'06 Draft. O-Line or Running Back?

Running back definitely. Don't let Foster's late games confuse you, he sucked large all year. In the regular season we had the second worst running game in the NFL, and that includes the Falcons game. It wasn't all on Jake. Shaun Alexander tore up the entire defense and Hasselbeck killed the secondary.

 

The thing I noticed they could have done off of that play was having Mangum come in motion as usual, everyone runs it as if it were the WR screen, except Mangum cuts back across the middle. The entire D was flowing to stop that play, using it to set something else up would have been smart. By the time the LB's realized what was going on Mangum should be free and in the clear.

 

you've gotta execute, and you've gotta play like you want it. Those are two primary things in any failure that probably didn't happen.

And I won't put it on Henning, just like I won't put it all on Jake. But it was clear we had no answer for Smith being covered well, even though everyone knew it was coming. You can't be prepared for losing your last RB to injury early, but you have to be ready for it, and I don't think we were ready for that, either. You've gotta be ready for that WR screen to be covered. You've gotta be ready to find a way to be successful when what's working isn't working.

And we didn't. And some of that's on Dan. I've always said that when we can't come up with the big plays, we still have to find ways to move the ball down the field - keep drives alive. And we didn't - 11 first downs.



Oh - and it's not like we only have one pick in the f'in draft. I don't know how much we need linemen, since they played like ass but so did everyone else; we had no talent at RB at all. We need better at RG, and probably couldn't hurt to have a better C, but I'm assuming Mathis gets the first shot at RG.

 

FACT...

and a truckload of Tiger Balm to go on 'em

 

Yes please!

 

both

 

Yes yes yes

I honestly expected to see that happen early and often enough to make them adjust.

Running into a pile on 1st, down 7-0, after it worked so well to start the game would be a related complaint. Our plan to win should have been come out throwing the ball to everybody but Smitty.

Edit: Whoa, where was I? I just went to watch the tape and we did try to get people involved. I guess my attempt to drink the images out of my mind wasn't in vain

 

Yeah, we threw to other people, Jake just outright missed them. For me this is one game that can be blamed at least in part on Henning and Trgovac. All the things I talked about in the week leading up to the game came true, and as ridiculous as it sounds, I'm sure I could have come up with a better plan on both sides of the ball. Seattle's tendencies were obvious, they didn't do anything against us that they hadn't done all season, and we didn't seem to attack them in any of the ways I thought we could.