“It’s give and take. We think if we start running the ball a little better than that will open it up and teams will have to get out of ‘2 Tampa’ shell,” Burrow said. “The second half tun game is how it should look.”
This business of being behind-the-chains on the early downs dogged them in the first half.
It miffed running back Joe Mixon.
I feel like, as a whole, we have to take initiative. Everybody. Coaches, players, everybody is involved with everything,” Mixon said. “I’m not going to finger point or anything like that. We have to put it on us to come out and execute. Be ready to play. For some reason, it seems like we’ve been coming up short in that area. We’ve been starting off slow; little penalties here and there that have been killing us. And get back on track. We just have to execute more.”
The first drive was blown up by a false start on right guard Alex Cappa and the werewolf Micah Parsons beat his old mentor, right tackle La’el Collins, for the first of his two sacks. The second drive was blown up on first down when 270-pound end Dorance Armstrong beat tight end Drew Sample for a sack.
Then on the next first down, Collins false started and while they did recover to get another first down, they lost four yards on a second-down tight end screen and Sample was lost for the game and maybe more with a knee injury. A particularly tough injury since Sample was a key guy in their protections and they then had to revert to using a sixth offensive lineman (backup tackle D’Ante Smith) at times.
“We had a big package for him on third down, he was a big part of our protection,” Burrow said. “But I though (running back) Samaje (Perine) came in and executed Drew’s job very well.”
On the last series of the half Burrow again took another early-down sack, this one by edge Dante Fowler knifing inside.
“The first half we were in first and fifteen in every series so we’re just going to get third down defenses when we’re in first and fifteen,” Burrow said. “So, we’ve got to…
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