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zn
And during the season, whoever sticks will be subbing in on a more veteran and cohesive line, not lining up with 4 other rookies. And whoever it is, will be better for the experience they're getting now.

I say lining up with 4 other rookies. That's not quite it...Neary and Demby are more than that, but they're still inexperienced. Plus they're overtaxing Demby by asking him to do too much (remember the summer of 2017 when Kromer had Hav at guard and Brown at tackle. For a while anyway. He likes to experiment in the pre-season.)

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Just posting a bit I read on a board, that I agree with.

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oldnotdead

I make an issue of the constant in-game movement of players on the o-line because the Rams use a zone scheme with a horizontal concept. That scheme more than any other requires a high degree of unit coordination CHEMISTRY is what makes a zone scheme work best. How do you get that when these guys are moving around during the game? It’s why these makeshift lines look so bad.

Denver was famous for their zone blocking scheme years ago. But what they did was to insert their primary backups one or two at a time during pre-season and scrimmages to give the backups an opportunity to play and practice with the first string o-line…i.e. the same guys they would be playing with if they came into the game as a replacement. It allowed them to build a sense of chemistry with that unit so when they did come in, it was many times seamless.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Kromer is an outstanding coach with a proven track record. But at the same time, it’s why I’m not going to be overly critical of these young guys at this point.

I think it's more than just guys moving around.

It;s the idea that you can put 5 inexperienced guys out there that have never played together as a unit and expect cohesion and veteran level communication and veteran level timing etc.

And I have no problem with the Rams doing that--I don't care if the PS games look pretty. The young linemen are getting real work with live bullets flying.

But an entire unit put on the field that way will NOT look good. It just won't.

BUT during the season we will never see 5 new players all playing on the OL at once.

They will replace a player one to one, and join a more cohesive unit. And when they do it, whoever goes in there will be better for having gone through the pre-season experience. Even if a makeshift pre-season OL CAN'T look good as a unit, and for that reason make some fans nervous.
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To me? All this can't be stressed enough.

In that light the OL worries honestly strike me as being a bit excessive,



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Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2019 04:58PM by zn.