The things he's being tasked with now and without good safety support are a lot, though.
This is the same thing that's going on with Wagner, which is why I'm a little boggled by the complaints about him here. The PFF guys were universally giddy last week talking about how huge he's playing individually, and how sad it is that there are so many holes in the defense that they can't leverage what he brings. I don't know what they use for their metrics, so maybe they're horseshit, but Wagner was one of the top 2 LBs in the game after 2 games, with a score in Week 2 that they did a whole segment on.
One of their guys likened the situation to trying to keep up a really big tent with one tent pole; that you have a top-caliber field general trying to lead and shore up a D with no edge, haphazard containment, an underperforming interior, and a dilapidated secondary. Not sure vintage Ray Lewis could buoy a situation like that on his own.
I immediately thought "That's a Lamar play" and it took Lamar a year to start doing that kind of thing.
And we can probably thank Lamar, and having an OC savvy enough to feed his smart QB with an apparently voracious appetite for football that film and say, "Look at what Lamar does here."
We're so lucky to have a guy with JD's physical gifts, but combine that with the humility to know he has things to learn, the smarts to diagnose those things and process the solutions, and the work ethic to go out and drill it into a rhythm with his teammates. KK appears to be bringing him along nicely, too.
Look at last week's game against the giants, there was one play where he got through a hole with wide open field in front of him and got taken down from behind as he was running.
In today's NFL, most DBs are faster than most RBs, and the fastest RBs are rarely big tackle-breakers. There's maybe 3 or 4 in the league that can either break through for a run or routinely make people miss AND also outrun the entire defense. BRob can't be all things, but he's real good at what he is. We could be better at leveraging his strengths more consistently, but last night it didn't end up being much of a priority.
Last week they were still sheltering JD, had to emphasize the run, and they pulled it off. This week they went in knowing they'd have to score a lot to keep pace with the Cincy offense, so they took the training wheels off some, and that worked out, too. Could be we have an offensive coaching staff now that actually knows how to coach an NFL offense and gameplan for what's in front of them.
Wouldn't that be something?
