DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Greg Robinson may be benched

Bingo.

Robinson going rogue is much more worrisome to me.

Going rogue?

It's a funny thing around here. It's not about stupid things being said to the media, but who it is saying stupid things.

Going rogue meaning the coach didn't want to announce anything until Sunday (or at least implied he didn't want anyone to know until Sunday). I guess it's possible that Greg Robinson didn't know what Kitchens wanted.

Either way. I don't think this amounts to much. The more interesting story to me is that we just benched our starting left tackle halfway into the season for a guy who has barely played in the NFL and when he did play he didn't play left tackle. I think that says a lot about what the team thinks of Greg Robinson.

I think it indicates they were looking for a scapegoat and are making a desperation move that will make things even worse. Most everyone knows Hubbard is the worst player on the OL and Robinson, while certainly not a great LT wasn't the weakest link.

Funny how the real story-at-hand gets buried beneath layers of meaningless banter about dysfunction.

That said, Robinson didn't really sound like a problem-child. The tone of his statement was "I gotta do better". Why he chose to divulge to the media? Don't really know so I won't try to connect a bunch of dots that aren't on the paper.

I would hope that the team isn't interested in scapegoating a player that is not actually the problem. If a person believes the team is benching for reasons other than his performance then that is alarming. At this point we are trying to win games, if we are benching guys for any other reason besides performance then the people in charge need to check themselves.



The people that know most about the team say that Robinson is the weakest link. That's why he's been benched. I'll leave the conspiracies about scapegoats to others.

The proof may or may not be in the pudding come Sunday. Scapegoat is a stretch, this isn't a soap opera, there's obviously something about his play and preparation they're not happy with.

The OL performance against Seattle was about the best of the year, imo, nothing glaring to even complain about as a unit.

This could be a simple as a coaching staff using a two week break to identify and address weaknesses... And maybe seeing things they feel that GR either can't, or is not working hard enough to fix.

It could also be Robinson is a possible trade piece and they're not willing to risk injury.

J/c

INFORMATION is the key to life ... the more u have the better odds u have of making a correct decision ... the more correct decisions u make the better your life will be ... its not that hard of a concept to understand yet many never think about it or realize it ...

Same concept holds true here .... ooob is right that when the decision is regarding a QB its “more important” than weather were starting GRob or a different bum ... but it is still HUGE info to have ... every player has his tendencies and strengths and weaknesses ... and football is all about winning one on one match ups ... u bet your ass the dude lining up across from GRob or McCray would love to know so he can study one players tendancies as opposed to the other ....

Same with the DC ... how does GRob react to stunts, bull rushes or how good is he at passing a player off ... who is playing the position could alter a part of the game plan (highly doubtful) but it could alter blitz packages and how u attack that position ... it will certainly make a difference in the prep of the player lining up across from the LT ...

INFORMATION is HUGE ... and in an nfl football game that may be dived by a last second score every bit of info u had to get u to that point is HUGE!!!

At this point I believe the proof will be in the pudding. All we have to do is watch the LT position moving forward to witness the ramifications of the move.

Every source I've seen has Robinson rated much higher than Hubbard. As a matter of fact it isn't even close.

One thing we can say for sure, the Robinson situation has certainly taken the struggles of other, more prominent players out of the spotlight for a little while.

Only for the dolts ... not for menZas like U and I .... *LOL* ...

I guess I should have said out of the public spotlight. Even on the board it's about the only thing getting responses right now.

Maybe this is a test to see if McCray can handle LT, in order to move Robinson to RG or RT? Far-fetched I know. And I'm as uncomfortable with a mid-season experiment as most here. I guess an away game, after a bye week to prepare McCray, against an opponent no one expects us to beat, makes it the "best" week to experiment..perhaps.

J/c

Perhaps they never relayed it to GRob to keep quiet about it? I’m not really sure how/why this transpired, but of course it can’t go smoothly.

In the end, it won’t matter much IMO ... just strange to have the miscommunication

j/c:

This situation is starting to remind me of the Timid years.

Even though your LT might be ranked better than your RT it doesn't necessarily mean your LT is playing to level needed out of your LT.

I don't know what's what anymore. Robinson may not be a problem child per se, but his kicking the plaer init eh head and his response afterwards left me with the nagging thought he may not have the right attitude.

I don't even think Freddie knows who the starting OL is.

Maybe Dorsey does...wink, wink...

What an embarrassment.

I thought MCCRay natural position is guard? Heck if your going to move a guard to let mind as well be bitonio.

I’ve thought of this a few times this season: what if we would have just committed to Bitonio at LT and drafted Quentin Nelson to play LG

We can think about a lot of what if's...if frogs had wings they could fly, but they don't, so they don't.

For the record I loved Quint Nelson. Many years ago on this board I wanted Steve Hutcheson, but got laughed at with people saying you don't draft guards that high.

My theory about line play is you need to have very good guards and a good center and you can go with less at the tackle position. If the QB has room to step up, and as long as your tackle doesn't get beat inside, the QB stepping up puts his tackle back in to position to run his guy around the play.

If you get beat up the middle, the shortest distance to the QB, your QB is dead.

