Man...while last night sucked, I came away feeling pretty good about our team. We have some huge cornerstones in place, and now just a few more holes need filled before we are in the elite echelons of the AFC. While Miami is a good team...we are gonna have a rough time on the road against the Packers and at home against Pitt. Super happy with Karlos Dansby and Brandon Mashall. Great moves this offseason....Henne is looking like future star, but still has some rough spots to smooth out. I think we need a flat out burner to play on offense, either at the RB spot or WR. Marshall is amazing...no doubt. Im not down on Jason Allen, but I think his ceiling is somewhere between how he played against Minn, and last night. Not really the other CB opposite VD we are going to need to take the next step. Covering the TE? Is that a personel issue, or a defensive play call? That needs to get fixed... Overall....we are firmly now a team in the upper second division.....whether we take that step this year to move up into the first division...remains to be seen.
Agreed. After sleeping on this one, I wake up this morning and feel pretty good about this team. The D let us down at times last night, sure, but you have to be excited about what we saw on offense. We finally saw the Brandon Marshall effect. He made plays, and drew coverage his way, hell, sometimes 3 guys. Then came the best part. Bess and Hartline actually took advantage of it this week and got themselves open and in positions to make plays. We needed those guys to step up, and they did. They need to do that consistently now too. There's no doubt were getting much closer.
yup...usually after a loss, especially to the Jets, I'm really upset. I wasn't that crushed this time out because I saw what our O could do if need be. Tell you what though, I don't see any reason for Ricky/Ronnie to split carries anymore. This should be Ronnie's show. Ricky has had me nervous about his fumbles since the Jax game last year. Remember...the defense was awesome the first 2 weeks, and overall just had a let down this week. That'll happen a couple times this year. They'll just have to learn from it and move on.
As good as the Offense might have been, keep in mind that they were playing from behind. As soon as it seemed we would take some sort of lead, our bonehead play-calling came back to kill us again. It is because they were playing from behind that they let Henne and the WR corps. "loose". It seems these coaches and/or offensive coordinator don't trust Henne enough to NOT run a wildcat play between pass plays and let him engineer his own scoring drive his way. I mean, why else would you take the ball out of the hands out of your play-maker when he's making plays? It seemed like Henne was landing combinations punching that defense and secondary in the mouth repeatedly, and Henning comes out of nowhere and puts Henne in a Half-Nelson.
Henne played a really good game last night. No doubt about it. If we are going to continue to run the Wildcat more they need to be more creative with the thing. Otherwise, it's just disrupting the flow of the offense for no real purpose.