I’m really look forward to this season, not only am I interested in seeing the Seahawks, but I’m equally interested in watching the Raiders. And I haven’t felt this way in a long, long time–probably going back to the 90s at least. I actually real hope for the Raiders, not that they will win a lot of games, but they will start playing better and become a solid team. I’m really hoping this happens, but I think their week 1 match-up against the Patriots is going to be tough. I really like Vrabel as a coach, and I think he’ll get the Patriots to play well. Watching some of their offense, it reminds of what the offense looked like under Belichick–good balance, and a good mix of spread and under center looks. I’m hoping the Raiders run defense is good (It looked awful in their first preseason game.), they play physical, run the ball well, and cut out the boneheaded plays. If they do this and lose, I can live with that. It would be a good first step.
With the Seahawks, I’m really looking forward to watching them, especially against the 49ers. My sense is that Klint Kubiak is as good as his father, Gary (or close enough), and the regular season games will start to show that. (This would be Klint’s 3rd year as the OC, not counting a partial season of being the OC in Denver.) If he is, the run game and the offense should be a delight to watch, especially the former. Kubiak’s match-up against Robert Saleh should be a good one (although I don’t have a good sense of how good the 49er defense will be as they have a lot of new, younger players). The match-up between Kyle Shananahan, with CMC fully healthy, and Mike Macdonald, in year 2 of his defense, should be really good, too. I can’t wait for this game!
Oh, I guess we should make some predictions, and initial power rankings of the teams. I’ll try to do that later.
Cowboys@Eagles
Cee Dee Lamb lost the game–with those two drops he should have had. Maybe this is not entirely accurate, but kinda? (Sanders fumbling was a big play as well.) Some other comments:
re: Cowboys/Eagles
I thought overall the Cowboys was the better team, but the Eagles had the best two players (at least last night) in Hurts and Barkley both of which consistently made plays.
I didn’t think the Cowboys defense played badly. The game plan seemed to be to take away the outside receivers, which they did. What the Cowboys was unable to do was to contain Hurts in the pocket, which included the last “real” play of the game.
The Cowboys was not pass first in the first half at all. But I agree for some reason there were in the second half. I also disagree with the play calling being vanilla. It looked much less vanilla than what McCarthy ran. I especially like the zone blocking runs off pre-snap motion. I think those plays will definitely become less effective as the season rolls on, but it was nice to see. In general, Dallas did a lot more pre-snap motion than during the McCarthy era.
The Cowboys looked poised most of the game except the fumble. McCarthy’s Cowboys would have at least three to five pre snap penalties a game.
Dallas’ o-line was a mix bag. The got pretty good push on the run plays, and they did a decent job of protecting Dak, but I thought their two most experienced players in Tyler Smith and Terence Steele had some breakdowns. Hopefully, that’s just rust.
Dallas missed Micah and his ability to run down Hurts, but I didn’t think Dallas d-line played badly. They had decent pressure rushing four and they weren’t getting consistently pushed backwards off the snap. Note, they played against the best or second best o-line in the NFL. That being said Mailata got toasted a few times which was surprising.
I thought Dak played great. He was on point almost all night. He didn’t have great stats, but add the pass interference yards and Ceedee’s drops to his stats, and it would have been very good to great.
Barring injuries, Dallas will be fine this year based on this one game. I think Philly has more things to worry about if Hurts continues to struggle to get his outside receivers involved and Adoree Jackson is their second best cover guy.
I agree that Dak played well and the Dallas DL played fairly well, at least in terms of the pass rush. Specifically, the collapsed the pocket and didn’t give Hurts all day. The defense overall wasn’t bad in the sense that they were just getting obviously gashed, nor did it seem like they were out of position.
But overall I thought the Eagles offense was in clear control, especially in terms of moving the ball and eating up the clock.
I still disagree about the play calling. And by “vanilla” I mean the formations and personnel grouping–there seems to be little diversity. Also, not very much diversity in the run game. Did you also feel like the play calling wan’t predictable and stayed ahead o the defense? I didn’t get that sense at all.
