Tuesday, December 4, 2007

The second half blues

Third-down success falls in second half

All five of the 2nd-half 3rd-down plays mentioned in the article were pass plays, even though THREE of the downs were third-and-two. I tried to put some of the second-half problems against Atlanta on Linehan getting too conservative right away after halftime, then trying to "turn the switch" back on.

What we see here is the Rams' coach, probably correctly, can't trust his running game to convert a 3rd-and-2 when they have to, at a time of the game they should be taking over the line of scrimmage and Jackson should be running it down the defense's throat. This is starting to develop as a theme of the Rams' second-half offensive failures.

More reason to improve the offensive line and line depth this offseason, and make sure it stays improved.

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