Hali’s regressed, Derrick Johnson’s regressed, injuries are rife throughout this team, the defense has been getting “rebuilt” for eight years now (using 71% of our first-day draft picks) and it’s still one of the worst in the NFL, and they’re on pace to break a number of historical bad records.

This isn’t rebuilding…this is collapse. The only teams that rebuild and are successful at it are the ones that don’t keep around the guys who ran the team into the toilet to begin with (e.g. Dolphins, Falcons, Cowboys of the 90s, Patriots). Otherwise those teams are just buying into a loser’s excuses and lies.

We knew this was coming. We knew we were going to go young, and rebuild from the ground up with the draft. It’s not like that’s a shocker.

We knew that we’d be getting blown out by the Raiders and Bills at home? We knew that we’d be going younger and cheaper to build the worst defense in the NFL? Hmmmm, funny but I don’t seem to recall the front office ever telling us “We’re going to win two or three games next year with our new plan and be worse than we were last year”. And I certainly don’t recall anyone on this message board saying that before this season…at least none who were spinning it in a positive light.

We also knew that we had one of the toughest schedules in the league coming into this season.

We had the 26th toughest schedule going into this year.

And, when you put the youngest team in the NFL up against teams that are more seasoned, full of veterans, and actually, you know, pretty damn good, then 19 times out of 20 the more experienced team is going to win.

The Green Bay Packers had the youngest team in the NFL last year and they won 13 games and went to the NFC Championship. Last I heard 13-3 was a lot better win-loss record than 1-19.

Of course Green Bay actually had a good coaching staff and competent GM.

To paraphrase Neil Young: We’re young, but we’re improving.

Based on what? Quoting rock lyrics is not the same as making an objective case for improvement. Show me where we’re getting better.

Even in one of Tyler’s worst games since he became the actual starter, he still threw for 240 yards and three touchdowns. That ain’t bad.

Funny how the coaching staff thought so little of him going into the season that he was the third stringer and how they only installed an offense that he was able to operate because their other QB plans blew up in their faces with the losses of Croyle and Huard. Think that was in their plans too? Because if so that’s one hell of a crystal ball that Peterson and Edwards have and I’m curious why they couldn’t use it to realize that their defense was going to be historically bad.

Yeah, the defense forgot to show up. Is that on the coaches?

Yes. They are the ones responsible for running the practices and filling out the lineups after all.

Or, is that at least somewhat attributable to the fact that we’ve lost half (or more) of our starters, and are playing with a rag-tag patchwork group that we put together by cherry-picking other teams’ practice squads?

“They can’t be blamed because all of their players suck”, huh? Well I can certainly blame them. Know why? Because they were the ones who brought in all of those players.

Injuries are a part of football. Good coaches recognize that and adapt to field a competitive squad. Bad coaches sit back and whine about how it’s not their fault and point fingers at their players.

I mean, it isn’t exactly like our Defense has been the pinnacle of continuity and good health this season.

Last I heard, insuring that the players are physically prepared and trained to withstand the rigors of an NFL season was the coaching staff’s responsibility. Here’s the strength and conditioning coach’s bio. You tell me what reason we have to believe that Carl Peterson didn’t just hire some ex-player on the cheap to run his S&C program instead of shelling out for a real coach who knew how to train professional athletes to succeed at their jobs.

And, even with all of that, we’ve been hanging in games and in a position to win them 4 out of the last 5 weeks

And how many of those games did we win? Also, if you look at the entire season instead of cherrypicking the numbers to make your case you’ll also see that we’ve blown out (losses of 10 points or more) in 5 out of 11 games this year. So we’ve been non-competitive in 45% of our games this year.

And, remember, Buffalo’s record might not show it now, but they were looking like one of the best teams in the NFL after the first 6 games.

After which they lost four straight games as Trent Edwards played like one of the worst QBs in the NFL. Cherrypicking again.

As much as I might want to, I can’t find a whole helluva lot to complain about there.

That’s because you’re seeing only what you want to see and your conclusions aren’t backed up by the results on the field or in the stat book. Either that or your expectations are ridiculously low.