3 positives and 3 negatives from Week 1

[mark sanchez]

Self-explanatory, I'm trying to get a feel for the goods and bads of all the teams so far.

[The LBC]

I'm game.

3 Positives:
- Rivers' decision making. Did he botch some throws that could/should have been put in more catch-able spots? Yes, though some of that you can attribute to not having the right side available to throw to a number of times because Vasquez and Clary weren't maintaining their lanes long enough to give Rivers the space to fit short and medium passes to that side in. Phil appeared much more conscious of making smart, less caution-to-the-wind throws on Monday with an obvious effort towards cutting down on his turnovers from last year.

- We're finally swarming again. Too many years past we've had to sit back and watch our guys standing there waiting for a teammate to make the play. They'd be like the gunner that gets all the way down to the returner, breaks downs, and then freezes up waiting for the returner to make a move only to end up decleated by a blocker. I'll be interested to see how Pagano schemes against a less speed-oriented offense this weekend. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt right now that the larger cushions we saw were due to the great team speed Oakland has, as there seemed to otherwise be a go for the throat type mentality to the rest of the defensive gameplan.

- The front 3 are disruptive. And I think disruptive is the best word to use to describe them; they're having an impact but it's not in the sexy stats (sack and the like). If we were getting half of the uncalled holding plays on those guys (specifically Reyes), the game would have been even more one-sided. Franklin is a boon to have on run-defense, largely because I'm waning on Cam Thomas - the effort just doesn't seem to be there or at least the fire. That said, we're getting production 2-deep out of our 5-tech corps now, so the pressure on the NG to draw consistent double and triple teams to free up the linebackers isn't as necessary.

3 Negatives:
- Run-blocking. Just in general, but the only guys that look like they're trying out there are Harris (who is still overmatched in terms of not having pro level strength yet), Hardwick (who is limited in what he can do, largely due to his lack of size), and Vasquez (and I'm probably giving him more credit in this department than he's due because he made that great cut block). Green looks like he just totally lacks the desire to lay someone out when he's pulling - he just sort of pulls, not aggressively, there's no mean streak whatsoever from him. Clary's a marshmallow... we all know this.

- Unnecessarily repetitive play-calling. I get that we want to keep teams honest. I get that we need to try and establish a run-game even if ours isn't being very effective on the day. But, for God's sake Norv, if the runs up the A & B gaps are stuffed behind the line 5 and 6 times, you might want to find a new go-to run play.

- Settling for FG's. I don't like using the word settling because we were trying for the TD's, but we couldn't pull them off (largely because we'd pretty much established to that point that we couldn't run the rock up the gut, so we weren't much of a threat to take the ball in on the ground unless it was off a sweep, counter, or screen pass). Lots of things contributed to this (mistake by the OL, overthrows by Rivers while erring on the side of "putting it where only his receiver could get it", drops by receivers). Just something to keep an eye on because it can be a major cause for concern when we're facing higher-tier teams if this becomes a trend.
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[AntonioGates]

LBC did a good job so I'll keep it short

+ 2nd half defensive adjustments. Besides that garbage time TD the defense dominated in the second half.
+ Smart and safe with the lead. When your defense is dominating, no need to force anything on offense. Take the free 3 points.
+ Pass blocking. Rivers got touched about 3 times all day. Clary and Harris both exceeded my expectations of them.

- Run game. Backs and blocking. Although Raiders have a great pair of DTs.
- Drops/Overthrows in endzone. Gates dropped a couple and Philip overthrew Floyd on an easy TD.
- Failure to turn that blocked punt into a TD. There were 5 Chargers and on Raider near the ball after it was blocked. How does it not end up in the endzone?

[Duffman57]

Both guys above me pretty much covered everything...

The only thing i got that they kinda in-directly said was the red-zone struggles, failure to make Red Zone trips into TD's, we constantly settled for FG's in the redzone when we really should've scored on at least a few of them. Last year the problem was Turnovers in the redzone, this year, that may get a lot better, but i'm hoping that our lack of a run game doesn't kill us and make us stall drives in the red zone.
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Kiltman on the Sig

[The LBC]