motife
10-25-2006, 05:38 PM
Kubiak's offense brings out the best in Carr, Johnson
By Nolan Nawrocki
Oct. 23, 2006
Texans QB
David Carr
When Gary Kubiak took over as head coach in Houston, he went out and found two receivers (Eric Moulds and Kevin Walter) and a tight end (Jeb Putzier) who fit the mold his West Coast offense desired. But he did not need a No. 1 receiver  Andre Johnson was tailor-made for his offense. In the West Coast system, there is a premium on big, physical receivers who can create after the catch, and there are few in the league bigger, more physical or stronger after the catch than Johnson.
Nor did Kubiak need a quarterback  David Carr had the athleticism and mobility to roll out, bootleg and throw on the run. He had everything Kubiak desired. Vince Young, Houston’s native son, was available in last year’s draft, and Kubiak could have chosen to start from scratch. But he knew what he had and saw no reason to set the franchise back further.
Not all league evaluators were convinced he had what he thought he had in Carr. After four years, Carr should have been more than a 58-percent passer who had thrown more interceptions (53) than touchdowns (48), or so it was rationalized. However, even in the NFL, the playing field is not level when making evaluations. No evaluation is ever made in a vacuum, and the very best can evaluate what players can do as it relates to their system.
In the Texans’ former offense, Carr was taught to drop back in the pocket and make his reads regardless of how much pressure was bearing down on him. There were few designed plays to allow Carr to use his athleticism to escape the pressure and continue looking downfield, and because the offense often employed max protection, Carr was left with few options. With pressure constantly in his face, he was a sitting duck, going down 208 times through four years, not to include the countless times he was hurried and hit.
Under Kubiak, the line has not changed much, but Carr is completing more than 70 percent of his passes, tops among the league through seven weeks. And Johnson is on track to have a career year, receiving numberous nominations from league evaluators for midseason All-Pro honors.
The biggest difference under center is that Carr now has more options, and if he does not find a receiver uncovering in a few seconds, he is coached to move, buy time with his feet, continue looking downfield or get upfield and run  anything to create a positive play. The progress Carr has made is very encouraging, and given that Kubiak helped mold John Elway, Steve Young, Brian Griese and Jake Plummer into Pro Bowl performers, Carr’s future could not look brighter.
Ask any coach and they will tell you they cannot win without good talent, but without good coaching, talent will take you nowhere. Even more importantly, as the re-energized, emerging young stars are beginning to prove  for a coach to be effective, he needs to be able to evaluate. It sounds elementary, but it is often what separates the men from the boys at any level of coaching.
Kubiak, who has developed a reputation for spending an inordinate amount of time grinding in the film room and has been highly commended by the NFL coaching fraternity for his evaluation ability, clearly deserves high marks based on early returns.
It takes years and years of repetition before a cornerback can leverage a receiver and read the quarterback at the same time. It arguably is the most difficult challenge a coverage defender must learn. For those who learn the skill and hone their instincts, it translates into outstanding ball skills. Tampa Bay veteran CB Ronde Barber may have the best ball skills in the league. Few cornerbacks would have read the double slant the way Barber did vs. the Eagles, switching off his man and jumping the route after seeing Donovan McNabb keying on the outside. Not only did Barber produce the Bucs’ first touchdown, but he jumped another route in the third quarter and returned it for the Bucs’ second score. In a week after what seemed like an ill-timed retirement announcement by his brother, it was good to see Ronde showing no signs of slowing down.
Speaking of ill, McNabb deserves credit for valiantly playing at less than full health, once vomiting on the field before he was about to take a snap. However, the last time McNabb threw three interceptions was in the Eagles' Super Bowl defeat to the Patriots. It is not fair to say his health took away from his concentration, as many players seem to rise to the occasion, like Michael Jordan was known to do, and exceed their typical performance when under the weather. However, the same way Jordan might focus on the rim when he was shooting, McNabb tended to lock on to his primary target too often and not look off his receivers, allowing Bucs corners to prey on his eyes. In the future, the Eagles may want to reconsider their game-day strategy if McNabb is ailing.
Jets CB Justin Miller is still developing as a cornerback, but he has quickly emerged as a difference-maker in the return game and has shown good vision, balance and breakaway speed each of the past two weeks.
