Brandon420tx
Flounder
http://forums.titansonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18316
Title of the thread
The good, the bad and the ugly
Thoughts?
Title of the thread
The good, the bad and the ugly
I'm assuming this means good, bad, and ugly so far this preseason as a whole.
The Good - Thornton came to life tonight. Tulloch looks like he's ready to step up and contribute on defense. The only bad news there is that having him in the lineup will be a nightmare to those posters who already butcher Keith Bulluck's name. Ahmard Hall looks like a legitimate player. He's shown he can run, block, and catch. He also seems to get pass protection. Calvin Lowry is showing value as a fourth rounder. At least he'll hit somebody. Big Al has quietly had a decent preseason. When he's been in there, he's made some stops. See comment below on the D-line under "The Bad." The Tight Ends once again look strong. Bironas has been very impressive. Unfortunately, I'd rather have gone into the season having converted drives into touchdowns that relying on long field goal attempts, but that's not his fault. He's doing his job on placements and on kickoffs. Craig didn't have as strong of a game tonight as his other showings but to be fair one of his touchbacks could have been downed inside the five if the coverage guys would have paid attention to the ball. Their eyes were upfield and the ball hit behind them and rolled into the endzone. Again, not Craig's fault. LenDale looked in the Denver game like he could be a real running back. Unfortunately, he had little opportunity tonight. It's hard to get a good look at a back when you're being dominated and are already trailing by so much (much more than the score suggested).
Pacman's development on the field. He's played very well in limited action. He seems to be in on almost every play. Off the field, he's handled himself much better, this week's incident notwithstanding. We still don't know the whole story there, so I'll not judge him too harshly.
Wade looks like a keeper at WR. He's not a #1 guy, but a bright spot in the corps and is working hard.
The Bad - The team just doesn't seem ready or fired up to play. There's no evidence of leadership, despite having Bullock and bringing in the four veteran free agents. The lack of imagination in our play calling. Lack of fundamentals. I learned when I was a little guy that if my team needed six yards for a first down, to run my pattern at least seven yards deep. We don't have a receiver on the team who has the talent to turn in big yards after the catch. Speaking of receivers, someone has to hold onto the ball. Tonight wasn't as bad as the first game, but there were a few drops still and done nothing to show me this has really been fixed. Special teams coverage hasn't been great. We've had a few returned for good gains on us. I haven't actually counted but Bironas has either made the tackle or forced the returner out of bounds way too much in the first three games. This may (should) correct itself once the regular season starts and a regular group is put into place though.
The defense is as atrocious as the offensive line. For whatever reason, KVB isn't getting to the QB. Hopefully last year wasn't a fluke. Sure, he's being double-teamed more but Pro Bowlers still cause trouble back there. Haynesworth is doing a decent job, but our problems seem to be at DE. We either have the dumbest group of DE's ever, or they're being manhandled. How many of the runs tonight went right over the right DE? And those rollouts are killing us. This is what I mean by either dumb or manhandled. Schwartz is a zone guy and no one seems to be playing their zone. That's not saying I like Schwartz's D, but if that's the system we're running we need to be consistent and play our zones. Again, fundamentals are killing us - not playing our zones and not tackling. Mahelona's missed tackle of Norwood when they were inside our five was a perfect example. You have to wrap up on that play. Sirmon is our starting MLB and I've heard his name too little in these three games. He may be smart, etc, but I believe he's just too slow. I'll be surprised if he holds off Tulloch for the balance of the season. The only way he does is because of investment, which is dumb. Let the better player play.
The Ugly- The offensive line. Remember the old John McKay line? As head coach of the expansion Bucs who lost 26 straight games to begin their franchise, he was asked during a post-game press conference about his team's execution. His reply? "I'm all for it." That's our offense in a nutshell. Actually, this is our offense in a nutshell, "Help! I'm in a nutshell..." Ok, I'm rambling, but our O-line is terrible. They may be the worst line I've seen since the group that blocked for Barry Sanders his first few years in the league. I'm beginning to doubt whether there's a player outside of Mawae who could start on another team. As bad as everything else is, nothing stinks so badly as our O-line. It gives all new meaning to the term "offensive".
I'll throw another wrinkle in here -
Neutral - Some things are neither really good or bad. For whatever reason, the jury is still out. Some of these are -
Vince's development - It's easy to look at his poor showings and say we made a mistake, but it's hard to fault a rookie QB running for his life in a preseason game. I've seen flashes of things I like as well. Bullock as been solid, but he hasn't had that game where he shined like usual.
While we're talking about QB's, I'll throw Mauck into this category. Honestly, I should throw his situation in the "Bad" category, but it seems unfair to him to lump him in with problem areas. We're the only team in the league that I know of whose third team QB hasn't seen the field. Given Billy's injury history and Vince's style of play, it would make sense to get him so PT. We may see Matt in the regular season more than we believe right now.
Andre Woolfolk - He hasn't turned in a poor game yet, but he didn't have the great game tonight I expected out of him. It was his opportunity to shine. On the bright side, he wasn't burned either. I say he makes the team.
Maybe more than you wanted, but there's my good, bad, and ugly. Unfortunately, football is a little like a beauty pageant. Ten attractive girls can walk out and then one who... well, isn't and people will ask all night, "Can you believe that ONE girl even had the nerve to be in the pageant with all those beautiful girls?" We tend to remember the bad and the ugly better than we do the good. Maybe in this case, it's because there's so much more of it to see?
Thoughts?
I think hiring a lawyer as your COO is a better move than hiring an accountant to be your GM ( name this clown real Oiler fans ) .
Thank god that idiot owner of theirs didn't listen to his coach
