Comments on: Thinking outside the box

By: chan gailey

chan gailey — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:19:41 +0000

we all know croyle is going to be bad. the only question is how bad? there’s a chance our conservative style will keep him from being ‘clown’ bad. either way, i’ve already begun to press “huard 08″ t-shirts.

By: Sesame Cake

Sesame Cake — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:21:40 +0000

I’ll tell you what…watching Chiefs games this season might not be as bad as I thought. Sure they’ll lose a lot but I do believe that the games will be exciting. I saw a lot of flash from our young D last night that I enjoyed. Turk, Tank, Flowers, DJ, Patterson and Dorsey all made some big plays last night and showed some flash. They’ll give up plenty of big plays this year but I do believe there’ll be more big plays on D than we’ve seen since the 90’s.

The offensive line looked dominating and the running game was impressive. I did not see that coming. However, that made the spotlight on Croyle that much brighter. I know a lot of us sound like Whitlock parrots sometimes (he wrote an article about this today) but if I came away with anything from last night it’s that Croyle has zero poise. There were some plays where he had plenty of time to survey the field and just dumped it off like a puss. He overthrew somebody on a great fly route that would have gone for 6 and he just looked bad baby. What’s gonna stink is the fact that if the Chiefs youngsters keep showing flashes, I’m going to start clamoring for Huard.

Also, piano man, your boy Cox was impressive.

By: Phanatic

Phanatic — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:07:42 +0000

I always thought the Chiefs did with Derrick Thomas the same thing the Giants did with Lawrence Taylor. Am I wrong here? They were similar in their abilities and wrecked havoc from their LB/DE spot. In fact, there is a book written by Michael Lewis called, “The Blind Side”, which expounds on the idea that Lawrence Taylor is the reason left tackles are one of the highest paid players in the NFL.

Sesame Cake, you are correct that the Ravens run some funky D’s at times. I think they can do it because they have studs at all positions on that D. In addition, the Patriots run funky D’s because they have enough cerebral players to make it work.

In general, unorthodox defenses are not a terrible idea once every 2 or 3 series. The issue, in my opinion, is that players would have a difficult time adjusting to their new responsibilities. This may come as a shock to some, but some professional players are not the sharpest knives in drawer. As bighatt mentioned, players play the same position the majority of their playing careers. I do like the idea of Pollard roaming, though. Maybe I am wearing rose colored glasses, but I think I could see him as a Palamalu, Bob Sanders, or Rodney Harrison type.

By: Sesame Cake

Sesame Cake — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:04:13 +0000

You could say that the Falcon giveth and the Falcon taketh away.

Besides having a bunch of bad mamma jammas on D for so many years, isn’t that what the Ravens have been doing to a lesser extent. Freeing up certain linebackers or do they just have “exotic” blitz packages a la Pittsburgh?

Let’s take it to the next level. Of course, it would require some serious smarts on the part of the linebackers (Nap can maybe sit this one out). I’m sure it would lead to some huge plays for the opposing team but what the hell.

By: katz

katz — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:39:06 +0000

on the one hand, you seem to have a good point. LaVar Arrington could have been incredible, or almost was, but in the end he was suffocated by his coachs’ rigid system. on the other hand, as frequent poster chan gailey will certainly agree, if you don’t “buy in” to the system you’re just not going to be successful.

i’m sure you’ve heard about the time we installed a Falcon position in FrownBall to feature Unkle Croker’s erraticism. that worked out pretty well.