Joe Lombardi Discussion

[gzubeck]

Who are you going to...? EKE or Mike (10 yards down field)...?

That's a screen play that obviously would work for a large gain. The problem is over reliance on these short routes that brings the defense up. 40 yard strikes opens everything up!

[Boltnut]

That's a screen play that obviously would work for a large gain. The problem is over reliance on these short routes that brings the defense up. 40 yard strikes opens everything up!

Had the ball been thrown a little further... and had Pipkins made his block... this was a 50-yard strike.
Notice the positioning of the defense (especially far side). That is what the quick hitting (short patterns) do TO a defense and FOR your offense.
When you do go deep... it increases your odds exponentially.
Anyways, I'm done talking about this. I've said my piece.

[Steve]

We're running short plays because we couldn't possibly protect Herbert on longer ones. I don't know why anyone has a problem with. The only option on a long pass that doesn't have time to develop is to take the sack or throw it away, which means every play is doomed from the start. Lombardi knows that even if most of the world seems to be too stupid. If you cannot block the play, you cannot call it. That is a saying his grandfather had, and it is just as true now as when he coached.

We are running kinda vanilla plays because the offense hasn't been together very much. More than half the players on the field were still in college, were our backups or were on another team last year. We brought in new players and a lot of young players, who got a lot of work in the offseason, but they still haven't worked together much.

Lombardi can't start calling every play in the world and think every players who have hardly played together can execute. They don't have the timing or the adjustments down like clockwork. Anything less than that is disaster waiting to happen.

If all you had to do to be a great offense was call good plays, everyone would do it. But you have to balance what the players can do, with what 11 guys do well, to find who you are as a unit. Oh, and one of the best teams in the league is trying to stop us from doing it at the same time, and they had the better players on the field than we did with Allen, and Lindsay off the field.

Has Colin Cowherd ever even played organized football at any level? He can say what he wants thanks to the 1st amendment, but it doesn't mean he is correct.

We brought in a whole bunch of new players, then had injuries, and the offense is struggling to execute.

[jamrock]

We're running short plays because we couldn't possibly protect Herbert on longer ones. I don't know why anyone has a problem with. The only option on a long pass that doesn't have time to develop is to take the sack or throw it away, which means every play is doomed from the start. Lombardi knows that even if most of the world seems to be too stupid. If you cannot block the play, you cannot call it. That is a saying his grandfather had, and it is just as true now as when he coached.

We are running kinda vanilla plays because the offense hasn't been together very much. More than half the players on the field were still in college, were our backups or were on another team last year. We brought in new players and a lot of young players, who got a lot of work in the offseason, but they still haven't worked together much.

Lombardi can't start calling every play in the world and think every players who have hardly played together can execute. They don't have the timing or the adjustments down like clockwork. Anything less than that is disaster waiting to happen.

If all you had to do to be a great offense was call good plays, everyone would do it. But you have to balance what the players can do, with what 11 guys do well, to find who you are as a unit. Oh, and one of the best teams in the league is trying to stop us from doing it at the same time, and they had the better players on the field than we did with Allen, and Lindsay off the field.

Has Colin Cowherd ever even played organized football at any level? He can say what he wants thanks to the 1st amendment, but it doesn't mean he is correct.

We brought in a whole bunch of new players, then had injuries, and the offense is struggling to execute.

Are you confusing us with KC? They have all the turnover on the offense. We have all the same guys except for RG and tE. This is year 2 for everyone.

we have what even boltnut thinks is a great OL and he’s the hardest to please when it comes to OL. Yet you’re premise is we have the lowest throwing distance/play with one of the biggest arms because we can’t block?

has nothing to do with playi g football. You don’t have to have played to see that the offense is dull and unimaginative. And by the way, ex player talking heads are saying the same thing.

[BlazingBolt]

The offense was top 5 last year. Coaching is holding the players back from being #1 I guess.

Didn’t he get a HC interview even in the off-season ?

Lombardi is the new Norv, pretty damn successful yet hated on by fans constantly.

[Guest]

We're running short plays because we couldn't possibly protect Herbert on longer ones. I don't know why anyone has a problem with. The only option on a long pass that doesn't have time to develop is to take the sack or throw it away, which means every play is doomed from the start. Lombardi knows that even if most of the world seems to be too stupid. If you cannot block the play, you cannot call it. That is a saying his grandfather had, and it is just as true now as when he coached.

We are running kinda vanilla plays because the offense hasn't been together very much. More than half the players on the field were still in college, were our backups or were on another team last year. We brought in new players and a lot of young players, who got a lot of work in the offseason, but they still haven't worked together much.

Lombardi can't start calling every play in the world and think every players who have hardly played together can execute. They don't have the timing or the adjustments down like clockwork. Anything less than that is disaster waiting to happen.

If all you had to do to be a great offense was call good plays, everyone would do it. But you have to balance what the players can do, with what 11 guys do well, to find who you are as a unit. Oh, and one of the best teams in the league is trying to stop us from doing it at the same time, and they had the better players on the field than we did with Allen, and Lindsay off the field.

