DawgTalkers.net Forums The Archives 2015 NFL Season Looking Back: Browns 10 Jets 31 Offensive Line

Hey Everyone,

Hopefully this is enough time after the brutal loss to have a rational conversation (probably not, but oh well).

Last year, our offensive line was the obvious strength of our offense. I know we lost some of our scheme when Shanny left, but the preseason articles kept mentioning that our blocking scheme would stay the same. It was expected that they would continue to excel, but that's not what I saw on Sunday. The Jets do have an awesome dline, but holy smokes.

I'm struggling to understand why our supposed strength looked so bad, and wasn't all that dominant through the preseason. Can the oline experts share their knowledge on why we look like we do? Are we actually undergoing a blocking scheme change? Are personnel just not getting it done?

Please keep the responses on topic. I've heard enough about Farmer and Banner, and they don't play or coach on the offensive line, so they shouldn't be part of this conversation. Thanks!

We are an extreme right handed team ( run to the right side of the field ) The Right side of our line is nothing to brag about ( my constant opinion ) Thomas is a finesse , Pass Blocking extraordinaire Left Tackle , so , so great at run blocking . I thought Bitoinio was a good combination of both .. I am just not sure were Mack is right now ( after injury ) .. We all thought that the fall off in line work was because of Mack going down .. We saw in Pre season that was not the case..

You have a very very raw rookie OC .. The Coaching staff dose not have the answer in hand at this moment .. What I see !

we're not facing the Jets DL this week. I think it will look much better.

Scrambling QBs (and both McCown and Manziel are) devalue OL play, that's a big part of the problem. The OL's job is to create a pocket and they did a good job of that most of the day, but if your QBs start running around because they're indecisive (or are too small to see anything, or both), they'll automatically look much worse than they are. They don't have eyes on their backs to see what the rabbit QB behind them does.

It's just another of many examples of very poor roster construction. Pass blocking has been a strength for some time, then they go out and put two scramblers at QB to devalue that strength. Brilliant.

My biggest concern is Alex Mack. Either he's not fully recovered from the injury, or is and has lost some athleticism, or just hadn't played a real game in forever and had tons of rust to knock off, or...

And let's be real, we faced a very, very credible defense. Defense as a whole is outstanding. Still though, we don't have a bunch of chumps on our oline so I thought we would least be able to generate some run game.

whats that?

Based on last years numbers we were 29th in the league running the ball between the C and OGs with a 3.5 per carry average and that was where 49% of our runs went. We do a good job of running to the left, both between the LG and LT (4.37 ypc ranked 5th) and outside the LT (4.30 ypc ranked 8th, a fair job running between the RG and RT (3.77 ypc ranked 18th), and a bad job running outside the RT (2.55 ypc ranked 29th).

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ol2014

j/c

It seems like we're trying an AWFUL lot of run plays off tackle to the right ... yet our right side is assuredly weaker.

Very little counters or cutbacks or draws with quicker backs.

It just seems so slow to develop

dont have a heart attack but..... yep. thats what i think.

I'm not the least bit surprised about the oline performance in game one. They looked the same after Mack went down last year and now every team we play has found a formula to own us. Yes we got got owned and looked horrible in run blocking and just plan bad in pass protection. Sure hope they can fix this with a different scheme and with playing a weaker "d". But I have my doubts with the Brown's power, talent, and depth up front. This is going to make for another very long season if the Oline can't get it done up front.

I'll agree with you on the run blocking, but I actually thought the pass blocking went very well for the most part.

I'll agree on that in the first half

The pass blocking looked bad in the second half and really bad late in the game. I attribute that to depth and just plain giving up.

I don't know how much of it was depth, giving up and how much of it was... well they can't run the ball at all, let's just pin our ears back and not worry about it while we rush the passer.. .

Well yeah ..... all teams have been owning our oline since Mack went down last year. Now every team has the formula and we still can't game plan around it. The Oline gave up. They can't do anything to stop it and they break down in frustration and fatigue with no reliable depth on oline.

On a Tuesday appearance with Cleveland Browns Daily, coach Mike Pettine gave fantastic insight on what exactly the coaching staff is up to during these late-night cramming sessions.
“The running game starts to get formulated,” Pettine said. “You want to make sure your play-actions match your runs. We’ll hit the pause button and the runs will get presented and then we’ll decide what passes will we run off of those. So it all marries up.

http://www.clevelandbrowns.com/news/arti...d2-75d055ed026d

Don't know why you say this. As far as I know most OL don't rotate, they play all game long unless there's an injury. Really has nothing to do with depth, unless, like I said there's an injury. We just need to adjust and come out stronger.

Yeah, that's "fantastic insight"! Now it's crystal clear why they got their asses handed to get Sunday. Maybe they need to do a lot less marrying pass plays to run plays and just figure out how the hell you win a football game!

It's a little early to draw any conclusions, but I will try and make a few points:

--Our guys are better at pass blocking than run blocking. That's always been the case.

--There really weren't many cutback opportunities the other day, so I can't blame the backs for that.

--I think I saw a lot more man/base blocking and less zone blocking than I did last year.

--Shanny used more play action than Flip did.

--Not sure of all the confusion about running more to the right side than the left??? Most teams run to their strong side, and if you have a right handed qb, the TE typically lines up on that side. That is why the LT is said to be protecting the blind side and plays on an island way more than the RT. That's not new. I can't blame the coaches for that one.

--I think this team is kinda soft under Pet. Too many easy practices. Too many days off. I liked the hire because I thought he was going to be a tough guy. He seems the opposite.

--It's hard to run the ball when you don't have any deep threats at WR or TE and your qbs are at the bottom of the league. The Jets did not respect our passing game.

--I don't think our OL is bad. They are certainly better at pass blocking than run blocking, but they are not the problem. We are extremely inadequate in regards to the skill positions and our new OC didn't impress me.

I am pretty sure we were supposed to have screen plays in full effect this year under this new O Coord. Please correct me if I,m wrong but I dont remember any. It seems we are totally inept at countering/audibles, we dont make other teams pay for their mistakes.

None of that excuses the ridiculous amount of penalties they got.....

That alone shows lack of preparation for the game.

They were embarrassing. Plain and simple. I don't think the pass blocking was particularly bad, but they didn't open any holes for the backs and they committed penalty after penalty. And that's on them 100%