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BearlyThere
No doubt the better the OL plays, the better the offense is. The OL isn't as a glaring of an issue this year like it was last year. Noteboom is no Whitworth but he is better than any backup the Cowboys and other teams have put out there.
Kromer seems like a Top OL coach to me. He took a lot of low round draft picks and throwaways aside from Whitworth and has molded them into an above average unit most of the time under McVay.
They are more of a agile OL instead of power. They've struggled against powerful DLs and an aggressive front like you mentioned Zn. The TEs are a more glaring problem to me. I love Higbee but he is a pretty inconsistent blocker and catcher. Everett is even more inconsistent.
So how to game plan for that? I'm not in love with McVay's condensed bunch formations. It can be tricky for defenses that aren't prepared but the better ones run a wide 6 man front like Chicago in 2018 and dare Goff to throw to the middle or run up the middle. LBs can chose to drop out of the box or CBs can blitz. When you spread out you take away guys that can blitz/disguise making less threats for the QB to account for.
I love Shanahan's style where they spread and move pieces to outnumber/overload the defense at specific points. It's very creative.
With Wolford, McVay has more options to run plays like Shanahan because Wolford is a running number in a way that Goff rarely is.
Btw, Goff was very good at RPO plays (run pass option) in college because they are a quick one decision read plays. I remember Gruden doing his QB camp with Goff before the draft and Gruden said he wouldn't run RPOs in the NFL because it will get your QB killed.
Wolford ran at least two RPOs along with QB designed runs in this game. Would that sustain over a season?
First, thanks for the original post that starts out this thread. It was rich, detailed, and knowledgeable.
As you can see I have some theories on all this.
Kromer is a top OL coach, but that means that sometimes he can hide weaknesses through scheming, as can McVay. And sometimes they meet defenses that have the particular strengths to match up and attack those weaker points. I mean it's no accident that Seattle took something from the Jets and SF defensive playbooks and disrupted the entire offense. Same things happened a couple of times in 2018 too as we know. The result is always a combination of a bad game from the qb, a bad game from the OL & all blockers, a bad game from the RBs, and a bad game from McVay--who doesn't seem to be able to counter this thing.
I agree with this, in fact it's a good point:
"They've struggled against powerful DLs and an aggressive front like you mentioned Zn. The TEs are a more glaring problem to me. I love Higbee but he is a pretty inconsistent blocker and catcher. Everett is even more inconsistent. "
This is also a good point:
"I'm not in love with McVay's condensed bunch formations. It can be tricky for defenses that aren't prepared but the better ones run a wide 6 man front like Chicago in 2018 and dare Goff to throw to the middle or run up the middle. LBs can chose to drop out of the box or CBs can blitz. When you spread out you take away guys that can blitz/disguise making less threats for the QB to account for."I also agree that if Wolford really is going to become a starting caliber qb, with the Rams or elsewhere, he has to stop running like that. It will work in the short term but get him killed in the long term.
Anyway, just 2 more cents on my part.
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