Michael Vick never threw two TD passes in a game during his six-year career, let alone three in a half, but his accuracy and ball placement was good this week. He is learning to throw with more touch, as he did on his first TD pass to TE Alge Crumpler, and he drilled another one low, where only Crumpler could catch it among three defenders. He also placed the ball perfectly over the shoulder of WR Michael Jenkins, where Deshea Townsend had no shot at it.
The last time I witnessed a quarterback get hit like Ben Roethlisberger did, the quarterback was left wandering in the parking lot, unsure where he was at, while the rest of the team already had boarded the bus and was waiting to depart. What made the collision so violent was that, like a hammer hitting a nail, Roethlisberger was forced to withstand the impact of the collision because a defender was coming from the backside, in essence holding him up to be drilled. The force of the blow was not able to be dissipated, and Roethlisberger is likely going to be feeling the force of that collision for some time. If there were ever a quarterback that seemed destined not to finish a season, after already enduring a face-first collision with the pavement in his motorcycle accident and an emergency appendectomy during the past four months, it is the Steelers’ fireballer.
His backup, Charlie Batch, looked very confident taking the field and led the Steelers to two impressive TD drives and appears to have benefited from Roethlisberger’s previous absences.
Some astute evaluators thought Packers OLT Daryn Colledge was too underpowered, short-armed and slow-handed to play tackle in the pros when he was coming out of Boise State last year, and it’s too early to say he will not improve and get stronger, but after the first quarter vs. Miami, Colledge looked a lot like he did in college vs. Georgia. Trying to match up with Jason Taylor, he got beat for two sacks and two forced fumbles in the first quarter alone. The Packers adjusted by giving him more chip help, and to their credit, they did not surrender another sack the rest of the game. But Brett Favre may have been thinking twice about his decision not to retire after beginning the game with three-fifths of his OL spots being manned by rookies.
Somehow, you knew it was going to come back to haunt the Eagles. Down 10-0 before the half, the Eagles received the ball back after a touchback with 59 seconds to play. McNabb engineered an impressive 74-yard drive before spiking the ball with :08 remaining. From the six-yard line, he hit TE L.J. Smith at the two-yard line and Barber and Will Allen combined to bring Smith down short of the goal line, allowing time to expire. With Smith’s strength, it’s difficult to fault McNabb for thinking his tight end could bull his way into the endzone. But he erred by not throwing the ball into the endzone, and the Eagles ultimately may have erred, with no timeouts left to call, by not kicking a field goal. Final score after Matt Bryant’s 62-yard game-winner  23-21  meaning the Bucs would have been forced to try for one final, last-ditch, Hail Mary attempt had the Eagles not wasted the scoring opportunity. Game management continues to be one of the most difficult challenges for head coaches to master.
For the first time in Matt Leinart’s three starts, he played like a rookie. When you look at the coaching instability of the franchise, with Denny Green now having gone through through his fourth offensive coordinator in three years, it is absolutely no surprise. What is shocking to many league observers is that Green fired offensive coordinator Keith Rowen after the offense scored as many touchdowns on the Bears' top-ranked defense as Chicago had allowed in the first five games. League evaluators were even more impressed with the job the Cardinals’ defense did on the Bears. Firing a head coach before the season ends historically accomplishes little, but there’s a growing belief in league circles that the Cardinals are not far off from being very competitive, and the quickest way to get there would be by holding accountable the man who continues to point his finger everywhere but back at himself, and promoting defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast. After getting easily handled by the worst team in football, something tells me it will only get uglier in Arizona, and Green might be re-joining his son, Jeremy, as an independent analyst outside the league before long.
Hungry pass rushers have to be champing at the bit to face the Raiders' offensive line. One evaluator said there is no sense of timing in their offense between the quarterback's drops, the receivers' routes and the line's protection, which may not be all that familiar to an offensive coordinator who has spent as much time in a broadcast booth as he has coaching football the last seven years. Timing did appear off at times vs. the Cardinals, including when OLT Robert Gallery short-set and was beat by DE Bertrand Berry to the outside for what turned out to be QB Andrew Walter's last play of the day. Berry finished the contest with three sacks and two forced fumbles.
