After a weekend to digest what went on Saturday nite in the game with Tampa, and many of the negatives already highlighted, I think there are some positives that should be pointed out. One, we were without arguably our two best defensive players, in Holliday and Porter. And without them, we handled the Bucs starting offense* two three and outs. Now the Bucs did make some changes, but we didn't have the experienced guys on the field who could recognize the subtleties of what was happening and give on-field advice to the younger players. Its expected that Merling and Langford might not recognize a change in technique by the Oline, but Vonnie and Joey P would have. They would have been able to alter their pass rush techniques and pass the word down the line. Also, our Oline is new and it was the first time they had a chance to play together. I saw some things that they did (or didn't do) that are easily correctable (probably already corrected by Sparano and company). Being that we started two rookies, one second year guy and a FA among the five, I think the Oline prospects are as good as they've been since Richmond Webb and Keith Sims manned the Left side. Ronnie Brown got into a real game and was able to leave the field healthy. He didn't show the explosiveness of Ricky (who was just outstanding), but for a first time after a serious injury, Ronnie can now focus more on the physical part of the game and leave the mental questions behind. I am not saying there aren't major opportunities for this team; unquestionably, there are. I am not saying that we are ready to compete with the Patriots for the division--we are not. But all was not lost Saturday. Some good things happened. And those are things that we can/will build on and by next year at this time, I think we'll see a team that will show some semblance of a team getting ready to go on a playoff run for many years. I was disappointed by Saturdays performance, but in now way discouraged. *I know that Garcia didn't start and might have made a difference.
Well the Bucs were without Jeff Garcia and there best playmaker Joey Galloway. This game was good work for the coaches to see what everyone can do
Given the fact that you happily go out of your way to tell the "homer fans" how bad a team this is and how over the top their expectations are, I find it somewhat funny that you would be disappointed by the first exhibition game of a 1-15 team that has new systems on both sides of the ball, turned the roster over and plays a bunch of 1st and 2nd year players at key positions.
Did you EVEN read the post? How could this be your reaction to that post? I don't happily go out of my way to tell anyone (homers or otherwise) how bad this team is. I tell the truth as I see it. Let me ask you, if a poster in a debate forum such as this, says, "I think this team is going to go 11-5"....what would reaction be? Mine would be that this team going 11-5 is unreasonable. Which position would you take? I am quite curious. And, appearently unlike you, I am disappointed WHENEVER the Fins lose. I don't care if we have 80 rookies, I want them to win and I am disappointed when they lose. But then, I have been a fan of this team since 1971. Maybe you've just gotten to the Fins and it doesn't bother you as much. Either way, its good. Right now, I am optimistic about the future of this team. Next year I think we'll be competitive in alot of games. In 2010, I think the sky will be the limit. This year, I think will be tough, and every time we lose, I will be disappointed. Thats just the way I am.
If someone says they think the team is going 11-5 than you should let them have their opinion. You have yours which is not as optimistic and that's fine.
That's quite easy: Your reaction to the exhibition game doesn't match with your assessment of the team's quality. Actually, it's quite antipodal. You're stating that this was an extremely bad team in another thread, yet you're disappointed by the performance when in fact said performance was nowhere near "extremely bad" given the circumstances. You can't have it both ways: If this is indeed an extremely bad team (an assessment I don't agree with, by the way), then you should actually be pleasently surprised by its performance in this game. I'd say that the poster should consume a healthy dose of reality instead of the booze he obviously had, but that's not the point. This is a pretty bad team right now (although not as bad as you make it out to be in the other threads) - which is exactly why I was pleasantly surprised by the game. That's a pretty slick attempt to turn the tables, but I'm not biting, mate. You explicitly stated that you were disappointed by the performance, not the score
So no debate or back and forth should take place on a message board? Are you serious? If you don't want to discuss football and make points and defend them, I can't imagine why anyone would take the time to go to a message board. But, maybe thats just me. And let me ask you....If someone thinks this team is pathetic and is going to lose 15 or 16 games this year and has no chance of turning this thing around, should that person be allowed to just have his opinion with no criticism? Because I have been criticized HARSHLY for being too pessimistic and I have even said that I think we are on the right track. Now don't get me wrong, I am happy to engage in debate and have the opportunity to defend my opinions. Thats why I enjoy this message board.
