I am not surprised Ivory is running out of gas. We've been sticking duct tape the left side of our OL and calling it fixed for years. I understand that you take BPA but if Macc doesn't draft at least a LT and another G, we are f-cked.
I would too..let's see how he does when colon and mangold are back. However, opposing defenses are stacking the box against the run because we absolutely refuse(can't) to throw the ball deep. We need to throw deep even if we don't complete any just to keep the defense honest.
One thing you'll notice is where he encounters 1st contact...In the 1st few games he was hitting the 2nd Level barely touched and gained 3-6 yards after 1st contact. Now, He's getting Hit or stopped at the LOS.. He was also gaining by bouncing outside, NFL caught on quick and now there is always someone on contain...
Yeah I agree that blocking is important but having someone like Gurley would've kept Ivory fresh for all 16 games. His style of running can't handle a full work-load and his body is showing it. He's not use to this type of workload and it's starting to reflect on the field. On top of that, he can never stay healthy. You can't bank a pivotal part of your offense on a guy who has shown to be never healthy nor has ever carried a heavy workload in his entire career. Gurley is going to be a STUD and it made more sense for the Jets to get him than it did to get Leonard Williams. Right now, what has Leonard added to this defense that we already didn't do well from last season? Everyone assumed he would've helped improve the pass rush, but that hasn't even happened at all. Gurley would've made this offense immensely better. Our defense was going to be elite regardless if we had selected Leonard Williams.
Hard to argue this, I would love to have Gurley going forward. Williams will be a good player, just struck me as superfluous on this team.
Maccagnan better restructure Brick's contract because he doesn't deserve 14M next year, and definitely doesn't deserve 11.6M this year either, but hey, shit happens.
Gurley is going to be a stud if the O-Line blocks well for him. He didn't do anything last night, he didn't do anything in his first game. Then he went on a great 3-4 game stretch. Ivory had that same stretch, just a game less or two I think. But any RB in order to be great needs a good O-Line. We don't have that yet. But we do have a back who can put up crazy numbers if the O-Line does well. So there really isn't any need for another good back. Of course I'd take Gurley over Ivory, any day of the week, but Ivory was being talked up to possibly even be an MVP candidate at one point, when we were on a winning streak, a top 3 team in the power rankings, when Ivory averaged like 7 yards per carry. He's good enough. No need to trade an elite D-Linemen now for a great back. No team would do that. No team would give up a Pro Bowl RB for a Pro Bowl DL (both legit pro bowlers / all pro's, both in their prime). Leonard has so much more value, he can dominate all by himself, he's gonna be a factor for way more years than Gurley will be. RB's don't dominate for 10-15 years anymore. They'll have 3-4-5 prime years and then they're done. Leonard is what, 21? With his style and skillset he's still gonna be a good player even in his mid 30s. Gurley will most likely be shot at 28-29.
i cant blame ivory nor do i think he is losing steam. when you have 3 guys bearing down on you before you get out of the backfield you arent going to have any sucess. jacksonville dominated our oline at the LOS in the run game
why? we dropped 28 points last game and are average 25 points a game without going deep. we are 10th in the NFL in scoring. as a comparison, the packers are just ahead of us at 25.4 ppg. i dont see any reason to change what we are doing on offense. get the D back on track and clean up special teams. but we are scoring plenty of points
ivorys poor games have nothing to do with being fresh and everything to do with first contact coming behind the line of scrimage. gurley, walter peyton, gale sayers, whomever wouldnt have any success with the blocking we saw on sunday. we need to fix the oline, not make any change at running back. no way on earth would i ever take a RB over a Dlineman. if you want to go offense over leonard williams, fine. but do it with a tackle or qb or wideout. not with a back
Not necessarily true. I can rattle off the names of some great backs who would have put up the same numbers no matter what O-line they ran behind. Starting with Jim Brown, O.J. Simpson, Eric Dickerson, Walter Payton, Barry Sanders, Ladanian Tomlinson and even Curtis Martin to name a few. Even a guy like Tiki Barber put up league leading numbers playing behind some horrible O-lines. Yeah, it helps to have good blocking, but the great ones are going to get their yards no matter what.
They all had decent run blocking, some even great run blocking. And let's be honest here for a second, nobody scouted guys like Jim Brown, Dickerson or OJ Simpson or Walter Payton. All we remember are their highlight plays. Curtis Martin was great, but he wasn't exactly a tackle breaking, run you over or a Darren Sproles type back. He needed good blocking. Tiki Barber? Please, go look at how great his O-Line was, they've had a bunch of good players and Pro Bowlers. LT, are you kidding? Marcus McNeill was a monster, arguably a top 3 tackle. Dielman was an elite Guard, Nick Hardwick was one of the best centers for a decade, Shane Olivea was a tremendous RT. And he had a stud fullback (Lorenzo Neal), arguably one of the best pure blockers in history. How do you even define a good run blocking O-Line anyway? Especially one from 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. You can't. You'd have to dig up all the film and study those guys play for play, look at what the defense was trying to do. Barry Sanders would not be able to do shit behind this pathetic O-Line, at least what they've given our backs the last 3 games. Could he have done a little better? Maybe. Don't tell me Sanders would just disappear in the backfield when he's got 4 guys in his face by the time the ball is being handed off. He'd get swallowed and destroyed. Just like any other back. If you give him room he does his damage. And yeah, maybe 30 years ago he was able to run away from a 390 pound Ted Washington. These days D-Linemen are freak athletes, some of them are faster than RB's. There's no way any of those guys mentioned would have had much better numbers than Peterson did a couple years ago behind a decent O-Line when he rushed for 2000 yards. Don't tell me Jim Brown would have rushed for 2500 yards or something, that's just absurd. At best they'd have matched his numbers.
Ivory had the worst game EVER for a back who carried the ball 23 times, that is NOT just the O-Line, not saying it isn't a factor but it's not the only issue. You can't say our O-Line vs. the Jags was the worst in recoded football history because Ivory's game was. He is not running with the same power, he's not punishing defenses, he is definitely running out of steam.
Dog, you didn't say anything contrary to my post. My whole point was that -- since Fitz is a known quantity and not a major threat -- D coordinators would have been keying on Ivory since day 1. Therefore, any recent lag by Ivory is not due to "keying" on him, because they've BEEN keying on him this whole year. Also, your bolded sentence...??? Is that a typo on your end? My definition of an open book means precisely that "his capabilities are well known." When the book is open, you know things.
That will be part of Mac's offseason plan for sure. Restructure his contract so we can get more cap space. Same will need to happen with Mangold.
The O-line sure hasn't helped but Ivory's lack of production is concerning and I think injury has something to do with it. Was looking forward to seeing Ridley last week maybe he'll get some snaps Thursday.
Don't even bother responding to this guy. He said he'd take Ivory over almost any back in the league not named AP so he clearly has an agenda. With that being said, having two backup offensive lineman in the game didn't help Ivory but he is a pretty poor vision runner. He has no patience to runs up the middle and immediately looks to bounce things outside if there's no initial hole, yet he doesn't have the game breaking speed to make that work. Give him a hole and he'll run through a couple arm tackles to get those extra hard yards. He's a good runner, but he's not a great runningback. There's a difference. If you want an example watch Le'veon Bell. The patience he exhibits in the hole makes him an elite runningback. We need Ridley to come back and contribute very badly at this point because Fitz isn't a put it all on my back and ride type of player.
