Cowboys @ Vikings post game

[J. Kapp 11]

Darrisaw wasn’t destroyed against Dallas. He had two bad plays. Otherwise he graded well per PFF.

He also wasn’t always injured in college. He had a sports hernia coming out, which lingered into his rookie year. You can’t categorize a guy with concussions as injury prone, especially when the second concussion came a week after the first one, on a play where the Dallas DLman basically head-butted him.

Drafting monsters doesn’t work. No matter who you pick, they need to have good feet, great balance and solid athleticism. Ingram is a big, strong dude, but he might as well be named Ed Overset because his technique in pass blocking is terrible. You don’t want pipsqueaks, but you can’t just draft lumbering oafs, either. These edge rushers are freaking machines.

And when they line up edge rushers on the inside in wide sets, or run stunts and twists, NFL guards have a real problem. They’re used to mauling people in tight quarters, but modern DCs are forcing them to play in space like tackles. Guys like Ingram don’t know how to play like a tackle. Even Quentin Nelson in Indy, a perennial all pro, is struggling with this new trend.

Bottom line, you need big, strong athletes along the O-line, not just monsters.

Darrisaw is a very good player but regardless of the circumstances or chain of events he has missed more time than anyone would like his first 2 years. He was head butted which is not his fault and should have been a penalty. A bad break for the young guy. Ingram is forced into an on the job training situation. One of the negatives based on scouting reports was that he needed to improve his pass blocking. Against the WFT he was run over by a very big DT for sack. It happens. But he will improve as a bass blocker. You can play at any size. I prefer the bigger guy no more than that.

I prefer bigger guys, too. Strength is really important, especially core strength.

What defenses are doing now in passing situations is lining up the edge rusher 3 yards outside of the offensive tackle and lining up the inside lineman over the tackle. The tackle has to set way to the outside, and the guard is getting rushed at from an angle and a distance that an edge rusher would normally be. So in essence, they force the guard to play like a tackle. A guy like Ed Ingram has played his whole life with like a sumo wrestler, big on big, his opponent lined up close to him. Now he’s trying to block a fast guy with a running start, and he’s struggling big-time.

On the other hand, Ezra Cleveland thrives in that situation. Why? Because he’s a converted tackle. He knows how to set, punch and mirror. The guys who beat Cleveland, and there aren’t many, are the ones who can overpower him. Opposite of Ingram.

Guard is becoming a very difficult position to play. I’ll be interested to see how Ingram responds to an off-season of coaching. He’s in over his head right now, but his over-setting problems in pass pro are coachable, I believe.