Why would I need to rewatch Sunday's game?

I am not talking about a single game.
I am talking about his overall performance in 5 games.

He has one good game against Austin Howard.

He has 4 marginal games against starters.

He could've been Justin Houston and we'd have lost both of the games we lost still.

My points is that he's taking far more heat than he deserves. People are still trying to argue that Zombo is a better player and acting like the guys on the other side of the ball aren't getting paid to play this game as well. He's not a great player and isn't likely to ever be a great player, but he's been servicable and hasn't been the reason we've lost any of the games we've lost.

You see more shit thrown at him on Twitter during the game than virtually anybody else on the roster, as though getting blocked out is a mortal sin. It's just ridiculous. Hell, it's not like he was even a top 10 pick; most guys taken where he was taken AREN'T Marcus Peters. If you get a servicable player, you're doing fine.

If he had a full season worth of playing time, he'd be a 10 sack guy, IMO. That's pretty damn decent.

You need to rewatch Sunday's game bc what you posted isn't right. Ford's first sack was against LT Donald Penn who is PFF's 9th rated OT.
His first sack against SD was against Joe Barksdale, one of PFF's higher ranked OT's last season.

I saw that.
He got that quick burst and got around the corner before Penn could get his hands on him and get set.

He will get a few of those, but he hasn't shown any consistency, and his best games have been playing primarily against SD and Oakland backups.

One play against a quality tackle is an aberration.

Howard was even Oakland's starting RT last season, and played well mostly. The quality of opponent argument does not work in this case.

He played so well that he isn't a starter anymore.

According to PFF, he was good. Well above average.

PFF has its flaws, though.

DJ with another good post.

People need to be objective about this guy. Saying he only gets sacks on backups is lazy. Half of his sacks are against starters that are actually really good. And who the **** cares if he gets some sacks on backups? Like any pass rusher hasn't done that before? Remember Khalil Mack getting 5 sacks (Half of his total sack count) in Denver on a shitty RT named Schofield? Remember Houston beating up on bad OT's that were on bad teams? Every rusher gets those sacks.

People seem to forget that OL play is bad league wide.

The facts are that Ford has 3.5 sacks as a rotational player.

54
62
28 (hurt hand)
41
43

228 total snaps and 3.5 sacks and a fumble. That's not full time work. Houston was getting over 70 snaps a game, so Ford doing this with fewer opportunities is surprising.

This is the same argument I used to have with Knowmo when he was yapping about Dumerville vs. Allen (I think it was Allen anyway).

Almost no pass rushers show the consistency you think they do. Most of the big time sack artists get the bulk of their sacks in a handful of their games and are usually stonewalled by the best OLs. The truly HoF caliber guys can get theirs pretty consistently but the merely good get theirs in spurts and aren't out there wrecking Pro Bowl LTs with any regularity.

Just like the "your second round picks should be immediate starters" argument so many like to make, we have a ridiculously high bar for our own players and rarely look to their contemporaries on other teams. If Ford goes out there and gets 10 sacks, 70% of which come against average or worse tackles, then he's really just doing what relatively decent pass rushers do. He's not beating up the elite and he's not getting stoned by the shitty. He's in that squishy middle where he's good enough to play but not so good that you just write his name in ink and move along.

That's a hell of a lot better than most are willing to give him credit for.

I get your point.

My point is that he is still the same guy he was two years ago.
He hasn't developed any pass rush skills beyond his initial burst and speed, and if he ever will be anything more than he is now, he has to have more than that single attribute.

Yeah, but if he can just do a credible job against the run (and he has), he could be little more than he is now as a pass rusher and be a pretty valuable player on the weak side.

My long-term goals for Ford never had much to do with how well he plays the strong side next to Hali but rather how well he can play the weak side next to Houston. I think he's shown enough doing the harder job this year to establish that he can complement Houston pretty nicely.

This definitely has merit.

If you're not talking in the 3rd person, shit has hit the fan.

Because half the buttholes here read something and take it as gospel.

I said a while ago, trashing Ford became en vogue around here. They're not actually paying attention to his play. If he doesn't get a sack or force a fumble he's the suck!

We've had this debate before, but I still don't think Ford needs to develop a multitude of pass rush moves to be successful. He's always gonna be a speed guy, that's what he's gonna live off off.

He just needs to show a few others. Rip and under, power, spin etc just to keep guys off balance.

He's done that this year.