Has Colin Cowherd ever even played organized football at any level? He can say what he wants thanks to the 1st amendment, but it doesn't mean he is correct.

We brought in a whole bunch of new players, then had injuries, and the offense is struggling to execute.

Again, if we could throw deep passes in 2020, we can throw them now as our OL is much better now than it was then. In my view, the above argument that we somehow could not block to throw deep has always been a weak argument not backed anything based in reality. DLs win sometimes, but that does not mean that deeper passes cannot be made ever.

Further, the only new starting OL player is Zion Johnson. There has been very little player turnover on offense. Norton and Pipkins have been on the roster for multiple seasons. Clapp is new, but only came in at the half and is a veteran. Lombardi's play calling issues were apparent before Clapp or Norton ever saw the field.

The stats showed that our receivers achieved about 73.6% of the depth of an average NFL team on their routes. With Herbert, our receivers should be running deeper routes, not shorter ones, than the NFL average.

The proliferation of shorter routes led to receivers being covered and Herbert being forced to go to second, third and fourth reads on multiple plays as nobody expects us to throw deep despite having arguably the game's best deep passer.

Emphatically, beginning in last year's preseason, we had not one, not two, but three potential deep threats (Williams, Johnson and Guyton). We foolishly cut one that produced the league's best QB rating when targeted in Herbert's rookie season (literally the most efficient WR in the entire NFL when paired with Herbert), have all but refused to use a second (who did not see a designed deep pass until the 12th game of last season), and have shifted the focus of the third to the short passing game. IMO, this approach has been flat out stupid.

The claim that we somehow lack the personnel to succeed in the deep passing game is utterly absurd since we have arguably the best deep passer in the league, a known deep passing game specialist, and a WR that is adept at making contested catches downfield. And our newest WR also has some deep passing game potential.

Lombardi has flat out admitted that he was too conservative in week 1 and he was again in week 2 in terms of only having two passing plays of over 17 yards in the entire game on 48 attempts. But hey, at least we have targeted Palmer 12 times for a whopping 35 yards of offensive output.

Finally, when the OC has elite offensive talent, arguably the best in the whole league, as Lombardi does have, all he really does have to do is to call good plays in order to take advantage of the vast talent at his disposal.

The whole point is that Lombardi is wasting the talent that is available to him by not doing a good job of calling plays.

[AL9000]

Lombardi doesn't seem to have a feel for the game. Like, at all. Herbert's talent has allowed this guy to keep his job. The crazy thing is, if Herbert can look as good as he has under the play calling of Lombardi, imagine what he will be when we can get an actual OC worth a shit. I definitely feel like we'll be beating ourselves throughout the season and now with Herbert banged up it may get even more conservative. Also if we don't get our run game going, we won't stand a chance in the playoffs.

[Guest]

The offense was top 5 last year. Coaching is holding the players back from being #1 I guess.

Didn’t he get a HC interview even in the off-season ?

Lombardi is the new Norv, pretty damn successful yet hated on by fans constantly.

Lombardi IS the new Norv. He has great talent and consistently underachieves with it. That is why people do not care for Lombardi. And that is not just Chargers fans saying that. Lions fans have indicated that Lombardi did the exact same thing to Stafford as he is doing now to Herbert when he was the OC at DET.

Some on this forum have wanted to give Lombardi credit for his work in New Orleans, but it is important to point out that Lombardi was never the OC of the Saints and did not call plays for them despite being there for in two stints for a period of 12 seasons. The Saints had a really good look at him and never promoted him to OC.

Based upon his performance for us and DET, I can clearly see why he was never promoted. His play calling is an upgrade over Anthony Lynn's game plans, but he keeps making the same mistakes repeatedly that are holding our offense back.

[blueman]

Lombardi doesn't seem to have a feel for the game. Like, at all. Herbert's talent has allowed this guy to keep his job. The crazy thing is, if Herbert can look as good as he has under the play calling of Lombardi, imagine what he will be when we can get an actual OC worth a shit. I definitely feel like we'll be beating ourselves throughout the season and now with Herbert banged up it may get even more conservative. Also if we don't get our run game going, we won't stand a chance in the playoffs.

Kinda all looks like that, yep.

[jamrock]

It’s ludicrous to say we can’t throw deeper patterns because of the OL. I wonder if people are actually watching the games. Herbert had to hold the ball a long time against KC and often went to his 4th progression.

[Heatmiser]

I would fire everyone. We lost by three points, on the road, with half an offensive line, without an all pro WR who would have feasted on all the missed 3rd and shorts, had two INTs called back by the refs due to penalty and one on a 50/50 call to a team that plays in the AFC championship almost every year. Heck yeah. Get rid of ALL of them. If we had Sean Peyton (who runs the SAME offense by the way) we would be 9-0 already.

TG

[gzubeck]

The offense was top 5 last year. Coaching is holding the players back from being #1 I guess.

Didn’t he get a HC interview even in the off-season ?

Lombardi is the new Norv, pretty damn successful yet hated on by fans constantly.

Our offense works in spite of Lombardi. That means we're getting a negative 20% return on our offensive capability.