Originally posted by thl408:
Originally posted by NCommand:
Hell yes! I challenged NN to do some film study b/c their original report was the same MB media dribble that got tossed around as fact...much props to them for man-ing up and doing their own h/w and film study. And guess what? We came to the exact same conclusions!
Summary:
After looking at all the plays Joe Looney had in the game, I wouldn't be overly concerned with him starting for us. In my mind he's an able pass protector who's probably a net neutral in run blocking. He did have a fairly egregious play on the last play of the first drive on 3rd and 1 on the Ravens six yard line. He simply didn't get his pad level low enough against NT Brandon Williams and lost all leverage allowing Williams to throw him aside and get into the backfield for the tackle. But he did have some good plays like standing-up Haloti Ngata a few times in pass protection. He does lack some situational awareness that I think comes down to lack of real game experience. All in all I think its been highly exaggerated that Joe Looney had a bad game, he didn't. He didn't shine in his chance to take a starting job, but he also didn't disappoint.
I know this is supposed to be a study of Joe Looney, but other Offensive Linemen stood out, and not in a good way. The players around Looney, Daniel Kilgore starting at Center and Jonathan Martin starting at Right Tackle and moving to Left, had bad to terrible games. Kilgore just isn't strong enough to hold up for long in pass protection. He was constantly being pushed around by the Ravens starting NT Brandon Williams and had a play or two where Ngata just made an absolute rag doll of him. And Jonathan Martin couldn't hold a block to save his life. The defenders he was supposed to block almost always seemed to be involved in the play somehow. I would hope that rookie Marcus Martin can get up to speed on the offense fast enough to supplant Kilgore as soon as possible. I'd also be worried if Martin were to make the roster as the primary swing-tackle.
IMHO, the best to worst re: the OL was as followed: Staley - Looney/Martin/Seymour - Iupati - Kilgore (both were poor).
I think it's important to note when assessing individual play, the players who started next to them. In this case, it was Kilgore and Martin for the most part. And to put that into perspective, Martin was by far the better player (as was Seymour later on at RT).
Really appreciate the Looney analysis for game 1. It's really hard for me to see and understand technique when it comes to the OL and DL. I can tell when an OL does a good job, or gets beat, but I can't tell why. As in, how was his knee bend, are his hips square, are his feet at a proper width, what should his hands be doing? Things like that, I have no idea what should be going on. Pad level is about the only thing I can spot.
I highly recommend NFL Rewind for the all22 camera during the regular season. If analyzing trench play is your thing, the endzone camera gives a great vantage point.
You bet!
The good thing is preseason games are pretty vanilla and straight-up. I think I only saw one pull by Looney and one blown up middle screen. That was about as exotic as we got. In that sense, it makes it a bit easier to ID OL successes/failures and assess the individual battles/matchups. But to keep perspective, it can get difficult at times b/c we don't know all the assignments. For instance, if Kilgore gets blown back at C, he could distrupt a pull block, etc. But we typically play power anyhow which is man-on-man. After tomorrows game, a couple of us are going to assess the OL play the best we can but please feel free to chime in since you have a different vantage point from the all22 as well if you get a chance. If not, we'll pull the veteran-card and "save" you for the regular season on assessing the passing game!