Hello my friends,
Welcome to the winter of my discontent. Although I may not sound that pessimistic, I am absolutely crushed by this loss. There are bright spots, but so much went wrong.
Well I wanted to get pissed and just shoot off the hip yesterday, but somebody already covered that for me ;). Seriously though, I'm with WCG. What am I supposed to do with this ?! What do you say after a loss like this? I don't even know where to start. We all knew our defense was skeletal going into the game, and I knew Griese hasn't played for a while, but I didn't know it was going to be this rusty. As we do every week let's take a look at what happened.
We have to give some credit to our defense. We held this supposed offensive beast to 3 points until the third quarter. That was without our ENTIRE SECONDARY and without Lance Briggs. My heart was warmed by seeing good old 91. As always he played like a G and in spite of his injury last week was still active with a sack. Our line played great and helped engineer 6 sacks on the day. Mark Anderson and Adewale Ogunleye were dominant with 2 sacks a piece. These two guys are proving their value to the team and along with Tommie Gun and the veteran Darwin Walker the line is looking good. We obviously missed Lance Briggs, but Jamar Williams helped fill the gap and even got himself a sack. However, at the end of the third quarter our pipe dream of defensive dominance faded as the Lions landed several strikes against that green secondary of ours. We began the fourth with a Lions special; Kitna passing for a TD and then Griese passing to the Lions for a TD. At that point the Lions carried the momentum and ran off with the game.
We have so many things that just went wrong with the offense, but before we go there and a colossal fourth quarter collapse lets peek at Special teams as they had some good and bad. Firstly, is it just me, or do other people just expect us to block Field Goals now? Seriously, it's four in four games and five if you count the PAT! Israel Idonije, is a good citizen and wreaking havoc. I love this aspect of our team, and I hope it doesn't disappear. Secondly, Devin Hester is still alive and gave us some life after things looked very grim post Griese handing the Lion's some points. I was really disappointed that we couldn't capitalize on this. Now, it may seem like I have been very positive, but here comes the hammer. DANG IT HESTER, HANG ONTO THE BALL!! I mean, why can't he get over this? I love this guy so much and I am thrilled to have him on the team, and every time he is on field I expect him to do something special, but he has to hold onto the ball. Look, Devin take a peek at your own commercial and learn something from yourself about catching the ball. Finally, in reference to the ST, I know that the onside kick is risky, but I couldn't help but feel that the squad looked like the 3 stooges out there. The ball bouncing off of Peterson's helmet and all, it was just a disaster of Curly proportions.
While were on the topic of fumbles... DANG IT GREISE AND BENSON!!! Wasn't switching to Griese supposed to help us cut down on turnovers? Three interceptions and two fumbles are unacceptable. Listen, I appreciate the two TD's and the fact that Griese marched us down the field and added a dimension that we haven't had in a while (albeit, taking away the deep ball). However, I beseech you, what is the point if we are just going to throw it away at the goal line?!? It's almost worse than Rex. As the boys at KSK so truthfully wrote about Rex and created the "Sex Cannon" moniker complete with the "Fu** it, I'm going deep" slogan. At least with Rex I never had to worry about the turnover turning into a touchdown because he threw the ball so dang far! Needless to say, I am really bitter about the quarterback situation. I saw Orton on the sideline (ALERT, he is rocking the neck beard once again!) and I wanted him to just come in and play. Heck, I even wanted Chris Leak to be in there. Yeah, you heard me say it. Chris. Freakin. Leak. Say what you want about Griese's "rust" but the truth of the matter is that he was bad, our whole offense was bad. I am sick of people getting injured (See Defense, Offensive Line). I am sick of our wide receivers dropping passes. I am sick of a seemingly inept Offensive Coordinator who had Griese throw the ball over fifty times! It was ridiculous, and our running game is still not there to top it all off.
The door is closing on our season really quick, and if the team doesn't stick its collective foot in it they are going to finish somewhere around 8 and 8 and start hoping that a franchise savior falls to us in the draft.
We absolutely have to win next week and it needs to be convincing. We can only hope that our defense is back somewhere close to normal, and that Brett Farve is out of his magical juice that has been powering him as of late. If we don't come away from this game with another win under our belt I will be grossly disappointed and I will have grave concerns about our season.
Try to hold onto hope, and if you see Griese on the street try not to hurt him.