If you watch that game again, all the misdirection and what not was a lot of nothing. The Rams pretty much ran it right down our throats, for the most part. Back a hundred years ago, when I was in HS, I played in the Delaware Wing TE. I was a Half Back in that Offense. It was predicated on a lot of misdirection but if you read your keys, then you could pretty much always know where the ball was going. The key to that Offense was the TE. Read the TE and you always knew if it was a run or a pass and if a run, where it was going. When we met teams who understood our Offense, it came down to executing blocks, making catches, making tackles and just who wanted it more.
As I watched that game last Saturday, I could not help but go back to my HS days because I was seeing the same exact thing out of the Rams Offense. They beat us, not with jet sweeps or exotic play calling. They beat us with man up blocking schemes that took advantage or our weakness. Our weakness, and it has been for as long as Garrett has been here, is our inability to adjust, in game. The Rams knew that if they could figure out a way to find something that was successful against us, they could beat us like a drum, all day, all night. We are a very good team but we don't have a great deal of experience and we are not good enough, as a team, to adjust to things on the fly. I mean, if I'm lying, I'm dying. I watched the Rams and it was very basic. The didn't do anything I haven't seen a thousand times. Seriously, nothing. They were better coached, better prepared and they had much more experience in some key areas.
I listen to fans, read posts and in todays game, youth is valued so much over experience, it's really one of the biggest differences in how the game is seen today. I believe that the game was better years ago and that the teams were better years ago. Now, I know that a lot of fans will not agree with me but let me tell you why. Today, youth is valued because the younger the cheaper against the cap. The cap is really what has been the catalyst for all of this IMO. You can't keep teams together long enough for them to really become proficient in any scheme. Used to be that you drafted players and you developed them for years. They learned their craft and they added to it, year over year. You really became a system player because you stayed in the same system, year over year. Today, that doesn't happen. What you have are players moving so often that it's tough to teach a player enough to really and truly make them great in any given system. They either have the natural ability to just outclass the guy across from them or they don't. This is why both sides of the ball are really dumbed down, for lack of a better term. I know many of you think that todays game is so much more complicated but honestly, it's not. Yeah, OCs throw more at you because if you can not really teach all aspects of any given thing, then you try to confuse all the more but it's really all the same stuff. Nothing new has been introduced, into the game of football, for the aspect of actually playing the game in 60 years. What's changed are the rules of the game and the financial drivers that force change. The game itself is the same. If players were allowed to actually learn the craft and the scheme, the could easily stop a lot of this stuff you see OCs rolling out. It doesn't take long for an OC to figure out that certain plays aren't going to work, once you blow them up a couple of times. You then get down to what your team can actually do and not what your team can try to do to confuse the other team because if you are well coached and well prepared, you aren't going to be able to confuse them. You essentially spend a lot of wasted time on new plays that won't work and that's on both sides of the ball. That is why I say that teams were better then then they are now. Not talking about Athletes here. I'm talking about actual teams.
What we saw last week was an example of this IMO. We faced a team that was better prepared. They were just better then we were. There talent is not really all that much better then ours is, IMO. There QB is a better passer but if you hit him, he looks a lot worse then Dak does if you hit Dak. There OL is not close to as talented as our is, even in our current state. There RB is not better then ours is. They might have a better one two then we do but there best guy and our best guy, it's a wash at best IMO. There WRs might be a little bit better then ours are but I'll take Gallup and Coop over there top two guys any day. There DLine has more talent then ours does, I can't argue that. Our LBs are way more talented and I think that our talent in the Secondary is also better but they were prepared. We were not and to me, that's the end of it.
Same exact thing as when I first started playing football, back when I was a kid. The team who was prepared, the team that made plays and executed won the game. Desire is a big thing in this game and you hear it from the very first practice you ever suit up for. There is a reason for that and it's not just old BS talk.
