And don't kid yourselves…the Score did not reflect how badly we were outplayed. The Bears gave us 2 turnovers to keep us in the game.
Losses generally teach more than wins.
There were many lessons to be learned today. Starting with the fact that if you are not playing to win big, either sit your quarterback, or get him to be interested in the game.
Second, I'm too lazy to go online and see who coaches the defensive line, but whoever does really needs a wake up call. The angle of attack by our edge rushers is horrendous, especially to the throwing side. Our guys, including our blitzers constantly undershoot the quarterback going to close to the line of scrimmage and instead of going to the quarterbacks throwing arm. If the quarterback is to escape an edge rush you want him to have to step up into the pocket, not go around you. This has happened repeatedly in the last two weeks, and in fact all season. I fear Hurts will do this all game to us.
Quarterbacks love to roll to their throwing side and we seem too stupid to be able to comprehend that fact. We should also inform our blitzing linebackers and safeties of the same fact. My goodness, high school coaches teach this more effectively than we do.
Back to offense, I would love to think that we simply didn't show too much because we want to save our good plays or series of plays for the playoffs, but that's giving too much credit I think to the staff. Nowhere in the arsenal were any basic slants, picks, or other fundamental plays which, even though we don't run them a lot, we should have run them in this game just to give teams something to look at.
I am not sure Love nor Willis is very good at getting us into the right play (or out of a bad play) at the line of scrimmage, one of the QB's most important function. Perhaps we have to many low Wonderlic players with can incorporate too many changes
Moreover, we're just not a very good team. We:
• barely beat the Colts with the dumbest and youngest quarterback in the league playing at the time
• the Titans gave us the game
• We played the Rams without Kupp and Nakua (and maybe Stafford IIRC) and barely won
• barely beat Texans
• barely beat the Jaguars who stink
• should have lost to the Bears the first time
And special teams, how embarrassing!!!!
So when you add it all up, we are essentially a .500 team who backed into the playoffs and hasn't beaten anyone good.
"Oh Martha", you are saying, "we are a young team and young teams make mistakes." Non-sense!!! Young stupid teams with ineffective coaches make mistakes. And I am sick an tired of people sticking that fact out there like it is an asset, especially when it is used as an excuse.
Long term the more troubling aspect is we've gotten our tails kicked in the division and I see nothing that will change that trend. We need upgrades all over the lineup:
• left tackle
• Corner
• linebacker
• defensive line
• and probably more interior alignment as Jenkins isn't getting any younger
The last two season's first rounds have not contributed and I have my doubt LVN will ever contribute meaningfully. I am not sure we have the front office capable of filling those gaps.
But as I said in the game chat, this game did not mean a thing, and the playing and coaching showed it.
Now, to the playoffs, where we have a fighters chance.