I know a lot of people will jump to blame the o-line for Russ constantly being under duress but I feel like that’s a pretty myopic opinion. Russ has a tendency to run out of the pocket before it’s necessary and based on how o-linemen are taught to block (keep the pocket clean, push the rushers to the outside) this is causing him to run into pressure himself. There were a bunch of examples today of how Russ not stepping up into the pocket led to him getting intro trouble
As an example, this is the final play of the game. I watched the replay and this is what the pocket looks like initially: https://imgur.com/a/eJeBzXq
I tried drawing on there the pocket in red. If I saw this, what I would consider good quarterbacking is to make use of this space in the middle and take a step or two up. Instead, the very next thing he did in this play was spin out to the left, right into the defender
Just to torture myself, I watched the rest of the play. The pocket is still as clean as it was two seconds ago and Russ decides to throw up a desperation pass despite having no one remotely close to him: https://imgur.com/a/bsmyyA6
Ask any Seattle fan and they’ll say that this is exactly who Russ was there. He has the longest time to throw in the league and that’s indicative of a good line, not a bad line. And it was a little frustrating watching Stroud who knows how to step uo perfectly. This is why I think we need to look to replace him in the draft. He makes the same poor decisions but isn’t as athletic as he used to be and so he can’t be that same escape artist
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Nail on the head bro. RW simply doesn’t have the ability to recognize if/when he needs to slide up the pocket to buy those precious few seconds. That’s why last year happened and why we’ve lost a couple of close ones this year.
I don’t know how people can continue to blame Russ’s olines when this dude is consistently at the top of the league in sacks year after year with multiple different lines and now even completely different teams, you know what they say you keep running into the same problem you might be the problem.
Both can be true. It’s pretty well known Russ does not like to step up to the guard level of the pocket, when he does it usually means he’s running. His height is an issue there. While it is an issue, the OL wasn’t good today
Yet I get banned for saying this LMAO