I don’t know if I could handle the excitement of a 6-10 season.
As a non-Browns fan who regularly watches Browns preseason games (football-starved and living in central Ohio), I notice that Kosar is like Harry Caray in that he steadily gets drunker throughout the games. Really, what else is there to do in a preseason game? Next time you watch, pay attention to it. By the 4th quarter, he’s snarkily wonderful. I love watching Browns preseason games even though I’m not a fan, just because of Bernie.
NY Giants rookie RB Andre Brown is out for the season. I can’t imagine he would have had a huge impact this season anyway, but I haven’t been following the Giants too closely. Any impact, Ellis Dee?
Me neither, which is why they are going to win 10 or more games this season, dethroning the Squeelers in the process.
This season is going to be like 2005 on a repeat loop, except no major injury to Carson Palmer.
Not really. Danny Ware was last year what Andre Brown was this year; a very promising rookie. Ware tore it up in both training camp and preseason last year, but never managed to get onto the field for obvious reasons. Now with Ward gone, I expect Ware to get a little playing time, though probably not a huge amount.
I can’t imagine Brown would have seen a single down on offense this season. His loss could be felt on special teams, I suppose, but then again rookie skill positions who actually get drafted tend to have never played a down on teams in their life, so probably not.
If you have Cox “regular” (non-digital) cable, check channel 99.
99 is a rotating channel of whatever premium channel they want to show for that week. The odds of it having a preseason game I’m interested in are pretty slim, unless it happens to be NFL network’s week. I’m not sure what you’re saying.
Well, it’s currently a preview of the NFL Network. Wall to wall reruns of preseason games.
Aha. I should’ve checked.
It’ll only last a week unfortunately. Not sure when it started.
I haven’t seen that many kickoff returns yet this year, but so far from what I’m seeing I don’t like the new rules at all.
Upon rewatching the game, while my team sucks, I was pleasantly surprised to see Mangini was displeased with the sucking. Usually Romeo looked confused or indifferent. So we may be terrible, but at least the head coach seems to be bothered by it. Progress!
Oh, and John St. Clair. He was the starting left tackle for Chicago last year, right? How’s that even possible? You should’ve gone through 17 QBs.
Come back from the ledge. I think the Lions went 3-1 in the preseason last year. Look at how the regular season went.
4-0, actually.
Three issues for the 49ers:
3) Depth in the backfield
A running back (Thomas Clayton) and a fullback (Zach Keasey) both went down with long-term injuries. We have two rookie running backs (Coffee and Sheets*) that are looking good. The FB behind Keasey is Brit Miller, and UDFA making the switch from linebacker. He played extremely well and has one of the best pass-catching FBs ever coaching him. The team signed another UDFA FB waived from the Chargers (Bill Rentmeester) fro depth.
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Receivers getting open
For all the promise of the receiving corps in camp, they never seemed to get open easily. The QBs both indicated the sacks they took were because they held the ball too long. The biggest passes were to tight ends and backs. This is something they can work on, but they better get cracking. -
No pass rush
It didn’t exist. If the secondary can continue to bail out the rush, wins will still come, but I doubt it will happen. Singletary, at least, knows of the problem.
*: I love the names in our backfield
Three positives:
3) Running game
Frank Gore didn’t play, so the rookies shined behind solid blocking. I hope there are counters and misdirection plays included in the run game. Even with a safety in the box, the pounding should open up thing for the passing game. [insert another football cliche here]
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Which QB? Who cares?
At this point both Smith and Hill have shown they can play. Hill has improved his deep pass, but still lags behind Smith there, which I think is the only reason there is still a competition. Hill will probably win out, but we’re not screwed if he goes down (Og forbid). -
Turnovers
It’s just one game, but we were +3 with no giveaways. That’s not including the interception that stopped the go-ahead 2-point attempt.
Smith has shown he can play what? Certainly not football.
No, no, the best pro football team in Ohio will once again be the Buckeyes! 
On the upside, the Packers have 3 pretty good FBs (Kuhn, Hall, Johnson), and will likely only keep two. So a FB with experience (I doubt they’ll cut their draft pick this year) will be available around cut down day. I’m hoping the Packers will be doing the same looking for a punter, because ours blow. I blame TT for that debacle.
Here’s a little summary of my perceptions from the Bears first preseason game versus the Bills from over the weekend. I’ve watched it about 3 times and have a pretty solid handle on it, once in a bar drunk, once on DVR Jaws-style and half-watched once on NFL network listening to the Bills announcers.
