Corey Davis makes me sick

You're not directing that to me, but I feel similar to 8isgreat.

We haven't seen how good Davis is. He just has been injured nearly the entire time he's been on the team. Right now it's a "can be".

And there was no way we'd have kept up with the scoring that the Texans (and Watson) were putting on us in that game. It totally exposed what has been a long standing weakness (at least 4 years) with this team. Specifically, lack of a pass rush and our secondary. The Dudd pick at #33 overall hurt us. The lack of anything thus far out of our #5 pick is hurting us.

We really didn't need a WR at #5 overall. We needed a pass rusher or ANOTHER premiere CB. And I know it very unpopular to criticize Jon Robinson on this board, but he neglected to effectively address both the pass rush and CB in his previous off season and draft, save the Adoree Jackson pick.

We had a lot of hype in the off season with our 9-7 record. I didn't buy it. I was encouraged by the Seahawks game but that all went away with that distracted mentally and physically soft game we played in Houston. And it was a VERY important game. Watson is for real. Their D is still for real.

We're not going anywhere with the personnel on this D. We lack quality depth at OLB, we don't have a true "disrupter" at DT (Casey is pretty good, and that's all we got) and we have one young CB who is learning and quality CB is yet TBD. Ryan is meh at best. We have Byard at S, Cyprien just isn't that good.

Our O is going to have to score at least 30 points every game to have a chance for us to win. We're not holding any team out of the end zone, especially on their first or second drive. And we're one injury away from even having a chance of doing that. Just not smart personnel choices IMO. We should have gone D with that #5 pick and Dodd was not the right choice with our #33 the year before. I wish we'd have seriously looked at Josh Norman. I wish we have brought Terrell Pryor in at WR. But we didn't. I wish we'd have kept McBride over Douglass who immediately went to IR.

I think it is a fair criticism to say our coaches (and GM, owner) are antiquated in their approach to directing this team. Sometimes wisdom prevails over intelligence. But I honestly believe we need younger blood in our OC and DC. But we have repeatedly chosen loyalty and familiarity over accountability in this organization.

I'm interested to see how they come out against the Dolphins. I expect Cutler is going to test our secondary 2 out of 3 plays. Miami needs a win bad, especially at home as they continue to recover from the hurricane. They will be bringing their best at us. We damn sure better think of a way to cover Parker and Landry because the Texans game provided a blueprint for the rest of the league.

 

Not turning the ball over goes a long ways in hiding your defenses weakness

 

Defense was out there a lot against the Texans. Doesn’t help with the 3 and outs on offense plus the 5 turnovers. Team was flat on all 3 phases.

Let’s see how he defense rebounds this week against the anemic Fins. They were pretty decent the previous 3 weeks for the most part.

Don’t jump off the bridge yet.

It seems to me that Hopkins pushes off on every play right before he comes back for the ball. Are they ever going to call those?

 

I don't think the TO were really what exposed this D. Didn't help, but not the cause.

The TO led to late points surely but the first INT lead to the first time the D was on the field. Were they already gassed? Couldn't hold them to a FG with the bad position they were given?

It was 30-14 by the next TO which led to zero points. Maybe that prevented our offense from scoring, but they were still sitting around their own 20.

I think the TOs only helped to make the score more lob-sided. Even without those TOs, this D wasn't stopping anything.

 

A quarter of the way into his first season lol

 

Yes. It seems Hopkins and Crabtree actually have a different set of rules than other receivers. Although Crabtree got called for it once, Hopkins and Crabtree just blatantly push off every time the ball comes to them and the defender is in decent position. Don't understand how I can see that and the officials can't.

 

Our defense isnt as bad as Sundays outing.

The offense couldn't sustain drives thus over exposing our already sketchy D. You wont win many games with the ball for only 20 minutes..

If the O carries their weight the way they did in Jacksonville and vs Seattle we're fine IMO...

The key thing to get right is the QB, we cant lose Mariota for more than a week..

 

In generalities I agree. Any game the D continues to stay on the field all day, bad things are going to happen.

My argument for this game is that the D came out of the gates getting smacked. If I was going to say the D got wore down, it would be after working to get a couple stops somewhere in there. They gave up TD's on the first 3 drives.
The first drive was only a handful of plays, couldn't have been tired yet, UNLESS the overall conditioning for the defense is crap which would go back to DLB. I put this game on him anyway for a garbage game plan and zero adjustments to that garbage game plan.

Also agree. Do whatever to keep Mariota healthy. If he needs to miss the Miami game, so be it.

 

Hes a QB, he doesnt need hamstrings, he better play.

Obviously our playbook will shrink that day but we can not play Cassel, he will cost us an AFC game

Play Mariota but dont run him, should be ok....

 

This will sound weird considering last week but,

It will be the Henry and Murray show and the Defense will win this game. Cassell playing won't matter even though I hope he never has to see the field.