"Offensive" Analysis

[EternalEnigma21]

It bothers me that all of our games come down to the wire... we should've blown out the giants the other day. We were dominating them, and then we quit executing. I don't know enough to say who's to blame, but we should've broken their backs... it seems like we're too nice a team and just want to keep the games too close... it doesn't matter who the opponent is either. RARELY does our margin of victory exceed one touchdown...

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by canthetuna

It bothers me that all of our games come down to the wire... we should've blown out the giants the other day. We were dominating them, and then we quit executing. I don't know enough to say who's to blame, but we should've broken their backs... it seems like we're too nice a team and just want to keep the games too close... it doesn't matter who the opponent is either. RARELY does our margin of victory exceed one touchdown...

That just means we haven't played any teams than we are a lot better than.

I do, however, think we are a lot better than Miami. There is a lot of variance from how good a team really is in week one. I think if we played Miami at home in Week 8, we would smoke them by two touchdowns.

[hurrykaine]

Originally Posted by canthetuna

It bothers me that all of our games come down to the wire... we should've blown out the giants the other day. We were dominating them, and then we quit executing. I don't know enough to say who's to blame, but we should've broken their backs... it seems like we're too nice a team and just want to keep the games too close... it doesn't matter who the opponent is either. RARELY does our margin of victory exceed one touchdown...

You've hit the nail on the head. Gibbs v 2.0 conservative playcalling means we play down to the level of our opposition on offense - if we're up by even a FG or just 1TD, Gibbs is content to just run the ball and eat up clock rather than trying to extend the lead. If we're running extremely well, then its a successful strategy, but when the right side of the line is banged up and/or other teams are crowding the box, its not as effective.

We have rarely won by more than a TD in the last 4 years. There have been exceptions like the SF game and the last 3 games from '05 when the defense scored and created tons of turnovers, but outside of that, we have not been putting teams away.