Potential head coach candidates

[Shake n Blake]

(11-21-2018, 08:32 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Chris Henry's presence was the key to our passing game.  Without him in the lineup teams rolled double coverage to Chad and shut us down.

Henry was injured in the 8th game of the season. Look at the difference in production.

First 8 games 4 of our opponents were top ten in pass defense and 6 were in top half of the league.  Avg rank was 13
Final 8 games only 1 opponent was top ten in pass defense and only 2 in top half of league.  Avg rank 20

First 8 games we averaged 229 yds passing with 14 tds and a rating of 83.5
Final 8 games we averaged 143 yds passing with 7 tds and a rating of 74.7

Overall our total offense went from #12 over the first 8 games to dead last (#32) over the last 8 games.

So, yes, The difference between the #12 offense to the #32 offense (against weaker defenses) was most likely the difference between a win and a loss in that playoff game.  We ran the Ball very Well with Benson, but our passing attack was non-existent.(18-36, 146 yds, 1 td, 1 int, 58.3 rating)

You should know better than to attempt this stuff with me. 

The first 8 games included that Bears blowout where Palmer threw 5 TD's
The last 8 games included that Jets game where we didn't even try to beat the Jets, and Palmer went 0 for 11

Kinda skews those numbers quite a bit. Chris wasn't a big difference maker in '09. Sorry. When you remove these 2 games from the equation:

First 8 (sans Bears blowout) - 216.7 pass yards - 1.29 pass TD's - 33.7 pass attempts - 117.9 rush yards
Last 8 (sans concession to Jets) - 162.9 pass yards - 1.00 pass TD's - 27.9 pass attempts - 134.9 rush yards

We leaned more on the run over the last 8 games and passed significantly less. Whether or not this was due to Chris Henry is up for debate, but I'd say we passed less as the season progressed due to the failure of Coles and the emergence of Benson. Not because of Chris Henry. It's obvious that the run game was working that year. The pass game wasn't good at any point. 

(11-21-2018, 08:55 PM)fredtoast Wrote: The Colts were the #1 passing offense in the league.  Their running game only ranked 22nd.  Them missing their top RBs was nothing compared to us missing Gresham and Green who accounted for 40% of our receptions and over half of our passing tds.  Plus we were also missing our starting RT (Smith)

This doesn't explain why a practice squad RB was able to drop 141 yards on us, which is more than any Bengals player in any Marvin playoff game, outside of 2009 Ced Benson. Jeremy Hill had a year (2014) that Boom Herron can only dream of.