Monday Morning Sentimonies: Back At It

Was it ever great to return to the hallowed football grounds that is Mosaic Stadium. A warm summer’s afternoon. The excitement of a hometown crowd. Reuniting with the people in your section. Getting overcharged for alcohol. Yes, it’s good to back. Of course the day would have been better if we had actually won the game but you take the good with the bad.

I know it’s only a preseason game where the results are about as meaningful as … and a good chunk of the players I watched will never again appear in green and white but still, its football and I love it.

Here are some random observations from the game.

- Our passing is going to be outstanding this year. Dressler looks to be back in form; Bagg is looking real good again; Fantuz is, well he’s Fantuz. Durant is in for a big season.

- Running does not seem to be in our plans this year. The only touches I see the RB getting will be screens. But as long as those screens go for more than 1 yard it will be an improvement over last year.

- Joel Bell had a rough day for someone who is supposed to be competing for a starters spot. He had a holding call that negated a long TD and also completely let up and let a defender hit Durant. Personally I blame his hair. He is suffering from the Samson effect… he cut his hair, which evidently was the source of his power. The same fate befell a previous budding young tackle by the name of Glen January who cut his hair and quickly found his way to bench and eventually out of town. Bell better get himself some Rogaine and fast.

- How devastating was the block that Getzlaf dished out on the Bagg TD? Despite scoring a TD, Bagg and the rest of his team-mates were more concerned with congratulating Getzlaf.

- Even though I have a much publicized disliking of him, I have to admit that Ryan “The Creepy Eyed Wonder” Dinwiddie looked really sharp out there. He was making good reads, finding receivers, moving the chains and putting up points. He pretty much solidified himself as our back-up.

- The good news for Jason Clermont is that that Ryan Dinwiddie seems to know he exists. The bad news is that Dinwiddie is unlikely to play in any actual games so this awareness of his existence won’t likely be of much benefit to Clermont.

- Just as I was begrudgingly starting to come around on Dinwiddie, he locked onto Jason Clermont right out of the huddle (it was so oblivious even to the folks in the upper deck) and Tad Crawford (who was evidently smart enough to figure out the budding bro-mance Dinwiddie was having with Clermont) read him like a book for an easy pick. Hmm locking onto a receiver… where have I seen that before? The only good news was that this pick didn’t lead to glory and fame for James Johnson.

- Not sure what happened to Cole Bergquist but that Bergqist guy we played in his place looked pretty good. He wasn’t as polished as Dinwiddie but for his first real game experience I thought he did really well. The thing I really noticed about him was how fast his passes travel. He just fires them in there.

- While the first 3 QBs all showed pretty well, the 4^th… not so much. The Kent Smith experiment will hopefully be a short lived one because his performance in the 4^th quarter was painful to watch. He made 2 passes on his 12 attempts (though it should have been 3 because the receiver had a bad drop). The other attempts were not even close. The coaches kept giving him chance after chance and he kept making Juan Joseph not seem like such a bad idea by comparison.

- Somewhere Todd Reesing is going “Cripes, I could do better than that!”

- I know there was a missed blocking assignment on the blocked punt but Sakoda might as well have called his mother and made some pancakes for all the time he took to get that punt off. I don’t know if he was nicked up or just not trying but he sure didn’t look like the King Louie I remember from last year.

- I still love our coaches’ commitment at trying to make Congi a punter and kickoff guy. 4 years of effort and it hasn’t worked out yet but the coaches give it a shot every year without fail. Though for some reason Congi always seems to unload a few nice looking punts in games that don’t count.

- Other players that impressed me: Byron Bullock, Shomari Williams, Daniel Francis, Stu Foord (nice catch) and Luc Mullinder

- Players that increased their odds of being cut: Aaron Fairooz and Kent Smith.