Originally posted by: mooglemania85
LT has the same damn O-line as last year. If you want to make the point that it's the coaching, fine. Collingsworth has an article documenting Turner's teams blow running the ball vs. Marty
linky.
However, c'mon; He's averaging 2.3 ypc thus far compared with a dominating 5.2 last season. Even Edgerrin James managed 3.4 in his first year with the craptastic Cardinals. As for LJ, the Chiefs no longer have Roaf and Shields and don't exactly have a barnstormer in either Huard or Croyle.
Same o-line doesn't mean they're performing the same, besides, it isn't like the
3 games (not enough samples to please any statistician) were against horrible defense, the only suspect game would have been against the Packers, but many analysts have been impressed with their defense, particularly the front 7 (the ones that would be doing most of the run stopping)
Yes, James managed 3.4, but that was with 16 games and in a craptastic NFC, not 3 games and a thus-far difficult schedule.
Heck, this brings us to another point - Philip Rivers. If your team doesn't have a legitimate passing threat, then your run game is going to suffer as a result. Of his particular draft class, I think Rivers is proving he's more like Eli Manning than Ben Roethlisberger. Heck, Ben's situation is unique as pretty much all quarterbacks struggle right away, that's if they even find success at all. The only other recent quarterback to come out and find immediate success would be Tom Brady - and even he had a 2nd season slump. So here we have a largely unproven Rivers and he could very well be in a slump.
On top of that, if you go back and analyze LT's performances over the years, you'll see he's very inconsistent, one game he'd only have 50 yards rushing, the next he'd hit 190...it really wasn't until last year that he really broke out and had any sort of consistency, but given some of the trends we have seen I'm not all that shocked he hasn't done that well through a mere 3 games.
Originally posted by: LS20
one barry sanders ran pretty well, behind a shitty line
A. Barry Sanders > LT
B. Barry Sanders was capable of putting up spotting numbers just like LT has these past 3 games.
I still sticking to my statement; watching some of the Chargers games...well I'll just say you can't go far if you're getting tackled in your own backfield - not in today's NFL against good defenses - and that tells me o-line.
The worst a RB can do is fumble the ball, something LT hasn't done in the 3 games, and it really isn't a stretch to assume he's at least taken what's be given to him (RB's really don't have much say on the outcome of play until they can get into the 2nd level, and to get there they really need their o-line to do most of the work), I mean the guy isn't a Jerome Bettis where he can run into the line and create his own hole...
I really don't see how anyone looking at this objectively could pick anyone other than Drew Brees. Sure, his completion % is about on par, but he's only averaging a poor 5.2 yards per completion. And the worst part is he has "complimented" his solo TD pass with a staggering 7 INTs and 2 Fumbles lost (9 turnovers, a 3 per game average, good luck to any team that thinks they can consistently win after giving up 3 turnovers), that matches his
total for his 2004 season, 4 more INTs and 1 more lost fumble and he matches last year. Yes, you could argue some of the same things I've been using to reason that LT isn't as big of a bust, but the QB has far more control over those things than the RB does. Brees turning the ball over 9 times already is a huge indication of that fact.
*Note to anyone disagreeing with me, I don't give a shit how much LT's poor numbers are hurting your fairy football league, I'm calling it like I see it. Football is a team sport, and a great player such as LT requires great players around him to make great plays (most people never notice the work done outside of the RB's legs). Some of the fault might actually be his, but I'm more inclined to believe most of it is because his team isn't making the plays they need to be for him to find the success he should be having.
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