First chink in the armor for Murrell. Letting up a small gain by Pierre Thomas in the red zone. Wasn't a bad mistake by any means just has to be a little more aggressive.
Mike Nolan would have a field day with Brandon Spikes. Really physical on the inside, anticipates, moves before the snap to where he's reading the play will go, can blitz, can cover short areas...basically do all the things Nolan has in mind for Channing Crowder. But Crowder will play in nickel. That may be a stretch...but with Spikes, that may be more than a stretch.
Nice play by Spikes there. Gives you an idea how they could use him in obvious pass situations, man to man with a RB. Idea being he rushes from the outside but his job is actually to mirror the RB and rape him in the short area. He rushed from the outside, recognized instantly that the RB was releasing on a pattern instead of blocking, engaged him immediately behind the line and was just physically pushing and dominating him all the way, and when the QB tried to look at the RB to dump off to him he found him being dominated by Spikes so he had to pull the ball down and run. Spikes was able to keep his eye on the QB and when he saw him running for the line of scrimmage he disengaged the RB and went after the QB. Problem? He might have disengaged JUST a bit too soon. The QB pulled up and threw the ball to Spikes' RB. But, if you look closely, the QB was just a little bit beyond the line of scrimmage when he released the ball so that should have been challenged (it's preseason, nobody cares). So Spikes really didn't make a bad decision. He could have been a little more conservative but I thought it was an excellent play, excellent example of what you could do with Spikes even when it looks like the team is passing.
Wow...what a kickoff return by McCourty there. Damn. They made an excellent draft choice. It's awesome that we also seem to have made a wise choice but it sucks that I don't think they missed on McCourty AT ALL. The Jets may end up not getting as much out of Kyle Wilson, IMO
One of my favorite players in the draft eric norwood played well with the panthers. Very disruptive player
I didn't pay much attention to him. I see that he got a sack, though. Someone tried to tell me that Doug Free sucked against the Raiders. They pointed out that Lamarr Houston had 2 sacks in that first drive against Romo, and someone else got a 3rd sack. I looked at the NFL.com highlights and they showed 5 plays from that first drive including all 3 sacks, and Free was doing a bang-up job on all 5 of those plays including the 3 sacks none of which were his fault. Was anyone watching that game somewhat closely? Did Free struggle?
I don't know if I'd say I watched closely, but I did watch that first quarter before I had to leave and I had an eye on Free as he was a guy I wanted in the fifth round that year. He neutralized the pass rusher consistently and I remember one running play where he pushed his guy five yards back. I didn't see him dominate on any other plays, but his guy was never a factor. If I were a Cowboy fan I'd feel comfortable that the LT position was solid. I wouldn't call it a true strength, but it isn't a liability either. Basically, Free did his job well enough on every play I saw and occasionally better than well enough.
