Originally posted by Paul_Hofer:Why isn't Juice successful as a larger, short yardage back? In the days of Roger Craig and Tom Rathman, Rathman often got the short yardage call and was successful.
I tend to think the problem is the interior OL. ShanaLynch's de-emphasis of the guards most strongly shows up in short yardage. You have to have the threat of a run up the gut getting at least two yards for play action and other pass plays to have a good chance of working.
I think you nailed it here. We dont have very much if any threat of runs up the middle. This makes it easy to shut down the outside edges and back off LBs to cover any routes in the middle of the field. We need to establish just the threat of that up the gut run even if we're not great at it. The lb will cheat up thinking there gonna get run stuffs and what not. Then we can open the playbook back up to outside runs and hitting those crossers over the middle.