It's not lightning. We lost to mediocre teams last year too. But we had an easy schedule in the second half of season. It's even easier this year. No more back to backs til March 7th. No back to backs after March 28th. 10 of last 12 games at home. This is significant. We are 3-6 in second night of back to backs. And we are much better at home than on the road.
11-9 at home is not great. The top 7 teams in the west have minimum 15 wins at home, and minimum 11 wins on the road.
All 8 playoff teams in the east have 13 or more wins at home.
Again, we're the easy part of the schedule for other teams until we can learn to have some god damn consistency. We have no easier schedule because none of those easy teams are much worse than us.
At least last year it felt like we had hope. I always feel it's troubling when real doubt comes into play about if CJ has overtaken Dame. It use to be like "Hey, this is a great situation to be in" but now it's become like "well, what the fuck do we have here?" And then our ancillary pieces.... god some of them have regressed. Davis is pretty much a no-show, Meyers aside from 3-4 games a year is completely invisible, Crabbe is so inconsistent... It goes further... what the fuck can this team do? Can it re-group and even resemble what we had last year? I have serious, serious doubts.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but THIS year (because this year and last year are completely different, nothing should be seen in a vacuum) they have little that resembles that team that at least stood a fighting chance every game.
Aside from the philly blowout last year, and maybe a couple others that slip my mind, I felt that they were there in every game and gave it a ton of effort and I was okay with the close losses and even ones that got away... This year? I don't understand. It's infuriating. What the hell happened to the team we had last year? I don't blame anyone for having cynicism towards this team because it's rightly justified given what we saw this team do on a consistent basis even in LOSSES.
So, you can stay homerific all you want... I just want to paint a picture as to why maybe some of us feel we aren't going to have some magical resurgence like we did last year. We don't love the team any less, we're not any less fans... but at least to me, there has been no signs of the progress, fight, and effort to deter our concerns like there was last year.
Eric, I plead you to read this with objective glasses. Regardless of whether Dame and Cj got better, and we have Turner... this team, fundamentally, is so different and wrong from last years' team... and it's the team as its' pieces. And yes, it mostly IS the same team. Whether it's because of "paid contentment" or whatever... there is something different about this team... and no "easier schedule" is going to fix it unless the TEAM fixes itself. Because, if it were the case, the easy teams we played in the "first half" would have all (or mostly all) been wins. These are professional players, back to backs and travel are part of the game... They understand that, that can't be built in excuses.
Again, until this team decides to show some consistency, effort, and continuity, people are going to rightly have their doubts.
