Mahomes is crazy. He can’t carry the team to 20-0 with his 50 million contract We will know after Week # 1 Gidi if his dream can come true ???.....KC is in tough to start with Cleveland.
They are the top of the AFC food chain, every week they will be getting the best of each of their opponents. 20-0 is a great goal, but I don’t think it’s achievable with the structure of the NFL. After week one, it will still be achievable for 16 teams..
Anything is possible and I bet he wanted the same last season also. I like/want my QB to have lofty goals and if anyone in todays NFL could pull that off, it would probably be the Chiefs, which is of course, just an opinion. Crazy tough schedule they have and the League is full of parody also... 15-2 would seem like a huge accomplishment for anybody. Im thinking his goal of 20-0 is just a winning attitude... after-all, he's not going to come out and say; We are going 12-3 this season', lol. It is just 1 game, 1 week at a time, but I like the SB attitude right from the git-go. Would be laughable if it was the Lions or Giants coming out and saying that, but hell, with Mahomes and the Chiefs its a real possibility. Week 1 cant get here soon enough!
No matter who your QB is you hope he plans on going 20-0. Yeah it sounds more believable from some (mahomes, brady, rodgers) than others (lawrence, roethlisberger, wentz) but there should be 32 qbs saying i hope to go 20-0.
It’s a bit easier to avoid an elite DE than an Aaron Donald. Roll outs, chips from either a TE or a RB can usually give the QB enough time to get rid of the ball, if there isn’t another above average guy on the other side. Miles Garret is good, don’t get me wrong, but if he’s the only quality guy on the DL it would be a long year for the Browns unless they have a great DB room to force QBs to hold the ball. Donald on the other hand comes right up the gut, and that’s a whole different animal. Pressure up the middle disrupts everything. If he isn’t double teamed, he’s almost guaranteed to make a positive play for his team. If he’s triple teamed, then it becomes 50/50. Unless you have a QB like Lamar Jackson sprinting outside Donald will still impact the play as that QB better be damn accurate on the run and better not slow down at all cause Donald won’t be far behind. Normally I’m right there with you saying 1 guy can’t do it himself. Donald is different, closest thing to him previously was JJ Watt in his prime. Maybe he can’t do it alone, but with him you can afford to not have the greatest support.
Ben Roethlisberger: Offense is like nothing that you’ve seen in the past The Steelers have Ben Roethlisberger back at quarterback for an 18th season, but Roethlisberger said on Tuesday that it won’t be the same old song on offense in Pittsburgh. Matt Canada replaced Randy Fichtner as the team’s offensive coordinator this offseason and Roethlisberger told reporters that he’s had to do a lot of studying in order to get comfortable in the scheme. He also said it is one that will look different to what the team’s done in recent years. “You’ll see nothing that you’ve seen in the past,” Roethlisberger said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN.com. Freshening up the offense was needed after the team slumped to the finish line in 2020 and moved on from several offensive linemen this offseason, although it remains to be seen just how big a departure there will be from the past. One new face is running back Najee Harris and Roethlisberger said the first-round pick “doesn’t seem lost” in his transition to the NFL. Roethlisberger added that the “most exciting part is once he gets it and it clicks and he goes full speed” for an offense that could use a new spark to go with their returning quarterback. NBC
Carson Wentz organizing summer workouts for Colts before training camp Colts quarterback Carson Wentz is making an effort to become the leader of his new team, and an increasingly common part of the job of being an NFL franchise quarterback is organizing summer workouts. Wentz revealed that he’s working on organizing workouts with his teammates in the weeks between the end of the Colts’ offseason program and the start of training camp. “I’m not 100 percent sure of the details yet,” Wentz said, via ESPN. “We’ll get together maybe even here in June and then probably in July as well. I’ve done that in the past in Philly as well and it’s just a great time to not just get the physical work on the field, but to get together and bond outside of football and get to know the guys. I look forward to that every summer and I look forward to doing that again once or twice this summer as well.” The Colts are expecting Wentz to embody everything a team needs from its franchise quarterback, and that goes well beyond what he does on Sundays in the fall. Wentz will also be hard at work this summer. NBC
