We're probably gonna get another shot at these guys in the playoffs. I'm sure we will make the neccesary adjustments by then. Letting a week 4 game ruin your week just isn't worth it. Save that heartbreak for the end of the season.
There are only 3 things during that whole game that I thought could have been done differently, and not in a hind-sight kind of way either. During the 4th down try as soon as they lined up I said outloud that it was going to be a playaction. Once they faked the handoff I knew the play wouldn't work. They had been doing that play frequently at the goalline, and I figured the Colts would sniff it out. They did. I think the call was a little too cute. On a 4th down like that, the team knows you aren't going to run it up the middle, which is why it would have been perfect to run it up the middle. If you watch the replay, as soon as Penny faked the handoff, there was a huge running lane for the RB to burst through, with just one guy in front waiting for him at the goaline. The second thing I didn't like was that no one tried to pick up the ball on the last kickoff that went to the 1. On a play like that I don't think you can afford to let it bounce. The last thing was on the last play. I thought they should have taken Chad out and put Smith in at QB, go 5 wide, and if possible, put Jones in at one of the tackle positions. That way you have 6 capable ball handlers and a former TE who can at least half run with the ball if needed. But even with those 3 things, it's just nitpicky. The playcall on 4th wasn't the worst ever because it worked before, you can't really blame blockers for not picking up a squib because how can they really know where it'll bounce, and if you take Chad out of the last play, the Colts know you aren't playing for the FG and probably defend the laterals a little better. The best part of all of it though, is that none of those calls are boneheaded. They are just nitpicky things that maybe could have been done differently and didn't work out. They certainly aren't "Take a knee to set up a longer FG" plays. Either way, I still trust this team.
You know what? How stupid can you be blaming Mangini for the weakness at defense. When Eric Mangini came in here he didn't have the personnel for a 3-4 defense. We are still learning how to play the 3-4 effectively and I believe things will get much better in the near future. People negative over a loss in which a team that was meant to be one of the bottom 5 teams in the league that outplayed and barely lost to a top-tier annual contender is ridiculous. We proved that we can play with anyone.
last year we started a 4th string QB most of the year, had a 3rd string RB play the 2nd half, had 1 OL start and ebd the year in the same position, lost our starting TE, lost a PB DE, a starting DT, our best defensive player from '04. NO HC could have won w/ that team so let's throw away 2005. this team is healthy and talented we should be winning games.
you can blame him for changing to 3-4 when we had 4-3 personnel. it doesn't matter if we were predicted to be a bootm 5 team. Things change quickly in this league, last year the Giants, Bucs, redskins and Bears were supposed to be bottom 3rd of the league and we were supposed to be good. things change quickly, w/ a healthy Chad we have a playoff caliber team and we should have 3 wins right now.
Way over reacting. I thought we played a great game against a playoff caliber football team. We had 2 defensive pass interferences that hurt us. Their ability to run against us also hurt us. We did do a better job with it as the game progressed. I saw where one person said we would have lost 30-3 under Herm. I think we would have lost by far more than that. I think we would have been PWNED. Mangini has done a wonderful job ressurecting this team from a near-death experience.
Hindsight is fun. Mangini's 2006 should be negated by his 2007...despite the fact that all but 2 players brought in under him have been complete busts (Kimo and Schlegel).
FYI: I searched for posts written by Learn_To_Swim about Tom Coughlin. I knew that that particular Giants fan had been critical of his team's coach. It turned out that the best post to respond to happened to come in this thread and is more than a year old. It is unfortunate this bumped thread has upset your delicate tendencies and caused you to post in a sarcastic nature once again.
So what if Mangini pulled a Coughlin next year? Probably not on such a grand scale (Championship game)...Coughlin's got some really good talent in the trenches...and he plays in the NFC...
As I noted in one of the nomination threads, you have the potential to be a good poster if you lay off the excessive sarcasm. You are unrelenting with it. It's really off-putting.
Hello. I probably didn't even read this thread. I certainly did not post in it till tonight. I searched for Coughlin comments written by L.T.S. and responded to one of them in (what was meant to be, at least) a humorous fashion. The post just happened to be in a Mangini thread.