ckparrothead
Premium Member
1. Jay Fiedler was definitely off but showed flashes of the QB that we know who can move the chains. Not all was his fault, he was under a lot of pressure. He made one bad decision not to throw to Konrad instead locking on a covered OG on 3rd down. The other two throws, one he just barely didn't get enough on it, the other was blaring inaccuracy. To me, not a whole lot to be worried about, but enough to get the home crowd p!ssed about the fact that we've scored no points and the Saints are up 17-0 largely because of 4 turnovers, 3 of which came directly from Jay Fiedler mistakes...not mistakes by any other teammate...Jay's mistakes.
2. The infamous BOOING. I don't see the big deal but thats just me. They started to Boo Jay after the 2nd interception but only slightly and a lot of it had to do with him not getting us any points, and overall offensive inefficiency. After ANY 3rd interception in one half of play, any QB is going to get Booed, and so Jay got a lot of loud boos from the audience. But KEY things to note. When Jay came back on the field after the 2nd INT, he did not get booed. And REALLY key, when Jay came back on the field after the THIRD interception, HE DID NOT GET BOOED AT ALL. The fans were even cheering a little. Know why? THEY WANTED TO SEE US SCORE THATS ALL. Jay moved us down the field a little, had to come out and the drive stalled for reasons that weren't necessarily his fault, and when coming off the field once again the fans did not boo.
3. Ray Lucas' cheers...put together with the 3rd INT booing people wanna make a QB controversy out of this. YEAH RIGHT. The cheers that Lucas got as he came into the game were no louder than the cheers Shawn Wooden was getting when he made his interception and very nice run back for like 30 yards or so. The crowd was genuinely EXCITED that we were gettin the ball around the 50 yard line, with a little over a minute to go, trying to score a TD in the two minute offense....and this was probably because a ton of those same fans were planning on leaving at the halftime gun and wanted to leave on a good note. They did.
4. Randy McMichael. Unbelievable. Can't say enough about this guy after this game. One thing I've been wantin to point out to people, is if you go back and look at the draft grades comin out on this kid, you notice TWO MAJOR knocks on him that dropped him into the 4th round into our laps. ONE was he's not big enough to block effectively but even the analyses admitted that won't stop him from trying the best he can which is better than a lot of TEs. TWO and the biggest criticism was, his CONCENTRATION. Kudos to the coaches for noticing this was a bogus claim, mainly from the game he played against Tennessee. Concentration? I'd call it a strength! As a rookie, he came onto the field, juiced up because the fans were juiced up, and he had the presence of mind to know exactly how much time was on the clock. He said it later, after the catch he was going to go toward the sidelines to run out but remembered that the clock was at 9 seconds when they snapped the ball...Lucas had a good 4 seconds in the pocket making his checkdowns before he tossed out the ball and by the time Randy could get toward the sideline it would have been questionable to whether the clock would have clicked to triple 0's, so Randy decided to go for the endzone as best he could...and oh how he did MAN what athleticism! He cleared 6 feet, no joke. So ALL THIS went through this kids head in one play, he made the right decision, made the incredible athletic play, and coaches questioned his CONCENTRATION??? There's a lot of coaches out there regretting the drafting of a bunch of Jeremey Stevens', Daniel Grahams', Schobels, etc...IMO
5. But certainly not least...and I say this BEFORE I've seen what the coaches are announcing for their starting OL and TE. I saw that someone put up a thread announcing that the coaches have announced the line and TE, but I have not read it yet so these are "virgin" thoughts so-to-speak. When hearing the game and reading about it I saw that Fiedler was pummeled a lot. I only heard one example of who was doing the pummeling, and that was Charles Grant on the fumble that was recovered by us. Some of you might note that I've been a huge proponent of moving Dixon to LT because I'm DEFINITELY not convinced Smith can do the job, and after hearing Fiedler was pummeled I was somewhat convinced Spriggs couldn't do it either. But I'm a man and will admit when I'm wrong and I definitely gave Spriggs less credit than was due. On one play, Charles Grant (a rookie, still not a good sign) severely abused Spriggs and made a move to get inside on Fiedler's blindside and cause a fumble. But after that and before that, I did not notice any glaring errors on Spriggs' part. He did well in fact. So lets place the blame squarely where it belongs. JAMIE NAILS. Thats right, I was as excited about Nails' prospects as any of you but I say if he's won a starting job over Dixon after THIS performance (unless Dixon is moving to LT) then Dixon must really be a mere shadow of his former self. JAMIE NAILS got severely abused in the first half of this game. One minute he looked real good, I saw him tying up a DL and LB and pushing them into each other completely taking them out of the play, on Ricky's 8 yard run. However any other time, either Norman Hand or Grady Jackson were just abusing this kid badly. Hand got in to tackle RW on one play. Then it was the Grady Jackson show. I was looking for outside pressure, but it was all comin from inside...from Nails' spot. I was lookin at a few of these plays and on some of them it just looked like Jackson or Hand could simply punch at Nails and knock him flat on his butt, or tip him over like a poorly stood christmas tree. Jay Fiedler was gettin HURT out there...and the primary culprit was Jamie Nails. Maybe he'll get better. Who knows. But if the battle between Nails and Dixon is as close as I thought it was, with this game determining if Nails was ready to assume a starting role, I'd say he failed. Would grade him as a B in run blocking, and a D- in pass blocking. Spriggs on the other hand I'd grade at about a B- for pass blocking which is fair enough...cuz he did allow a blindside rush to cause a fumble that could hurt in a real game, but any other time he did well.
