Morgan’s long catch should’ve been a TD but he cut inside instead of staying in a straight line which also slowed him down he’s really freaking slow.

Fixed it!

We’re in FG range after the fumble recovery but get sacked on 3rd down. Cost our offense three points

If we run here then were pissin andmoanin get rid of Raye. Why is it that no one comes back and say, “i see why Raye plays so conservatively”

I don’t want to actually see him until next year

Idk Henne looked pretty good today and Long was a monster up front.

It’s a plain fact that if your Ol cann’t move the defense or pass protect, you’re done. Then the Defense dicates what the Offense can do.

I’m a full fledged proponent of this theory. The reverse is also true: If you don’t have a D-Line that can defend the run or get to the QB, you’re done.

First, this post is not to defend the poor play from the entire team, offense, defense, QB, RB, LB, WR, DB, coaches, etc. On Sunday, everybody played poorly. But it starts up front on both sides of the ball:

Passing issues -
Hill didn’t have any time and it showed. On top of that, he did an absolutely horrible job of adjusting to the pressure. Forget the same page, he wasn’t even in the same genre as VD on what looked like 7 drop offs that good QBs don’t make. VD never realized he needed to turn around, and even if he had, he would have been tackled for a 3 yard gain, whoppie! Hill never found an open man with room to run, and just seemed rattled the whole game. When he had time, he usually found somebody, but again, that’s what any QB will do. The difference between a top notch QB and a run of the mill QB is how they perform under pressure. There’s a reason people say “you don’t blitz Peyton Manning,” it’s not just that his line is usually able to give him an extra half a second, it’s because he knows exactly where the weak spot of the defense is and can hit his receivers there. Without a QB like that and with our line, we’re going to get creamed by anybody with the guts to blitz often.

On the flip side, Matt Ryan seemed to have 7 aligators to find anybody he wanted on any given play. We got zero pressure on him because his line beasted our D line every play. If we traded QBs, we still lose 35-17 (at best). If we traded offensive and defensive lines, we probably win 30-17.

Ryan is definitely a better QB, no doubt, but a line that gives you that much time is a big time difference maker (2 sacks in 4 games is crazy good, and at least this past Sunday that wasn’t a result of him getting rid of the ball quickly. He just had to be patient and wait for his receivers to get open).

This has an effect on the secondary because after 5 straight passes where you’ve had to defend for 7 seconds, you’re not going to feel like you have to take a risk to make a play instead of being conservative and expecting that the line will help make a stop. That’s how you get burned.

Rushing issues – On every running play, our D-line was 2-3 yards downfield which either resulted in a 3-4 yard gain at worst and often having our LBs getting caught up in the cluster and not being able to plug the holes (i.e. a 8-30 yard gain).

On the flip side, our O line got no push, usually gave up penetration to a D-linemen, let alone a linebacker, and we only gained yardage when we fooled them or Coffee made a play (see the tense goalline series after Morgan’s catch that only worked out because they weren’t expecting the flip and Coffee then beat two guys to the corner. Note that this was 15 yards away from any offensive lineman). Our O line cannot get it done.

Again, don’t get me wrong, Shaun Hill and the rest of the team played poorly today, but a lot of that is the panic mode that set in. Everything went against us, and the team kept making boneheaded play after boneheaded play.

They took Atlanta’s best shot in the first quarter, clawed back, got a turnover in Atlanta territory with a good chance to take the lead, screwed it up, pinned ATL in deep, earned a 3rd and medium to long with a chance to get the ball back AGAIN in Atlanta territory, but instead gave up a TD (on which Josh Morgan would have been caught at the 50), and had used our timeouts and couldn’t challenge the stupid call on the ensuing kick off. At that point, the D was a bit rattled (could have used a TO to gather the troops), gave up a 30 yard run on first down and then another TD. In literally 90 seconds, we’d gone from having momentum with a chance to take the lead to down 18 and dead in the water. After that, we played poorly, we were playing a better team, and we still kept getting the short end of the luck stick.

Where do we go from here? First, that game isn’t a real good measuring stick. For a quarter and a half, we played Atlanta tough. Would it have lasted without the fiasco? Maybe… probably not.

The thing that stands out most is that our lines were useless. That can’t continue. Without better line play, nothing else much matters. Is Shaun Hill “the answer,” as I’ve repeatedly said, “no,” but he’s at least played acceptably until this week (and you can’t excuse Lawson’s one bad game without excusing Hill’s the same way) and we have bigger fish to fry (if you can’t tell from above, I think that’s OL & DL). Unless we can magically get Peyton Manning, a better QB is not going to have much of an effect unless we can keep him off his behind. Hill had a dud this week, which happens, and he can certainly be improved upon, but we have bigger fish to fry. The quickest way to improve the team, and the surest way to improve the team is to shore up the deficiencies on the lines.