[ul]
[li]Jay Cutler. The media is pissing themselves over his mediocre debut and subsequent “dis” of Hester. Now, Cutler wasn’t great but this frenzy is pretty silly. Cutler’s arm and accuracy were fine. He didn’t get a ton of help from his WRs and he was facing a Bills defense that has a game under it’s belt already. He seemed to be making a concerted effort to force the ball to Hester every opportunity. Other WRs were open frequently (and Olsen was held out of the game) but he went to Hester even when he was blanketed. McKelvin had a great game on Hester and frankly Hester was outmatched there and it looked to me like Cutler was simply testing out his primary target. It simply didn’t look like a game situation. [/li]
[li]The Offensive Line. All in all I was very impressed with the pass protection. Schaffer seemed to get beat a couple times when the second stringers were in the game but the rest of the line pass protected beautifully. Cutler had a nearly perfect pocket and room to step up all game long. The run blocking was pretty poor. They prevented penetration and the RBs were able to get back to the line, but there simply weren’t opening up any holes. This isn’t a huge surprise, Pace was widely known to be a subpar run blocker at this stage and Williams was drafted as a classic finesse LT. Not having a textbook RT on the roster who can block going forward hurts us and the money we spent on the FA OGs seem to not have much drive either. This could lead to problems in the running game but protecting Cutler is the primary need. The play calling was decidedly pass heavy and the run game was vanilla and could improve as they open the playbook some. [/li]
[li]The Receivers. Hester didn’t play well at all. He quit on a couple routes and offered no help on Cutler’s underthrown INT. In many ways it seems like Turner hasn’t changed much from last season and they seem to be using Hester in a short passing scheme far too much. Most of his routes were quick slants, outs and hitches and he doesn’t have the size to shield a defender who reads the play well. I keep beating this horse, but they are using him all wrong. The rest of the guys were mostly invisible. 6 of Cutler’s 10 throws were to Hester. Bennett and Clark had catches and were open often, time will tell. Pretty much all the starters came off with Cutler after the 1st Quarter. Rashied Davis’ love affair with Caleb Hanie from last season has continued. He caught a couple balls and got a lot of targets as did backup TE Kellen Davis who’s fighting for a roster slot. One positive sign is that Hester and Bennett were on the field together which is in contrast to early reports that they were supposedly fighting for the X position. Much is left to be decided. [/li]
[li]Caleb Hanie. The guy played really well. He had plenty of time to throw, similar to Cutler, and was generally on target and throwing with authority. He played against many of the Bills first string D and was productive. I feel pretty confident with him as the #2 guy. [/li]
[li]Al Afalava. I wasn’t very high on his drafting because I felt the Bears should have taken a higher rated guy earlier but he really played well. They lined him up in the SS position and used him like Mike Brown was used in the past and he really excelled and was in on almost every tackle. Last year my biggest issue with the Bears Safeties was the poor tackling and Afalava breaks down, wraps and takes the outside from ball carriers. A huge improvement. We didn’t see him in coverage very much so there are a few questions there still but he’s raised expectations. [/li]
[li]The Secondary. Awful, just awful. This isn’t much of a shack since they were crappy last year and did little to improve in the offseason but the weaknesses were apparent. And T.O. wasn’t even in this game, it’s scary to think how bad it would have been otherwise. I’m starting to think that Vasher isn’t even going to make this team. He was owned by Lee Evans all game long. Granted we were without Tillman and Bowman which means Vasher had to start but he’s not worth the price if he’s going to be a guy you can’t trust to fill in. Vasher was so bad that it’s difficult to tell how bad the rest of them were because the Bills QBs almost never had to check down. However the Bills top 2 QBs were a combined 23 for 26 so it’s safe to say they all sucked. Things could get ugly.[/li]
[li]The D Line. Pretty unimpressive. The Bills went no huddle most of the first half and that certainly kept the pass rush at bay and the Bears were basically playing base with only 4 rusher all game long, but I would have expected much better pressure considering the money spent. Certainly the DBs weren’t loving the lack of pressure. As far as I’m concerned Tommie Harris is a non-entity. Everyone seems to think that when he comes back everything will be candy-coated but I’m not sure why anyone would assume that he’ll come back looking anything like he once was. The guys filling in for hm were barely average. They didn’t get blown off the ball but they sure as hell didn’t do anything to affect the game. They held the running game down with help from the LBs but they have to do more. Not a single player stood out. [/li]
[li]The Special Teams. A+ so far. The coverage units were rock solid and the return game was productive no matter who was back there. I’m not sure things have been clarified much as to who will be running kicks and punts back but I’m guessing Hester’s time there is done. [/li][/ul]
That’s that. It’s only one game, the first preseason game against a team in their second at that, but there’s a lot more reason for concern than optimism. I like a lot of the pieces but we really need to put things together. If I had to place bets right now I’d bet that this is Lovie’s last year in Chicago.
People understate the importance of the preseason. Your record doesn’t matter terribly much (although there is a weak correlation between preseason record and the record of that regular season), and the analysis of your coach’s gameplanning skills doesn’t matter that much, but how your starters play matters.
If you can’t open holes or tackle or pick up blitzes or
make accurate passes in the preseason, chances are you can’t in the regular season either. It’s the first preseason game under a new coach and it’s not the end of the world, but it’s pretty bad.
Funny. I think the preseason is overrated.
It is if you’re only looking at the box score and think you can discern a lot of meaningful information there. But if you actually watch your starters closely it’s pretty meaningful.