Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
So is Spags a wild-card here?
My feeling on Spagnolo was made pretty clear. I was ultimately convinced on the hire by the quality of assistants we were able to get to hitch their wagon to him (smart follows smart), but ultimately felt like his reputation was overblown.
But he's come up with unique gameplans twice already in the post-season and in the process has really made things difficult for the opposition. And those two squads couldn't be much more different on offense. Spags had something for 'em both.
It's possible that there's something to what he was able to do to NE in the SB that year. We saw a 'light' version of it the last 2 weeks. So does he have another ace up his sleeve? Is he really a guy who can individually gameplan for opponents?
Because man - if he's capable of doing even 80% of the individualized attacks that Reid can do, that's a potentially huge advantage. That's not to say he'll be holding SF to 13, but if he can hold them to 24 that has to put us in the driver's seat.
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I think that Houston is the closest comparison of what we’ve seen to SF’s offense. Top 10 rushing team, good QB, good weapons, very good TE (Fells was 3rd in TD’s among TE’s) and a pretty good, albeit not great (still overrated) offensive mind in Bill O’Brien.
I saw a stat yesterday that we are the best 2nd quarter team in the league. IIRC we have an incredibly small margin of time being behind. I give the offense much credit, but Spags is just as paramount.
The entire 1st quarter is like a case study for him. He’s sticking with his original plan, not veering too far off of his gameplan. Then in the 2nd quarter he adjusts and just turns everything around.
The Texans came out and embarrassed us in the opening drive and everything looked like a disaster, but Spags and this defense shut down that offense in 8 of the their last 9 drives. The adjustments that Spags makes are incredible and that comes from his excellent positional hires.
This will be a different animal though. Rat Jr is a terrific play designer. It will undoubtedly be his biggest challenge to date.
If I had to choose, the more favorable matchup is Spags vs Rat Jr than Andy vs Saleh