Ok, whats my assessment of the teams quality? And do you know the teams quality or is that up for debate? Let me guess...we can't know because its only been ONE PRESEASON GAME! Am I right? You say this is a "pretty bad team right now". Whats the difference between your explanation of "pretty bad" and my explanation of this team being bad? How many wins do you expect? I expect 3-5. Do you expect considerably more? If so, I guess we'll have to wait until the season to see who was right. I wasn't being slick at all, but I'll take that as a compliment! I was disappointed that the PERFORMANCE didn't alter the SCORE. As I always am when we lose. Hey, we all want the team to get better. Hopefully it improves and soon. Then we won't have to be disappointed by the score or the performance! GO FINS!!
I didnt get to see it. So I cant really wiegh in either way. But I can say that with all the new additions on our roster, these preseasons games are going to probably look very sloppy. The chemistry in Football between a team is the hardest to establish in any sport IMO. These guys have got to learn what each others strenghts and weaknesses are, and they only have four games to get it right, so its going to be ugly for awhile. But its going to get better. We show promise, and thats what counts as a rebuilding team.
I agree. But to your point in bold above, some here will tell us not only is it going to be ugly for a while, we better LIKE it.
Of course that's up for debate. I didn't say I had the ultimate insight - I just happen to disagree with your assessment that we were an extremely bad team. Sure, we can take a look at the record and say, gee, we were 1-15 ... it doesn't get much worse. But looking at the record only tells you half of the story. It doesn't tell that we lost six games by three points or less (which alone illustrates how thin the line between extremely bad and mediocre is in today's NFL). It doesn't tell about the injury plague. It doesn't tell about the coaching, the playcalling, the conditioning, the work at camp. If I had to wager a guess, I'd say 5-11 sounds about right for this season. I could easily imagine 2-14 or 10-6 as well though. The reason being that with regard to last season, we don't really know where we stand right now. We easily could have won three or four of those six games - would we talk about a 4-12 season as well if that was the case? We'd probably be talking about something like 8-8. It's incredibly hard to evaluate the quality of this roster because so many things went wrong last season. And in today's NFL one or two key acquisitions can make the difference between lousy and competing for a PO spot. See Cleveland, for instance. If this was Atlanta or Oakland or Kansas City, I'd say yeah, we're bad and we are probably going to stay bad for a while until we fix the whole roster over. In our case, however, it's hard to tell where we stand. We might be every bit as bad as the record says. We might be considerably better. There's just too many unknowns (Ronnie? Ginn? QB? O-Line?) that could go either way. And a single preseason game simply isn't enough to tell either way.
A wise old man (named Bill Parcells) once said that "you are what your record says you are." To lose 15 games in a season, you have to be in position to lose 15 games. Now you might have also been in a position to win two or three or four of the games you lost, but you didn't win them. In the NFL, we keep score. The Super Bowl was close. The Patriots can say, well, we were in position to win that game and it was really close. Guess what? They are just as big of losers as SD was vs the 49ers back in 94. When you win, you are the unequivocal winner. When you lose, you are the complete and total loser. I don't want to beat this to death, but I see alot of these posts saying, "we lost this many games by this many points and IF this and done that and IF that had done this, it would have been different". But it wasn't. We were what we were, we are what we are. But I think we are on the way up. And for the past 7 years we've been on the way down. Going up is much better. We are going to see this team be a perennial contender for our division and our conference in a few years. But that nothing to diminish or mitigate our history or our current state. It is what it is.
you had me up until this post SCFF if we were just talking about records, then yes your post would be fine. but we're talking on the state of the team, and the quality of the team. when analyzing this, you look at a lot more than just score. as was stated earlier, we lost a large amount of games by just a few points. the record of 1-15 won't tell you that.
Sorry I lost you, brother...I'll try to do better next time! But my point about being 1-15 is...does it matter that we might have been better? Hell, if Camarillo doesn't make that catch and run, we might have been 0-16. But we weren't. We were 1-15. The only way we can make a case that we were better than that is if we were to win 8-9 games this year, and say, "see, we probably should have won 3-4 games (whoo-hoo) last year. Let's not dwell on that. Its silly. Our record was what it was. Lets focus on the enjoyment of watching these young guys develop and getting better. The next three years are going to be a good time to be a Fins fan, after the last 7 or so of misery!
