I’d hope that the players (and McDermott) would hold some accountability for that.

You are surely missed off the football field, Jim, but you have no idea how much we all miss seeing you on those sidelines every Sunday.

But it’s certainly a start.

to less than 10 points!

Yes, you already missed the game.

The year before he was awful but to be honest, last year the entire D was pretty damn bad

Last year he wasn’t that good because he had to babysit for Macho on just about every play.

Nate Allen’s doing a good job at FS now, though, and it’s freeing up Mikell to actually do his job again.

As Joe said, though, he seems to be playing a lot better this year.

…except for the bit about a strong pass rush making a defense elite. Few people would characterize Indy’s defense as elite the past few years (even though they looked it on Sunday night, complements of the Giants, lol) and they’ve got Mathis and Freeney, probably the best pass-rush duo in the league. It still take some other parts to at least be competent or poor playcalling on the other side of the ball for that to make an elite defense.

Gaither just needs to go in my opinion. I’m sure he’s good as an outside backer, but I’d really like to see at least a little depth at MIKE, given Stew’s recent problems with staying healthy. Clayton looks promising, so let’s hoping he gets there soon.

and if Gaither stays on the sideline.

With a red-hot QB with all these weapons, a fired-up defense, and no Gaither making our LBs embarrass us? I agree, though. Could be a great year.

Lots of ifs, though, and it’s all contingent on staying absolutely healthy, just like any other season for any other team. Except the Rams and the Bills, they’re just waiting for the Draft to come around again. Lol.

Seriously….Luke straight raped our D lmao

Yeah. When I saw that headline, I chuckled a little.

Cole has been good, Parker excellent and Laws and Graham have been pretty good with applying pressure from the interior when Bunkley and Patterson aren’t in there stopping the run. Mikell has returned to form, mostly because Nate Allen has picked it right up, I don’t really have any qualms with Asanti or Hobbs really besides getting burnt that one time. It’s the linebackers that need help and having Stew back should restore order and generally make everyone a little better.

*Offense

i said the same thing in a post earlier in the week, the fact that we allowed 32 points to a Shaun Hill led offense and a Rookie RB ( a good one at that but still inexcusable) sent up some red flags 2 me. The good thing is that they got the stop when they needed it. I think the things going wrong on defense are very fixable , its not that our Defense doesnt have the talent to play good because we have a ton of talent its undisciplined and i think the screws will be tightned for the Jag game.

BUT I think that’s due in a very, very large part to Gaither. He misred plays, missed tackles, and was generally a bum against the run in the first half. Once they got that established they were able to free things up over the middle for their Tight Ends. Their WRs were shut down, so our secondary is good. And if you look back to last week when we had Big Stew in, we went almost an entire half (4:44 left in the half is when he went down), Green Bay’s offense only had 3 points on the board. That’s probably the second best offense in the NFC. I’ll take three points in a half by them any day.

Shaun isn’t really a horrible QB. He’s never really gotten much of a chance to start but he’s been pretty decent when given the opportunity. 25:14 TD:INT ratio, 185 yrds/gm, 61% completion percentage. That’s not terrible for a starter. If you want to make comparisons, Vick (running plus passing) averages 184 yards/gm owns a career 75:52 TD:INT ratio passing and completes 54% of his passes.

Just sayin’.

And Best, well we don’t know what he will be in the league, the Bears also just held the Cowboy’s trio of running backs to just 37 yards rushing combined last week so 20 yards for Best against the Bears might not be a product of who he is, rather who the Bears are. He was a 1st round draft pick this year, so it’s not like we just got run over by a slouch who barely made the team, he looked very good out there, that may have been him, or it may have been us, but he has a lot of potential to be for real.

The Lion’s offense I think it making great strides, hoarding top draft picks for the last few years certainly helps quite a bit. These aren’t the Lions of old, they’re getting better.

We’ve been spoiled in a lot of ways, JJ was an extraordinary defensive coordinator, we probably won’t have another like him in a long time and we shouldn’t be expecting JJ out of McDermott or the next guy because the defenses just won’t be as good.