I like the way the preseason is playing out for Miami this year. The Tampa game sort of set a baseline for us to evaluate players. Tampa is good, but not great. This week, after a week for our young players to develop and improve, they get to earn their money. We head up to the Mighty Mighty Jaguars. That isn't going to be easy. The Jags are big, strong, physical, and well prepared. Any of our players that stand out will be doing so against as good a team as we'll play until the Patriots. The following week, vs KC, our players will be able to take what they learned and utilize it against an opponent not as skilled, talented, or as well coached as the Jags. IOW, they should be able to show some real progress. And then vs the Saints, although alot of starters will be resting, its a chance for the guys on the bubble to play against a team that has some very good (offensive) players. It should also be a good warmup for Henne to show how much he's progressed the first game vs the Bucs. Its not a huge difference, but I think they coaches have themselves set up perfectly to evaluate a young team. Just a random thought that came to me as I was looking over our schedule.
I think the bucks are better than you think. At least as far as defensively. I mean thay had a stout defense last year and this year they look to be better. I would have liked to see what Pennington would have done against them with a week under his belt.. Henne did well for his first start! I expect when we play Kansas City at home in 2 weeks that Henne will light them up (Im hoping!) that would be a great sign for us. This week against another top team in the Jags we will get to see how Henne handles the pressure blitz from the top 2 depth charts the jags have..
I wouldn't place too much emphasis on the Bucs game or the Jags for that matter...no game planning, only evaluation of certain players..that's all they are looking at. Things changed as far as the 'plan' for this regime when Pennington was added...whatever they were going to be doing with Beck/Henne/McCown has been thrown out and a new plan is/has been developed. Now the emphasis will be on preparing Pennington. Period. Now that doesn't mean that they aren't going to work Beck/Henne/McCown into the rotation, but the rotation doesn't mean what it did a week ago... Henne, who has the least of the experience of the group might get extra time and work leaving Beck/McCown to mop up. it's still a mystery as to what will happen to those two...obviously, with the talent level this team has, keeping a roster spot for a 4th QB has to be way down on the priority list. Keeping one of them around until the cut down days isn't a bad thing, except for the particular player...
