First I want to say, I was very impressed by the adjustments made by the offense at halftime. If it weren't for that elementary school attempt to tackle one of the NFL best RB's by Laron Landry, the game could have been much closer.
This brings me to the thumbs down, Laron Landry. He just isn't playing well this year! Was that really an attempt to tackle Turner on his 2nd TD run? And where was he on the 1st run? Oh yeah, he was running in circles!
Now, I would like to address the Orakpo situation that keeps coming up. Where on the line do you play him? Do you replace your sack leader, Andre Carter, with him? Do you put him on the other side where he is out of position also. And if he does play that side of the line, who plays LB on that side?
Orakpo is playing out of position, granted! But how do you adjust for him on the line?
We actually have a lot of guys playing out of position, Orakpo being the most obvious one. However now that we know this season is a wrap we might as well take advantage of the opportunity to get him a wide variety of experience to improve his versatility for the future. If playing LB this year improves his ability to drop into coverage on zone blitzes and/or play the run, then it's a good thing in the long run.
As for the effect Rak's taking his spot would have on Carter, that means nothing to me. Rak is better and deserves that starting DE spot. If that means AC has to be a backup or move to LDE, so be it. Orakpo and Jarmon are the future at DE and the current state of our team means the future is now.
After OL, finding a way to get Landry back to SS should be a top priority this offseason. In the short term, I'd like to see us audition Smoot and Tryon at FS full-time so Landry can return to SS where his short area quickness would be most effective.
Another guy I'd like to see moved next year is BMW. He's lousy as a RT but he didn't look
bad at RG, at least what we saw of him in limited duty anyway.
Finally, today's game wasn't as bad as I expected. I'm really proud of our guys for being in an impossible situation and fighting hard to the bitter end. Orakpo, of course. Heyer and JC sucked it up and played through pain. Sherm Lewis, while perhaps not a top tier playcaller, clearly understands playcalling more than Zorn. The use of bootlegs and rollouts was relatively effective and gave JC a better shot at staying upright long enough to pass the ball and preserve enough brain cells to maybe remember his name after the game. Speaking of JC, he's obviously not very good as a starter but he'll make someone a very adequate backup.
Thumbs down? The defense, especially against the run and especially in the second half sucked. And there's no point in saying anything about Heyer/BMW/Batiste since we all knew they don't belong anywhere near a starting lineup at OT.
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