Ok, I admit that I panicked this morning as I awoke hung over with the immediate feeling something horrible occurred last night. Car accident? No. Fat woman lying next to me? No. Bar fight? No. Then I remembered...the game. And it really ate at me. 17 point lead blown. 16 penalties. 4 turnovers. WTF!?! It ate at me while I showered, dressed, drove to work, and sat at my desk. But the more I thought about it, I started rationalizing. Here's where I stand.
Remember last year exactly at this point in the season? We had just gotten donkey punched by the Colts, Aldon's future was in doubt and we all sat on this site and moaned about how it was the beginning of the end. What happened then? A nice little 5 game win streak that set us up for the rest of the season and made us forget all about the IND debacle.
Losses happen (and make no mistake that Seattle's loss yesterday took A LOT of sting out of this one). A loss like last night is the perfect type of loss to have at this point in the season, because everything that went wrong is fixable. The penalties are fixable. The turnovers are fixable (let's admit Kap pressed last night and was thinking his arm was a little more powerful than it is). My biggest concern going forward at this point is that we have ZERO pass rush beyond JS. That needs to change, whether it be upping the blitzing or making some personnel changes (Tank anyone?).
Bottom line, I've hydrated and feel much better. I also feel better about this horrible loss. Now, if we are having a similar conversation 7 days from now, then it might be time to panic. Until then we should all just take a breath and relax. This is a good team and good teams take care of their problems. Right? F***, now I'm nervous and need a drink.
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Deep Breath Time...
Sep 15, 2014 at 7:32 PM
- VANiner
- Veteran
- Posts: 348
Sep 15, 2014 at 8:53 PM
- Sanfran_chrisco
- Veteran
- Posts: 33,133
IM HYPE
Sep 15, 2014 at 9:02 PM
- Phil
- Veteran
- Posts: 2,720
Originally posted by VANiner:
Ok, I admit that I panicked this morning as I awoke hung over with the immediate feeling something horrible occurred last night. Car accident? No. Fat woman lying next to me? No. Bar fight? No. Then I remembered...the game. And it really ate at me. 17 point lead blown. 16 penalties. 4 turnovers. WTF!?! It ate at me while I showered, dressed, drove to work, and sat at my desk. But the more I thought about it, I started rationalizing. Here's where I stand.
Remember last year exactly at this point in the season? We had just gotten donkey punched by the Colts, Aldon's future was in doubt and we all sat on this site and moaned about how it was the beginning of the end. What happened then? A nice little 5 game win streak that set us up for the rest of the season and made us forget all about the IND debacle.
Losses happen (and make no mistake that Seattle's loss yesterday took A LOT of sting out of this one). A loss like last night is the perfect type of loss to have at this point in the season, because everything that went wrong is fixable. The penalties are fixable. The turnovers are fixable (let's admit Kap pressed last night and was thinking his arm was a little more powerful than it is). My biggest concern going forward at this point is that we have ZERO pass rush beyond JS. That needs to change, whether it be upping the blitzing or making some personnel changes (Tank anyone?).
Bottom line, I've hydrated and feel much better. I also feel better about this horrible loss. Now, if we are having a similar conversation 7 days from now, then it might be time to panic. Until then we should all just take a breath and relax. This is a good team and good teams take care of their problems. Right? F***, now I'm nervous and need a drink.
The 5 game win streak came against the Rams, Houston, Arizona, Tennessee and Jacksonville.
This season we have a better Arizona offense, Philadelphia, KC (Alex will prepare them well for this game), Rams (improved defense) and Denver. All without Bowman and Aldon and a new secondary who's playing as a unit together for their first season. With a struggling offense and injured defense things could get really ugly. Last season we went into emergency game manager mode and our defense stepped up and kicked tail all over the place causing turnovers, giving great field position and holding opponents scores down to garbage time points. We don't have the dominant defense to just pound the rock. Our passing game NEEDS to improve or we're f**ked.
Sep 15, 2014 at 9:10 PM
- BobS
- Veteran
- Posts: 10,630
Also Kap has an extra year of experience than last year, at the same point last year he only had 10 starts under his belt, now he has over double that so we don't expect so many mistakes.
Sep 15, 2014 at 9:14 PM
- fly15
- Veteran
- Posts: 5,754
Deep wut?
Sep 15, 2014 at 9:19 PM
- Phil
- Veteran
- Posts: 2,720
Originally posted by BobS:
Also Kap has an extra year of experience than last year, at the same point last year he only had 10 starts under his belt, now he has over double that so we don't expect so many mistakes.
They should have been playing him with the starters in the preseason for full halfs. Out there with Crabs/Boldin/Davis/Johnson. Instead we fooled around with Gabbert and Johnson. And Kap should have been tied to Whitfields hip. From what Ive read he didn't do much work with Whitfield in camp. I think Kap can quickly fix the ints/fumbles and has the ability to play well from the pocket but I'm not so sure he can take advantage of a full field of receivers yet. I'm really curious what we'll do with our passing game against Arizona. Probably conservative. 2 TE's etc. but if VD and VM are injured...eeerk.
Sep 16, 2014 at 5:33 AM
- DrGonzo00
- Veteran
- Posts: 255
I agree. Too early to panic, but this should be a wakeup call. We can't afford to lose winnable games. Right from the start when Kap's throws were high and he was missing wide open guys or just off target I had a bad feeling. Think we've seen that before in games where he's a little wild and throws get away from him. Think he just needs to reset a bit and calm down.
Offensively, I love the different formations and looks but agree that we should still look to enforce the running game. Chicago was playing up and playing the run, but we've won in the past by imposing our will and wearing down defenses late in games. We can't do that throwing so much. And for all the talk about needing a pass rush, you simply can run a 3-4 with no blitz packages and expect a pass rush. We still don't do anything creative and seemingly never blitz. It drives me crazy.
Finally, and I hate being this kind of fan, but between Week 1 and the Bears game, the refs are just blowing calls against us. I mean, it's blatant. I could barely watch the game because of all the flags thrown and the "hold" on the Gore run was just ridiculous.
Offensively, I love the different formations and looks but agree that we should still look to enforce the running game. Chicago was playing up and playing the run, but we've won in the past by imposing our will and wearing down defenses late in games. We can't do that throwing so much. And for all the talk about needing a pass rush, you simply can run a 3-4 with no blitz packages and expect a pass rush. We still don't do anything creative and seemingly never blitz. It drives me crazy.
Finally, and I hate being this kind of fan, but between Week 1 and the Bears game, the refs are just blowing calls against us. I mean, it's blatant. I could barely watch the game because of all the flags thrown and the "hold" on the Gore run was just ridiculous.
Sep 16, 2014 at 5:37 AM
- SnakePlissken
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- Posts: 15,028
Sep 16, 2014 at 5:39 AM
- English
- Moderator
- Posts: 40,210
Oh look. Another thread.