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A.J. Green: Proof that Mike Bobo is not the long-term answer at Offensive Coordinator


I know I've been rather hard on on Mike Bobo as of late, so allow me to preface this critique with the following:

Mike Bobo is a good guy and a great quarterbacks coach.

Now that the obligatory "He's not a bad guy" is out of the way, I will now commence with the meat of the post.

If A.J. Green is the only thing separating us from having 4-0 or 3-1 or 2-2 record, then our offensive staff has done a poor job of coaching our players. Sure, A.J. Green is a phenomenal athlete. He's a Top 10 draft pick, without question. He's a once-in-a-generation kind of receiver. He is also one man. And one man should never define a team.

Our offense has highly-recruited talent other than Green. Talent that most of the 119 FBS Offensive Coordinators would salivate over. Talent that should never be held to under 21 points per game, much less 6 or 12 points. So why do we keep getting told that things will get better once A.J. is back?

For one, I'm sure they will get better...at least a little. Surely to God having a future NFL star at wideout will make things better. But don't be fooled. Things "getting better" is a red-herring to distract us from the truth:

They never should have gotten this bad in the first place.

A.J. Green won't be around forever. In fact, we've probably only got him for another 8 games. What in the hell is Mike Bobo going to do next year? We don't have another A.J. on our team, and we don't have one coming in. A.J. Green is a prime example of my biggest problem with Mike Bobo: He benefits from elite talent bailing him out.

Mike Bobo's play-calling is exactly the same as it was last year, and the year before. The difference is, he doesn't have Knowshon Rockwell Moreno turning sure losses into three-yard gains. And so far, he hasn't had A.J. Green turning 3 and 15 (from our own 20) into 1st and 10 (from their 20). Sure, everyone wants elite talent. And it helps. But there are teams out there that do more with less. Bobo has proved that he can win if surrounded by elite players.

But we need a coordinator who can win without elite players. We need a coordinator who doesn't rely on elite talent to bail him out of poor play-calling or failure to make adjustments. Mike Bobo is a good guy, but he's not that guy. And until we find that guy, we will not legitimately compete for our own division again.



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