Originally posted by Allx9er:
Before i throw mark roman (smh) totally under the bus im going to give him 3 years. But here are a couple things ive thought about when it comes to our OC.
1....he's only 1.5 years into his NFL OC experience and only 1 full off season to sharpen his trade with the tools available.
2....he kinda reminds me of mm, only with the running game (which aint all bad) but you cant play to your tendencies all the time. he sometimes calls goofy/cute plays that seam out of touch with the flow of the game and that hasnt improved much as the season has progressed.
3....he has shown an inability to create or exploit mismatches in the passing game personnel wise. Yeh yeh yeh AS is pulling the trigger but for all the exquisitely designed run plays that create an advantage our passing game is equally bleh when creating mismatches by motioning or personnel.
4....i haven't seen his stamp on the O. i know it's probably an unfair criticism but his only claim to fame at this point is the running game. Im not sure how much input he has in play design or tweaking of plays considering the rathman, harbaugh, seifert connections with the WCO....(like i said i know it's unfair, not many play books are original anymore).
Very nice post. I esp. agree with the first point about only 1.5 years in. I try to remind everyone of that point b/c it's not just the QB, but the RB's, OL, TE's, WR's and esp. the coaches. Some things they did in college will work in the NFL but it will only be short-lived. The NFL is all about game planning and adjusting on the fly. He's a genius at creating mismatches in the running game and playing to the strengths of the OL and RB's for the most part as well as Alex who makes the pre snap reads/decisions. Genius. And that was their bread and butter at Stanford as well documented (in this thread as well). In fact, the Rams were using our own "wham blocks" against us last game AND the 3 TE sets aligned on one side of the line (but they passed out of that formation rather than run like we do). They did a stellar job of reviewing film of Rogers getting torched by Cruz again in the slot and isolated/exploited him all game. The Rams only have two weapons, Jackson and Amendola and both had over 100 yards b/c of their OC's scheme ad individual efforts. Period. This is where Roman fails right now...we have x10 the weapons they do.
And I really like your last point about his offense. In the passing game, he seems to be stellar on 1st down calls; calls where the defense has no idea what is coming. But if we don't get 4+ yards on 1st down, and the defense can at least predict if it is a run or pass, we're especially weak. Our passing game seems to be all-or-nothing at time.
And like we talked about, we aren't really seeing him create or find ways to get the ball in his best receivers hands which is the staple of the WCO. Teams would always try to take Jerry Rice away but he'd work harder to win those individual battles off the LOS and the OC's would create new ways to get him the ball (e.g. line him up in the back field).
To your point, we do need to be patient. He continues to install package after package. When he is called out (RZ last year) he admitted it was not as much a focus as it was to that point, gaining and sustaining drives between the 20's. Eventually, we may see the deep packages installed. Hopefully some more traditional WCO plays such as the slant, post pattern, go-routes, etc.
But for now, his focus should be on building off his running game, first down production and game planning to get his talented receiver the ball (VD, Moss, Manningham, Hunter, Crabtree, etc.).