The REAL game notes...

Maybe we should punt the entire season away...
OK, after last night I needed a little time to digest the carnage I saw on the field. I sat down and watched it again this morning, with a little less alcohol, and I think I have a bit better idea about what was going on out there. It still wasn't pretty, but it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was last night.

- First the plays we were talking about. On the Moss TD bomb, Jon McGraw got to Brooks on the blitz, and was hauled down from behind. The play should have been called back for holding - never happened. It was that obvious on the replay. But since it wasn't, we got to face the absurd reality that we were trying to cover Randy Moss with Fernando Bryant. We've only played against him for like 8 years and seen him do this to us how many times? Ah yes, we have new coaches who aren't familiar with Randy torching the Lions. At least they hopefully learned this lesson in the preseason.

- The second Moss TD was a head scratcher as well. Somehow Levar Woods was matched up man-to-man with Randy Moss. Whoever called that scheme and thought Woods could guard Moss should be fired. Today.

On to the player breakdowns...
- Kitna looked awful. DanO also didn't look good. It was a bad night for our QB's, and that's never a way to win a game. If Kitna keeps running the way he has been, he won't make it to the 5th game. He got his clock rung a few times last night on his runs. Not a good thing for your starter to be doing. DanO skipped a few of his passes to his receivers they were so short. We didn't even see McCown, but he couldn't have done any worse than those two did.

- KJ looked good last night. Real good. End of his rookie season good. I love this Heisman Trophy pose... I actually was surprised when I saw the replay about how well he was running. Had a few of his teammates done their jobs, he could have had a 100 yard game last night. He was hitting the holes well, accelerating through them, and making contact when needed. He also caught the ball well out of the backfield. He was definitely the shining star on O.

- But once again, the O-line wasn't. I slowed down several plays, and saw more of the same from previous games - O-linemen not making the right reads, missing the correct blocks, not holding the blocks long enough. The only one I didn't see make a glaring mistake was Raiola. Verba seems to pull well, but he doesn't always make contact with the guy he's supposed to. Backus got beat by a speed rusher around the end again - what else is new?. And then the right side of the line... ick. We need Woody and Tucker back because Stokes showed why Butler is beating him out, and that isn't good. And DeMulling showed he was the same blocker as last year. Even Pollard got into the mix, getting blown up by a LB in the hole when he was supposed to lay down a lead block for KJ on one play. Beightol had better work his magic with these guys, and quickly.

- At WR, someone needs to remind Kitna who his best WR is. Roy was mostly invisible, and that's never good for our team. Instead, most of Kitna's throws went to Furrey and Bradford. I'm not really impressed with either of them. They're OK players, but nothing special. And when you don't have a single completion to anyone named Williams, it's not going to be pretty. To be honest, I don't even know if BMW got in the game. If this is what we're going to be seeing during the regular season, it's going to be really ugly.

- On the other side of the ball, we really miss Baby. Get well Shaun, because we need you in there to draw a double team. It really messes up the other teams blocking patterns because they have to account for him. Without him in there, they can pretty much run it any way they want. Shaun Cody looked good, but there was an obvious hole in the line next to him. Our ends were invisible all night as well. IMHO, we have to get Swancutt in there with the first team and see if he can get it done with them. He was a bright spot again, and he deserves a shot.

- At LB, I didn't see too much of Ernie Sims. He just didn't' seem to be around the ball like he was in previous weeks. On the other hand, the Raiders ran at Paris Lenon as much as they could, and it was obvious they intended to. On at least 3 of their draws, Lenon was in the hole, and simply couldn't react to stop Lamont Jordan and Justin Fargas before they gained 6+ yards. He wasn't stepping up into the hole and initiating contact, he was waiting for it to come to him, and it went right on by him. At least we did see Boss Bailey play, and he looked OK in the middle. And Alex Lewis looked good as well. Maybe next week we'll see a starting lineup of Sims, Bailey and Lewis instead of Sims, Woods and Lenon. That would be a huge improvement.

- At DB, it wasn't pretty. Once again, Bryant got burned deep. He has shown absolutely nothing since he came to Detroit. Oakland mostly avoided throwing toward Dre, because of how easy it was to throw elsewhere. And our safeties were mostly missing in action. But truth be told, this wasn't the biggest problem area on D, the line and LB's were.

Ugh, it wasn't a pretty game. Dunno how we're supposed to have any good feeling going into the regular season after seeing that kind of a display. Maybe I should try to get my money back for my season tickets...