Shouldn’t a head coach get more than one week into an NFL season before his players are already criticizing the play calling? Every game counts in football and losing can be extremely frustrating, but most coaches need a little more than 6.25 percent of a season to prove themselves. Maurice Jones-Drew and LeGarrette Blount do not seem to care.
While premature, Blount may have a case. He was supposed to be a major part of the Buccaneers offense this season, yet he carried the ball only five times for 15 yards in a loss to the Lions on Sunday. The game was relatively close the entire way through, so the Bucs probably should have stuck to their game plan rather than running a two-minute offense for much of the second half.
“I feel like…I’m a play-maker on this team also, so I feel like I should be on the football field more,” Blount told the St. Petersburg Times on Monday. “We got away from our game plan. We got away from getting me the football, we got away from giving Mike (Williams) opportunity balls. It was just things like that…I don’t know if we panicked, but we kind of got away from that really early.”
Jones-Drew, on the other hand, carried the ball 24 times for 97 yards. More importantly, the Jaguars beat the Titans. MJD’s fantasy football owners would certainly welcome more touches, but it’s tough to argue when your team wins.
“I feel like I could have played more,” Jones-Drew said according to the Florida Times-Union. “Last year, I played on one leg; now I have two. I feel like [I’m] being monitored, if that seems more of precaution, that’s [something] we don’t need to do. That was the coach’s decision. They made it and I had to abide by it. We talked about it and they know I’m very unhappy about that. Every player on this team wants to play and I feel like I had more in the tank.”
Perhaps Maurice went into the game with the thought of the team babying him in the back of his mind. I’m sure he could be used more as the season progresses, but a week one win is a week one win. I don’t know if it’s something in the water in Florida, but it’s a little early for running backs to be whining about touches.
