Basically we have lost just enough games that time of year to barely be in contention around thanksgiving and then shoot ourselves in the foot with a loss in late November or early December.
Why this could happen again is the fact that we have the longest road trip of the season during this time. To Carolina and our "home game" from England. I think both of those games are coin tosses to who can win them.
It is nice to see the Rams and the Bucs on our schedule when we come back. Assuming me beat the Raiders, there is no excuse to not win those three games. But if one slips away, it could really hurt us down the stretch.
The last reason why we might slip is because we have done well in the recent past against our own division. And as Chris Chase from Yahoo points out There are 256 NFL games per year, 96 of which are indradivisional matchups Instead of spreading those 96 games out over 17 weeks, as usual, almost 30 percent of them will be compressed into the final 11 percent of the schedule. Translation: We play who we matchup best with all at the end of the season this year.
Not only that but our late November prime time game has been rated #2 on the Worst Primetime games to watch this year list.
The only way we make it out of this funk is if Jimmy Raye wakes up and starts being more balanced and aggressive. Last summer all we heard about was we were going to be a smash mouth running team. This off season we have heard how we are going to be a balance attack team. I will believe it when I see it, but that right there will give us the best chance to win, when we have struggled the most in the past.
[ Edited by global_nomad on Apr 21, 2010 at 7:38 AM ]
I might be too high to understand this right, am i missing something? I would think this would help us. We get it easy at the end. So if they(Rams, Cards, Hawks) do have a better record up to that point, it gives us a shot to beat them out.
