Over his career, irregardless of his OC or HC, Dak and the offense have often been plagued by slow, sloppy starts.
He can find his rhythm at times, sometimes even mad-scrambling back into a comeback or near comeback, but over and over and over again— this offense is sluggish out of the gates.
Fix this problem, and a lot starts to change. Doesn’t make the team flawless by any stretch, but it will go a long way towards positioning them to play their brand of football.
1. The D plays better with a lead. This team is built to rush the passer, and can’t do that when teams can pound the rock at will. When the offense grabs the early lead, we win far more games than we lose.
2. Confidence. This team plays best with a swagger, and when they are battling for every yard and dropping passes, and committing drive killing penalties, their morale plummets. Fast, up tempo starts get the good vibes going.
3. Playbook flexibility. When they are in control on the scoreboard, they can utilize the entire gameplan vs becoming one dimensional when playing from behind.
MM and Dak need to come out crisp and efficient. Too often we are out-coached to start games and look unprepared and unfocused.
This single negative pattern has a cascading trickle down effect for the whole team. Why can’t we dictate tempo, pace, and exploit weaknesses to gain an early advantage?
Dak gets blamed for inaccuracy, “deer in the headlights”, not being able to read a defense, failing to find the open guy, having an average arm etc… but IMO, much of his struggles boil down to this one problem:
Starting slow, sloppy, and sluggish. Fix it, and you fix a lot of what ails this team, and at least gives the team a chance to compete.