By Nolan Nawrocki
Oct. 23, 2006
Texans QB
David Carr
When Gary Kubiak took over as head coach in Houston, he went out and found two receivers (Eric Moulds and Kevin Walter) and a tight end (Jeb Putzier) who fit the mold his West Coast offense desired. But he did not need a No. 1 receiver  Andre Johnson was tailor-made for his offense. In the West Coast system, there is a premium on big, physical receivers who can create after the catch, and there are few in the league bigger, more physical or stronger after the catch than Johnson.
Nor did Kubiak need a quarterback  David Carr had the athleticism and mobility to roll out, bootleg and throw on the run. He had everything Kubiak desired. Vince Young, Houston’s native son, was available in last year’s draft, and Kubiak could have chosen to start from scratch. But he knew what he had and saw no reason to set the franchise back further.
Not all league evaluators were convinced he had what he thought he had in Carr. After four years, Carr should have been more than a 58-percent passer who had thrown more interceptions (53) than touchdowns (48), or so it was rationalized. However, even in the NFL, the playing field is not level when making evaluations. No evaluation is ever made in a vacuum, and the very best can evaluate what players can do as it relates to their system.
In the Texans’ former offense, Carr was taught to drop back in the pocket and make his reads regardless of how much pressure was bearing down on him. There were few designed plays to allow Carr to use his athleticism to escape the pressure and continue looking downfield, and because the offense often employed max protection, Carr was left with few options. With pressure constantly in his face, he was a sitting duck, going down 208 times through four years, not to include the countless times he was hurried and hit.
Under Kubiak, the line has not changed much, but Carr is completing more than 70 percent of his passes, tops among the league through seven weeks. And Johnson is on track to have a career year, receiving numberous nominations from league evaluators for midseason All-Pro honors.
The biggest difference under center is that Carr now has more options, and if he does not find a receiver uncovering in a few seconds, he is coached to move, buy time with his feet, continue looking downfield or get upfield and run  anything to create a positive play. The progress Carr has made is very encouraging, and given that Kubiak helped mold John Elway, Steve Young, Brian Griese and Jake Plummer into Pro Bowl performers, Carr’s future could not look brighter.
Ask any coach and they will tell you they cannot win without good talent, but without good coaching, talent will take you nowhere. Even more importantly, as the re-energized, emerging young stars are beginning to prove  for a coach to be effective, he needs to be able to evaluate. It sounds elementary, but it is often what separates the men from the boys at any level of coaching.
Kubiak, who has developed a reputation for spending an inordinate amount of time grinding in the film room and has been highly commended by the NFL coaching fraternity for his evaluation ability, clearly deserves high marks based on early returns.
It takes years and years of repetition before a cornerback can leverage a receiver and read the quarterback at the same time. It arguably is the most difficult challenge a coverage defender must learn. For those who learn the skill and hone their instincts, it translates into outstanding ball skills. Tampa Bay veteran CB Ronde Barber may have the best ball skills in the league. Few cornerbacks would have read the double slant the way Barber did vs. the Eagles, switching off his man and jumping the route after seeing Donovan McNabb keying on the outside. Not only did Barber produce the Bucs’ first touchdown, but he jumped another route in the third quarter and returned it for the Bucs’ second score. In a week after what seemed like an ill-timed retirement announcement by his brother, it was good to see Ronde showing no signs of slowing down.
Speaking of ill, McNabb deserves credit for valiantly playing at less than full health, once vomiting on the field before he was about to take a snap. However, the last time McNabb threw three interceptions was in the Eagles' Super Bowl defeat to the Patriots. It is not fair to say his health took away from his concentration, as many players seem to rise to the occasion, like Michael Jordan was known to do, and exceed their typical performance when under the weather. However, the same way Jordan might focus on the rim when he was shooting, McNabb tended to lock on to his primary target too often and not look off his receivers, allowing Bucs corners to prey on his eyes. In the future, the Eagles may want to reconsider their game-day strategy if McNabb is ailing.
Jets CB Justin Miller is still developing as a cornerback, but he has quickly emerged as a difference-maker in the return game and has shown good vision, balance and breakaway speed each of the past two weeks.
