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Posted on 8/18/24 at 12:57 pm to Snipe
quote:
Initially it was a lack of technical refinement which lead to a massive crumbling of confidence.
I think is a HUGE part of it. His injuries really stunted his growth technique-wise, and due to where he was drafted, they threw him into the fire way before he was ready and he lost confidence and got all up in his head. And remains there. He has zero confidence, which is only made worse by all the negative chatter about him, which he undoubtedly hears. He’s kind of a mental midget and now has the yips. He isn’t able to let 1 bad play be the end of it and move on to the next. They just snowball and 1 turns into 3 or 4. And while the 1st one might just be him getting beat around the edge, eventually he’s just getting bull-rushed and letting much smaller dudes just run right over him and put him on his arse.
He can be fine in practice, but once live bullets start flying, he reverts back to all his old bad habits which absolutely do not play in the NFL. And he’s got to be doubting right now if he can play in the NFL at all.
Like others have said, the move should be—and should have been—to just cut your losses with him at tackle and move him inside where great technique is not quite as paramount and he’ll have McCoy next to him on 1 side and Fuaga (assuming it’s LG) on the other to help out. Guard not only plays to his strengths and could help hide his weaknesses, it could get him out of his head some. Not that you don’t have to think at guard, but you’re thinking about plays and who you’re blocking and snap counts, where is at tackle, I think he’s mainly just thinking “Don’t get beat, don’t get beat, don’t get beat.”
And that kind of negative thinking just turns into self-fulfilling prophecies. Like a golfer with the slicing yips just saying to himself “don’t slice, don’t slice, don’t slice” winds up slicing even more. Or a slumping kicker thinking “don’t miss, don’t miss, don’t miss” winds up continuing to miss. Sports are so much mental that if you go into a play scared you’ll screw up, that winds up manifesting itself more often than not.
Posted on 8/18/24 at 1:23 pm to Hot Carl
And a lot of times, it’s not just not psyching yourself “out,” you have to psyche yourself “in.” Even if it’s fake confidence. We’ve got to get Penning to the place where his mean streak attitude is what’s in his head and he’s lined up at guard against DTs thinking “how dare you have the audacity to line up in front of me. I’m about to murder you, motherfricker.”
A complete 180 on what he must be thinking when he lines up right now. I think he’s too far gone at tackle now to get there. But he might not be at guard. Did we lose a lot of time, energy, and reps not moving him to guard in the offseason? Obviously. But I think they were counting on Saldiveri winning the LG job and his injury (wtf is it and when will he be back btw?). Is moving Penning to LG right now and putting even more on his plate a gamble? Absolutely. But it may be a net positive if you’re taking out all that “don’t get beat” shite in his head.
Just say, “it doesn’t matter where you were drafted, how much money you make, what our original vision was for you, how good or bad you’ve played up until now, etc…None of that bullshite matters. New offensive coaches—clean slate. You are just 1 of 53 players on the team. It doesn’t matter how you got here, whether you were the 1st pick in the 1st round or a UDFA. Who gives a shite? You are here to make the 2024 New Orleans Saints the best football team it can be, and right now, we think that is with you at LG. Your current skill set fits better there. We believe in you. Now go out there and be the mean, strong, nasty motherfricker we all know you can be and prove us all right.”
Or whatever. Surely they know him well enough by now to know what to say to motivate him. Now, is it too late to have him ready to go by Week 1. Maybe. By Week 6? Maybe not. They can’t fall into the sunken cost fallacy and keep running him out there at tackle just because they spent a high draft pick on him. But they also can’t throw the baby out with the bath water either if there is anything worth salvaging. And they’ve got to at least see if there is at guard.
A complete 180 on what he must be thinking when he lines up right now. I think he’s too far gone at tackle now to get there. But he might not be at guard. Did we lose a lot of time, energy, and reps not moving him to guard in the offseason? Obviously. But I think they were counting on Saldiveri winning the LG job and his injury (wtf is it and when will he be back btw?). Is moving Penning to LG right now and putting even more on his plate a gamble? Absolutely. But it may be a net positive if you’re taking out all that “don’t get beat” shite in his head.
Just say, “it doesn’t matter where you were drafted, how much money you make, what our original vision was for you, how good or bad you’ve played up until now, etc…None of that bullshite matters. New offensive coaches—clean slate. You are just 1 of 53 players on the team. It doesn’t matter how you got here, whether you were the 1st pick in the 1st round or a UDFA. Who gives a shite? You are here to make the 2024 New Orleans Saints the best football team it can be, and right now, we think that is with you at LG. Your current skill set fits better there. We believe in you. Now go out there and be the mean, strong, nasty motherfricker we all know you can be and prove us all right.”
