A coaches message gets old whether it's rah rah or woof woof. That's not unique to Pete. Players tired of Vermeil. They tired of Parcels. And Sherm is notoriously thin skinned.
I think I agree in part that the roster has underperformed. I say in part, because when you see what Pete gets out of players who otherwise wouldnt achieve what they do, that accounts for something. How far above who he is, is Geno playing? Lock? I mean, 99.9% of everyone in the world thought starting Geno last year was a joke. And with Pete, he went on to post the season he did. We can talk about regression. But really, if he was playing way above his ceiling to begin with, doesn't that mean that he's getting good coaching and playing in a good system? Same with Lock.
Hoe many teams lose both starting tackles and manage to stay competitive?
On the flip, Pete's admission this week that the intensity in preparation the team had leading up to the Eagles game was above what they've had all year. That's disturbing because it points to a team that week in and week out hasn't been focused enough, and that showed in the product on the field and especially in thr losses we've had. It shouldn't have taken Pete 15 weeks to see what slapped him in the face in week 1. Same thing. Lack of focus. Sub-par preparation.
So where I'm landing is that I think Pete brings soemthing intangible to this team that gets players and sometimes the unit as a whole to perform better than what another staff would be able to extract. AND other times that same approach results in games slipping away that shouldn't. But in the end, at this point in our development, are we really more than a game off of what this team's potential really is? I don't know the answer to that. Because I can't say that many other coaching staffs would have gotten what ours did from Lock this past Monday or what it has from Geno since he's been a starter. I don't know many staffs that could March into Detroit with a backup o Line and beat the Lions. Or with a backup qb, missing its best defensive player, beat the 2nd best team in the NFC, when they had to have a win to keep pace for the 1 seed. Or go into Dallas, a place no one wins but the Cowboys, and go toe to toe with them... without your starting RB.
And.. I also don't see how you drop the 2nd game to the Rams. The first one, I caveat because we did lose both starting tackles against a defense featuring the best D lineman in the game. But yeah, we have sleep walked ourselves to losses.
But are players like Woolen now underperforming, or did they simply overperform last year? Because I seem to remember his play not being great toward the end of the season last year when teams began to understand what he struggles with.
At the end, I think we are right about where we should be. It's just been frustrating to watch and experience because we discount the incredible wins against teams we'd most likely penciled in as Ls to start the season, and dropped games we absokutley coukd have won, but gave away.
Unless Pete is really just done and the game has past him by, I still think that when it's all said and done, we end up being a really good team with a shot to win it all. The path their might just seem like it's lost until we arrive.
