They've been going downhill because their once fearsome defence is now ridiculously old (including Dick Lebeau). Calling Ben "decent" is a huge disservice to him, he's been consistently among the best QBs in the NFL for several years now. A somewhat dodgy (but by no means catastrophic) start to this season doesn't suddenly put his job in jeopardy. Todd Haley is more to blame than anybody else if Roethlisberger has regressed.
Wilson still standing up where RG3 and Kaepernick are going down. With Sherman, Rice, Lynch, Chancellor, Clemens, Unger and Miller the Seahawks look to make it far in the post-season. What a brilliant offense they got.
I don't think individuals are what is gonna take us to the post-season and beyond, certainly not some of the ones you have mentioned anyway. It's the shear strength in depth of our team which is what is doing it for us at the mo. For example, we didn't have Clemons for the first two games of the season, so we have toyed around with various players at DE, who have been just as good at his job. Michael Bennett is on 2.5 sacks for the season, and Cliff Avril has one sack fumble to his name too. On top of that, we have Red Bryant and maybe Bruce Irvin, depending on how we use him now he's been swapped to Sam backer. Clemons is a great player, but is coming off ACL surgery, and is one of the highest paid players on the team. He's also getting on a bit too, and I would not be completely disappointed if we went down the Bennett/Avril direction instead of renewing his contract. Rice is similar. Yes he's good, but not really worth the money we're paying bearing in mind we're a run-first team. Plus with Baldwin, Tate and (hopefully) Harvin, again there is a lot of depth there, and again, with his contract up pretty soon, I'd happily go another way rather than renew. Miller is decent but again not worth the money we're paying for him. And then we come onto the LOB, with Chancellor and Sherman already mentioned. What about Earl Thomas, one of the most dynamic safeties in the league, or Brandon Browner, the biggest CB in the league? Then there's the rest of our DB depth...CB especially is ridiculiously loaded with good players. I'm also a little miffed that Bobby Wagner or KJ Wright haven't been mentioned either. Wagner especially has all the makings of being one of the best ILBs in the league.
Quite happy with our start considering Brady has had no real offensive weapons for most of the games this year, hopefully we can get Amendola back fit for the rest of the season, Gronk to return, the rookies start to make some more plays, with a better passing attack, it should free up the ground game, defence appears to be playing better ball so far this season, however we haven't really come up against any power offences yet. Seahawks, if they get home field advantage and I don't see anyone stopping them getting to the big game, one of the most complete teams in the NFL right now.
Well the Vikings are ****, Couldn't even beat a Browns team that has thrown in the towel on the season already. Time to get through the season, hopefully get Bridgewater, sack all the coaching staff and start afresh next year
I agree. The whole team seems ponderous (forgive the pun) and don't seem to have a clue. There seems to be very occasional glimpses of great things, but for the most part just headless chickens being led by a sloth.
Is annoying as I think there is a lot of talent on the roster. Unfortunately we have no talent at QB and an offensive co-ordinator whos playbook is about the size of a post it note. Its either run straight up the middle with AP, some **** play action pass that means Ponder moves out to his left and gets intercepted, or some screen to AP/a WR and hope they do everything. The most frustrating thing is Ponder, as mentioned before I think if we had a decent QB we'd have a good shot at going pretty deep into the post season. Come the end of this season I can see Allen leaving and probably K-Will aswell which means 2 more holes to fill, and another year of APs prime gone. In some ways I think it could be a good move to trade AP and get a couple of picks in this draft and try and do a whole re-build this off season with a new coaching staff.
Its getting to the point where I hope for a slight injury to Mr Ponder so he can sit on the sideline for a while and think about the game, whilst Cassel leads the team for a while. Bring an old head into it to settle them down.
I'm still backing the Seahawks for the moment. Getting tough to pick from them, the Bears and the Broncos though.
