[FlyerSkin]

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

I am somewhere in between right now. Not excited b/c I have lived with mediocrity and the continual promise that we will break out of it only to have fall back to double digit losses. After 25 years of this cycle, call me jaded. At the same time, I will watch and hope. I think the D has made some good acquisitions. I think the offense will be solid, but am less enthusiastic than I was originally. This is mainly because I am now concerned that the Pryor/Doctson replacement plan will be a much larger step down than I originally thought.

DJax, for all his faults, meant we were a threat to score at any time. When he played, opposing D's backed way the f* off or got burned. I thought Pryor and Doctson could make up for that by being much better red zone targets. Now, I just want to see them catch the ball and get on the field.

Now, before you pull out the "back to back winning seasons" on me, let me just say: 8-7-1, 9-7. Yes. They are winning seasons. In one, we won only one more game than half of the games played. In the other, we won half our games and only achieved a winning season by TYING A GAME (Yay! We are winners b/c we tied a game! lol). As a result of these slightly better than purely mediocre seasons, some are hopeful of bigger and better things. To me, however, this has been the cycle since the early 90's - we suck, we achieve mediocrity, fans get excited, we sink back to sucking. Rinse & Repeat.

If I felt like Gruden had turned the corner, maybe I get excited. I just haven't seen anything to convince me that he has. I think mediocrity may be the best he's got. If so, he's gone after this year or next and back to sucking we go. On the other hand, if we start fast out of the gate and are 5-3 or 6-2 by midseason, I will pull a mea culpa and be hooked all over again. I just don't see that happening. c'est la vie.

For now, I'll watch the games but will not pass up a beautiful fall afternoon with my family outside of the Plato's cave that we Skins fans have constructed for ourselves over the last 25 years.

Exactly how I have felt for pretty much over a decade. The rinse, spin, and repeat crap is what is killing my enthusiasm. It is getting increasingly harder to really be interested when my alma mater's (Univ of Dayton)football team, which is non scholarship, seems to play with more passion and a true desire to win than the bums the Skins put on the field year in and year out for at least the past decade. It is really a sad state of affairs, and it is true with most of the NFL, with the exception of the really good franchises.