Feeling much better about the season now (1 Viewer)

Indonesianwhodat

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First of all - there is no sugarcoating our defense. It has been bad, and secondary needs to be fixed. The good thing is that DL and LB play has improved from 1st week, but the entire D still needs fixing

But other than that, I take many positives from the season so far

1) Yes we gave away many many points to Tampa & Atlanta. But I would posit that both are good to very good offenses. Atlanta is a very very good offense. On Tampa I think we underestimated them, and I think they have improved a lot on offense. Case in point is obviously that they beat defending champs Eagles. Plus we did lose to them last season in a meaningful game, so its not totally out of pattern

2) Our offense has been nothing short of spectacular in Week 1 and 3. Yes they were sputtering on Week 2, but again, I think we all are underestimating how improved Browns are on defense.

3) Our offense has been this spectacular by leaning heavily on ONLY MT & AK. Can you imagine how good we will be when Ingram comes back? If and when Cam Meredith & TQS gets even more comfortable?

4) Pending tonight's game - we are in a good position in NFC South. Everyone might be 2-1 by tonight (except Falcons who's worse). We lose the tiebreaker vs Tampa but still time to rectify that.

5) Everyone in the NFC has flaws. Rams is looking good on offense, but their defense hurting a bit now.

6) When the schedule came out, I thought that I'd be ecstatic if we can get to the bye at 4-1. That is still very very doable.


Now of course things might happen that changes my mind in the remaining 2 weeks before the bye, but these are my feelings as of NOW

Thoughts? Comments?
 
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Still concerned about the DLine and LB played much better Sunday, but secondary is terrible outside of 23. There will be games we have to rely on defense to keep us in it.
 
I'm glad you can be positive. If this defense stops allowing a QB rating that exceeds the greatest in NFL history, I might start feeling good about our chances to go 9-7 or 10-6.

The Giants will be no easy task. Eli had a great game this past Sunday against a Texans secondary that is trash like ours.

Barkley is a generational talent RB and they'll most likely be looking to gameplan using him on us.

I worry about Odell after watching this secondary look completely clueless against a rookie.

FiveThirtyEight was correct to call out that we had the toughest schedule of the year. We haven't even got to the Rams or Eagles yet and our defense is already giving up 34 points a game. It's going to be a tough road making the playoffs. We absolutely CANNOT afford to lose to mediocre teams this year.

This feels, looks and is going exactly like 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. Except we didn't start out 0-3 or 0-4 like those years. The defense is a dumpster fire like those years and every game is going to come down to Brees having to be like Dan Marino and win shoot out games.
 
This feels, looks and is going exactly like 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. Except we didn't start out 0-3 or 0-4 like those years.

Being 2-1 versus 0-3 or 0-4 is significantly different. So you can't just dismiss that fact and say this year is going like those years.
 
Well tonight proved that TB is actually a pretty good team. Browns have talent and a bad head coach. Atlanta is a good offense with an injured defense. Makes the Saints 2-1 record acceptable. Giants are not a good team but they are at home and have talent. Good thing is Eli doesn’t have the arm to heave bombs against us or maybe he does. We need to continue to win against these incomplete teams. Hopefully we gel and fix the big issues prior to the stretch run.
 
1) Our defense is trash. I’m very surprised at how bad our pass defense is; it was our strength last year. Do we have injuries to key players that we don’t know about? Why has Ken Crawley / Marcus Williams regressed so badly? We need to figure it out if we want to make playoffs.

2) We miss Mark Ingram big time, not just his on the field production but also his leadership. Payton mentioned Karma was exhausted towards the end of Atlanta game,. We need Mark to move the chains and keep defenses honest of our rushing attack.

3) We have one of the best offensive lines in the NFL. Drew has time to work his magic. Super excited to see what Mark does when he returns.
 
I think we will figure out the defense. We wont get a top 5 defense, but an average, top-15 defense is enough really

A defense that can get some stops and consistently hold opponents to 20 points will win us many many games
 
Being 2-1 versus 0-3 or 0-4 is significantly different. So you can't just dismiss that fact and say this year is going like those years.

The problem that many have on this board is that people are looking at this from the win column and working their way backwards. Because we won, everything must be OK. This logic also works in reverse with how Brees gets blamed for turnovers in losses where the defense can't stop anybody.

We have yet to play a solid game where our defense looks OK enough to be trusted. We would be 0-3 if not for the Browns kicker missing field goals and if the Falcons had won that coin toss in overtime. Yes, they're 2-1, but they don't look like even a wildcard team. All this talk about playoffs, yet the NFC is pretty stacked this year and we don't look like we're anywhere close in the same stratosphere as the contenders.

If you go back to the years 2014-2016, we lost a number of nail biter games that we could've easily won if luck had been on our side. This season don't feel any different from that. Yes, we're 2-1 but given the current state of our defense, I won't be surprised if we get destroyed any Sunday by even average QBs like Eli Manning, Flacco and Dalton. We have yet to even face a top offense like the Rams or Eagles whom no doubt are going to rack up points on us.
 
Before the season started I thought we would drop that one to Atlanta anyway. So to be 2-1 is just where I thought we would be. HOWEVER...I didn't expect to get killed my the Bucs...nor did I expect to squeak by the Browns...nor did I expect our secondary to be THIS bad. So unless they get some issues fixed...we can't expect to continue to win like we have been winning.
 
on defense if we can learn to defend the deep ball and stop giving free passes with penalties, I think we'll be in great shape.
 
The problem that many have on this board is that people are looking at this from the win column and working their way backwards. Because we won, everything must be OK. This logic also works in reverse with how Brees gets blamed for turnovers in losses where the defense can't stop anybody.

We have yet to play a solid game where our defense looks OK enough to be trusted. We would be 0-3 if not for the Browns kicker missing field goals and if the Falcons had won that coin toss in overtime. Yes, they're 2-1, but they don't look like even a wildcard team. All this talk about playoffs, yet the NFC is pretty stacked this year and we don't look like we're anywhere close in the same stratosphere as the contenders.

If you go back to the years 2014-2016, we lost a number of nail biter games that we could've easily won if luck had been on our side. This season don't feel any different from that. Yes, we're 2-1 but given the current state of our defense, I won't be surprised if we get destroyed any Sunday by even average QBs like Eli Manning, Flacco and Dalton. We have yet to even face a top offense like the Rams or Eagles whom no doubt are going to rack up points on us.
I agree with everything except we have faced Atlanta and Tampa Bay. Tampa has the best offense in the NFL right now.
 
I agree with everything except we have faced Atlanta and Tampa Bay. Tampa has the best offense in the NFL right now.

Todd Monken deserves more credit for Tampa's turnaround instead of all the focus going to Fitzpatrick. he has been the biggest difference maker for them going from 2017 to 2018.
 

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