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- Jul 11, 2005
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Never has an 8-0 team looked so shaky. Right? Hasn't this been the most consistent theme of the last month. Another double digit win AND a cover, yet the first things that will come out of our heads will be criticisms of our team, with the end result being anxiety, fear, trepidation, AND @Joker pulling his hair out and railing about the fear mongers....and probably rightfully so. So lets begin the exercise and get started.
1. Some Cleveland Brown talk - This team is almost the polar OPPOSITE of our Pats. Never has a team seemingly done so little with so much talent. And it's not like this was the first game this season that they self-destructed so abysmally. . Nor is there a team that so justly DESERVES that 2-5 record more than the team we played tonight. Their long suffering and infinitely loyal fans should be outraged.
That SHOULD have been a highly competitive game between 2 talented teams, but it wasn't mostly because of 3 plays in the first quarter, and more than a DOZEN freakin' STUPID penalties that sabotaged what was left of the Cleveland Offense throughout the game.. Cleveland has MORE than enough talent on offense AND defense to be able to keep their team in every game they play.. But the fact is, the "generosity" shown by Cleveland tonight has been shown to 3 or 4 OTHER teams this season, as they continue to be the team that shows the rest of the league how to LOSE, just as the Pats are the team that shows the league how to win.
BTW- the immediate blame will fall on Freddie Kitchens, but the fault isn't all his. The REAL blame should fall on the people who hired him to a job they had NO right to expect him to be successful at. It is just TOO hard a job to have thought he could go from being in charge of 4 guys about a year ago and running a team now.
The purpose of all this Browns talk is to point out that the good news is we beat a very talented football team tonight. The bad news is we needed a LOT of that generosity to do it so convincingly again. I don't think the Ravens will have as much talent, but they WILL be a better opponent in a tough road game.
2. General Offensive thoughts - There were a LOT of good reasons why the offense still didn't look like what we wanted it to look like. But just like last week, and the week before that, it took a few more baby steps in the right direction. That was a good defense who got their 2 high pick CB's back to go along with an excellent front 7. So the fact we made some small progress despite missing 3/5ths of our OL, the TE's still need GPS to get to the stadium, and we got 36 snaps out of Sanu after only 3 practices.
As long as keep seeing those baby steps going forward, I'm fine with the offense where it is right now. Help is coming. Wynn and Mason should both be ready after the bye. Sanu and the TE's will be better prepared to contribute. While getting Rex back should add some depth and more flexibility to the running attack.
Finally - I would have liked to see more picks, slants, and crossers included in the pass routes. Cleveland ran a lot of man tonight and we weren't running much to threaten that.
3. QB- Brady made a BUNCH of really good throws tonight. The ones to Watson, Dorsett and the 2 TD passes to Edelman come immediately to mind. But there were a bunch of others that weren't even close. Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was the rush. I don't know, but there were way too many errant throws tonight, which contributed to a surprising 55% completion rate. Again, not sure why that was. Could be the dislocation at the WR and TE positions, but some just looked like bad throws
4. RB- Thought the run game did better tonight. A lot of worst plays came when the Browns were stacking the LOS at the end of the game and we were just running clock. Still not seeing much in the way of holes late in the game.
I think that it is pretty clear that we don't win the Superbowl without Sony's playoff run, but it's also pretty apparent which Georgia RB we should have taken. Bigger, stronger, more explosive. It wasn't a bad choice, just not the BEST one.
5. OL - The fact that Ferentz was the choice to replace Mason tonight really disappointed me. Elumanour by all reports, is by far the better prospect, so I figured he's be the one to get the nod in Mason's absence. The fact that he wasn't makes me wonder about the 3 trades we made for Cunningham, Elumanour, and the other guy we cut a couple of weeks ago, and just what we got for what we gave away. If Elumanour couldn't beat out Karras, who was getting hammered by guys who were playing for a chance to make it in the XFL, what's going on with our pro scouting department, and dare I say....Dante? It's a nice story that the future HC of Iowa got his first start of his career, but I GOT to think we can do better. Right?
The GDT was all over Newhouse, but it is so hard to tell (at least for me) who is or is not screwing up from the TV feed. We shall see. By Wednesday Kyed, Bedard, and Howe, etc will have their own breakdowns
for us to discuss.
6. Receivers - Nothing new here to see. One really nice over route for Sanu gives hope for the future. Meyers got what was given. Jules was OK. Watson gave us TE hope, and Dorsett did what he does. It added up to 260 yds if you include the RB's and how can we not.
7. General defensive thoughts - Bell got some decent yardage, and now Chubb added 140 more. Are we seeing a "blueprint" being issued here? Are there "cracks in the wall"? I don't know if what we saw was some kind of defensive trade off to protect against "the long ball" , but it sure didn't look good and it isn't going to make people feel better since the NEXT team we play leads the league in rushing. But one thing for certain, how we plan on stopping the Raven running game SHOULD be the major topic of the upcoming week.
