Outgunned on the O-line, What Can Be Done?

[*Wyche'sWarrior*]

(10-11-2020, 10:26 PM)samhain Wrote: Yes are coaches are bad and yes our rookie quarterback needs to learn to stop holding onto the ball so long.  Both are big problems.  Even so, I'm still of the belief that the majority of our offensive issues stem from the line (no shit, right?)

Knowing that we have an assortment of bad to awful players (with the exception of maybe Jonah and Trey), and 11 games left to play, what's left that can be done to fix this in the short term?  The guys we need to replace the right side likely aren't out on the street to sign.  The Bengals have a rookie quarterback to keep in one piece, and the guys are just not getting it done.

The best I can manage to come up with is a renewed commitment to the run a-la Paul Brown.  Let the guys up front attack more instead of retreating to pass protect all the time.  Use the running back you invested in this offseason.  Run the hell out of him, Gio and whoever else they want to throw out there.  Get a fullback.  I keep hearing how antiquated that concept is, but the team that just beat the shit out of us seems to value it enough.

This empty backfield, five-wide nonsense ain't it.  Not with our personnel.  They need more than the five guys up front to survive the blitzing that will come at them for the rest of the season.  

Run it, run it, run it, then run it some more.  They might even get decent enough at it to make opposing defenses think twice about the blitz.  If they can't then they'll se a lot of games that will look a lot like this afternoon's debacle.  

Hakeem Adenji and Fred Johnson aren't saviors any more than Price or Redmond were.  Switch up the offensive strategy for the duration of the season and then retool when the offseason gets here if you want to go pass-heavy again.

Agreed, and NE likes FBs too. As to the 5 wide stuff, apparently Joe likes it because it enables him to get a better read when it spreads the defense out. We're in quite the conundrum with a rookie learning, and shit for olinemen.