So much irony in yesterdays loss.

[holycrikey]

The biggest fears the huddle had collectively had nothing to do with our loss.

Secondary-The consensus was we may be in trouble here, because outside of Gamble everything else was a question mark at best. Well they actually did a damn good job compared to what we were all bracing for. Freeman finished with 138 yards on 24 pass attempts and his best receiver had less yards than our top 4. Thats right V-Jax had only 46 yards and Olsen had 56. Murphy and Lafell were in the 60's and Smith had over 100 on the day.

Run Defense- We kept them to 3.6 YPC and 0 touchdowns. Also had a nice goal line stance as well.

Interior pass rush/D-line as whole- Dwan got himself a sack and Hardy as well on the outside. Alexander batted down a couple passes as well at the LOS. The last 3 many expected production from on the D-line.

Special teams coverage- Aside from the mistake made by Munnerlyn, they did a great job at limiting returns and many were deathly afraid of that being an issue. I saw Onatulu show up on a few occasions and Rivera mentioned the newly traded for safety by name in his press conference.

The Buc's secondary- This was thought to be a strength of theirs but in reality was the least of our worries. Cam spread the ball around well and had 4 receiving threats get over 55 yards, in spite of the obvious fact that we were passing the ball on most downs and did not even attempt to hide it.

Then we were likely over confident in this area.

Our run game- Williams and Tolbert had 7 carries combined and we had 0 success with any of them. This was thought to be a place where we would dominate pre-game, even with Stewart being out, but no go. I don't personally blame Williams or Tolbert for this one, as not even Barry Sanders could have danced his way out of this shitty read option runs with 8-9 men collapsing on him with only 5 blocking.

That was a classic case of Fox Ball at its finest. They completely shocked the poo out of our coaching staff on the first drive and we had no answer for it until after half time.

That's all quite wonderful, but it just seems like a lot of rationalization.

I'm starting to believe some of the analysts. The Panthers will put up guady numbers. Cam will throw for 4000 and Smitty will have over 1200. Olsen may end up with 600/700. But unless we get the "W" to go with them, it means absolutely, 100% nothing. Nada. Zip.

All that matters is at the end of the day the Bucs have something in the win column and we don't. Numbers be damned.

I'll gladly take Cam throwing for 2400 yards, 18 TD's and 29 INT's if it means we end up with wins and playoff berths. I'm talking numbers and I HATE talking numbers. We should only be discussing what will get us wins.