[Paintrain]

I'm choosing to be positive (some may call naive) about our offensive improvement this season. We're bringing back all of our starters, for better or worse, who are now going into their 2nd season in the system. We're either going to see, very early this season, if the notion that JC simply needs to be left in one offense for consecutive years is true or if he's just not going to develop. Also, it's clearly 'show or go' for Zorn this year so hopefully his ability to 'stay medium' will be beneficial to offset our offseason 'turmoil'.

Thomas, Kelly and Davis have all talked, individually, about understanding much more now what's going to be required of them to be impact players and by all accounts are working hard to achieve that. I'm in the minority in thinking that Heyer will be fine at RT. This is his 3rd season and he's played quite a bit for an UDFA in his first two years. Getting all the reps with the first team should greatly benefit him.

Bottom line, we need to see an uptick in production, scoring and offensive effectiveness. I think we're going to have an elite-level defense (especially if we somehow add Leroy Hill) so a moderately improved offense will make a 2-3 game difference in the standings.