10 things that went sideways

[Kray007]

First off, let me say that it’s rare for a team to need so much adversity in order to engineer a loss. I sort of felt like it was like the Super Bowl vs the Saints. Six things all had to go right in order for New Orleans to prevail, and they all did. Yesterday, AD Mitchell stepped into the Hank Baskett role.

It was as if they kept piling straws on the camel’s back, and, eventually, it broke.

The injuries…injuries aren’t especially rare in the National Football League, but rarely do they have the kind of impact that they had yesterday. All three injuries, to Pierce, to Moore, and to Goncalves played critical roles in the loss.

Not only has Pierce become a lethal weapon vs every level of the Offense, his blocking skills, if not elite, are functional. I have a hard time seeing him having to tackle a DB in order to spring Taylor.

Moore’s injury took a key tool out of Anarumo’s toolbox. He might not have shut down Nacua, but his presence on the back end might have helped Anarumo make life just a bit more challenging for the receiver.

And, Goncalves. I haven’t looked at a game replay, yet; but, when I do, and start counting bad plays by the RG, I suspect I won’t have enough fingers and toes.

That’s 3. In no particular order of magnitude, 4 and 5 should be 4A and 4B, since they happened on the same play. A defender tripping and falling was egregious enough, but it was exacerbated by the fact that there were only 10 men on the field.

For 6, we have DJ Gidden’s failure to help chip on Kearse when the Ram’s edge rusher blew past Raimann at the two minute mark. It helped turn 2nd
and 15 into 3rd and forever.

Coming in at 7, we have a bad call by the ref on Tyler Warren for offensive pass interference. Clearly, Warren made contact, but if you’re not going to call it on Nacua, why call it on Warren? It quite likely turned 7 points into 3.

At 8, we have the plethora of ugly penalty calls that kept them off schedule. There aren’t many teams out there who can overcome 3rd and 25, especially when it seems to happen on half your possessions.

9, it’s the penalty on Mitchell that negated Taylor’s TD run. There’s no way to know if it would have been a TD without the penalty, but it would have, at the very least, kept the sticks moving, inside of two minutes, and set them up for a potential winning FG in regulation.

And, at 10, we have the play that will be burned into our collective memory until the stars wink out and man’s monuments crumble into dust..Mitchell’s fumble.