I also highly doubt Pickens being off the field “tips off” teams that it’s a run or a pass. That’s one of those narratives that seems very easy to say, but the stats may not necessarily support that. If there’s a clear split in rushing efficiency when Pickens is on/off the field, then sure, but I haven’t seen anything like that yet. It would probably take at least half a season for that to be sticky at all.
Yeah I'm not sure where I could even find that information, probably behind a paywall somewhere.
Our early down pass frequency skews towards the bottom of the league but it's not like outlier low. There's like 9 teams running it more than us in these scenarios.
This graph shows the specific down and distances we're in and our actual vs expected pass frequency.
For arguments sake, lets agree that what you stated is true: Pickens on the field doesn't tip run v pass.
But if you are a DC and don't see Pickens on the field, are you afraid of VJ? Are you going to double him?
Of course not, you'll run man and allow your CB to erase him easily.
To put it succinctly, Pickens being off the field is a personnel matchup win for the defense. He is the only thing that scares DC's. Why you'd voluntarily remove that threat is quite a head scratcher...
I think it depends what we're trying to accomplish on the play. Pass? Sure, there's no reason he shouldn't be out there. And he has been on 95% of pass plays. But in other situations, Smith has a clear preference for how he wants to do things and that does not involve WR's. This is like complaining about Pittsburgh being cloudy.
Ironically, per 2023 PFF grades,
our two highest graded run blocking WR's were Calvin Austin (6th) and Scotty Miller (21st). Pickens 33rd, Van Jefferson 100th.
I mean, yeah, a lot of this is just Smith things combined with Tomlin things. But them being predictable doesn't mean I won't point at where it can't be better. I'm not raging or anything about it, but I'm not going to call myself happy. I'm not going to be happy with the team until I can see it's definitely on the path to being a really good offence.
And yeah these things take time... but there's rookie QBs balling out and that's just as difficult to get going. So... a couple of weeks grace, fine. Now I expect things to happen. We want to say 20 vs the Chargers is quite good considering, fair enough. But it needs to be sustained and pushed and improved.
It's funny, if Najee doesn't get tackled at the one yard line or we punch it in for 27 pts rather than kneel it out, I feel like nobody is saying anything about the offense this week lol.
I've said it before, but the two biggest improvements the team needs to make is the early down rush efficiency and red zone efficiency. We're dead last in RZ efficiency, granted were talking a sample size of 8 trips and as previously mentioned, we ran clock out in one of those trips so it should really be 7.
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