River Dog wrote:I pretty much agree except for the part about Russell, at least not the Russell towards the end of his time with us. He held onto the ball so damn long that it put enormous stress on our offensive line, which by all of our estimates, was very suspect to say the least. You can cover for a poor offensive line if you're like Tom Brady or Drew Brees and consistently get the ball out in under 2.5 seconds, but not when you have a QB with a diminishing skill set who refuses to adjust.
I don't want to turn this thread into another Russell Wilson debate, so I'll not comment about his relationship with this subject any further.
At 29, Mahomes is still at the peak of his physical skills, but it won't be very many years before he, too, will have to start adjusting. The guy is insane now, though, obviously the best player in the game today.
I did write Russell in his prime.
Russell later in his career may have been somewhat unhappy because of the lack of building an O-line around him. Who knows what happened behind closed doors. But it seems no matter how many draft picks we spend on O-line, it doesn't seem to be working. I remember reading way back when Pete first arrived he was using that famous Denver O-line coach's philosophy that wanted more athletic lineman and seemed to believe you could build a quality O-line without spending heavy because you would do zone blocking which required the O-lineman to block an area. It didn't work out too well. I think Cable kept that zone blocking philosophy for years even after the original O-line coach Pete brought in left because he didn't like the laid back atmosphere and music.
Is John still hanging on to the zone blocking philosophy that devalues O-linemen?
