Rant Time
The people, objects, and decisions that contributed the most to this extremely hard-to-stomach opening day result:
Taylor Decker– Four penalties, and he probably could have used a few more to prevent Stafford from getting rocked on the blind side for two sacks that became fumbles. I don’t follow those PFF offensive lineman ratings very closely, but I’d have a hard time believing that anyone in the league was worse than Decker in Week 1.
Jamal Agnew– The most suspect First Team All-Pro you’ll ever meet had a day to forget as well. In fact, Taylor Decker had more punt return yardage than ‘Swagnew’ (5 returns, -2 yards) on Sunday. Decker was also responsible for more fumbles (2 to 1), but Agnew’s momentum-killing muffed punt came at a worse time and area of the field.
The ‘1934’ Hat- Matt Patricia can take that thing off any time as far as I’m concerned. Like he’s this die hard Honolulu Blue through and through type of guy who’s been through it all with this franchise since the beginning. And yes, I’m partially blaming the tie on the 1934 hat.
Last but certainly not least…
Coaching blunders- Remember the time Darrell Bevell took the ball out of Beast Mode’s hands from the half yard line to lose the Super Bowl? While ‘The Timeout Heard Round the Desert’ was hardly of the same magnitude, it involved both coordinators from the famous Malcolm Butler interception, and made both of them look equally ridiculous.
We have Matt “Smartest Man in the Room” Patricia and Darrell “Can’t Fit in the Same Room as Patricia, but is the Smartest Man in the Next Room Over” Bevell, engaged in such a battle of wits with themselves that it goes beyond second guessing everything that worked all day and moves into triple guessing.
Who called that timeout and why? Some said it was Bevell, others said it was Patricia. Video pretty clearly shows Bevell running up the sideline making the signal, but the rule says it must have been Patricia. I don’t know.
Patricia said in the press conference it was him, so there’s that. Either way, it seems the coaches can’t even decide which one of them called timeout, when all they had to do was bury their heads in the sand and let the decade-long franchise quarterback who’s been lights out the entire day just do what he does and it’s game over.
For all of Patricia’s potential (and yes, he clearly has potential. We all saw that defense for the first 52 minutes), this is why everybody laughs at him.
But you know who must be loving life right now? Paul Pasqualoni. The unit he’s responsible for went into their shell and gave up four long scoring drives in the 4th quarter and overtime, and literally nobody is talking about that because right now because of how moronic his other colleagues look at the moment.
After a particularly ugly and unsatisfying win, the common coach speak cliché is to say, half-optimistically/half-apologetically, “well, a win’s a win.” I would love to hear Patricia’s post-game description of this one. But then again, no I wouldn’t.
“Well, a tie’s…a tie.” Or something like that. Make no mistake though; this tie was a loss.