Four Years Later: Are We Better Off?

[Paintrain]

We're a better football team than we were in 2004 but I'm in agreement with what others have said, we're still not consistently good. We've made the playoffs twice (sandwiched by 6-10 and 5-11 seasons) with miraculous end of the season runs that coincided with improbable circumstances of other teams losing (NO at home to Philly, GB losing to make the Dallas game meaningless for them) and us hitting a mini stride at the right time. A legitimate argument can be made that we were more lucky than good and were the beneficiary of being the right team at the right time.

Good teams don't have to do that, they take care of business from September-December. If we win games we should have won/closed out (NYG, GB, PHI, BUF) we are sitting at home on Saturday rather than trudging across country on 5 days rest. Those are the differences between good teams that make it deep into the playoffs consistently and teams that occassionaly flash. We are a mirror of Tampa Bay, 6-10 to 10-6 to 5-11 to 10-6 (except we were 9-7 this year) and nobody considers Tampa a strong consistent team. Most prognosicators picked them last in their division this year and if injuries/stupidity didn't decimate their competition (Atlanta-Vick, Carolina-Delhomme & Smith missed most of the year, NO-McAllister, Payton's playcalling) do we really think they are a 10 win team?

Roster wise we are in much better shape with a franchise QB in Campbell, Portis still going strong, Moss, Cooley and Randle-El serviceable at WR (but we need a stud WR, Moss is a #2 at this point and ARE is a #3), the OL is solid, the DL has some good young talent, LB should be a strength in '08 (Fletcher, Washington and I'm calling Briggs a Redskin) and the secondary has 2 solid players in Landry & Smoot with some young depth and hopefully Rogers coming back by midseason..

While I have backed off of my 'Gibbs must go' mantra of pre-Taylor murder, I still think a philisophical change needs to occur offensively to become much more aggressive. We need to model the aggressiveness after the Patriots, Packers and Cowboys (ugh) who attack for 60 minutes and try to hang as many points on the board as they can.