I am as disappointed as anyone about how the season has gone. A win against the lowly bills would have set up this weekend as a showdown for first place. But, I guess we should have some perspective. Since Parcells, Ireland, and Sparano have come on board, we went from 1-15 to 11-5, and 5-6 this year. If we look at Sean Payton's record with the Saints (who might be the best team in the league this year), he took a 3-13 ball club in 2005 to a 10-6 record in 2006. They then went 7-9 in 2007, 8-8 in 2008, and are now 11-0. This, with arguably the best QB in the league leading them. I think we'll know much more about how the current regime is doing when we get to years 3 and 4. I imagine there were some disgruntled Saints fans when they went 7-9 and 8-8 in consecutive years after going to the NFC championship game. It will take time to eradicate the putrid personnel decisions made by the likes of Wannstedt, Saban, and Cameron. Whether this current group of coaches and personnel guys are the right people to get it done should be answered in due time. Keep the faith, we may get there yet.

I basically made this same point in another thread, we all just need to chill out and give these guys some time to build this thing right. And remember that every personnel move isnt gonna be a homerun, they will miss on some.

I might add that Buffalo is the only team worse than us that we have lost to this year.

The frustrating thing is that I felt like we should have won the games against NO and Indy and Buffalo. Last year, we found a way to win the games while this year it feels like we find ways to lose them. But, a fair amount of the reason for that has to be the fact that we're playing better teams.

Yes, but knowing our luck , we will be 15-0 on December 22, 2012....

I agree that there is time still; but, the thing is that not everything they 'try' is going to work...and...they people at the top need to know 'what' didn't work and 'why'.

My concern is that it isn't just the players that need improving. The coaches have some 'splainin' to do as well.

Play calling has been questionable

Defensive Blitzing/then stopping when it was working has twice happened. Exposing rookies, too much rotation...all issues.

Player Evaluation - Turner, Wake, Roth, Vontae Davis, Wilson vs Clemons, Merling.

Player Development - Ginn, Turner.

Roth gets cut and with 1 week of practice he gets 7 tackles and a sack in 1 game.

Wilford got cut, signs back with Jags mid-October and now has 7 catches for 14.3 yds/catch......better than all but Hartline.


SO....does Sparano dismiss this stuff...or does he sit down with Bill and fix coaching too?

If he fixes it...great!...If he doesn't see it.....sigh.....here we go again.

What I do like about what Parcells et al. are doing is not giving away draft picks. The draft is a numbers game. The more picks you have, the more chances to strike gold ala Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor. Past regimes gave away draft picks like there was no tomorrow. Better teams hoard them because the more you have, the more likely it is that you'll find some gems in the later rounds. I agree that play calling on both sides of the ball has been suspect. Henning is likely gone soon as he came out of retirement as it is to coach here at the request of his friend Bill Parcells. At his age, I can't imagine him being here much longer. It will be interesting to see if they promote from within (David Lee) or hire a higher profile guy from outside of the organization.

Unlike his predecessors, I think Sparano is relatively humble and able to admit faults, mistakes, whatever. So, I think it's likely that he does work to fix some of the coaching shortcomings. Perhaps the greatest example of this is his working with David Lee to introduce the Wildcat last year. He took a chance and humbled himself by, in effect, saying 'My way ain't working so good'.

That said, some of this stuff has gone on too long this season already:
- receiver development: Ginn has clearly regressed and Turner should probably get a chance given the overall quality of our WR corps. Either he hasn't developed much at all, or he wasn't much to begin with. My guess is that Dorrall has a part in pre-selection evaluation, and he certainly has responsibility for post-selection development. Not a great sign for him.
- vanishing QB pressure in the 2nd half - I've noticed this as well, and it boggles my mind. If it ain't broke in the first half, don't fix it in the second. I think this is the single biggest reason we have struggled to close out games.

I'm not really there with you on player evaluation and movement. I do think Wake should have been playing more, but he has been seeing increased playing time. With Porter, he may be surviving on last season's performance. Vontae is playing...who should Merling replace at DE?

Listed as a TE for the Jags, Wilford has only had two games with more than one catch, and he had a season-high of 39 yards last game. He has nice YPC, but 100 yards receiving in a month and a half doesn't scream 'we should have kept him' to me.

With Roth, I'm convinced that Sparano valued integrity enough that Roth's lying and playing contract games (allegedly) led Tony to a point where the right decision was to cut him. I'm not sure why they didn't just let him sit or play sparingly the rest of the season, unless it was to open another roster spot. I'll keep my eye on his stats for the remainder of the season, but getting tackles on a defense as bad as Cleveland's speaks more to their lack of talent than our need of Roth's, I believe. Cincy barely had to pass in the game, as it was in hand from the start. They ran for 210 yards at about 4.7 ypc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2009 07:50AM by tsstamper.

A couple points...

Wake....took too long to get him on the field, too long to get those increased snaps, and last weak he saw fewer snaps and Moses played, and Porter was allowed to be out there doing precious little for a lot of the game.

Merling? he wasn't being given the opportunity in Training camp to vie for the starting spot. he was 2nd team for the majority. He has more production than Langford on a fraction of the snaps. Starks is playing well, Langford is playing ok...but when you look at production in relation to snaps count? Merling should be on the field more than he is.

Ernest Wilford? No he isn't a superstar by any stretch. BUT he was judged not good enough to get on the field with us...that's us with the weak WR corp. The Jags sign him in October and he is getting valuable 1st down receptions and has a 14.3 yd/ctch average. I don't know whether it is practice attitude? Or something else? But I question how well they are evaluating the potential of the guys on the roster.

Turner should get a chance, Merling and Wake deserve more snaps, and Wilford should have been activated and put into a couple games...and thrown to...before they decide they don't like what they see from practice.

I'm there with you on Wake. Porter was the one who missed setting the edge on Fitzpatrick's TD run. In fact, the last truly notable thing I remember him doing was sacking the SF QB on 4th down last year to preserve that win.

I wouldn't have a beef with Merling getting starts over Langford or just more PT. I like the rotation of DEs generally, though I noticed it was a bit out of control in the BUF game.

I suppose you never really know until you let the thing play out on the field, but I just don't get the sense that Wilford was ever going to be anything special with us. A minor improvement over the likes of Haynos and Turner? Maybe, but only minor I would bet...and that's only maybe. Neither Haynos, Wilford or (it would appear early on) Turner are what we truly need. Haynos and Turner are young and cheap while Wilford wasn't. If you replace say Haynos' production w/Wilford's since Wilford started back with the Jags, they're not too different. Haynos has taken 3 more receptions to get 4 more yards.

I probably have a bigger issue with the lack of receiver development and the apparent lack of emphasis on getting a truly complete receiver. The mere fact that we're giving attention to the idea that Wilford wasn't given much of a chance to show anything more than he did (which wasn't much when he played for us in 2008 and one wide-open TD catch/run in 2009 preseason) should tell us that the real problem is overall lack of talent and/or development.

However, you've piqued my interest in following these two former phins the rest of the year to see how things turn out.