If Roman didn’t take that stupid angle, it would have been a 15 yard gain…still bad, but not deflating.

Terrible, terrible angle.

When Rachal allowed his man to go free for a sack vs a three man rush. We were in FG range and may have extended that drive for a TD (and the lead). 13-14 or 17-14, we’re feeling good and even if ATL still scores again, the entire flow and possession management changed.

I can’t stop thinking about Taylor Mays! Anyone, anyone?

(overconfident to start, then just completely lost after Matt Ryan started tearing apart our secondary, led by the horrible overrated and unreliable Nate Clements)

Anybody can look good/bad given good/bad line play. You make Champ Bailey or Deion Sanders in his prime defend somebody for 10 seconds and they’ll have a tough time. You give Shaun Hill 10 seconds, and he’ll look pretty good too. Is Clements as good as Bailey? Not as a cover corner, but he’s not thaaat far off. Is Hill as good as Ryan? No, certainly not, but this week was a bit of an outlier.

Our defense looked good, but our offense was terrible.

Part of the problem might be that everybody – including the players – is only thinking about the final score and saying, “wow, you don’t lay a beat like that on somebody unless you’re pretty good” but our offense didn’t score that many points, and the turnovers-turned points are great, but not the sort of thing you can bank on every week.

Maybe I’m just a bad fan, since I don’t like him that much.

That doesn’t make you a bad fan dude.

I actually like Shaun Hill as a side-kick on the Joe Show, however….

I do agree McCoy sucks.

It does us no good that he and Bradford will get all sorts of hype because of the upcoming game.

Well, that’s like saying Hill can never improve his game

I thought we all agreed on this.
How in the world can Shaun Hill ever get better?
He peaked in Mike Martz’s system. That’s as good as he’s ever going to be.

I look back at guys like Rich Gannon, Jeff Garcia, and Kurt Warner.

Jeff Garcia has always been a player (he tore it up in Canada), Kurt Warner had tons of upside because of his strong arm.

what I AM saying is that he can be better than what we’re seeing now.

Not unless they bring back Mike Martz and roll out the 5 WR sets to spread out the defense.

"how many opportunities has he been given to play against top tier teams?"

2008 @ Dallas: Played well at the start but eventually cooled off and couldn’t rally the team back (had success in garbage time).

2009 @ Minnesota: Threw a weird INT, fumbled, threw a pick in the redzone that was negated because of a delay of game (yeah I remember that) and other than that pick he was pretty good in the redzone (although VD was the guy that made the big plays and took a beating over the middle).

2009 vs Atlanta: Completely broke down and lost all confidence in his protection, threw passes too early because he didn’t trust his linemen and looked like he shitted his pants on every snap.

Give him some time, and we’ll see how he does

The game @ HOU should be a perfect gauge of Shaun HIll’s skills.
HOU sucks at getting after the QB and is pretty terrible against the pass.

When you look at the good throws that Hill has made (e.g. 50 yarder to Bruce; the 30 yarder to Morgan; the long bomb to Morgan that he dropped, etc.), they’ve all been a result of the O-line giving him enough time.

The 50 yarder to Bruce was terribly underthrown and would have been a TD if Hill had put more oomph into it.
The 30(wasn’t it 24?) yard TD to Morgan was a HORRIBLE pass that should have been picked off.
The long bomb that Morgan dropped (“It came down like a punt!” was actually pretty good, I’ll give you that.

So when you say something like, "Hill just didn’t get the job done today", I think you should also mention how "the O-line just didn’t get the job done today"

When I see a person critique Shaun Hill and the offense they always mention how bad the O-line sucks.
No one is putting all the blame on Shaun.

Note: I feel I should include this in my post because for some reason a lot of people LOVE to misunderstand what I’m trying to say.
I understand that Shaun Hill is the best QB we have on the roster and I am NOT calling for him to be replaced. I am, however, trying to point out his limitations.

When your offense is in the bottom of the League, without a running game…

Your passing offense sucks ass. Why?

Because the QB isn’t a threat.

Explain to me how Hill is a threat. Against winning teams.

Tell me.

Usually, the part of a QB’s game that improves is the mental part. The guy with the canon arm learns to read defenses, learns pocket presence, learns to take what the defense is giving him, stops forcing the ball, etc.

You pretty much never see the opposite: the guy with the mental skills suddenly learning how to throw the ball better. But that is what we would need to have happen for Hill to improve. He has the mental part of the game down pat. There’s just not much room for improvement there.

So the only way for him to improve is for his physical tools to get better, and that just really doesn’t happen.

He’s never going to do much better.

And it’s pretty interesting how we’re on pace to give up more (?) sacks this year than we did last year.