making the assumption that the team can make that radical change cold. Another analogy...a good country guitarist can play rock and roll, but to ask him to sub in for Slash or Eddie Van Halen for a concert in four days while expecting a flawless performance is just daft.
Now, I am sure someone is thinking Hoot is exonerating the Coaches. If you are, for ***** sake open your comprehension a little bit because I did not say anything close to that. What I am saying is that there aren't magic plays you can change to that makes a bad player suddenly great. I am also saying that large change is a process, not a wave of the wand. In the end, both coaches and players are to blame for some of the **** this season. They are also all culpable for good things too. Seriously, when Ben went down with an umproven backup, I thought we were a 4 win team at best.
For example, if you run a basic off tackle play...lets say 26 G-scheme....so the tailback to the 6 hole (off the TE's hip to the right side of the line) withe guard pulling. If the OLB starts to cheat in to squeeze the play, your complimentary call might be a WR screen. If, instead, the backside backer begins to over pursue, maybe you call a counter. Or, if the backside DE/Contain man crashes too hard (stays to shallow), you might go bootleg or some sort of reverse. Film tells you what you think the D might do and you build a set of plays and complimentary plays as a game plan then go rep it in practice. This is is where I think RF struggles and, believe or not, this is something Haley did pretty well. With Haley, I could see something like an overloaded line in the first and think...he will run a misdirection on that later. Sure as ****, Haley would run that same package a couple more times to get the defense into that overload response and then hit the reverse (or whatever) in the third. I just couldn't see that kind of set up and thinking with RF, but, to be fair, that could have been a direct impact of the QB situation.
I am using running game examples because they are easy. Passing concepts are a lot more complicated. When a young QB is struggling with the presnap reads or executing quickly enough (recognition time), it really does limit what plays you can run. Back to the running example...if your TB can't run a simple 26G, he probably isn't going to fair much better on an outside zone run. I know a lot of fans like to think there is an unlimited well of plays to pick and choose from as a panacea to fix all ills, but there just isn't. The reality is that when you have subpar talent coaching can only do so much. Look at what happened with the wildcat. We popped a surprise for a win one week, but the next time it blew up in our face. Lack of talent can not be overcome by scheme. The concept that there is some scheme to make everyone successful is false. You can maximize talent with schemes, but you can't replace bad talent with schemes. Old saying...a good OL can make a bad back look good. A great OL can make a good back look great. The best back in the world can not make a bad OL look good. Think of scheme as the OL in that saying and RB as the talent.
@deljzc makes a good point about scheme and concepts being installed/taught starting in OTA's. There is simply no substitute for repetition and the last CBA put a lot of restrictions on practice time in the off season, camp, and regular season. It is really hard to get everyone reps and especially at QB. I do recall the Steelers giving Ben a number of days off the last couple of years just to get extra reps for the backup QB's. Frankly, this was probably a pretty good move even if it did not pay the dividends we fans would have liked. Changing overall scheme in September is damn near impossible. For example, you don't just go from being a power running team to zone running team in a week. I know fans think you do, but you don't. It changes everything from OL footwork (which, btw, is a very precise thing) to play development time, reads, etc. It requires repetition by the players...even old hats have to keep repping in. So, when fans keep saying...just change the scheme or concepts (which is what they mean when they say change the playbook) they are making the assumption that the team can make that radical change cold. Another analogy...a good country guitarist can play rock and roll, but to ask him to sub in for Slash or Eddie Van Halen for a concert in four days while expecting a flawless performance is just daft.
Now, I am sure someone is thinking Hoot is exonerating the Coaches. If you are, for ***** sake open your comprehension a little bit because I did not say anything close to that. What I am saying is that there aren't magic plays you can change to that makes a bad player suddenly great. I am also saying that large change is a process, not a wave of the wand. In the end, both coaches and players are to blame for some of the **** this season. They are also all culpable for good things too. Seriously, when Ben went down with an umproven backup, I thought we were a 4 win team at best.
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Harbaugh did last year with Flacco going down, and Jackson coming in.
Also I think in 2012 when they won the Super Bowl, he fired his OC during the season.
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Excellent post!
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I don't think we are talking major coarse changing but adjustments here and there,........ Happens all the time for other teams but for some reason our coaching staff doesn't / hasn/t / & won/t do it. It's like huh.....what........... Square fit round.
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