I would have to go back and watch the first half, but I feel like overall, the Cowboy offense is pass-based. They’re not trying to establish the run to set up the pass.
Were we watching the same game? In the first half both defenses couldn’t do anything. During that time, I thought the Cowboys offense looked better than the Eagle offense. The Eagles got a lot of their yards on “broken plays” with Hurts using his legs. Yes, Barkley was getting good yards almost every time he touched the ball, but when I saw them last year that was the norm against almost any team. I didn’t feel like the Eagles were in “control” at all despite them moving the ball.
The talk is that Eberflus was the crutch as he did nothing to stop Hurts from running the first half. Yeah, that was strange that the defense didn’t adjust. The Cowboys really seem to stick with their game plan of taking away the outside receivers.
I’m guessing the difference in our perception is the ball control of the offense. I feel like the Eagles were better at this than the Cowboys. Maybe I’m misremembering, but that was my sense, and that’s why I say the offense was in control.
I would also say the Eagles had better offensive balance.
You could argue that the plan was fine–the Cowboys were in a position to win. The fumble and two drops were the bigger problems.
Chiefs-Chargers
I thought this was a good game, hard fought.
The Chargers could not run against the Chiefs, particularly under center. (I think a lot of teams will have trouble running against them. The Chiefs might have the best run defense.) But they seemed to have difficulty defending the pass when the Chargers were in shotgun–not completely, but the Chargers had some wide-open players at fairly critical moments.
The Chargers D looked good. I’d mention Henley, not sure who else.
But the Chiefs are really hurting in the WR department. (I’m not sure how bad Xavier Worthy’s injury is.)
I’m a little surprised you give so much credit to the Chief’s defensive in terms of stopping the run. I actually thought Hampton was the problem. He’s powerful and has that patient running style, but I thought he should be hitting the holes faster. The caveat to that is if you are right and the Chiefs didn’t allow any holes to develop.
The Chiefs pass defense was pretty terrible all night. That probably was the main reason they lost. With the second reason being their lack of receivers.
You know how some games it seems like there’s no way an offense will be a able to run the ball, because the run defense is that good? That’s almost the sense I got from watching the game, especially the outside zone. (There was one brief series in a drive in the second half where the Chargers might have been getting momentum.) And it seemed like Harbaugh arrived at this conclusion, because they relied more on passing, especially from spread looks.
As for the Chiefs secondary, “terrible” goes a little too far. I didn’t get the sense that the Chargers had an easy time moving the ball, including through the air. WRs got open, but it didn’t seem like it was always happening or a piece of cake.
Raiders@Patriots
I’m happy with the Raider win, but I want to say the Patriots didn’t look that great, especially on offense. I’m also not really a fan of what I’ve seen from Chip Kelly’s offense. It seems more like a spread offense with little variety.
49ers@Seahawks
Seahawks defense looked good, but I feel like Riq Witherspoon lost the game, misjudging a deep pass and allowing a TD in the 4th. (The TD wasn’t entirely his fault, to be fair.) Equally to blame was Darnold’s fumble at the end. (Until that time, he did fine.)
The Seahawk offense, the OL, looked a bit shaky, but they’re a little more balanced at least.
Steelers@Jets
The Steelers couldn’t stop Breece Hall, and the Steeler OL didn’t look good. But a huge fumble by the Jets on the return cost them the game (if I recall correctly).
The Jets looked solid overall, though. Fields looked solid, but I think a lot of that had to do with the Jets run game.
Giants@Commanders
The Giants OL was pretty horrible. The Giants couldn’t run the ball or pass protect. The Commanders front seven looked really good against the Giants.
Lions@Packers
The Packers have a really good roster, maybe one of the better ones in the league.
Titans@Broncos
Nix! Bo Nix!…He sucked. Not only did he make some poor decisions, but his accuracy was off. His feet was a little too happy as well. The Titans defense looked solid, but that doesn’t explain his performance.