Or whatever. Surely they know him well enough by now to know what to say to motivate him. Now, is it too late to have him ready to go by Week 1. Maybe. By Week 6? Maybe not. They can’t fall into the sunken cost fallacy and keep running him out there at tackle just because they spent a high draft pick on him. But they also can’t throw the baby out with the bath water either if there is anything worth salvaging. And they’ve got to at least see if there is at guard.
Posted on 8/18/24 at 2:03 pm to Hot Carl
Btw, that Ruiz pick Sean made (from his house, I believe—wasn’t that the 2020 virtual draft?) was so fricking bad. I can’t remember how it went—maybe the guy he really wanted and thought he would get went the pick before and he couldn’t work out a trade to move down and panicked.
It ONLY made sense if they were picking him as a Center and moving McCoy to guard. But since Brees and McCoy were not down for that move, we got stuck with an undersized, overpaid RG. I’m not sure who we would have picked if it wasn’t Ruiz or if he’d have worked out or not, but getting stuck with the investment of him at RG seems to have been the 1st domino that lead to us chasing this current iteration/abomination of an OL we’re dealing with.
Not that Ruiz isn’t a serviceable RG, but he’s just small and not even close to being a good enough one to have invested a 1st round pick in. And then we had to extend him as a 1st rounder? He’s a guy you could have just as easily replaced with a James Hurst or Calvin Throckmorten that you got off the trash heap and gotten similar play for at a fraction of the price and no long-term investment.
But with so much guaranteed money invested in a really good center, an average RG, and a declining 1st round RT (2 1st rounders and 1 2nd), we had to go with a Hurst level LG (who actually was really good value), we needed a really good LT to replace Armstead (who we either couldn’t afford or thought was too big a risk with his injury history) in order to have a good OL. But we had too much money tied up in the OL already to go out and sign a really good FA, so we had to find a good LT in the draft. Only we were still too good to be picking in the top half of the draft where all of the “sure-fire,” “can’t miss” LTs go and wound up having to gamble on a less proven, high risk/high reward one like Penning and struck out. I’ll have to go look at that draft—I’m sure there were LTs taken after him that have turned out well, but they were probably considered risks at the time too. We just chose…poorly.
And even this year there were a couple of stud LTs at the top of the draft that we weren’t in line for, so we had to take a RT and move him to the left side. It looks early on like it may just work out, but it was still a risk and more of us chasing a really good LT, which we desperately need, from a position of weakness.
It ONLY made sense if they were picking him as a Center and moving McCoy to guard. But since Brees and McCoy were not down for that move, we got stuck with an undersized, overpaid RG. I’m not sure who we would have picked if it wasn’t Ruiz or if he’d have worked out or not, but getting stuck with the investment of him at RG seems to have been the 1st domino that lead to us chasing this current iteration/abomination of an OL we’re dealing with.
Not that Ruiz isn’t a serviceable RG, but he’s just small and not even close to being a good enough one to have invested a 1st round pick in. And then we had to extend him as a 1st rounder? He’s a guy you could have just as easily replaced with a James Hurst or Calvin Throckmorten that you got off the trash heap and gotten similar play for at a fraction of the price and no long-term investment.
But with so much guaranteed money invested in a really good center, an average RG, and a declining 1st round RT (2 1st rounders and 1 2nd), we had to go with a Hurst level LG (who actually was really good value), we needed a really good LT to replace Armstead (who we either couldn’t afford or thought was too big a risk with his injury history) in order to have a good OL. But we had too much money tied up in the OL already to go out and sign a really good FA, so we had to find a good LT in the draft. Only we were still too good to be picking in the top half of the draft where all of the “sure-fire,” “can’t miss” LTs go and wound up having to gamble on a less proven, high risk/high reward one like Penning and struck out. I’ll have to go look at that draft—I’m sure there were LTs taken after him that have turned out well, but they were probably considered risks at the time too. We just chose…poorly.
And even this year there were a couple of stud LTs at the top of the draft that we weren’t in line for, so we had to take a RT and move him to the left side. It looks early on like it may just work out, but it was still a risk and more of us chasing a really good LT, which we desperately need, from a position of weakness.
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