Review of our embarrising performance

[papabear]

I'm sure the great deabte on Schaub will get beat to death, so I'm only going to say this. He sucked. He didn't get much help, but he sucked. He looks nothing like the QB he was last year.

Andre Johnson should have caught both of those balls. Sure, they were tough plays, but not impossible...and definitely plays a WR is supposed to make. Not to mention one that is supposed to be an "elite" WR. I'm not putting the blame on AJ, but if he catches that first pass it could have had a very positive/calming effect on Schaub and the teams confidence.

Slaton was a bright spot, but I'm not ready to say we have solved our problems in the running game. There were still too many runs that got stuffed. I wonder how much of that was Slaton and how much was the line....It looked like the line but without the game film and the knowledge of the play call it's hard to say for sure. It was still nice to see.

I thought the defense looked better today. still plenty of sloppy tackling though. We got some pressure at times, and it seemed like Smith was at least trying to be creative at times....Although the only good thing I can say about Mario being in coverage is that it's better than Weaver being in coverage. I understand that the Titans probably game planned Mario so he was probably hoping to catch the Titans line off gaurd when he didn't rush, but I really don't want to see this too much.

Kubiak seems to coach "tight". I like being agressive on fourth down, but it seems like Kubiak was more desperate than anything....well before it was time to be desperate. He also talks about how he wants to be a running team....and always abandons the run quickly when we fall behind. We had too many runs getting stuffed, but there was no reason to go away from the run as much we did in the second half....especially on the goalline.

I also want to know who is in the booth making decisions on challenges. After the first waste of a challenge I wonder if Kubiak was scared to trust them again....Kubiak has a history of challenging plays that have no chance of being overturned. They need to sort out the communication with the booth.

I think Kubiak is a good coach, but he it seems far too often he caoches in panic mode. Many times when there was no reason to panic yet.

[jppaul]

I forgot to add to the original post that McNair is to blame also, he needs to send the league scheduling office a fruit cake or something, maybe then we could get a schedule like the Pats.

[Joshua]

With regard to Schaub, my biggest concern is that he appears easily rattled, intimidated, scared (pick whatever word you think fits best). Granted, this is nothing more than my personal opinion but he appears to already be shellshocked in only about 10 games. And he really hasn't been hit that much. I think it took Carr about 3 years to get to that level and he got hit a lot more than Schaub.

I also hate how every time he gets hit he is slow to get up and let's the other team see him rolling around on the turf. (Anybody else see Vandenbosch yank Schaub off the turf on the last INT?) Even if you get your bell rung, you should try and get up quickly and not let the other team know. A similar point is that if these hits really are taking that kind of toll, I'm not sure he's tough enough to play QB in this league. Virtually every QB is going to take those types of hits every game. If you can't withstand that, you're in the wrong line of work.

Finally, I know most teams don't tackle in practice for fear of injury, but we need to have some tackling drills. We're not good enough on defense to miss tackles when we're finally in the right spot.

[KJ3]

Originally Posted by jppaul

I forgot to add to the original post that McNair is to blame also, he needs to send the league scheduling office a fruit cake or something, maybe then we could get a schedule like the Pats.

.....to take on the mighty dolphins? no thanks...

Originally Posted by Joshua

With regard to Schaub, my biggest concern is that he appears easily rattled, intimidated, scared (pick whatever word you think fits best). Granted, this is nothing more than my personal opinion but he appears to already be shellshocked in only about 10 games. And he really hasn't been hit that much. I think it took Carr about 3 years to get to that level and he got hit a lot more than Schaub.

yup yup yup. football has no room for scared.

I also hate how every time he gets hit he is slow to get up and let's the other team see him rolling around on the turf. (Anybody else see Vandenbosch yank Schaub off the turf on the last INT?) Even if you get your bell rung, you should try and get up quickly and not let the other team know.

yea, i thought that was pretty big-brother of kvb. like a "get up and quit acting like a baby before mom sees us" bit. seeing as how the texans were content to be little-brother i guess i can't really fault the titans.

don't tell me their goal is anything other than knocking him out of the game. even if you get back up winded, bloodied, bruised, whatever get up and let them know that wasn't enough, that they can't do it.

Originally Posted by keith

I'm interested in the record projections though. Forgetting briefly how poorly the team has looked in their first two games, for those of you predicting wins this season, did you expect the team to win in either Pittsburgh or Nashville this season?

well, no. well, not exactly. i think i split our games between every division opponent so...i guess technically i'm still on with my prediction. although technically i would expect us to be 1-2 right now (beating baltimore).

[Roy P]

Originally Posted by papabear

[Schaub] He sucked. He didn't get much help, but he sucked.

I'm not putting the blame on AJ, but if he catches that first pass it could have had a very positive/calming effect on Schaub and the teams confidence.

There were still too many runs that got stuffed. I wonder how much of that was Slaton and how much was the line....It looked like the line.

I thought the defense looked better today. still plenty of sloppy tackling though.

Kubiak seems to coach "tight". I like being agressive on fourth down, but it seems like Kubiak was more desperate than anything....well before it was time to be desperate.

I think Kubiak is a good coach, but he it seems far too often he caoches in panic mode. Many times when there was no reason to panic yet.

Many good points that I agree with here.

I think Slaton did well in spite of the O-Line, not because of it. He was making people miss or spinning out of tackles to break long runs. However, there were several times when he was stuffed behind the LOS. I'm not sure what Alex Gibbs is doing, but I hope the OL starts to figure it out soon.

The defense is respectable when we can stop the run on 1st down. Getting Frank Okam on the field made me happy. Them playing Zgonina as much as they did makes me scratch my head. I realize he's the GM's old roommate, but come on, does he have some pictures hidden somewhere? Amobi Okoye is still getting pushed around too much for my taste. I'm not going to call him a bust yet, but I'm not going to call him "Baby Sapp" either.

Kubiak went into this game trying to make something happen. If he were a player, I would say that he was "Pressing" instead of letting the game come to him. It is similar to when a QB starts "aiming" vice trusting that his pass will go to where it needs to go. After the first couple of failures, Kubiak started going into hyper-panic.

All this talk about benching Schaub in favor of Sage is somewhat knee-jerk. If I were Kubiak, I'd let sage play the next three games just to remind fans that Sage is not the starting QB for a reason. Unfortunately, I would hate to think what that would do to the psyche of the city. Right now, there's at least hope that we have the answer to our problems currently on the roster. We don't have Favre, Manning, Roethlisberger, McNabb, Romo, Brady, Brees, or any other Pro-Bowl QB in Matt or Sage. Then again, there are several other teams in that boat. I thought or hoped we might have a QB in the caliber of Kerry Collins, Brian Griese, or Chad Pennington (those teams won last week). While it would be nice to have THE guy, we previously didn't have A guy.