What I think they are thinking at the headquarters of the four AFC South teams on Monday:
Well, we knew we’d covered up some holes in those first two games. Dallas certainly showed them off. Our pass defense is an issue and we’ve got guys who need to grow up in a hurry in the secondary, but no matter how mature they are the pass rush has to hurry quarterbacks to help the cause. We’re sure hoping a limited rush and an inexperienced coverage group don’t combine to prove an architectural flaw. Our offense has more than enough fuel that we should be in the 20s every week, so we’re disappointed in the production there as well.
Last year we did a pretty good job minimizing big plays. The Broncos had way too many of those in Denver Sunday, but like some of our defenders talked about after the game, their job isn’t to limit yards, it’s to limit points and we did fine in that department. If we hold people to 13 points, we’re going to win. And our next opponent, the Jacksonville Jaguars, hasn’t looked like a scoring juggernaut the past couple weeks. In Florida we can expect to see an early, heavy dose of Maurice Jones-Drew. We’ll want to shift the pressure to their quarterback.
Jacksonville Jaguars
It’s too bad that Luke McCown tore an ACL last week, because we might be installing him as the starter in the game plan we draw up Tuesday. David Garrard’s last two weeks have just been atrocious, and this young team isn’t going to gain much confidence or much of a personality without anything to follow or build on from the quarterback position. We don’t have a legitimate backup to turn to and we don’t have a developmental guy to put on the fast track either. We need our guys not to think about quarterback or coaching job security.
Told you Pittsburgh was going to be more the aberration than the rule. This talk of how we baited the Giants into personal fouls is pretty silly, isn’t it? Are they going to start throwing flags for drawing flags? Vince Young rebounded from the poor showing against the Steelers with a showing that was more efficient and cleaner than Eli Manning’s. We ran it well enough, we were opportunistic on the turnover front and we won handily despite a big discrepancy in yards. And at 2-1, we’re just fine with that.