Originally posted by NCommand:
Originally posted by WRATHman44:
Originally posted by ModestoNiner33:
Can Looney excell in a zbs?
I think so. He's a good athlete, and he's a lot better than the general opinion of him. I think he got called out by some local writers who don't know enough to grade OL play. He didn't have many negative plays, but he had a handful of ugly ones that got a lot of attention. At least two of them were because he got hung out to dry by another OL (cough cough *JMart).
I like his nasty streak, too. Davis is the only other guy carrying some chippiness into the game. I watched Looney try to legally (ish) bust a dude's head on a PAT.
Agreed. He is/was probably our second best pulling G too which is encouraging in a ZBS given you need to be able to block on the run. I was excited when we had Iupati at LG AND Looney at RG for a bit b/c for the first time ever, we could pull to both sides and avoid some of our predictability. The biggest "tell" in our running offense as stated by the opposition was that in order to get to the ball carrier, you just needed to follow the "move man" in our formations...Iupati, Miller, etc. and you can make the tackle. It's part of the reason we had so many negative yards on first downs and were stuck in 2nd and longs 2/3rd of the time for the entire season and over the entire HaRoman era. Simple schemes can change that here esp. if we move to a ZBS.
They used some misdirection at times, and it worked, but too often they just ran straight into the power of the defense and assumed Iupati and company could overpower the D. I think they could have used Hyde and Gore as decoys more often and had Kaepernick roll behind them for both passing and running plays.
One play I like, and I can't recall who ran it--maybe Denver?--fake to the RB who runs over LT, QB rolls behind him with a run disquised rolling pocket for a deep pass...perhaps a post route, which T Smith could excel in running. I thought of that when I read your comment, NC, about the D following the "move man." Just one of many plays that can be run to punish the defense for making assumptions. I believe Kaepernick ran a similar play a number of times but the 9ers didn't have a receiver who could get deep enough dependably. So Boldin across the middle, VD running a deep route on the opposite side. With Smith's speed three receivers could be more dangerous than four were last year.
Another reason I hate the power run game Harbaugh/Roman ran! Other than the interesting blocks, like the wham, very little subtlety.
[ Edited by dtg_9er on Apr 12, 2015 at 9:58 AM ]
