brucem78 said:
After watching the first 4 games of the season I have come to the conclusion that we are playing offense,defense and special teams with the "I don't want to make a mistake" mentality. This is a fine line. You don't want your team to be totally undisiplined but you can't make them so afraid of making mistakes that they play without emotion and become mechanical. I think even though we are making our share of mistakes, we are also trying to avoid them at all cost and that is why we are playing like robots rather than with a controlled fury.
We are most definitely playing "not to lose" instead of playing to win. Parcells' focus is on avoiding mistakes rather than on opportunities to score. Zimmer has always been that way with his (or rather Campo's) "bend-but-don't-break" scheme, so this is no surprise from him.
Watching San Diego demolish the Patriots yesterday I saw how often they took chances on both sides of the ball and it paid off for them. The passing game opened up the run for Tomlinson and he had a very good game against one of the best defenses in the league. Brees also had a good game because they mixed up their play-calling and kept New England guessing all day.
Even though they only got one sack on Brady they put good pressure on him throughout the game and did not allow the Pats' WRs to get into their routes by playing bump & run against them.
We are playing with a flawed strategy and it is costing us games.
