note: I posted this in the WildCat thread, but hell, I liked it so I gave it it's own thread. So if you're already read it, read it again. Yes, i'm that self aggrandizing I just want to point a few things out. First of all, the Wildcat is our saving grace, not our biggest failure. If we didn't have it on Monday night at the Colts, we would have been slaughtered. We couldn't stop the pass all night. But that doesn't mean our defense sucks. Quite the contrary. Phillip Merling, Max Starks and Kendall Langford make a very stolid 3-4 DE rotation. Justin Ferguson is still good and Paul Solial is much improved this year. We have Joey and Jason rushing the passer, 2 of the best ever. We need help at ILB. I like Channing Crowder as a run stopper, but he can't play in pass coverage. Neither can Ayodele. We need ILBs that can cover the underneath and middle. Secondary we knew was a work in progress. Sean Smith is getting better. Will Allen is still good. Bell is still a good SS. Vontae Davis and Chris Clemons are bright spots on the depth chart. Gibril Wilson is terrible. He's not a coverage guy and he gets picked on all the time. Aside from playing against 3 Hall of Fame calibur TE's the first 3 weeks, why do you think offenses kept going to the TE? Gibril Wilson is a SS, not a FS. He's being played out of position and it's hurting him and us. As for the receivers, Camarillo is still our best receiver. Ginn showed flashes of brilliance on Monday night. He'll only be remembered for the 2 missed TDs though, which is wrong. The first one he had no chance of staying in bounds on. The second one Penny delivered the ball late, high and very flat, no zip on the ball. Randy Moss might not even catch that. I've seen Terell Owens and Andre Johnson drop easier TDs than that. Bess is money, I agree. But we don't have Randy Moss on the opposite side to scare people off of our Wes Welker. Hartline and Turner it's still too soon to tell on. We have a very average group of WRs. No super star, but a lot of guys that do certain things well. And for all those that say you MUST have a #1 WR, the Patriots are 3-0 in the Superbowl without a "True #1 WR" and 0-1 with one. A "true #1 WR doesn't win you a super bowl. A team wins the super bowl. The next thing to address is the coaching. It's been bad. But Sparano is not a bad coach. Dan Henning offense is historically pretty bland and conservative. Don't forget that David Lee was the one who introduce the wildcat, not Henning. We lost our DBs coach this off-season which is another reason the pass defense has been so bad. I don't think that we're "tanking" it in weeks 1, 2, or 3 as some have suggested. I just think that we're playing intimidated ball, we're coaching intimidated ball and we're losing at intimidated ball. This team lacks confidence, and you can tell. And confidence is a real factor in the wins and losses. The WildCat I'm not going to touch, since others have already done it. But I urge you, and all Fins fans to not look to next year. But to look to the rest of this year as a maturing process for our young players. I'm interested to see the development of guys like Jake Long, Merling, Langford, Solial, Clemons, Davis, Smith, Bess, Ginn, Turner, Hartline, Donald Thomas, Cameron Wake, etc. We've got a lot of young pieces on this team. Maybe we don't win that many this year, but we'll have to watch the progression of these players. This year isn't about "rebuilding" the actual rebuilding is mostly done (hopefully) this year is about maturation, progression and team-building. It's not a super bowl, but you have to go through this period to get to a super bowl. So let's all get our fingers off the panic button and realize that we had no reason to panic. It was expected of us to be here because we're not ready yet. And, as radical as it seems, don't focus on wins and losses so much this season as you do the players. Have patience.
