Key to the Season...?

I know its early and not one thing or person wins games. However what do you all think is the one part of the game or preformance of what player will have the great impact on how well this season goes?

A couple of things.

On offense, Portis. If he's a thousand yard back, I figure that alone could get the skins to the playoffs. It takes the heat off the passing game, it keeps you out of 2nd- and 3rd-and-longs, it prevents the blitz, it controls clock and field position, and it keeps the D rested. Finally, it sets up the wicked play action to Coles, et. al., and our H-backs slipping out.

On D, Lavar MUST have double-digit sacks. If teams have to really plan and schme for Lavar, then others will also have opportunity to pressure the QB. Griffen and Barrow (and everyone else) must stop the run effectively. And Taylor must adapt quickly to NFL to cover our agressive play all over the field.

Finally, (and obviously) special teams must play well to win the field position game, and to score points on FGs.

All these are quite within reach, I think, but it will take some time for things to gell. Once again, it's new coaches, new systems, new players, on both sides of the ball.

it all depends on how much the team can gel in the offseason, and whether nobody impotant get injured during offseason. I pray that Taylor doesn't get hurt like Jacobs did last year.

I was going to say Portis but I think bigger than that is the O-line. We all know Portis can run behind a strong O-line. I am not so sure he can make it behind an iffy line. If the O-line makes holes he'll find them. And no matter who the QB is he got to have more time than our QBs were gettting last year. If the O-line can hold their own it will also ofcourse keep the our D off the feild and more rested than last year.

The key to our defense is our pass rush. Regardless of where it comes from, opposing QB's need to hear footsteps.

The key to our defense is our pass rush. Regardless of where it comes from, opposing QB's need to hear footsteps.


Especially true since I think 2 of the NFC east's QBs (Eli and whoever Dallas throws up there) will be susceptible to the rush.

i think on offense it's gonna be a close battle between, our starting qb(insert name here), portis, and the offense's safety valve, newly drafted chris cooley(i'm willing to bet he has atleast 4-5 touchdowns this year if healthy.)

on defense it's gonna be either springs staying healthy or griffin reaching his potential.

I think the key to winning is playing as a team. As usual we have a ton of new players and they need to gel and learn to play together. The coaching will key as well, both for making the team gel, and for just not being stupid and not knowing how to call a game.

My guess is that Coles gets a few people on him early in the year, and someone will be watching Portis, therefore Cooley is going to get a lot of clutch plays until teams learn to respect him. No one is going to care to much when a third round fullback is in the game until he burns them. At which point how do they cover all of our weopens?

Portis is used to running behind a trapping style offensive line, where if you can cut and exellerate you can find big hitter's, with Gibb's it's a little different it's more of a straight ahead smash mouth type of running game, which mean's he will be running into more defender's at the line of scrimmage, 1 style is meant to break the big play, Gibb's style is to get a smaller gain but continually move the ball in shorter chunk's, control the ball and where the defense down, the 1 play that I think portis will be perfect for is the counter trey, he has the opportunity with this play to read the blocking and react off of it, which is what I think he's more suited for.

The good old formula to winning games, run the ball effectively on offense, stop the run on defense, and win the turnover battle. If we do those 3 things more often than not, we'll have a shot at having a winning season.