I really can’t stand the fan default narrative of “it’s coaching, not personnel!”
Sometimes it’s clearly coaching. Sometimes it’s clearly personnel. The tape will tell you the story. I think broadly, the story of this last regime and personnel breaks down to a complex combination of both, but with a lean toward personel. Our OL is the perfect place to examine this complexity.
OFFENSIVE LINE
COACHING
* Warhop has had poor results wherever he’s been.
* Couple this with the fact that as run game coordinator and the fact that DK loves to be versatile in the run game, and you have strong evidence that a certain % of our running game woes are the result of not pruning plays from the run game suite that your personnel sucks at and poor positional coaching. This is a big one and is one that you saw me cite as problematic regularly. I’m hoping BA’s crew will prune the running game to the handful of runs that this personel group is good at.
PERSONEL
* However, starting directly from above, the problem is that this group’s skill set is really incoherent. One guy who is poor at Inside Zone (THE staple of the modern NFL running game) is a solid Man blocker...meanwhile, the guy beside him is the inverse. You can’t build a solid running game on pan incoherent personel paradigm.
* DSmith has given up a RIDICULOUS number of pressures since he’s been in the league. Coaching actually recognized his definciencies on the edge and has helped him out so many times by putting OJ in line to either assist or 1v1 a DE while Smith doubled a 3 tech with the LG. He’s lazy in the running game, often doing just enough to get by with a stalemate (or worse) and is poor in space (despite his athleticism). The odds that he is not a finished product is REMOTE.
* Jensen was never a good player and had a solid year in Balt playing adjacent to two fantastic Guards. He is a finished product. A regime change in coaching will do nothing for him. He’s a finished product. The ONLY thing that will help him is + Guard play on both sides (to make up for his definciencies).
* Benenoch. Good grief. I was stunned when we went into last season with him as starting RG. The complete circus was as predictable a thing as there can be. He has so many flaws, technical and inherent, (narrow base, plays high, Strike initiative and placement is poor, head leaks out beyond his base, inefficient footwork, aloof/unaware on Stunts/Games/Delay Blitz) and a lot of these are likely ingrained. It’s possible that he may be able to hand some of this coached out of him...but don’t expect anything approaching a transformation). Him playing at all is a combo of personnel decisions that have to be placed on layers of coaching and Licht et al.
* Cappa. The fact that he couldn’t supplant one of the worst Guards you will ever see in the NFL is very troubling. 3rd round players should typically be able to supplant the worst the NFL can possibly offer (despite being a small school OT project). He can already vertical set. He has to learn Quick/45 Set and various footwork from the OG position. Things happen much quicker in there do processing has to speed up as well. Tons of players (3rd and 4th rounders) have historically made the immediate move from OT to OG and provide NOT HISTORICALLY BAD play.
If he’s a player, then this is the one that is most salvageable via coaching (but he has a LOT of warts...I’m not convinced yet that he can block the edge at RT in the NFL at this point and ALL of his foundational instincts are RT-centered)..so we’ll see.
