This was not a pretty game, special teams & D got owned but the D started substituting guys on the 2nd drive so I'm not worried too much. After a quick first watch heres some thoughts
OL BIG improvement form the first game. the Line only gave up 1 sack & that was down to Cutler who at this stage of his career should know to just throw the ball away on that play. Both starting tackles got called for false starts but Carimi more than held his own against the wily veteran Justin Tuck. He looked very good.
WR Looking through my notes, 3 times I wrote Roy Williams sucks & he wan't in that often. He looks like I feared the receiver form Dallas not the receiver from Matz' Detroit days. Hester caught a lovely pass down the sideline & then stepped out of bounds when he could have gotten another couple yards, YES it's pre-season but I've seen this too many times in the regular season. He then dropped a TD pass badly. Earl Bennett is the man enough said. We got our first look at Dane Zansenbacher &he needs to make better judgement calls going out of bounds instead of trying to get an extra couple yards. Drops were the name of the game here. Who's going to drop more balls this year? Roy Williams or Des Clark? Onrea Turner had some nice catches in garbage time.
RB Forte didn't do a whole lot on his 4 carries but made a nice one handed catch on a screen 7 made a beautiful cutback showing off nice speed to get 37 yards on it. Chester Taylor is done. I look to have been wrong on Marion Barber he ran hard again & showed soft hands in the receiving game. Khalil Bell done what he has done before, an impressive first game followed by meh.
LB Briggs didn't play, Urlacher only played a couple series & the rest were meh. UDFA Diciccio was at fault for the blocked punt & didn't do much on D. Iwuh had a great pass break up on the goal-line.
DL Peppers was awesome on the 1 series he was in for getting pressure on Manning
DB Too many missed tackles & too many bad angles. Major Wright got punked by Brandon Jacobs. tim Jennings continues to impress me with his tackling.
ST Strangely a very poor performance from the third phase. A blocked punt, though not Spencers fault, Podlesh punted better than game 1, If Knox is going to be returning punts he needs to learn to let balls inside the 10 go into the endzone. HATED seeing Bennett return punts, I think he's going to be too important on O though he did return it hard. The special teams, it must be noted, was poor last pre-season too as Toub is basically evaluating new guys.
Our 4th down & short yardage woes look to be continuing the game was a loss but at least there were no injuries unlike the Giants.
It was strange seeing big plays from a number 91 but Okoye had an impressive debut & Melton continued to impress. Wouldn't surprise meto see Melton starting week 1.
