-PERSPECTIVE: Dallas lost to an AFC team on the road that went 12-4 last season.
-PERSPECTIVE: The Panthers, considered to be the odds on favorite to win the Super Bowl, just got housed at home to a divisional rival.
-PERSPECTIVE: We were hardly dominated. We not only had more total net yards than the Jags, but more yards per play.
-PERSPECTIVE: We've hardly been a good season opener team under Parcells. OTOH, the Jags have done very well in season openers under Del Rio.
-The biggest reasons why we lost the game is that Bledsoe stunk and the nickel defense appears to have issues. With Bledsoe, I was legitimately worried once it started to rain. My roommate, a Bears fan, couldn't understand why and I kept on telling him that Bledsoe was god awful against Seattle last year when it started to rain.
-I didn't have a problem with the coverage of the DB's in the nickel, but the pass rush was non-existent. I'll have to chart the game (which I'll get to around Thursday or Friday), but the only time I recall them blitzing was on 3rd and long. And as the Jags started passing the ball more and getting the short completions, they were leaving themselves with a lot of short yardage 3rd down situations and we weren't blitzing.
-While you can blame the rain for Bledsoe's performance and blow it off as nothing big, chances are they are going to face a few poor weather situations as the year goes along.
-The ripping on the O-Line makes no sense. Last season the Jags finished 3rd in total sacks and 1st in adjusted sack ratio. We gave up all of 2 sacks yesterday and Julius averaged 4.2 yards per carry.
-The real problem was that whomever was calling the plays seemingly insisted to run the ball on every 2nd down. There was a period were they ran the ball on 2nd down at least 6 times in a row and Jacksonville knew it was coming. I think the O-Line is better than people are giving it credit for, but it's still not at the point where it can get 2 yards if the opposing defense stacks 8 in the box.
-God awful day of refereeing for both teams. Saw plenty of terrible holds that both teams got away with, then they call Flozell on a hold that wasn't nearly as bad. Matt Jones and Brian Williams made those catches, but were somehow overturned. It's okay for Reggie Williams to yank Henry's head down to go up for a jump ball, but it's not okay for Witten to use his hands to get position. Parcells was right, the refs DID start the clock on a play that went out of bounds and somehow we lose a timeout on a play that supposedly isn't reviewable, that didn't stop a play, and well.....he was correct, the clock was supposed to be stopped.
-I'll have to chart the game, but it appears that we got some real good play from Jason Ferguson. Everybody else, sans Roy's nice INT seemed non-existent.
-They'll need to work on covering the checkdown receivers. Leftwich got on a roll when he couldn't find his regular WR's and just made the simple checkdown pass for effective yardage and the checkdown receiver was usually wide open.
-As much as this sucks, it certainly beats the hell out this day five years ago.
YAKUZA