Andy Dalton: My mindset doesn’t change because Bears drafted Justin Fields Andy Dalton spent nine seasons as the Bengals’ starter before Joe Burrow supplanted him. After one season in Dallas, where he signed as Dak Prescott‘s backup before Prescott was injured in Week 5, Dalton signed a one-year deal with the Bears. Chicago, though, drafted Justin Fields in the first round only 44 days after signing Dalton. “I knew the situation I was going into, regardless of if they drafted somebody or they didn’t,” Dalton said Wednesday, via Chris Emma of 670 The Score. “I was on a one-year deal, and I was going to be the starter. My mindset didn’t have to change.” Bears coach Matt Nagy repeatedly has declared Dalton the starter. But let’s be honest: That means Dalton is the starter until A.) The Bears start losing; B.) Dalton is injured; or C.) Dalton isn’t playing well. Nagy knows it. Dalton knows it. Everyone knows it. Dalton, though, doesn’t seem fazed by the prospect of losing his job, because he believes he can win with the Bears this season. That could delay Fields’ ascension until 2022. “I already knew that I’m going to do everything I can to be the best player I can for this team and to help us win a lot of football games,” Dalton said. “Whatever happens after this year happens. But my mindset didn’t change because they drafted Justin. “I’m trying to do everything I can to make us the best team we can become the fall.” The Cowboys went 4-5 with Dalton as their starter last season. The three-time Pro Bowler is 74-66-2 as a starter in his career, passing for 33,764 yards with 218 touchdowns and 126 interceptions. NBC
Lamar Jackson will spend time under center in 2021 In three NFL seasons, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson has operated almost exclusively (if not entirely exclusively) out of the pistol formation. That will change in 2021. Via Jamison Hensley of ESPN.com, Baltimore’s offense will include plays with Jackson starting under center. Offensive coordinator Greg Roman told reporters on Wednesday that, indeed, the change is coming to the team’s approach. “That is definitely going to be a part of what we do this year — the percentage of which I cannot state at this point,” Roman said. “I don’t know the extent of it. But we are working on it and evaluating it every day.” It sounds like it won’t be a gimmick or a short-yardage-only feature of the offense. “It’s something we will certainly use from time to time, some games more than others,” Roman said. “I believe it’s a very important part in the development of a quarterback from a forward standpoint.” He’s right, and that raises an important question. Why hasn’t Roman done it sooner? Roman has received increasing criticism for the one-dimensional nature of the offense, and there’s increasing pressure on the Roman and the team to develop Jackson as a passer. It’s easier, obviously, to pass from shotgun formation. But play-action passing, which entails the quarterback faking a handoff and then dropping back to throw, can be highly effective. It’s also not easy. Selling the fake entails the quarterback turning his back to the defense, long enough for things to be very different once his eyes return to the other side of the ball. That’s when the experiment will be tested the most, and when Jackson will be doing at the NFL level something he’s never done before. NBC
I can see Jackson having fumbling problems with taking under center snaps. He has never done it at any level of his football life.
@Willie If I were the OC for the Ravens the entire offense would be predicated on a dedicated pistol-pro formation with a full time 5 wide strategy. I know @LAOJoe and I discussed it briefly either the summer before or the summer after Lamar was drafted (I think it was before because I had the Bengals in mind when I started breaking it down). It would take a certain set of players to make it run at it's optimum level, but the offense would be set up for Jackson to make presnap reads and audible into formation changes based on what he was seeing in front of him on virtually every down. It would be able to flex from the base pistol pro to nearly any type of formation from hybrid wing T all the way to 5 wide (empty). The base set at its core would be the pro-set, but with the quarterback off center in the pistol. The threat of the quarterback being able to run with efficiency would be one of the core principles, but both the runners would need to be solid receivers (RB and HB), the TE would need to be capable of lining up on the perimeter as well as inline (think Pitts or Waller) and it needs one possession type and one speed type receiver, because I need to lift the top off the defense on any down and have a capable chain mover. If I had to run with current players, the H-Back/Full Back would be the more difficult player to locate. I'd probably look to go with a larger running back with decent hands for that position. I could go with a guy like Henry, Dillon, Fournette or maybe Bell, but there are some guys that don't have that resume or maybe haven't had the opportunities to see the field that could possibly fit that role. Gus Edwards might be a solid candidate and a deep dig at a name like Rhamondre Stevenson, Jordan Chunn or Josh Adams might be interesting. Ideally, that position would be able to fall into either the running back role in a 4 wide set (10 personnel) or the h-back/off line tight end role in a single back (11 personnel) situation. It would definitely be the toughest role to fill for the offense to be successful.
Tim, you don’t think Dobbins would be able to fill the role? Going five wide would make defenses happy because Jackson is easier to stop if he is in a offense more geared towards the pass.
The other problem Jackson has is fumbling. Every time I watch him play a full game I pretty sure I have seen at least one fumble, more likely ar least two. The only saving grace for his fumbling is that he is usually near the sideline and the majority of them role out of bounds.
Going 5 wide is an option out of the base set that the defense would be forced to account for regardless of down and distance. The idea of the offense is to be as flexible as possible and maximizing the ability to create unusual match-ups against any defensive formation.