I LOVE all the turnovers, but the unfortunately thing about TO's is that it is hard to count on them. Defenses that rely on them (like say the 2011 D) Can find themselves on the wrong end of a score, when they don't come. Fortunately I think the depth of talent across all 3 levels of THIS defense is good enough to carry us over, even when the ball DOESN'T bounce our way.
8. Front 7 - Good tackling can cure a lot of ills. Good tackling would have cut Chubb's rush yardage by about half. The weather might have been a factor in the first half, but not as much in the 2nd as the rain died down. I saw one play where Jaime Collins was very late getting to a gap which made me wonder if he had fallen back into the guessing game again. Though Collins had a MOSTER game with 13 tackles and a sack and a half. Guy had ANOTHER great game helping others look good. I really hope he gets at least some recognition for the job he does.
Butler had 2 more sacks. What's up with him. I thought he looked slow in TC and wondered if he was going to be here, given how good Cowart looked. He's having a career year this season.. BTW- anyone else think that Roberts and Bentley were no shows last night?
9. Secondary - I thought they were very good again last night. I liked the fact there weren't any flags on Jackson. I thought the coverage was good on OBJ and Landry. What was frustrating on the TD pass was that Hightower actually got to his man. He just didn't see the ball in time to make a play on it. I think our DB's do an EXCELLENT job of that for the most part. Hightower needs more work at it.
10. ST's - So I guess its time we can get back to the paranoia about the kicker again. That was a nice one week respite, but it's OVER! Feel free to panic. Though I have to admit I kind of like the idea of going for it all the time when the kick is longer than 40 yds.
11. General League talk - Carolina has been a pretty good team the last month and SF simply took them apart. I won't mind a bit if they get rated #1 in all the power rankings. It will help cement our place as an underdog.
b. Lots of good games coming up. The Eagles have resurrected their season in Buffalo. The Chiefs gave the Packers everything they wanted without Mahomes, The Cowboys are still the beasts of the NFCE and have a DE who might be carrying a grudge. The aforementioned Ravens, and very dangerous Texans are all on the immediate schedule. So while the first 8 could be dismissed by the naysayers, the next SIX cannot.
c. I wonder if we should start a pool over which mediot will think its time to break the news to us that Tom Brady has his house on the market and will be a FA next season.
See you all on the rewatch thread and welcome back K'Neal Harry. It's about f*cking time. And get your ass on the practice field bright and early on Tuesday, Issaiah Wynn.
1. Some Cleveland Brown talk - This team is almost the polar OPPOSITE of our Pats. Never has a team seemingly done so little with so much talent. And it's not like this was the first game this season that they self-destructed so abysmally. . Nor is there a team that so justly DESERVES that 2-5 record more than the team we played tonight. Their long suffering and infinitely loyal fans should be outraged.
That SHOULD have been a highly competitive game between 2 talented teams, but it wasn't mostly because of 3 plays in the first quarter, and more than a DOZEN freakin' STUPID penalties that sabotaged what was left of the Cleveland Offense throughout the game.. Cleveland has MORE than enough talent on offense AND defense to be able to keep their team in every game they play.. But the fact is, the "generosity" shown by Cleveland tonight has been shown to 3 or 4 OTHER teams this season, as they continue to be the team that shows the rest of the league how to LOSE, just as the Pats are the team that shows the league how to win.
BTW- the immediate blame will fall on Freddie Kitchens, but the fault isn't all his. The REAL blame should fall on the people who hired him to a job they had NO right to expect him to be successful at. It is just TOO hard a job to have thought he could go from being in charge of 4 guys about a year ago and running a team now.
The purpose of all this Browns talk is to point out that the good news is we beat a very talented football team tonight. The bad news is we needed a LOT of that generosity to do it so convincingly again. I don't think the Ravens will have as much talent, but they WILL be a better opponent in a tough road game.
2. General Offensive thoughts - There were a LOT of good reasons why the offense still didn't look like what we wanted it to look like. But just like last week, and the week before that, it took a few more baby steps in the right direction. That was a good defense who got their 2 high pick CB's back to go along with an excellent front 7. So the fact we made some small progress despite missing 3/5ths of our OL, the TE's still need GPS to get to the stadium, and we got 36 snaps out of Sanu after only 3 practices.
As long as keep seeing those baby steps going forward, I'm fine with the offense where it is right now. Help is coming. Wynn and Mason should both be ready after the bye. Sanu and the TE's will be better prepared to contribute. While getting Rex back should add some depth and more flexibility to the running attack.
Finally - I would have liked to see more picks, slants, and crossers included in the pass routes. Cleveland ran a lot of man tonight and we weren't running much to threaten that.
