http://espn.go.com/fantasy/football...unning-game-more-fixable-tampa-bay-buccaneers
We tend to want simple answers:
Either he's not very good,
or his blocking is terrible. But the truth is almost always somewhere in between. How do we, as film-watchers, decide where our struggling RBs of choice fall? Let's take a few examples, one at a time:
Ben Tate, Cleveland Browns: In his past two games, Tate has gained 62 yards on 31 carries. He rescued his value with a garbage-time score Sunday against the Oakland Raiders, but watching that film was painful. As a team, from Weeks 1 through 6, the Browns averaged 4.4 yards per carry with a league-high eight rushing TDs, and the easy conclusion is that center Alex Mack was lost for the season in Week 6, so of course that's the reason Tate and the Browns are now struggling.
Mack's absence definitely doesn't help. His Week 8 replacement, Nick McDonald, got manhandled Sunday every time the Raiders put a man -- usually rookie defensive tackle Justin Ellis -- head-on against him. Here's a failed play that can be directly traced to McDonald:
NFL/CBS
This is a classic Kyle Shanahan zone-stretch play. At the snap, everyone is going right, including Tate, whose task is to float toward the sideline until he sees an opening in his blocking wall, whereupon he can cut upfield and get yards. It's well-blocked with one major exception: Instead of continuing right and accounting for Raiders linebacker Sio Moore, McDonald stays connected to a double-team of Ellis. Moore easily shoots the gap and meets Tate behind the line of scrimmage for a 2-yard loss.
But breakdowns are happening all over. In Week 7 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Browns ran the zone-stretch to the left:
NFL/CBS
The breakdown on this play was either a mistake by left tackle Joe Thomas or fullback Ray Agnew; given the fact that Agnew was cut after the game, I'm guessing he might've been the culprit. The problem here is that Thomas stays connected with a double-team on defensive endRed Bryant, but Agnew doesn't fill the hole between Thomas and tight end Jordan Cameron. This mistake allows linebacker Paul Posluszny an easy path to gum up the works.
Tate's prognosis: Breakdowns are more noticeable in zone-blocking schemes because the RB is waiting, usually gliding east/west; when a missed assignment allows a defender to blow things up, the result looks
bad. As Sunday's game progressed, the Browns eschewed outside-zone plays, simplifying things and asking Tate to get north/south much faster. I wouldn't say the results were spectacular, but it shows some flexibility. Fixing this scheme seems more like a mental challenge to cut out breakdowns, more than something the Browns are physically incapable of doing. I have hope that good coaching can fix this.