With the most unbiased view I can have...

Last night was....well, to put it lightly "a work in progress". Some of you may know me as an optimist, to some I'm even a "Kool Aid fan" which in my opinion is just as much an insult as any McNickname. As we all saw last night, some things we are usually solid with took a step back (I'm looking at yellow laundry here). But, there are 3 things that have taken dramatic steps forward and I think it's fair that they are mentioned as well.

First thing:  Quarterback play. No, KO didn't throw a TD pass which would have been sweet, but he didn't throw any INT's either. He's down from 1 against Seattle and 3 against SF. I'm not trying to sugarcoat his average performance, but we all need to recognize that it was average--not poor. Tom Brandstater has make marvelous steps forward from Seattle. The game seemed to slow down quite a bit for him this week and he managed things well, despite the INT. He did everything you can ask and expect a rookie to do: He shook off the inevitable mistakes, and didn't let them haunt him. If you're expecting a 200 yard, 3 TD, 0 INT game from a rookie in his second showing (with little to no practice with the first team), you're being too demanding of him. He's not going to have the game mastered in 2 weeks, and he will make improvements as time goes on. Expect a good game from him next week if he keeps it up.

Second: Running backs. Again, nothing outstanding last night, but I think it's pretty safe to say that we have a good running game and it will be used this season. Correll Buckhalter put on a good show that was far better than his previous games. He's making progress. Also, Darius Walker had a light up game last night that is being overshadowed and disregarded. That's not fair to him. He makes the team over Lamont Jordan at this point I'd say. He didn't seem to have the jitters that Jordan does and he attacks the hole with everything he's got. Again, expect him to have a good game next week. Also, last night was our first realistic glimpse (IMO) of what Hillis will do in this system. I plan on nabbing him in all my fantasy drafts because his RZ play is phenomenal. His KR and PR stuff was fun to see too.

Third: Secondary. I think we can all unanimously agree here that our secondary looks much better with Dawkins in the mix. He's the bone jarring, skull rattling guy that we all knew he'd be and despite his club hand, he tacked on 5 tackles and 1 assisted tackle in 2 quarters of play. Brian Dawkins is no doubt the life blood of our secondary. I was hoping to see better things from our secondary on short passing routes, and if I'm not mistaken, that's the responsibility of the LB's that drop back into coverage. I could be wrong on that, but I think that's who's at fault mostly for what happened there. Alphonso Smith is going to need to step it up if he plans on making the starting team at all this year. That play when he got burned on a 43 yard route was embarrassing for him. He didn't look up for the ball once. All in all though, mistakes have been corrected (Goodman and his coverage). Although not related to the secondary, Doom really impressed me last night. That guy ate Orlando Pace's lunch on pretty much every play. That was encouraging!

Thanks for reading guys, let's talk about it.