right....right.....

ghosts, im seeing ghosts...................
quick papz, look in the mirror........................lol smitty

I'm with you here Whodi. Nothing could be more devestating to the city than having to deal with another big storm. That would be like kicking a guy in the nuts while he's down.

I agree that there are a lot of what if's for the upcoming season. However, for some stupid reason, I can't help but feel optimistic about them.

- I think Deuce will realize that uh-oh, he's not just going to be handed the job. He's going to have to compete with a guy who could be the next Marshall Faulk. I believe this will push him to get in the best possible shape he's ever been in.
- I do think Stinch will be a good player at RT. Last year he was in line to win the starting tackle job before his injury. I think he's gotten enough time to rehab, and with a little bit of competition from some young guys, he might just have even more incentive. I think he's going to be a good, solid player.
- You can call me stupid, but I believe Drew Brees when he says his shoulder is feeling great and he'll be back on time. The guy is throwing something like 40 passes a day right now, and that's a full month before training camp. The guy is one of the most competitive players I've seen. Everything I hear about him is how hard he's working and how badly he wants to be out there. Not to mention he's going to be the leader on offense that we've been missing for so long. We have a guy who called Reggie Bush before we drafted him and told him that he understood Reggie was probably disappointed about not being the first pick, but he was excited to have the opportunity to be his teammate. That's really pretty amazing. We have a veteran quarterback calling a rookie to tell him welcome. If that doesn't scream leadership, cohesiveness, and humility, I don't know what does. I have a feeling Brees is going to pull that whole locker room together under the single goal of winning a Super Bowl. It might seem out of reach now, but with some of the talent we now have, and some of the new leadership we have, I think it'll be realistic very soon, if not this year.
- I think Hollis Thomas is glad to get out of Philly, and will be energized by the new surroundings and a youthful coach who seems intent on no-nonsense fundamental football. He's a welcome upgrade over our other DTs (minus Brian Young who always goes hard and is pretty effective).
- Does anybody know if Simmons is playing on the outside for sure? I remember his best years were playing ILB with the Seahawks. I think with him in the middle, Fujita on the outside, and then Watson/Allen/Bock competing for the other outside LB spot, we should have a pretty solid corps.

Well that's my take on the what if's right now. If that was too optimistic for you, here's a little dose of pessimism. I think Sully will be the same fat, lazy slob he's always been and he'll never change. Is that enough?

Gotta say I am pretty surprised by the responses to this post. Seems the most common worry for our football team is the weather. Only one guy posts about the actual issues with the team, and his prediction is that 90% of them will resolve in our favor. Interesting.

When I listed my "Ifs", I didn't even get into the coaching "ifs" - like the fact that Payton's never been a head coach before and that he filled our coordinator positions with his friends. I don't know most of these guys, and maybe they're great. I don't think anyone knows though, since they are basically all rookie-coaches.

I didn't mention the fact that Stinchcombs never started before and Faine has been a disappointment his whole career - I only talked about whether their injuries would recover. I could go on and on in this vein, but what's the point. I basically overlooked a lot of HUGE concerns, and that still wasn't optimistic enough for this crowd. I'm surprised Joe Horn's prediction (16-0 with SB win) wasn't considered pessimistic with this crowd.

I hope you guys are right.

Living in Miami has taught me a lot about storms and devastation. I was a senior in high school when we were hit with Hurricane Andrew. For those who don't remember...Andrew was a Category 5 that blew in with 155 mph winds. It took us a while to regroup and get our lives in order not to mention the fear of the following years. Since then we have learned that being prepared is the key my friends. Obviously we have no say so in the matter as far as the weather. This past year we were hit with 3 storms....Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. By us the people and the city being totally ready....things were back to normal in no time. Just a week or two of delay due to lost power. Unfortunately I can't speak for the levee situation since we really don't have that issue down here but for the most part guys....be strong....don't even worry about the storms...but please...make sure all of you are ready for anything.

My 2 cents on the matter.

From the plywood state...lol Good luck to all of us this hurricane season.

I hope Horn's prediction is true. a $200 bet in Vegas would land me $8000

WTF?!?!?! Did you just make a post to piss on people? You listed your what ifs, others listed theirs. Did you want people to get down on the team with "oh yeah we don't have this and we don't have that" talk? What for? We were a 3-13 team, what does listing the problems prove except what we already knew, it's gonna take a while to get this team together, but we ARE on the right track it appears. So what if someone's concerns are more for the weather than the team? If they DO have a weather situation, it WILL affect the team and city greatly again. To ME, that's bigger concern than any on the field stuff. You listed stuff like we don't all have those same concerns, I didn't see anyone predicting a Superbowl victory next year, and the one guy who predicted playoffs I tried to temper his enthusiasm. NExt time, headline the post, "I want you all to crap on the team like me" so we know what direction we should follow with our posts in order not to get pissed on.

We did not get hit by a worse case senario anyways. If that happens there is no point in talking football. We have all known it and our parents have known it. God is weather so be it.
Now back to football. 8-8 is what I think and no serious injuries to key starter is a winning season right now. It will take 8 games at the least to get the team to gell. We will see what gems have been locked away in Haz's dog house, if any. What players can play what position when not playing out of position and play at a natural playing wieght that is comfortable to them. Slimming down not fatting up. FA on June 1st, next years draft and 2007 FA will make this team or break it. Till then so be it.

Well hagan.....if you want football..then I'll give you....wildcard....10-6. I think we actually have an offense capable of scoring A LOT of points. Our defense will be the reason for the 6 losses. We simply still have no real answer to stopping the run. Our LB corps is still avg...I'm not sure about our secondary and our d-line is great but a d-line alone never won a championship. Since we probably won't stop the run very well....we won't stop the clock either.....and if we can't stop the clock...our offense will end up on the sidleines more than I'd like. Now...I am not a big fan of talking about a team solely based on whats on paper but....thats the way I see this year happening unless we get a stud LB.

What are you talking about? Character and 137 safety's should be plenty enough to stop the run.