I thought I'd have to beat off all the Spartan slappys this morning after those Drew Stanton last minute heroics we saw on Saturday night. That shit reminded me of Joey Harrington during his senior year at Oregon. Here are a few take aways from preseason game #2...
We gotta talk about it right off the bat. Stafford looks solid so far. He went 13-18 for 130 yds with 1 TD and would've had even better numbers if Pettigrew wasn't dropping balls in the redzone. Even with the receiving miscues, getting points outta your first 4 drives to start the game is a fantastic sign and something we aren't accustomed to in Detroit. The touchdown to Calvin was gorgeous and should be how we butter our bread all season. The shocking thing about that play was that Stafford had great fuckin protection. Every single guy on the line did there job and then it became a game of simple pitch and catch with a 6'5" receiver and a 5'10" corner. In my humble opinion you need to take a shot like that every single time you get in the redzone and if they start giving the corner help over the top then you gash them with Pettigrew or Tony Scheffler down the middle of the field. Jahvid Best had a decent night and averaged 6.1 yds on 8 carries. I'm just a little disappointed that we haven't seen him bust the big one yet but as he gets more comfortable I think we'll be seeing it a lot more.
But as much as I like what I've seen from our first team thus far, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that were looking at an 8-8 season. And the reason is that the preseason doesn't mean jack. In fact, I remember not too long ago when we went 4-0 in the preseason and then lost 16 regular season games in a row. So don't go baking any cornbread just yet. You can be happy Stafford is finding Calvin and that the offense is moving the ball but once it's all on the line they're gonna have to be real consistent and limit bad decision if they wanna hang around in games. Good NFL teams smell blood in the water and an interception or fumble early can put this young team in a real bad position of having to play catch up and abandon the game plan. We need to take it one play at a time, find what is working and run with it. When teams adjust to what you're throwing at them, then you adjust and find another weapon to utilize. Bottom line is that the offense putting up points is absolutely essential because it's pretty evident that this secondary isn't gonna be able to stop anybody.
And now onto the defense. The front four looked alright but fell off a bit in the second quarter. Without any pass rush the secondary was screwed more than Montana Fishburne. With time even Kyle Orton can pick you apart and he took advantage of a secondary without it's key piece, Louis Delmas. Despite Dre Bly's early interception, the secondary had little to get excited about. The most disappointing part of the defense was the play of JBS favorite Zack Follett. He looked slow in pass coverage and didn't get over to the flat in time to stop Marquez Branson from scoring a touchdown with :03 seconds left in the first half.
Even worse was when he got stiff armed to the ground after he tried to tackle Lance Ball on his way into the endzone. He was in position to make the play but tried to tackle him way to high and got sat on his ass. There is no doubt that Follett has the desire to play in the NFL, I just hope his technique improves in a hurry cause that shit was Marinelli-ish.
PS - I missed the very beginning of the game but got an update on my phone that said we got the ball first but were down 2-0 after only 4 seconds. Then when I got to the bar the score was 0-0 again. Shit didn't make sense, can anybody tell me what happened?
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