Ask the Phinsider

Not anything massive like the way the Jets blitz, but a pretty decent amount. And while we don’t have a lot of guys with high sack numbers, we do get lots of pressure on opposing QBs and get a lot of QB hits and hurries. While not as statistically pleasing as sacks are, they still can be rather effective in making a QB make bad throws or decisions.

As far as Marshall, right now I would probably say he would be questionable. He wasn’t at practice again today, and we haven’t really heard many reports of how bad his injury was. At this point we’re kind of on a wait and see as much as you guys.

But part of that would be because after the acquisition of Marshall and the 2-0 start to the season, I think that many fans, myself included, got excited and the expectations jumped to higher than they probably should have. While we did get the big playmakers on offense in Marshall, deep down we still knew that we had a very very conservative and old fashioned OC. That is one of the biggest reasons for our offensive woes, at least in my opinion.

As for defense, I would say our defense has pretty much met our expectations. About the only thing that hasn’t quite met what we expected is that Mike Nolan hasn’t called as many exotic blitz packages as we thought. But I also think that part of that is because we have young CBs who are not quite able to be left man on man confidently all the time. Once they get there, I think we will see more of the exotic blitzes that Nolan is known for.

So, at least in my opinion, I would say that our defense has met, and even slightly exceeded expectations, while the offense has not met our expectations.

For a defensive player to watch out for, I would say Vontae Davis. He is quickly turning into a shutdown corner and making fewer and fewer mistakes. He shut down Randy Moss a couple of times this year and other QBs have commented that they try to avoid throwing to the receiver he’s covering.

As far as the production of our offensive guys, nobody has done a whole lot. Hartline has probably been the most solid out of the guys you listed. He had some stumbles at the beginning of the year, but has been getting more #2 production since then. Marshall has a good amount of catches and yards, but he has only 1 TD so far. Fasano has been hit and miss all year, having a really good game and then being invisible the next.

The running game has been pretty abysmal this year. Despite the fact that Ronnie Brown is still healthy and Ricky Williams is still running hard, we have not been running the ball very much. This can be directly attributed to our OC, Dan Henning. In the debacle against Chicago, Ronnie and Ricky ran the ball a combined 6 times for 11 yards. That is just pathetic.

As for the OL, it is so banged up and plagued by injuries we are on 3rd stringers for most of the interior. Jake Long has a hurt shoulder at LT, John Jerry is a rookie who has missed a few games because of illness at guard, Joe Berger and Cory Proctor are both injured (Proctor with a torn ACL) at center, Richie Incognito is our other guard, but had to move to center last game because of Proctor going down, and Vernon Carey has been hurt on and off all year.

Right now he is kind of looking like just an average OLB right now, but he has been getting in on some good plays. Still, he hasn’t really been doing much to stand out, so we’ll have to see if he just needs a year to get up to NFL level or not.

As for the draft winners, I can’t really say for sure if we won that or not. During the draft I definitely was on board with drafting Jerry Hughes (that’s the guy the Colts took). But we took Odrick instead because we wanted to pick up Misi. Odrick unfortunately got hurt early in the season, so until I see how he pans out, I can’t really say for sure that we were winners.

Dansby has definitely been a great pickup for us. He has instantly become a leader for our defense and has been making plays all year. I definitely think that he was worth every penny that we gave to him to pick him up.

Wake has actually been doing pretty well against the run. It is definitely one of the things that we are pleasantly surprised with regarding him. We were all ready to accept that he would probably be a little weak against the run until he got some more experience, but then he showed up to be a pretty good run defender. Hopefully that will continue into this week because I am pretty worried about how your run game is gonna hurt us.

As for Ricky, unfortunately I can’t really give you a good answer as we’ve hardly run the ball at all this year. Our OC, Dan Henning, has been moving completely away from run as soon as we get down by more than 1 point. For instance, Ronnie and Ricky ran for a total of 6 times combined in the entire game. I mean, I know that the Bears have a really good defense against the run, but did he really think that putting the game completely into Thigpen’s hands was the best option when you have running backs like those two?