High expectations

[malzj]

You guys know what? we had high expectations for a reason. That's because this team is very talented and our defense played really well sunday. We thought this could have been a superbowl team. There's still reason to believe that. If we ARE a superbowl team then we should beable to beat teams such as Chicago, Jacksonville, and Indy. There's no reason why we cannot be that.

It sounds like Joey is going to start some more games for us. I for one wish Pep was the guy but Saban made the decision to keep joey in until Pep gets better. At least we know who to stand behind and we won't be waiting till sunday to know who the qb is. All this time... I still think it has nothing to do who is our qb. It's Mularkey, poor discipline, and lack of concetration that has cost us wins.

Saban said we came together as a team finally, that's because our defense played really well. I think guys in the locker room are going to be much more upbeat. We beat the jets guys.... we beat the jets!

 

[DolfinDave]

One of the problems this year besides the play on the field was the extremely high expectations all of us fans had. I think it was a little premature to start thinking we were a Super Bowl team. And I didn't like the fact that the media and the experts were jumping on the bandwagon.

We went 9-7 last year. Good, but it didn't get us in the playoffs or win us the division. How many teams don't make the playoffs and then go to a Super Bowl the next year? And the 9-7 record is a little misleading. We ran off those 6 wins at the end against mediocre opponents. And we still didn't beat anyone convincingly. They were always tight games. And the one good team we did play which was the Chargers, we had to make a big comeback at the end. What I am saying is that 9-7 probably wasn't a good indication of how good of team we really were last year.

We had offensive line problems at the beginning of last year which have resurfaced this year. We made a change at QB, which isn't usually an easy think to do. It takes time for new QBs to be totally comfortable with a new team. We have a second year running back, who while is very talented, is having to adjust to something different. Our skill position players are good, but they just aren't playing well. And our secondary, which was suspect last year, hasn't played well and hasn't really been given enough time to get a lot better.

The bottom line is that we were probably a good team coming into this year. We weren't the very good or great team everyone thought. And I admit, I bought into the hype a little too much. I was under the impression that our oline would carry over from last year and be average. And I thought Culpepper would be more towards 100% health wise, and more towards the QB he was in Minnesota. The fact is that the Patriots are still the best team in the division. The Jets are a different team with Chad Pennington at QB. And the Bills can pretty much only go up from where they were. I think it was reasonable to think we could go 9-7 or 10-6 this year. And if things went right, we could win the division. But Super Bowls and being up their with the Colts, Seahawks, and Bears, that is a little unreasonable. It just takes a little time in the NFL to become an elite team. We were 4-12 two years ago. We were a bad team then and we were an average team last year. We have talent, but that isn't enough. We should all know better than to buy into media hype. And I will certainly be a lot more cautious before writing us down into the playoffs.