The 2008 "Who needs to step up" thread

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4. Carlos "2 seconds 2 late" Rogers - showed potential last year before getting hurt; once healthy, this is the year that he needs to prove that he's our true #1 corner.

... he could also try removing the led from his shoes...

Yeah Carlos needs to become our top corner or I'd officially label him a bust.

player wise, i think everyone has covered all the bases. but Jim Zorn, and the rest of the staff has to step up. i love coach Gibbs to death, but lets face it, he had a free pass around here. the guy all but blows the buffalo game with a major league gaffe, and hardly anyone says a word. what its going to be like the first time Zorn goes for it on fourth down, and the skins don't convert? you know he isn't getting the same luxury that Gibbs was.

The number of players mentioned by various people in this thread is just further evidence of the fact that football is such a team sport.

Really, everyone needs to step up for us, everyone needs to play well.

Keys:

- Randy Thomas; few guards in the league can pull like him. We need him to pave the way for our run game. I think he will, and Portis should take things up a notch because of it. I love this guy.

- Tryon or Torrence; one of them needs to take the nickel spot. Rogers' knee injury was nasty, I can't believe he's going to be himself this season.

- The WRs; the whole lot of them. With Saunders we kinda sorta got away with having only 2 decent ones. In Zorn's offense we need more than that. We need all of the WRs to contribute.

And because this is a team sport, we can't take certain things for granted. Samuels is so consistent, he's like a rock in pass protection. If we lost him to injury, that would crush us. Jason Taylor needs to hold up against the run adequately. Rocky needs to be healthy, or our backup LBs need to step up. And Sellers needs to truck some dudes or this season just won't be as much fun!

player wise, i think everyone has covered all the bases. but Jim Zorn, and the rest of the staff has to step up. i love coach Gibbs to death, but lets face it, he had a free pass around here. the guy all but blows the buffalo game with a major league gaffe, and hardly anyone says a word. what its going to be like the first time Zorn goes for it on fourth down, and the skins don't convert? you know he isn't getting the same luxury that Gibbs was.

Not sure where you were but there was alot of people saying plenty of things after that, most of it not so nice either. I'm sure we had a couple of "Joe must go" discussions going on after that.

good thread and thoughts for this time of the season.

reed doughty - i dont think laron needs to "step up" as much as keep his play equal to last season so im going with reed needing to "step up" to keep those long balls that plagued our D in '06 from happening. when we relinquished the long passes it really screwed with g williams ability to run his true D scheme b/c he had to constantly compensate for those long balls. so heres hoping the secondary in general holds up well with injuries and play to allow us to bring pressure on the qb.

jason taylor - would like to see what a stud d-lineman looks like in real life since charles mann.

i agree with everyones assessments above, knowledgeable group of skins fans here.

go skins!

I think that Jason Taylor and Andre Carter are going to make the secondary look like all-Pro's by making the QB's make ill-advised passes.

I also think LaRon is going to have at least a half-dozen sacks this year with blitzing up the middle.

The WR's must be more productive this year. They went the first half season without a TD last year. That's almost inconceivable with today's rules giving receivers a decided edge over defenders.

The WR's must be more productive this year. They went the first half season without a TD last year. That's almost inconceivable with today's rules giving receivers a decided edge over defenders.

... yeah, and that was directly related to our QB play...

... yeah, and that was directly related to our QB play...

Not necessarily. Cooley caught 8 TDs so it wasn't all on the QB.

I might be reading too far into this but I think you might have some sort of axe to grind with JC. Is it because everyone piled on your boy Brunell, and now you're revolting against the majority with your JC bashing?