Rubes

Given that one of those games was against a team giving up a staggering average of 165 yards per game on the ground, I'll reserve judgement for another few weeks.

From NFL.com play-by-play: They indicate when a play is in shotgun formation. Do a search for "(Shotgun) J.Losman". You'll find it once, on the first drive of the game. If you search for "(Shotgun) P.Manning" you'll find it 21 times.

So....just that I wouldn't call that an "awesome" game. They did well, got some points, and made a couple of turnovers. But Indy still mostly had their way with them, they gave up far too many rushing yards, and when the time came to stop Indy and give us a chance, they folded. Don't get me wrong, I thought the defense played fairly well, and I'm impressed that they held Indy to 17 points (though it would have been more if they needed it at the end). But I wouldn't exactly call that an "awesome" game and in no way did it remind me of our dominating D from a few years ago. That's all.

Keep 'em coming. This is good stuff.

Sure. Except for not being able to stop the Colts from using up the last 6 and a half minutes of the game. Without even forcing a single third down, at that.

Does that help?

So....is it that the coaching staff doesn't have confidence in Losman, or they don't have confidence in the line's ability to keep him off his ass? From Jauron's post-game comments, I know where I'd put my money.

Yeah, it is. I'd like to see him step in at RT, now that you mention it. It really boils down to these points: 1. Our offensive line is really, really offensive. 2. We have done a pretty lousy job bringing in and/or developing new offensive linemen. Drafting a whole crapload of offensive linemen won't necessarily solve the problem. But I think the point is that we need some linemen who are capable of getting the job done. This group, for the most part, ain't getting it done. Whether it's poor scouting, poor judgement, or poor coaching, I don't know. The new regime has found us a center and moved Peters to the position he should be in at LT. That's just 2 positions out of 5 that they've secured for us. I'm assuming the Reyes experiment at LG has failed (unless he's just injured, I don't know). Sticking with Villarial was probably more out of necessity than anything else. The jury is still out on Pennington, but he hasn't shown a tremendous amount yet. I'm not advocating bringing in a boatload of offensive linemen as a fix, but we really need to look everything over from scouting to coaching to figure out why we have failed so miserably for so many years at putting together what most would believe is the foundation for an offense.

Which part?

Who's Lineman? Can he play right tackle?

Nobody with a brain expected Levy and Jauron to fix this right away. They inherited a mess on offense and defense, but a quality special teams unit. They had holes everywhere. You had to know that this would be a two or three year effort. Start plugging the holes one year, plug some more the second year and watch the first group mature. In the third year, you finish plugging the holes while the first two groups mature into solid players. There were that many holes to fill. I think they're doing a pretty decent job on defense so far, and that seems to have been the focus this first year. We're still pretty lousy at stopping the run and stopping teams at the end of games, but it's still the first year of the plan and so far I'm not disappointed in the effort. I think they might have underestimated the complete mess that is our offense, and I also think they ended up not getting their money's worth out of the stiffs they brought in for the line. Fowler will probably be serviceable, and Peters is decent, but beyond that we have, basically, nothing for a line. I expect this offseason we will see a focus on bringing in some better quality offensive linemen in free agency and a focus on offensive and defensive linemen in the draft. But I wouldn't expect more than one big offensive lineman FA signing, which means we still are two good offensive linemen away from a decent line. Those we draft next year will need at least a year to develop. A lot depends on if Pennington (or Butler) can prove by the end of the year that they belong in the league, if not on the starting line. Even if we focus 100% of our off-season efforts (FA and draft) on offensive linemen, we're still talking a couple of years to see that effort bear fruit. It sucks, but unfortunately that's the way it is, and we have to deal with it.

I can't really say that I disagree with any of that. This organization has been striking out on offensive linemen for so long, both in the draft and through free agency, that we are just a mess.

Cool, so let's have him drop back to pass 42 times so Indy can rack up 11 sacks. But he'll at least have the chance...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061109/ap_on_...e/space_shuttle My goodness.

On a related note... The #1 cause of death in China by an infectious disease is from...rabies.

Dammit...you beat me to it.

And here I thought you had something against Nate and Terrance.

Not until he tries to grab my wife's ass.

"I think we finally got to show what this team is really capable of." Problem is, I'm not sure who's going to be saying it.

Multitasking, man. Multitasking.

Wow, that's real?

Hey, that's cool. Can I start a thread of my own tomorrow?

Crashing down on 40 and still believe that JP deserves the whole season. He also deserves a line that can handle a blitz and a coordinator that can hide the weaknesses of the team rather than highlight them.

Sigh...I see the point was lost here. Regardless, just look at New England.

This makes far too much sense to be seen on this board.