Re: Thoughts on the Game
Sure, McKelvin's poor decision helped. But on the other side of the ball, a couple of huge and suspect roughing penalties and a slew of uncharacteristic dropped passes helped the Bills. There are always things that "help" both sides. (And it's not like McKelvin just dropped that ball.)
No question. But this wasn't just any game.
This was the game where your quarterback on offense is playing for the first time in a year and it takes him a few quarters to find his touch and his rhythm -- and your quarterback on defense is injured early and out of the game, leaving a couple of guys who have never worn a green dot in their lives to scramble around and piece things together.
I went to bed not long after my OP, and have just read through everyone's comments. So let me clarify a few things:
1. As I mentioned, I missed the first half of the game. I'm glad I did, from other's comments. It sounds like we stunk, and that's obviously not a good thing. I'm not trying to whitewash bad performances by the OL, the DL, and TB. We have a lot of work to do, no doubt about it.
2. With that in mind, I think this kind of win is much better for this time at this point in time than a blowout. The rust showed early on, and it seemed it took getting our backs up against a wall to finally get this team to do a gut check and come out firing on all cylinders the last 5 minutes of the game.
3. Yes, we won't beat the Steelers playing like we did tonight. Though we might have beaten the Steelers who showed up last Thursday night. They didn't look very good either. But they still came out with a win, as did Indy, as did we. Good teams win when they play badly. We needed that.
4. My expectations for the defense were not that high going into the game. Given that Seymour's trade was a distraction all week and the DL will take a game or 2 to adjust to his loss, and the unexpected loss of Mayo early in the game, I thought the defense did ok overall, at least in the 2nd half.
5. Everyone expected the offense to come out firing like vintage 2007. But we didn't look that great in the preseason, and up to the last 2 possessions the offense looked poor (poor is actually being kind) tonight. Brady looked tentative, the OL was poor, the offensive playcalling was bad, we gave up on the running game too soon, and we need productivity from more than 2 WRs. Missed 3rd downs, 4th downs, and 2 point conversions, with sloppy looking play. BUT the last 2 serious looked like vintage Brady and vintage Pats, Watson played his best game as a Pat, and the line seemed to play better.
Bottom line is I'm not whitewashing the fact that we played more poorly than expected and have a ton of work to do, but I think that pulling out this kind of win may be better for the team in the long run than a dominant opening statement. We lost 31-0 to open 2003 and became a stiffling defense and clutch offensive team that won the SB. We started 2007 as the most dominant team in history but couldn't finish.
