[papabear]

I'm actually not nearly as upset as some people are about the game last night. There are plenty of things that concern me, but as I was looking through comments here and at battle red during the game it seemed like their was plenty of the we suck crowd. The offense didn't look sharp, but we were playing one of the better defenses in the league. The defense has some holes, but we all knew that. They also showed some backbone especially the drive where they held Minnesota to a field goal. General observations:

-I thought there were times last year where Slaton missed the whole, or picked the wrong one. Last night I thought he looked indecisive early, but better after Brown had a couple of series. I don't know if it's rust or what, but he seemed to be dancing a little last night and didn't have the "one cut and go" mentality. On one play he damn near went backwards to try and bounce it outside instead of taking it for a yard or two at least up the middle. I think he'll be fine...and even last year our running game was a bit feast or famine. Brown could be a big help, and Foster looked good too. Gibbs will fix whatever problems are in the run game.

-I thought the defensive line did a good job last night. They pressured the QB into a few incompletions, got a few sacks, and were close enough to get a shot on the QB several times. The big run early was not their fault. Adibi overpursued, but Adibi and Ryans were both kept clean on that play. If the d-line does nothing else against the run accept hold the line and keep the LB's clean they did their job. Barwin is very active. Okam had a couple nice pressures. Okoye too, and I saw him string several plays out to the sideline. Showed a lot of effort. Smith got a paw on Favre that allowed Mario to get a sack. Plenty to work on, but overall I thought the D-line looked better than the LB (minus Demeco) and the secondary....though that's not saying much I guess.

-It will be interesting to see who starts at WILL once Cush is back. Adibi and Diles have both made plenty of mistakes. It's a tossup in my opinion at this point. I think Adibi has much better potential and should therefore win the tie breaker. Ryans was playing with a fire that was great too see. The LB's have to do a better job sniffing out screens, especially if the CB's are in man.

-I thought the corners were fine last night. Minny's not known for their passing game, but we were beaten mostly by screen passes and dump-offs that aren't necessarily the corners primary responsibility. The couple of down-field passes they tried were well covered (and/or poorly thrown by that guy). The safeties get a failing grade just for that Eugen Wilson tackle though....I think that was the same play where Demeco looked like he had man coverage on that, or at least sniffed it out, but slipped trying to get to the play.

-Duane Brown had a great day pass protection. Captain A-hole was held in check.

-Pitts needs to play next week even if it's mostly back ups in that game to knock the rest of the rust off.

-Orlovsky was making me feel good about him....until that pick. Both picks looked like the same problem. It looked like they decided where to go with the ball before the snap. I don't know if the breakdown was in the pre-snap read, an audible, or they just did a good job of disguising coverages, but Kubiak needs to fix that. I'm not worried about it as much with Schaub. I thought we saw a little of why Kubes likes Orlovsky so much last night though.


I'm not guaranteeing playoffs(I always think you should wait to get through a good chunk of the season before playoff talk starts anyway) or anything like that, but I don't think it's fair to write this team off either. The defense struggled against a VERY good offense one week. The Offense struggled against a very good defense the next. Both games were still winnable when the starters started coming out, and we have no idea what would have happened had it been a real game. Sure, I would have liked for them to look better, but most NFL games are of a back and forth nature that usually aren't settled until well into the fourth quarter. We've been great in the preseason before and it didn't do us any good. I think we have enough guys on this team with the right make up to use the last couple of weeks for motivation.