Mid-season report

I know this is a little after mid-season but my opinions are still the same. First, my beloved Redskins are worse than mediocre and I was wrong to think that Zorn needed more time because the team has obviously not responded to him. Granted he’s had several battles to fight but when I look on the field I see losers who don’t fear the coach. An example of this is the tirade that Joe Bugel had to give the offensive line’s effort versus the Falcons. Position coaches have to get on their players from time to time but Zorn was too nice to call them out. In addition, you see other players making silly mistakes with no concern for the consequences. Zorn must go and be replaced with a tougher coach.

In making preseason predictions I use some general rules of thought to conclude how team’s are doing. Several weeks ago I told a friend to not get too high on teams that come screaming out of the gate. They tend to fizzle out. I saw the Giants in the preseason and they were flat-out great. Now they’re on a 3 game skid. Fortunately for them they have plenty of time to regroup for the playoffs.

I didn’t think the Broncos were good when they went 6-0 and now they’ve been exposed.

One team that caught me off guard was the Bengals, which gives me a new rule for predicting team success: Great leaders trump great players. Meaning, teams that have great leadership at the head coach (or in Indy’s case, the QB) can get more out of their players than a mediocre leader with great players. Some people thought Marvin Lewis was done in Cincinnati and when they put together a team of has-beens I thought it was just the management’s way of adding player’s with resumes but nothing left in the tank.

The bottom line is; Marvin Lewis is a very good coach. Give him some football players and he’ll compete. San Diego is the other end of the spectrum. They have a great QB, some very good RBs, and a solid defense. Yet, they come slow out of the gate until it gets to crunch time where they have to ratchet things up to make the playoffs. I thought for sure with there soft schedule they’d coast in to the playoffs and talent would take over. But Norv Turner is not a great leader. I think he’s a very good coordinator but the players don’t respect or fear him like they did Schottenheimer. They appear to be righting the ship but they will eventually come up short dispite their talent.

If I could jump on another bandwagon it woud be the Saints. Drew Breese is leading that team the way Manning is leading the Colts. He’s putting it on his shoulders. And Sean Payton is a genius in how he’s using Reggie Bush. People may still be poo-pooing that draft pick but he’s getting touches, making plays, and scoring TDs. Go Saints!

Somebody wake me up when the Redskins get serious again.