Dear Fish: Just. Effing. Hire. Martz.

[V3]

He's been an abject failure at every stop since he was here. He kills QBs with 5-7 step drops. We can't keep QBs healthy as it is. He had multiple hall of famers to work with last time that he wouldn't have now.

It's a recipe for disaster. IMO, of course.

You make valid points. I just wonder if part of the reason, besides the HOFers, he was successful here was because he had a coach like Vermeil to reign him back whenever he got too aggressive? Could a coach like Fisher do the same? I really don't know. I'm just throwing it out there.

 

[snackdaddy]

Martz is great at improving a passing game. But he wouldn't fit with with Fisher. Fisher wants a power running attack to set up play action. Martz wants the passing game to set up the run.

These two guys have totally different philosophies. They just aren't a good fit together.

 

[Rmfnlt]

I have to give B&G credit... I'm not sure I've ever seen a more passionate fan of a coach... ever.

Commendable.

I don't share it... but I am impressed!

 

[Merlin]

So your content with pedestrian bottom 12 in the league in scoring?

Rabid what I am content with is an OC who gets the most from what he has.

Way I see it right now there are three very good options out there without jobs: Martz, Chud, and Mike Shanahan. Rams probably aren't interested in Martz. They are waiting on Chud. And Shanahan I include simply because he is Fish's friend so I make the assumption he is on Fish's list if he misses out on Chud.

Of the other remaining "options" Hackett runs a hybrid system with multiple scheme elements, so concerns with him are twofold: first, if he leaves for another job next year whoever replaces him will run a different system, and second he has a very small sample size to look at. I will say in his favor that the guy is creative, since he is the one who merged the old K-Gun offense Kelly ran with the run-n-shoot and WCO elements. Again, though, he has to be considered a notch below the other three above.

I'm not hell bent on Martz, btw. It's not like he's the only candidate I like or prefer. The OP was after it came out that Chud and Van Pelt were denied which was alarming. At that point I think Martz or Shanahan are the best options. But it just irritates me that Martz gets such a bad rap around here given what he did for us, and the fact that after he left he did a lot with very little. Those stats you knock demonstrate that, along with consideration of what he had to work with from poor talent to neurotic coaches above him second guessing what he wanted to do.

 

[jap]

I think Martz could really help Bradford. To me, Bradford's biggest weakness (outside of the injury problems) is his lack of down-field throws. That's actually kind of maddening since he has some of the best accuracy on long throws that I've ever seen. Martz would get him to throw it down field. I also think he could do WONDERS for our WR group.

That's one of the biggest benefits I have felt Mike can provide Sam---getting him to think & play more aggressively & going more downtown. What's the point of having a strong-armed QB if he isn't going to air it out as frequently as needed?

I also don't believe for an instant that Martz is clueless about the running game. He simply took full advantage of existing NFL defensive sets. At a time when teams usually only possessed two good CB's, he spread the field with four quality WR's, a couple of TE's, and a RB with excellent hands.

Now that the NFL is responded with teams fielding 3-4 quality CB's, can we really expect him to behave exactly the same? We all heard him in that audio recording where he talked about how the running game will resurge in importance and things will move towards a more balanced attack.

My biggest beef with the empty backfield sets Martz ran wasn't so much on Mike himself, it was that defenses would deliberately tee off on Warner, sometimes blatantly late, and the damn officials were slow to call "roughing the passer" penalties. Sometimes it took an irate Warner screaming in referees' faces several times before they started doing their jobs in that respect. With the more modern rules protecting the QB, I wonder how Mike's empty backfield sets would fare today?

 

[Boffo97]

So your content with pedestrian bottom 12 in the league in scoring?

That's just so silly a retort that I can't believe it actually gets play here. It's right up there with the "Since you don't agree with me, you must like losing" nonsense.

Of course no one is content with being in the bottom of the League. But what the stats show is that Martz really had nothing when he came in, was definitely on the road to making it something, then when he was scapegoated by Marinelli, the offense regressed.

As many are fond of saying in defense of Boudreau, you can't make chicken salad out of chicken ****.