Michael Vick never threw two TD passes in a game during his six-year career, let alone three in a half, but his accuracy and ball placement was good this week. He is learning to throw with more touch, as he did on his first TD pass to TE Alge Crumpler, and he drilled another one low, where only Crumpler could catch it among three defenders. He also placed the ball perfectly over the shoulder of WR Michael Jenkins, where Deshea Townsend had no shot at it.
The last time I witnessed a quarterback get hit like Ben Roethlisberger did, the quarterback was left wandering in the parking lot, unsure where he was at, while the rest of the team already had boarded the bus and was waiting to depart. What made the collision so violent was that, like a hammer hitting a nail, Roethlisberger was forced to withstand the impact of the collision because a defender was coming from the backside, in essence holding him up to be drilled. The force of the blow was not able to be dissipated, and Roethlisberger is likely going to be feeling the force of that collision for some time. If there were ever a quarterback that seemed destined not to finish a season, after already enduring a face-first collision with the pavement in his motorcycle accident and an emergency appendectomy during the past four months, it is the Steelers’ fireballer.
His backup, Charlie Batch, looked very confident taking the field and led the Steelers to two impressive TD drives and appears to have benefited from Roethlisberger’s previous absences.
Some astute evaluators thought Packers OLT Daryn Colledge was too underpowered, short-armed and slow-handed to play tackle in the pros when he was coming out of Boise State last year, and it’s too early to say he will not improve and get stronger, but after the first quarter vs. Miami, Colledge looked a lot like he did in college vs. Georgia. Trying to match up with Jason Taylor, he got beat for two sacks and two forced fumbles in the first quarter alone. The Packers adjusted by giving him more chip help, and to their credit, they did not surrender another sack the rest of the game. But Brett Favre may have been thinking twice about his decision not to retire after beginning the game with three-fifths of his OL spots being manned by rookies.
Somehow, you knew it was going to come back to haunt the Eagles. Down 10-0 before the half, the Eagles received the ball back after a touchback with 59 seconds to play. McNabb engineered an impressive 74-yard drive before spiking the ball with :08 remaining. From the six-yard line, he hit TE L.J. Smith at the two-yard line and Barber and Will Allen combined to bring Smith down short of the goal line, allowing time to expire. With Smith’s strength, it’s difficult to fault McNabb for thinking his tight end could bull his way into the endzone. But he erred by not throwing the ball into the endzone, and the Eagles ultimately may have erred, with no timeouts left to call, by not kicking a field goal. Final score after Matt Bryant’s 62-yard game-winner  23-21  meaning the Bucs would have been forced to try for one final, last-ditch, Hail Mary attempt had the Eagles not wasted the scoring opportunity. Game management continues to be one of the most difficult challenges for head coaches to master.
For the first time in Matt Leinart’s three starts, he played like a rookie. When you look at the coaching instability of the franchise, with Denny Green now having gone through through his fourth offensive coordinator in three years, it is absolutely no surprise. What is shocking to many league observers is that Green fired offensive coordinator Keith Rowen after the offense scored as many touchdowns on the Bears' top-ranked defense as Chicago had allowed in the first five games. League evaluators were even more impressed with the job the Cardinals’ defense did on the Bears. Firing a head coach before the season ends historically accomplishes little, but there’s a growing belief in league circles that the Cardinals are not far off from being very competitive, and the quickest way to get there would be by holding accountable the man who continues to point his finger everywhere but back at himself, and promoting defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast. After getting easily handled by the worst team in football, something tells me it will only get uglier in Arizona, and Green might be re-joining his son, Jeremy, as an independent analyst outside the league before long.
Hungry pass rushers have to be champing at the bit to face the Raiders' offensive line. One evaluator said there is no sense of timing in their offense between the quarterback's drops, the receivers' routes and the line's protection, which may not be all that familiar to an offensive coordinator who has spent as much time in a broadcast booth as he has coaching football the last seven years. Timing did appear off at times vs. the Cardinals, including when OLT Robert Gallery short-set and was beat by DE Bertrand Berry to the outside for what turned out to be QB Andrew Walter's last play of the day. Berry finished the contest with three sacks and two forced fumbles.