One of the reasons I wanted Denver to beat San Diego was that Denver now faces a pretty brutal stretch now where they play Pitt, Green Bay, @ KC, @ Chicago with Detroit and Tennessee mixed in... There was a good chance they were going to drop back to the pack no matter what...
In contrast, SD has us, Houston and Minny, which on paper gives them a great chance to put together a 4 game win streak and enter their Indy, Baltimore, Jax stretch briming with self confidence.... They lose today to Denver and maybe they continue to infight and start pulling at some threads that shouldn't be pulled on... Mostly, I was hoping that they'd implode and AJ Smith was subsequentionly cut loose by ownership for his arrogant handling of the team this offseason, because I really believe he's put together probably the most talented roster in the NFL and drafts about as well as anyone....
Anyway, onwards and upwards... Clearly I'm not as confident about this game as others are...
I don't know if it's a good sign or a bad sign that the Rat and I were on the same wave length as to how to attack the SD defense... I like that he spread out the defense by going 3 and 4 wide and using a ball control passing game... If they don't shoot themselves in the foot with turnovers in the redzone at the end of some of those drives, it may have been a different game... As it was, at least they moved the ball and controlled the pass rush as I don't recall Cutler getting sacked, though for whatever lame reason, the Bolts are using Merriman and Phillips in coverage certainly more than I would... I'm thinking I'd come out using primarily the shotgun and take advantage of Rhodes experience running and catching the ball out of spread formations.... If it were me, I'd line Higgins (for lack of a better speedster) up in the slot on the first play and throw a deep post to him just to make the safeties play honest...
Defensively, I have no answers... Unfortunately IMO our weaknesses play right to the Bolt's strengths... They have the kind of patient RB's that tend to take advantage of our D's propensity to overpersue gaps, and they attack the post with Gates and Jackson.... This is one game that I'd almost rather play a lot of man off and zone coverages to keep containment and to be less susceptable to those screen passes Norv likes so much... Burgess playing like Burgess would help a lot because Olivea was having a real tough time with Dumerville when they matched up...
But hey, if we can do something to take the crowd out of it early and stop the Bolts from building on the momentum of todays game.......