So now...I'm going to read what the coaches have announced for our OL and watch...I'll be completely off base. They'll say something like Brent Smith starting at LT and Jamie Nails at LG. LOL. Sad that I could be so off-base but probably true. Drum-roll please....
2. The infamous BOOING. I don't see the big deal but thats just me. They started to Boo Jay after the 2nd interception but only slightly and a lot of it had to do with him not getting us any points, and overall offensive inefficiency. After ANY 3rd interception in one half of play, any QB is going to get Booed, and so Jay got a lot of loud boos from the audience. But KEY things to note. When Jay came back on the field after the 2nd INT, he did not get booed. And REALLY key, when Jay came back on the field after the THIRD interception, HE DID NOT GET BOOED AT ALL. The fans were even cheering a little. Know why? THEY WANTED TO SEE US SCORE THATS ALL. Jay moved us down the field a little, had to come out and the drive stalled for reasons that weren't necessarily his fault, and when coming off the field once again the fans did not boo.
3. Ray Lucas' cheers...put together with the 3rd INT booing people wanna make a QB controversy out of this. YEAH RIGHT. The cheers that Lucas got as he came into the game were no louder than the cheers Shawn Wooden was getting when he made his interception and very nice run back for like 30 yards or so. The crowd was genuinely EXCITED that we were gettin the ball around the 50 yard line, with a little over a minute to go, trying to score a TD in the two minute offense....and this was probably because a ton of those same fans were planning on leaving at the halftime gun and wanted to leave on a good note. They did.
4. Randy McMichael. Unbelievable. Can't say enough about this guy after this game. One thing I've been wantin to point out to people, is if you go back and look at the draft grades comin out on this kid, you notice TWO MAJOR knocks on him that dropped him into the 4th round into our laps. ONE was he's not big enough to block effectively but even the analyses admitted that won't stop him from trying the best he can which is better than a lot of TEs. TWO and the biggest criticism was, his CONCENTRATION. Kudos to the coaches for noticing this was a bogus claim, mainly from the game he played against Tennessee. Concentration? I'd call it a strength! As a rookie, he came onto the field, juiced up because the fans were juiced up, and he had the presence of mind to know exactly how much time was on the clock. He said it later, after the catch he was going to go toward the sidelines to run out but remembered that the clock was at 9 seconds when they snapped the ball...Lucas had a good 4 seconds in the pocket making his checkdowns before he tossed out the ball and by the time Randy could get toward the sideline it would have been questionable to whether the clock would have clicked to triple 0's, so Randy decided to go for the endzone as best he could...and oh how he did MAN what athleticism! He cleared 6 feet, no joke. So ALL THIS went through this kids head in one play, he made the right decision, made the incredible athletic play, and coaches questioned his CONCENTRATION??? There's a lot of coaches out there regretting the drafting of a bunch of Jeremey Stevens', Daniel Grahams', Schobels, etc...IMO
5. But certainly not least...and I say this BEFORE I've seen what the coaches are announcing for their starting OL and TE. I saw that someone put up a thread announcing that the coaches have announced the line and TE, but I have not read it yet so these are "virgin" thoughts so-to-speak. When hearing the game and reading about it I saw that Fiedler was pummeled a lot. I only heard one example of who was doing the pummeling, and that was Charles Grant on the fumble that was recovered by us. Some of you might note that I've been a huge proponent of moving Dixon to LT because I'm DEFINITELY not convinced Smith can do the job, and after hearing Fiedler was pummeled I was somewhat convinced Spriggs couldn't do it either. But I'm a man and will admit when I'm wrong and I definitely gave Spriggs less credit than was due. On one play, Charles Grant (a rookie, still not a good sign) severely abused Spriggs and made a move to get inside on Fiedler's blindside and cause a fumble. But after that and before that, I did not notice any glaring errors on Spriggs' part. He did well in fact. So lets place the blame squarely where it belongs. JAMIE NAILS. Thats right, I was as excited about Nails' prospects as any of you but I say if he's won a starting job over Dixon after THIS performance (unless Dixon is moving to LT) then Dixon must really be a mere shadow of his former self. JAMIE NAILS got severely abused in the first half of this game. One minute he looked real good, I saw him tying up a DL and LB and pushing them into each other completely taking them out of the play, on Ricky's 8 yard run. However any other time, either Norman Hand or Grady Jackson were just abusing this kid badly. Hand got in to tackle RW on one play. Then it was the Grady Jackson show. I was looking for outside pressure, but it was all comin from inside...from Nails' spot. I was lookin at a few of these plays and on some of them it just looked like Jackson or Hand could simply punch at Nails and knock him flat on his butt, or tip him over like a poorly stood christmas tree. Jay Fiedler was gettin HURT out there...and the primary culprit was Jamie Nails. Maybe he'll get better. Who knows. But if the battle between Nails and Dixon is as close as I thought it was, with this game determining if Nails was ready to assume a starting role, I'd say he failed. Would grade him as a B in run blocking, and a D- in pass blocking. Spriggs on the other hand I'd grade at about a B- for pass blocking which is fair enough...cuz he did allow a blindside rush to cause a fumble that could hurt in a real game, but any other time he did well.
So now...I'm going to read what the coaches have announced for our OL and watch...I'll be completely off base. They'll say something like Brent Smith starting at LT and Jamie Nails at LG. LOL. Sad that I could be so off-base but probably true. Drum-roll please....