Aros":341l5udp said:
Don't sleep on the Cardinals just yet. They aren't going away and I can see them nippin' on our heels the rest of the way.
And I don't care how average the Packers look right now. They ALWAYS are tough to beat in Green Bay.
And the Panthers are definitely not as formidable as last year but that won't be a cake walk either.
The thing with the cards is Arians gets so emotional-both negative and poitive-and his team emulates this emotion. When they are doing well, Arians exudes confidence and positivity. When they are doing bad, he throws guys under the bus (kicker), blames refs, throws tantrums etc. The cards aren't out of it, but if they lose a couple more, they will be easy to beat in my opinion, especially if we beat the eagles.
The rams just need a good hard beatdown by this team. Not just score wise, but really make Goff begin to question his decisions, and light up their defense. With Fant instead of sowell at LT we should do MUCH etter when we see them next. He is a much more powerful and quick left tackle. Once we get it in their head that we are decisively better and take away their confidence they have when they play us, the sooner we can put this stupid "always play us tough" thing to bed. Break their spirit. This will take a couple of games probably, but it starts with this next one.
The eagles game is going to be tougher than we think. Yes, we beat the patriots convincingly and played a phenomenal game against them, but they don't really have a pass rush and a mediocre defense in general. The eagles defense is much better and will be a good test for us to see if the line has really improved as much as it looked like last game. Rawls will have a slow start I think. Similar to the beginning of the season when he was just too excited to go and doesn't keep patient and let the line open up before he hits it. I think he does bust one or two real good runs though which will give him confidence going into week 12. Anxious to see how pope does against this defense as well. We haven't seen him run against a starting defensive line.
I think the 9ers are going to gel under kaep. By the time we play them, we might see a decent team. We have seen before what a confident kaep can do. The guy is an athletic freak. His main issues happen between his ears.
Panthers don't scare me. They look lost and with the way cam whines, I don't see them or him turning it around. He blames everything else but the problem, which is him. This doesn't give the other players the confidence and fire needed to finish strong.
Packers are similar to the panthers as they are in meltdown and blamegame mode. There is a big disconnect between the coaches and the players, and the players are left torn and unfocused. Should be a decisive win.
The bucs are streaky. so no telling what team we will see. We could blow them out or it could be a battle. They have good players but questionable playcalling and execution at times from what I have seen. I see us as the favorite to win this game though.
This obviously hinges on health. The running game really opens up our playbook. If Rawls gets injured again and we don't have pope or procise, we could be in trouble. Both Rawls and procise have shown to be injury prone (procise in college and rawls has 2 broken bones in less than a full season), so this is a concern.
Overall, I think we drop for sure 1, maybe 2 games ending with 11-4-1. If we can go 12-3-1, I think we have a very good shot at HFA as Dallas' record is better than the actual team. They have some tough games coming up, and I see them dropping at least 2, but we need them to drop 3.
