Every Sunday after the game, I come here and look at the comments of the game. The first two weeks, there was plenty to complain about and plenty of us that did. I come on here though after the game today and there is a lot of hatin’ going around. Some people are optimistic, but we need all the good news we can get at this point and guys a win is a great thing! Now here is my take on the biggest complaints that I see on here. This isn't final, I'm not God, I don't have all the answers, but this is what is logical in my head, so if you like to discuss please keep it civil, but this is my thinking.

Todd Haley

We all know that his contract is up after this year. I put at least some of the blame on him for the slow start. Maybe the biggest part of last year's success was the lack of mistakes the team made. We didn't turn the ball over, and the defense tackled well plus forced turnovers. We didn't do any of that in the first two weeks. Maybe the lockout is to blame, but over the last 3 games, it seems that those days are behind us. Now of course we have to talk about the spat with Matt Cassel. Many people we saying that yelling and calling out your players isn't the way to do it, but let's give Haley this, yelling at his guys is his style and who says that's bad? He's done it before and that's just the way he coaches. There are many different ways of coaching that have worked. Parcels coached with fear, Tony Dungy was a players coach, Bill Bellicheck is an Xs and Os guy, but they all have their place and they have all had success. Now don't quote me as saying that Todd Haley is the next...I'm just making the point, all coaching styles have their place, because each has had success.

Matt Cassel

Our favorite player on here!!! Alright, I'll be the first to admit. The guy isn't Tom Brady here. I'm not his biggest fan. He does have some head scratching moments. Having said that, I don't think he deserves the persecution that he deserves. So I'm going to take the middle road. Yes, the first two games were bad. He 1 TD to 4 INT. Since then though, 7 TDs to 1 INT. Because of that, we are 2-1 in the last three games and it goes back to what I said about Haley, if you don't have the most talent around your team, you have can't turn the ball over and you have to play good, smart football. Yes, the defenses that he played were not greatest, but he still had a 102 passer rating against SD and when 6 of your games are against SD, Oakland and Denver, its not like we are playing the Jets or Steelers defense week in and week out. If Cassel limits his turnovers, which he has proven he can do, we at least put ourselves in a position to win the game most days.

Scott Pioli

I'm hearing a lot of buzz about how Pioli is to blamed. I'm rather confused. Have we already forgotten about the Peterson days when we would take a step forward, we end up taking two steps back. We keep pointing to the drafts and saying well we missed on him and we took him to early. Here's a quick news flash....not every pick is going to turn out. I know its crazy, but if you end up with 2 starters in the draft, you count that as a success and move on. In the first draft, Pioli didn't have all year to scout his players and while I'm not going to give him a straight pass on that draft, I understand if that wasn't our best draft. We do have two starters from that draft (Jackson and Succop) for now, but then look after that. Last year we took 7 players, 4 of which are starting (Berry, Asamoah, Moeaki, and Lewis) and 2 of them are regular contributors (Arenas and McCluster). Yes, we are lacking a little in depth, but we have to remember that this was a 4-12 team 2 years ago. It takes some time to build that. With this last draft, we can at least see some of that with our Center of the future, possibly our next pass rusher in Houston, our backup QB in Stanzi and our project DT with Powe.

All in all, we lost possibly our best defensive player and best offensive player at the start of the year, and we are 2-3 going into the bye week. If we can fix the snail slow start that we seem to have in the 1st half going into the bye week, we can possibly start looking competitive even without our best players sidelined.