The Packers played cover-1 man, with one safety double teaming Evans, and one safety deep. A smart playcall, to double cover a team's best receiver. If only we could have done that against the Falcons. I digress.
Our passing concept is diagrammed above in yellow, the safety movements in red, and his other targets in blue. We had three curls underneath, Evans on a deep out in the left slot, and Hump running a post to the middle of the field.
Winston made only one read, staring down Evans the entire way. He saw that the safety was heading that way, and decided to tuck it and try to run. As you can see from the blue circles, he very easily could have thrown Hump open deep. He also had Martino wide open on the bottom of the picture, and Jackson working free on the top on their curl routes.
Perhaps because he felt the heat. Let's look at the pass protection in depth.
Here we are presnap. We can see that the Packers are threatening a five man pressure, with #50 over the center, EDS. Pretty standard stuff.
Here we are a half second later. We can see that we have a six man protection here, with Sims checking for pressure before releasing into that curl route. See his head? He's looking directly at #50, and will attack him if he blitzes. Since #50 drops into coverage, Sims releases in another moment, thinking that Winston has relatively little pressure headed his way.
Oh, but he certainly does. Winston's going to be feeling it in a moment, and we can see why already. But Cheb, it's only a quarter of a second into the play! How can you tell who's gonna **** up? I want you to focus on a big difference here in technique. We're going to contrast Sweezy at right guard versus Pamphile at left guard.
Let's first look at Sweezy. Sweezy punched straight forward into #97's chest, which is textbook. Notice his arms are extended to keep the pass rusher at bay. Sweezy's hands are on #97's chest, likely holding but it will never get called, and he has firm control of his man. Notice that Sweezy's arms are inside of #97's arms; this means that he has more control and better leverage. That's textbook line play. #97 has already lost the snap.
Now look at Pamphile. Oh dear. His arms aren't on #76's chest at all. In fact, his hands are, oddly, resting on top of #76's shoulder pads. The Packer's defender has his arms inside Pamphile's, has his hands on his chest, and is lower than Pamphile as well. Pamphile has no leverage here. He's fucked, and Winston hasn't even fully caught the snap yet.
EDS at center first checked to make sure that #50 wasn't blitzing, and now is looking for work. He already swept his eyes right prior to this picture, and now is looking to help Pamphile. Smith and Benenoch at tackle have just started their kickslides and are waiting for their pass rusher.
Let's fast forward another half second.
Jesus Christ.
Donovan Smith has overextended on his punch. Look at that balance, bent at the waist and nearly falling over; his center of gravity is about a yard in front of his feet. Donovan Smith does this all the time, and it's a big reason why he struggles. He isn't patient in pass pro, he gets too aggressive, and it leads to this. It's bad technique. Not only that, but he's getting away with a Facemask penalty here. What a putz.
In the last half second, #76 easily clubbed Pamphile's shitty block off of him and ripped across into the A-gap. Pamphile, to his credit, has reengaged the block, and is making up for his earlier bad technique with even worse technique; he's holding right now, and he's holding on the back of #76's jersey. That's easily called, and it wasn't.
EDS is moving over to help the left side to help Pamphile.
Sweezy is controlling his man well.
Look at Benenoch on the right against Clay Matthews. Notice that Benenoch has lost all extension on his arms to keep the pass rusher at bay, and Matthews has worked his arms inside of Benenoch's. Since Benenoch isn't controlling Matthews with his length, this is just about over. Matthews has won here. He can rip and go outside, he can do a push-pull, he can swim over, he can one-arm and disengage at his lesiure; he can do whatever he wants.
Sims is releasing into his route.
Let's fast forward another second.
We already knew this was going to happen.
Donovan Smith, because of the overextension on the prior picture, stopped his feet, because otherwise he would have fallen over. His rusher easily moved outside with a simple rip. Donovan Smith lost what leverage he had. He is beat like a drum.
Speaking of getting beat like a drum, Pamphile is still holding, and he's letting #76 split the double team.
But Cheb, EDS was coming over to help Pamphile! And now he's... behind the rusher? Perpendicular to the line of scrimmage? What happened?
Instead of EDS using the hands that God gave him, he threw a shoulder into the rusher. It was lazy technique. It's like a shoulder tackle on defense; it may slow down the ball carrier for a second, but it doesn't always result in getting him on the ground. EDS could have latched on and sustained the block, but he didn't. Now, he is likewise beat like a drum.
