Originally posted by DownSouth:
Raye/Singletary's continuing talk of "power football" is what worries me. If we try to run up the gut two thirds of the time like we did last year, this team is in trouble. Even with the best OL in football, it's hard to beat a defense that knows what is coming.
One of the other things that worry me about all of our coaches (sing, Raye and manusky) is the more time we had to prepare for a team, the worse we played. It looked like our coaches couldn't prepare a gameplan--even with extra time to do it. Look at the games we had extra time to prepare for--Houston & GB. The team didn't get off the bus in Houston until we were down by 21points and scrapped the gameplan in favor of the spread. In GB, the game wasn't as close as the score indicated (and we were down by 20 at halftime). We blew numerous chances and the team looked scared.
Yet again, we had a giant midseason swoon. We won 3 of our first 4 games and 3 of our last 4. That sounds great, but we lost 6 of our middle 8 games. This team fell apart like that under Nolan and it continues under Singletary. If that doesn't change this year, we can forget the playoffs. This year, the middle 8 games will be: Philly, Oakland, Carolina, Denver, Stlou, TB, AZ, and GB. We've got to take care of business in those games--we've got to win at least 5 of them.
THAT has to change.
Very good post and I share ALL your concerns. Add in the piss poor winning percentage on the road to that as well. In years past, we seem to start out well, hit that mid-season reality and then win a few at the end to save grace. This year we've got a much tougher schedule starting the season. So it should be interesting to watch.
There is a lot to watch for in order for us to take that next step no matter what else happens with the rest of the teams in the NFC West.