Week 4: Grading Brissett & Other Notes
 

Here's a thread with my notes from Week 4. https://twitter.com/VeveJones007/sta...956463110?s=20

A few call-outs here:

Overall, this was the worst of the three games I've reviewed for Brissett. He made 3 poor reads and the egregious error on the Pick-6 by staring down Pascal the entire play. Still, he made a couple plays that showed real progress. He also wasn't the reason they lost. Grade: B-/C+

A few specific plays:

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This might be the worst read I've evaluated from Brissett so far this year. 3rd and long and he misses an easy completion to Cain past the sticks at the bottom of the screen. He forces it to Doyle in a tight window. Incomplete. 3 and out.

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Here's a better read from Brissett that showed progress. He missed the deep out behind the corner a couple times against TENN. Here, he reads it and drops it to Rogers at the top of the screen for 20 yards.

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2nd misread of the half from Brissett. He doesn't identify the blitz from the slot. If he did, he has Rogers for an easy 15 with a chance to break it to the house. Still, he put it on Cain's chest, who dropped a would be 1st down.

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PA with two man route. This is the one Campbell gave up on. You can’t do that when it’s a two man route. But more importantly, Brissett missed Cain on the shorter option. The far corner was following Campbell through the play, so it would’ve been an easy 25+ yards.

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On the 1st TD drive of the 4th, Brissett and Hines did a good job attacking underneath vs the Cover 4 from OAK. Then Brissett delivers this beauty to Pascal, which Brissett set up by eyeing the underneath route and pulling up the LB. This was a next-level play from Brissett. We need to see more of this if he's to take the next step as a QB.

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It’ll probably get lost in people’s minds, but the TD to Ebron was a fantastic play from Brissett. That was an Andrew Luck-style evasion of pressure while keeping his head downfield and creating a big play.

A few other notes on the game:

-Glowinski was atrocious in pass protection.

-Not the best game from Kelly, either.

-All too often, either one or both of Walker and Okereke are out of position. EJ Speed was the best LB on the day and it wasn’t particularly close. That's not to say Speed was all that good. It's more of an indictment against the other two.

-If the DL doesn’t keep the LBs clean, they can’t make a play. I think this goes into the new free agent signing. They need someone to eat up two blockers since they aren’t getting enough penetration from the current line.

-Kenny Moore isn’t giving them any playmaking. Also, he can’t get beat around the edge by a TE.

-A few of those 1st half penalties called on the offense were really soft and had zero bearing on the play. Hurt the Colts in a couple instances and probably took points off the board.

-Eberflus called a lot of blitzes in the 2nd half. Still resulted in very little pressure on Carr.

-Why is Campbell extending the ball from his body on the fumble? Easy play for the defender.

-Milligan with another nice tackle on kickoff


Winners: Willis, Pascal, Castonzo, Nelson, Sheard. EJ Speed if we’re being generous, but that’s a reach.

Losers: Glowinski, Walker, Okerek, Geathers, Ebron, Cain, basically the entire DL except Sheard, Ya-Sin. Kelly (but to a much lesser degree than Glowinski).

This one bothers me. I've never been a big proponent of moving a guy out of his natural position to cover for injury while moving...especially a rookie into his position. Those 2 have just not played well together.

I hope to god that Leonard hasn't become Bob Sanders, in the fact the defense completely falls apart when he's not in there.

It sort of seems that way unfortunately. On the converse, if he is Bob esque, we should win the SB this year.

I’m this close to concluding that Walker isn’t good enough and never will be. While Okereke isn’t good enough right now, there’s more potential there.

If it were me, I would start Okereke next to Leonard when he comes back. Take some growing pains now and hope Okereke develops throughout the year.

1000% agree. Walker is constantly constantly constantly out of position. Yep, I have been touting it for a bit- Speed, DL, Okereke and THEN Walker. Speed and DL together would be blazingly fast sideline to sideline and spectacularly long.

It was concerning when they fired DeGuglielmo after the offensive line had played its best in years. They got rid of a guy who apparently wasn't nice and got a nice guy to coach our line. So far this has been hands down the worst decision by Reich so far as this line has regressed. DeGuglielmo's personality seemed to mesh with how the line played last year when it looked like the offensive line might be where this team got its identity. Not so much now.

I'm not sure about this, through three games Mack had the 3rd best yardage total. I get a similar vibe as you, that the OL isnt playing as well as it did last year, but at the same time I think also that were Looking at the Raiders game and drawing conclusions that are perhaps too general.

Last year it took several games for the OL to develop into the top-notch unit they ended the season as. This is the biggest gripe I have about coaching. The team should be prepared from week 1 to dominate, it should not take them 5 weeks to figure out.

The OL was never this juggernaut that some made it out to be in late 2018. They got manhandled against the Jags and Chiefs, and were only slightly better than the Titans DL. I would say the line has been on par with how it performed last year. Perhaps Glowinski has regressed a bit, but that's all I see.