Smoot Lays the Smack Down (Preseason Week 1)

[Skinny Tee]

Originally Posted by Paintrain

Jim Zorn/offensive staff-The logic behind giving your starters one or two series is all well and good when you have an established offense and you're just looking to get some reps. The Patriots had their offense in for the entire 1st half, the Eagles did the same. Both of them are well established but they wanted to get in a rhythm offensively. Our offense needed to play at least 5 drives in this game. What exactly did we learn from our starting offense last night? That for 2 drives Rinehart can hold up? That we can basically replicate 70% of our drives from last season? Last year since we had 5 pre-season games I understand doing that but in a make or break year for coach and QB, I'd think that he'd be more aggressive in getting the offense a good look with live bullets flying. This was a failure in the game planning and preparing for the season.

Yeah, I don't think Zorn can afford to leave them in that long. Having a lack of depth on the team means that we can't expose our starters to injury in a prolonged stay in a preseason game. The Pats and Eagles are pretty deep teams so they are afforded the luxury of leaving people in there longer.

Also, they don't rely on the output or welfare of one key player, as witnessed when Brady went down. They scheme their roster around their gameplan so the responsibility doesn't just fall to one or two key players.