One swallow doesn’t make a summer, but this was a good win. And one I saw coming, which makes it even more sweeter.
Three things I liked:
Punter Smith to Mike Sellers. What a play! Well designed and brilliantly executed.
Players stepping up. Devin Thomas, Fred Davis, Malcolm Kelly, the O-line, Ladell Betts… it goes on and on. A lot of players that we’d been waiting on for a while now put a good game in.
That Santana Moss had only 8 yards, and that 10 different players caught a catch shows what an all-round effort this was.
Defensive pressure. It was great to see the front four making their presence felt. Sims, in particular, took some hard hits towards the end of the game.
And three things that I didn’t like:
The Secondary. What the heck was Bradon Marshall doing by himself? Then… “Oh come on. Not again!” As the highlight clip shows though, Smoot and Hall were all over each other on that one. Smoot didn’t have a great game, all told.
This is still a good unit though, despite a couple of not-so-great outings. And to be fair, the did learn their lesson in the second half.
Hall’s hand-off to Landry. No! No! No! I have to think the coaches chewed him out on this. After making a good pick (on a bad decision by Chris Sims) he ran out of the endzone and headed up field. That all sounds fine, right? But then he tossed the ball off to LaRon Landry at the 30 yard line. The 30 yard line! Fight for a couple of yards, but protect the ball and go down.
Though it came off and Landry gained another 13 yards, it was a high-risk play that wasn’t worth it. Other than that, he had a pretty good game.
Haynesworth battling through. Whilst I do like seeing a player hurting but stepping up, he seems to be limping off at some point every week now. You want your best guys on the field, but I wonder about the long-term implications of the big guy’s health when he can’t be kept on the sideline if he needs to be.
So roll on the Cowboys! They’ll be smarting from a loss against the Packers and whilst they’re strong favourites you can just never tell in a big rivalry game like this. One I’m very much looking forward to.
Image Credits: The Bad M@ttitude’s from Flickr. Visit his photostream.