3. QB- Brady made a BUNCH of really good throws tonight. The ones to Watson, Dorsett and the 2 TD passes to Edelman come immediately to mind. But there were a bunch of others that weren't even close. Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was the rush. I don't know, but there were way too many errant throws tonight, which contributed to a surprising 55% completion rate. Again, not sure why that was. Could be the dislocation at the WR and TE positions, but some just looked like bad throws
4. RB- Thought the run game did better tonight. A lot of worst plays came when the Browns were stacking the LOS at the end of the game and we were just running clock. Still not seeing much in the way of holes late in the game.
I think that it is pretty clear that we don't win the Superbowl without Sony's playoff run, but it's also pretty apparent which Georgia RB we should have taken. Bigger, stronger, more explosive. It wasn't a bad choice, just not the BEST one.
5. OL - The fact that Ferentz was the choice to replace Mason tonight really disappointed me. Elumanour by all reports, is by far the better prospect, so I figured he's be the one to get the nod in Mason's absence. The fact that he wasn't makes me wonder about the 3 trades we made for Cunningham, Elumanour, and the other guy we cut a couple of weeks ago, and just what we got for what we gave away. If Elumanour couldn't beat out Karras, who was getting hammered by guys who were playing for a chance to make it in the XFL, what's going on with our pro scouting department, and dare I say....Dante? It's a nice story that the future HC of Iowa got his first start of his career, but I GOT to think we can do better. Right?
The GDT was all over Newhouse, but it is so hard to tell (at least for me) who is or is not screwing up from the TV feed. We shall see. By Wednesday Kyed, Bedard, and Howe, etc will have their own breakdowns
for us to discuss.
6. Receivers - Nothing new here to see. One really nice over route for Sanu gives hope for the future. Meyers got what was given. Jules was OK. Watson gave us TE hope, and Dorsett did what he does. It added up to 260 yds if you include the RB's and how can we not.
7. General defensive thoughts - Bell got some decent yardage, and now Chubb added 140 more. Are we seeing a "blueprint" being issued here? Are there "cracks in the wall"? I don't know if what we saw was some kind of defensive trade off to protect against "the long ball" , but it sure didn't look good and it isn't going to make people feel better since the NEXT team we play leads the league in rushing. But one thing for certain, how we plan on stopping the Raven running game SHOULD be the major topic of the upcoming week.
I LOVE all the turnovers, but the unfortunately thing about TO's is that it is hard to count on them. Defenses that rely on them (like say the 2011 D) Can find themselves on the wrong end of a score, when they don't come. Fortunately I think the depth of talent across all 3 levels of THIS defense is good enough to carry us over, even when the ball DOESN'T bounce our way.
8. Front 7 - Good tackling can cure a lot of ills. Good tackling would have cut Chubb's rush yardage by about half. The weather might have been a factor in the first half, but not as much in the 2nd as the rain died down. I saw one play where Jaime Collins was very late getting to a gap which made me wonder if he had fallen back into the guessing game again. Though Collins had a MOSTER game with 13 tackles and a sack and a half. Guy had ANOTHER great game helping others look good. I really hope he gets at least some recognition for the job he does.
Butler had 2 more sacks. What's up with him. I thought he looked slow in TC and wondered if he was going to be here, given how good Cowart looked. He's having a career year this season.. BTW- anyone else think that Roberts and Bentley were no shows last night?
9. Secondary - I thought they were very good again last night. I liked the fact there weren't any flags on Jackson. I thought the coverage was good on OBJ and Landry. What was frustrating on the TD pass was that Hightower actually got to his man. He just didn't see the ball in time to make a play on it. I think our DB's do an EXCELLENT job of that for the most part. Hightower needs more work at it.
10. ST's - So I guess its time we can get back to the paranoia about the kicker again. That was a nice one week respite, but it's OVER! Feel free to panic. Though I have to admit I kind of like the idea of going for it all the time when the kick is longer than 40 yds.
11. General League talk - Carolina has been a pretty good team the last month and SF simply took them apart. I won't mind a bit if they get rated #1 in all the power rankings. It will help cement our place as an underdog.
b. Lots of good games coming up. The Eagles have resurrected their season in Buffalo. The Chiefs gave the Packers everything they wanted without Mahomes, The Cowboys are still the beasts of the NFCE and have a DE who might be carrying a grudge. The aforementioned Ravens, and very dangerous Texans are all on the immediate schedule. So while the first 8 could be dismissed by the naysayers, the next SIX cannot.
c. I wonder if we should start a pool over which mediot will think its time to break the news to us that Tom Brady has his house on the market and will be a FA next season.
See you all on the rewatch thread and welcome back K'Neal Harry. It's about f*cking time. And get your ass on the practice field bright and early on Tuesday, Issaiah Wynn.