Look at Mr Sweezy, our lone bright spot. Notice that he still has inside leverage, with his arms inside of the defenders'. Noticed that his center of gravity isn't too far forward. He's chopping his feet, he's mirroring the other guys' movements, and he is staying in contact. It's great technique.
Remember when we said that Clay Matthews had won? Guess what, he's won. Clay could have used any number of the techniques I suggested. He chose to get distance, extending his arms while attacking Benenoch's outside shoulder. In so doing, he throws back Benenoch three yards. Notice that Benenoch is turned here. Clay is now fighting Benenoch's one arm with both of his, in essence making a double team for himself. Benenoch's balance isn't great here, not quite as bad as Smith's on the prior snap. Benenoch should get ready to apologize to Winston.
For those keeping score at home, we have only 20% of our offensive line doing their jobs here.
It's all over but the crying.
Donovan Smith actually recovered to reengage his defender. That's the damn frustrating thing. Donovan Smith has the athleticism to make up for his stupid mistakes, but if he didn't make those stupid mistakes in the first place, then he wouldn't be in such a bad position. Sure, his technique ain't great, but if the pocket wouldn't have collapsed, Winston would have not felt pressure from his left end. If Donovan Smith repped patience and proper technique, he could be very good. As is, his aggression and lack of good technique is holding him back.
Pamphile and EDS's fuckups have come home to roost. #76 has won, there's the pressure. Winston tucks and prays for a miracle scramble.
Sweezy is still mirroring well here.
Benenoch is done. Look at his center of balance, about a yard over his feet. look at his hands, grasping air. Matthews is going to chuck him to the side and get himself a half sack.
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So, what to make of this?
Remember that first picture? Here it is again, if you don't.
This was right before Winston tucked it. Notice that #76 is right in his grill.
Winston had only made the one read at this point, staring down Evans. A casual observer would say that he had Martino open, that Jackson was working open, that Hump could be thrown open on the deep post. Hell, that's what we said at the beginning of this post, right? It's all Winston's fault.
They would say that Winston had options here. But, in reality, he didn't.
It was 2.1 seconds from snap to QB hit. Everyone on the offensive line but Sweezy failed because of bad and lazy technique. Two of them committed penalties.
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This was just the first of many examples of bad offensive line play today.
As you can imagine, doing that kinda breakdown on all of our seven sacks would take an inordinate amount of time. I'll start to sum up a bit.
This thread is about pointing fingers, so by god let's point some.
First sack (the one we broke down): Half on Benenoch, half on Pamphile, but everyone sucked
Second sack (the fumble-TD): Pamphile
Third sack: Winston. Decent pocket, got happy feet, had three open receivers (!), first read wasn't open, tried to scramble, sacked.
Fourth sack: Benenoch got schooled by Matthews
Fifth sack: Matthews unblocked, communication error, can't really say who fucked up.
Sixth sack: #94 unblocked, communication error, can't really say who fucked up.
Seventh sack: Benenoch got schooled by Matthews, even despite a chip at the line by OJ
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Now, would better (read: different) coaching have stopped these things from happening? Without being in their meeting rooms and on their practice field, it's hard to say. But what we can say is that George Warhop's resume as an offensive line coach speaks for itself. He's coached the offensive line in the NFL for over 20 years. He knows what he's doing.
You could say that more conservative protections and more chip blocks would have helped, but we allowed sacks even with six and seven man protections with chip blocks to help.
It seems to me more like our athletes on the offensive line just weren't up to the assignments they were given.
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I think that if we had a healthy Marpet making the line calls, that would have helped clean up the communication issues, which would have likely dropped two of those sacks. Likewise, I think that the first sack and second sacks would not have happened if Marpet were there to clean up Pamphile's mess instead of EDS providing underpar work. Dotson would also have not been demolished on sacks four and seven.
If we had our line healthy, that would have dropped our sack total from seven to one. And had Winston not been feeling thse pressure and hits, maybe he would not have gotten happy feet.
Theoretically, with a healthy line, we could have dropped our sacks taken total from seven to zero.
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Thoughts? Opinions? Gnashing of teeth?
