[Stroud] Mike Evans getting only four targets (and catching all four for 42 yards) in a game where the entire starting secondary for the Steelers is injured is a play-calling problem. You have to get the football to your best player. Period.

When Mike Evans is covered as tightly as he consistently is running down the sideline, and often double teamed, there is no way for Brady to "Make it so Evans can only get the ball" on crazy deep balls. He can do this in the Red Zone when he can throw a dart or a fade so high that only Mike can catch it, but he cannot do that on arching, 50 yard bombs consistently - it's just not possible.

The solution to their problem is not to gamble on unnecessary risk, check it and fuck it is not going to fix their team as it exists now. Their problem is coaching, it's often the go-to clichéd excuse people cite when a team is playing poorly but in this instance it's beyond obvious. Bowles is coaching right now at the same level he coached at for the Jets for 4 years. He needs to improve or innovate, period. He coaches like an NFL algorithm from the 90s - it's so vanilla, predictable, and results in consistently playing from behind. Not just 'behind" score-wise, but also consistently behind down wise... when he constantly runs Fournette up the middle and their shit, ineffective O Line creates no gaps and Fournette just runs into the wall and falls over - now Brady just essentially just lost a down and is working from behind. This happens every single possession, sometimes multiple times. Meanwhile his receivers are all running the same predictable routes and rarely create separation.

You can only go so far without great coaching. Watching Reid and Mahomes' Chiefs, McDermott and Allen's Bills, etc. there's just no fucking way they can compete with those systems - they function like well-oiled machines. If they happened to go all the way and get to the SB that's who they'll be facing - and as they're being coached now they don't have a fucking prayer of making it that far. Elite talent can only get so far with mediocre coaching (as in, usually not very far at all). People bitched a lot about Arians, but Bowles taking the reigns has shown that Reid was far from the talent, if anything he was a crucial part of the solution (which isn't surprising, he was a 2x coach of the year).

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