MISSING: Santana Moss and Chris Cooley

Last Seen: hovering 5 or 6 yards by the line schrimmage. and Moss often behind the line of schrimmage on the WR screens. of all the things to keep from last year's playbook...

seriously remember how last year Moss was in the Pro-Bowl and Cooley just missed it? they're languishing right now, and it's not because of the addition of Randle El and Lloyd, they're all in the same boat, hanging around the first down marker and no further.

is this really Saunder's scheme? a take on the west coast offense? Tony Gonzales was downfield all the time in KC and i thought Cooley was gonna be made a household name this season.

i really hope we're just in the prologue of Al Saunder's 700 page opus, because that classic Gibbs down in the trenches, over the top offense from last year really served us well. with a third of the offensive talent!

It's early, the offense is just finding it's groove.

But even once things start clicking I don't think we'll see Moss or Cooley come close to last year's numbers.

There's just not enough balls to go around with Lloyd and Randel El now on board.

how did Saunder's use WRs over in KC? i can honestly say i don't remember anybody at that position over there, except Dante Hall.

Saunders liked to go deep at times in KC, I recall. I'm sure he wants to. But if teams play a loose 2-deep zone, it aims to take away that throw. And we all know MB doesn't have a gun to begin with. The 73-yard shffle pass is a great way to beat the 2-deep. Run the WRs deep, play action to draw up the LBs and Safties, and slip by them on the shuffle, or a quick slant or screen. Defenses will now have to scheme against that, and that, combined with our run attack (that HAS to continue!), will open up the longer throws, IMHO.

Honestly though, they may not be putting up numbers, but if you watch the guys, they are still HUGE parts of this team. They both blocked their asses off yesterday, and are playing well.

I agree we need to open it up a little bit, but I still think they are both playing well and doing what they are asked to do.

Yesterday was about building confidence. While the short passes may have lacked the oomph we are all looking for, the 25 yard strike to Patten on 3rd and 9 doesn't happen unless everyone believes. They believe now.

I don't know if you guys feel like this but, I think our defense is worse without R. Clark, P. Priolou (sp?), and yes Lavar. Our defense still looks like it is missing an identity. And on offense, I miss my man R. Royal.

I think we're missing Clark and Prioleau, but not LaVar. He's a shell of the shell of his former self.

I don't think Saunders is fully confident that the line has mastered his protection schemes. He's keeping Cooley in to block on a lot of plays in order to cover for this.

Once Al feels that the line can pick up blitzes on the fly, then I think he'll start going downfield a bit more. But against Dallas and Minnesota the line had a lot of trouble adjusting and picking up blitzes. The game-plan against the Texans was designed to take pressure off the linemen, getting the ball out ASAP. It worked, Brunell wasn't sacked.

Hopefully we can start threatening the field deep sometime soon. Because the short stuff worked against the Texans, but it won't work against Ds like the Jaguars.

LaVar was never a big piece of this defense under Williams, for the last two years he was injured more often than not.

Having Springs and Prioleau both out definitely hurts.

Hopefully we can get Springs back very soon.