Honestly, what good did Joe Thomas bring to the team other than he was maybe the best to play the position? We might have won 25 games while he played here.

You know, trooper, we made a similar “mid season experiment” last season with our o line and it worked out pretty well. Hopefully this will have a similar result.

How far apart is the Freddie saying "wait and see" and GR saying "I was benched".

Could it be that Greg did not know this was a secret and when asked by a reporter he said yes?

I know it doesn't fit the "Team In Turmoil" agenda, but sometimes, miscommunication happens.

I still miss the big guy

That's a really interesting (and somewhat provocative) observation that I hope gets some discussion. I was thinking about two of the more successful franchises of modern times, the Patriots and the Steelers, and trying to remember when either had a prototype All-Pro Left Tackle, and I couldn't think of any. And while I can't say I know much about the Patriots interior OL, the Steelers always seem to be very strong at the OG and C positions.

Didn't Bitonio make it abundantly clear he didn't want to play LT?

This says a lot most people don't want to talk about.

Pit, I do not know what profession you are in but do you by any chance teach creative writing?? So you think our coaches are so stupid as to replace the better of our two tackles on the line with a worse tackle??? Really?? You do realize that our coaches’ futures depend on us having success? Any change they are making will , in their opinion, make us better.

Also, I am sure our coaches watch replays of their position groups, and I am certain our o line coach, offensive coordinator and head coach have a way better idea of which tackle to replace than anyone else does.

Pit are macray’s 67 snaps from week one when he played in an emergency after being in camp about four days or so??

Plenty of people are talking about it.

Jc...

At the end of last year Bitinio was interviewed and a lot of it had content on Greg Robinson...I dont recall the exact dialogue but it was along the ways of Robinson has to keep at it, and keep focused and preparing...

So now that Robinson is benched, it may just be because of his effort behind the scenes...he hasnt looked horrible imho but I knew he wasn't very good last year as well. I am not sure what to think of McCray, but I thought he moves poorly in the short time I've seen him this year...hate to see that on an island where he will be at LT....

I know I'm tough on Baker, only because I expected better this year...But often he runs directly back (where the tackles are pushing their defenders to, and where as a QB you are taught not to go) Baker needs to clean that up, and being fair...Oline must do better as well.

I could be wrong but it seems Kush has done worse as the year progressed (could be wrong) Hubbard is probably best served as a swing tackle imo...but I understand we really have noone better, let's hope for some positive resolution soon.

I also believe if we were trading for a LT, it would have happened already (as the bye week would have been perfect to getting the player up to speed) we shall see though.

So looking at all those PFF Browns numbers, it tells me:

- Trettor and Bitonio (#notenoughtalent) are the largest reason why the unit's pass blocking numbers are good.

- Our tackles are combining for 20 pressures through 6 games. Not sure how this relates to other tackle combos but at first glance, it doesn't seem good. McCray doesn't look like that much of an improvement either.

- Greg Robinson is not doing well vs the pass or rush. Roughly 30 amongst all tackles in a variety of categories?

Correction: GR seems to be doing just above average compared to all tackles. I overlooked the 77 total number. I would like to see this compared to just LTs.

- PFF thinks Kush is pretty bad. I tend to agree and it amplifies the trade of Zeitler (#notenoughtalent) and drafting Corbett.

Let's get real here for just a hot second.

Last year we started a raw rookie at LT who had never taken an NFL snap. He was actually a UDFA that no other team even drafted.

At mid season we inserted Robinson. Now I don't attribute that to the turn around we had in terms of W's, but the position was certainly improved.

Now let's look at this change. We go to a kid who has never started a game at LT is entire career. Who has been cut from two NFL teams and is a natural G. Otherwise he has only played RT and that was in a total of seven games.

So yes, I think if you look at the PFF grades you can see that Robinson is most certainly not quite the problem some say he is. I don't think there is anyone on this roster that can play the LT position as well as Robinson and I think it only serves to distract from where the bigger problem is at this time.

But with that problem, the investment is so high that he can't be replaced. So we might as well blame someone else to distract from it. I know people love to think of football as a sport. And that's fine for the fan base.

But it's actually a business worth about a billion dollars. If you don't think keeping the fan base focused on more trivial things and distracting them into thinking what it is you want them to think, then you're having trouble seeing how this all works.

At this point we're only one day away from seeing the folly in all of this. Stay tuned.....

THAT'S getting real?? C'mon bro. We're not mixing up the OL to make people think Baker isn't playing bad. That's after school movie nonsense.

Oh Baker isn't the only issue. He's one of the bigger issues than Robinson, but not the only one. We have many players rated and playing worse than Robinson. Some of them on the OL.

So sabotage the entire thing so nobody knows where to point the fingers? How does that benefit "the business"?

Is Dorsey seeing ghosts on the Offensive line?

It seems decent to me.

Most of it is on Baker and Freddie's/Monkey's goofy offensive system.

He has had time to throw.

The stats and the eye-test show that Kush is pretty bad. When your OTs are below-average and your RG is simply over-matched, your QB has no where to go...can't step-up...gotta escape the guys the OTs are supposed to block...running right makes more sense than running left...hence...run right. This isn't rocket science.