mbarbour21

Hey, remember that time Aaron Rodgers had a 36.8 passer rating (week 1 this year against the mighty Saints) and everyone laughed at him because he would have had a better rating if he just spiked the ball every play... ....yeah....good times.

If we can't cover kicks, this shouldn't be a joke. lol!

I'm just hoping for 1-0 this week.

That crowd noise tho...

It's funny that, "They did play the Browns. Haha!" still triggers an automatic assumption that you claimed they suck. Lol! It's gonna take a while for people to get use to the Browns being used as a positive measuring stick. HAHA!

I believe if we can take Cooks out of the game it will be a blowout. It will be like taking Kamara out of the game against the Saints. If Cooks gets under 50 yards receiving, I have to believe we win this game by 30. Like I said in the op, I don't think their rushing attack will fair well against us. (see Kamara) That's why I am most interested in the Cooks vs our CBs match-up.

Agreed. They have done well in the first half while also leaving points on the field. So their good could have been great. The 3rd quarter play has been abysmal as a whole. We have got to get that figured out. I'm hoping we put a hurt on the Texans and the scoreboard actually reflects it. That will give me a lot of hope going forward.

I was referencing the Jets game. Someone said that they would not say we struggled to beat the Jets. Which I replied that we didn't struggle the whole game, but didn't do well late (in the fourth). Someone then quoted me saying that we have yet to be behind in a game. Which I then replied with the post you quoted.

That makes a lot of sense though. Honestly, kick-off coverage probably scares me more than our o-line....if that tells you anything. The missed XP was at least close. Slye would miss wide right or whatever. Besides, the kicker doesn't even matter if we can't keep the other team out of the backfield. However, we are gonna miss those touchbacks BAD if we can't cover. Having to drive 75 yards against this defense is brutal. Field position is HUGE. (ask the Saints) Although, if we can cover well and force opposing teams to start at the 20 or worse it could work in our favor. But that is a big if. But I agree, kicker will be a problem against tougher competition. I'm still not sure what we have in Zane.

No. I was definitely not saying they were not good at running. Their 3rd running back is a beast. Haha! I was implying that the high rushing yards allowed could be because they had to play the Browns. So, maybe they are not quite that bad. I trust CMC, but I do not trust the line.....especially not in run blocking. But 4.6 is a pretty high amount on average.

True, but you can still struggle while in the lead. We manhandled them all game until the 4th quarter. (at least from a defensive perspective, our offense didn't really do well in the second half) They scored 14 in the 4th, which was more than us that quarter. They won the 4th quarter as far as I am concerned.

Mine has got to be whoever lines up against Brandin Cooks. According to the Carolina Panthers official website: Horn has not received many targets at all. I think he has been targeted about 4 or 5 times through both games combined, likely because his man has not been open. I'd love to see what he could do against Cooks all game long. However, I don't know how Snow will be playing the corners. I do not see the Texans having the same success running the ball in this game as they have the first two weeks. We held Kamara to around 30 yards total, with only 5 of those yards falling in the rushing category. Tyrod had 55 yards of their total 242 rushing yards, while Davis Mills comes in at a whopping -1 yards. They do not seem to be comfortable evenly spreading the ball around through the air. Whoever is on Cooks will probably have an eventful day. If our guy wins this match-up it will get ugly QUICK. Does anyone know if there is a possibility that Horn sticks with Cooks or will it most likely be a combined effort? ***Honorable Mention: CMC running against this Texans Defense. They have allowed 4.6 yards average. Granted, they did play the Browns. Haha!

Agreed. If they lost by 3 then I could MAYBE see the argument that the guys missing played a huge role. But they were never in this game.....EVER.

I believe we struggled late. But the score does not reflect the play on the field. It was a total shutout for 3 quarters. Same with the Saints. I am hoping that we finally have the scoreboard speak for itself tomorrow.

I get that we had a close game with the Jets, but it was also week one and it was Sam's first full game. If we had them this week, we would probably win 40-0. There was A LOT of points left on the field against the Jets. Everyone picked the Saints to beat us until they didn't. Then the excuses started. The team that beat GB 38-3 was not drastically different than the team that was fielded against us. Definitely not 128 yards total bad. I'm not saying it had no affect on the Saints....but come on. It's not like the Saints got Thanos snapped in the middle of the game. They all knew this before entering the game. They praised Payton for his, "Next man up!" success....that never showed up Sunday. The question of this game is: Who is Davis Mills? We don't really know. I would assume Taylor would be more of a threat. Can Mills and the coaches play around our pass rush? If our pass coverage is as tight as it was against the Saints, can Mills put it where only his guy has a shot, and do that with this pass rush breathing down his neck? My guess is a giant no. I'd have to agree though. At this point, I don't see a point in signing another QB to come in and lead the team to mediocrity. Let the rookie play and see what he has. Trade Watson and throw down on a rebuild. Their division isn't all that great, so I could see reason to believe that they could possibly win that if Taylor stayed healthy. But I don't see them beating Browns, Bills, Chiefs, or Ravens in the playoffs right now. This game should be a win. (unless Mills turns out to be significantly better than Taylor) However, if we lose, I will lose a lot of expectation going forward.

The two spots that I felt like were our weakness were LBs and OL. I think it has to be LBs that I eat the crow for, at least for now. Because I honestly think our o-line is still a little bit of hot garbage. Run blocking seems horrible. Pass blocking looks to be better than horrible, but I'm not sure how much of that is the line and how much of that is Darnold and the coaches. I think we are scheming around the horribleness. Not sold on OL yet.

I have to agree. To be fair, I don't feel like the bar was very high here. His first year I thought I would be able to just watch the games with zero expectations. I was almost upset I didn't get a year of low expectations, because missing the playoffs wouldn't hurt so much. We outplayed my expectations by a mile last year. Losing 8 or 9 games by a score or less showed we were competitive in almost every single game we played. It felt like we belonged inside the top 20 of the league. Which we had no business even sniffing judging by the personnel we had. The defense has grown at a ridiculous rate. I honestly believe the offense isn't far behind. It may not be until next year before it really takes off, because we need to strengthen the o-line. All I know, is Rhule and Co. saw the issues we had.....and made some valid attempts to fix them. (o-line is questionable considering options we could have gone after in draft) But all in all, it was refreshing to see our weaknesses being addressed.

“If we can’t win here, no one can!!!”

Agreed. I'd still love to see it.

To be fair, they really could have used those 62 yards a game in this game. LOL!!!

I think they just pied him because he came back. lol! But yeah, all Saints fans and all analysts were saying those things were not going to stop them. How do you pick the Saints to win the game and then start throwing out excuses when they get taken to the woodshed? If they lost by 3, maybe I see the excuses. But not 26-7, with a gift from Darnold in the 4th. If he just takes that sack, they don't score period. They were wrong, why can't they just admit it? I admit I was wrong. Winston didn't throw 3 TDs and get benched. We didn't win a close game. I was wrong. I wasn't one of the guys saying we would completely dominate them. So I'm not gonna make excuses. WE ALL KNEW about what the Saints had to deal with before the game was played, tune was very different then though.

We were told it didn't matter until there were less than 5 minutes to go in the game.

I would love to get the Rams in the playoffs and win.