BakoSaint

I think people are being too hard on Grupe. He also made a 55 yarder. Chicago's kicker had a miss today too. Lutz missed a field goal and an XP in his last game too. I would not say we kept the wrong kicker. Perhaps we should have traded BOTH of them, but Grupe could still recover and has good range and is cheaper than Lutz.

Michael Thomas had 0 yards today, but nobody is saying we need to demote him, except maybe I am saying Shaheed should start over him.

I am still very skeptical of what Taysom Hill can accomplish in big games versus big defenses. Unfortunately our schedule does not lend itself to finding out. Clearly he has an amount of value but I think it is less than the salaries and guarantees we have given him. Yes he rushed for 52 yards, but D'Onta Foreman and Tyson Bagent costs less combined and both rushed for more, so I am not convinced that Taysom Hill rushing for 52 yards and throwing a 3 yard pass means his $10 million a year salary is an amazing bargain. Today though it was better than Kamara's salary for being a 3rd down back with 2.9 yards a carry of Michael Thomas' for catching 0 passes.

I think a shocking thing could be responsible for improvements to our offensive line. The motivational power of competition and consequences. We finally have started benching players who struggle and handing full time jobs to those who thrive in relief. For so many years we had these golden boy high draft pick oline and we were so disappointed that many of them were glass and constantly hurt so we *****ed and moaned that the only reason the Falcons or whoever beat us was because they got to play their starting oline more, so whenever our starting oline was healthy we would not dare take them off the field because then we would be inflicting that instability on ourselves and wasting all the incredible draft capital we spent on them. Well, it turns out that sometimes when you bench a player you light a fire under their ass and they improve, and sometimes when you give a backup a real chance to earn the starting job not just a 1 week gig keeping a seat warm where they cant earn **** no matter how well they perform, that backup surprises you and continues to grow. And sometimes that sends a message to other starters and other backups too, that they all better be on their game. For all we know if we had benched Andrus Peat for a few games 5 years ago, he would be an all pro today, but we never tried it. Now that there is a sense that everyone has to produce to keep their job, our oline is performing better.

Now if only this same standard was applied to wide receivers, and the number of snaps and targets they received had any relationship whatsoever to their performance.