View topic - My intial thoughts.

[lloydgreene Profile]

I never let a win become a negative. As always we must improve to be where we want to be at the end of the year.

Overall, I think we had a good "vanilla" win.

-Nice to see Harrison get 3 and Woodley get a couple of sacks. As I predicted earlier their time will come.

-Defense played off in the 4th to give up the touchdown but pressured Culpepper in the last drive to stop preserve the win. Maybe a 4th quarter lesson was learned by our coaching staff?

-Mendy had 62 yards rushing and Big Ben was not sacked in the first half. In the second half Mendy rushed for 15 yards and Ben was sacked 3 times. Arians is WAAAAY TOO happy to come out in the second half throwing the ball. The Lions did nothing to adjust to our run game in the second half, we just stopped prioritizing it. After 165 yards last week, ARIANS held Mendy to 77 this week.

-Tied with the Ravens and 1 game behind the Bengals. I think I might prefer the other way around with two games to play against the Ravens and only one to play against the Bengals. Either way, the Bungals will show up sooner or later. We have our season ahead of us and I definitely like our division chances.

-Brownies next week could be a trap game. Division games are always meaningful, Brownies games are alwasy heated and we have not shown a consistent game (except giving up 4th quarter leads) all season. The key to this week is URGENCY not complacency.

Good win, good play on offense, held them in the 4th qrtr on defense when we had to, 2 game win streak (I predicted a 7-9 game streak a while back), and we get back TP43 and FWP soon.

[steelwest Profile]

I agree that the playcalling in the fourth quarter needs much work. While the Bengals did move down the field a couple weeks back against our defense, it was the inability of our offense to move the ball that allowed the Bengals the opportunity. The same thing happened here. We are way to content in the second half with a finesse attack. The running game should have been used more in this game. And we need to continue to hold our intensity.

Although the players talk about finishing the games, that seems to be idle talk. The results show that time and again we shut it down early in one or more phases of the game. Either that or we just aren't very good.

Of note, the top three defenses in the league from last year (Steelers, Ravens, Titans) have proven repeatedly that they cannot stop teams in the fourth quarter. This usually means it is an offensive year where dominating with defense will not happen and the offenses will be the difference. Historically, this has not favored us because we have been stout defense and conservative offense. If it continues, it probably trends against us this year as well. We will see.

Oh, and it would be nice if we can get by one week without a Pick-6 or a special teams touchdown against us.