Needs

[Kray007]

I’d love to think that this team is a legit Super Bowl contender, I really would. But, I think they may be a year and a big-time pass rusher away.

That having been said, I can’t see any reason that they can’t live on the fringes of that terrain. As long as….

They quit making stupid, drive killing mistakes, like players lining up offside on offense and coming out in illegal formations.

They don’t keep muffing punts. Tight games are hard enough to win. We don’t need Josh Downs botching punt returns at his own 11 yard line.

Shane Steichen figures out that, sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor. Sometimes, with the clock running out on the first half, it’s better to let time expire than to gift the other guys a couple of extra timeouts that they use to narrow your lead and build momentum.

They find a viable back up piece at DT. Going from giving up 2,8 yards per carry when Buckner and Stewart are on the field to allowing 7 whatever one of them leaves is unsustainable.

They reinforce the Receiving corps. Daniel Jones did a remarkable job of squeezing the ball into tight spaces, hitting Pierce and Pittman just before they went out of bounds. But, there’s no substitute for a receiver who consistently separates from coverage. Asking the football gods for the next Ja’Marr Chase or Puka Nacua might be tempting their ire, but would another Wes Welker be too much to ask.

They locate someone to take the load off Jonathan Taylor. With any luck, JT has three or four good years left, but not if they keep running him 20 times per game.

They get better on the right side of the offensive line. Braden Smith is now peddling his diminishing skills in Houston, and I suspect that the Texans will soon discover that he lost the past couple of years is unrecoverable. I know a lot of his rules we can still eat level edge, rushers, but he didn’t use to struggle as much against the likes of JJ and JT Watt. As far as Goncalves is concerned, last year he was a double threat… mediocre at both pass and run blocking. There’s a reason why Taylor’s backups didn’t produce much on the ground, and that was the inability of Goncalves to move his man off the line, to create holes or, even, creases.

Injuries. It’s tough up to win healthy, but it’s infinitely harder if the likes of Daniel Jones, Deforest Buckner, Sauce Gardner, and Charvarius Ward are out of action.

And, finally, they’re bringing in 7 new faces to fill spots vacated by trades, cuts, or free agency. We need at least half of those guys like Haulcy, Allen, and Key to step in and play well. I’m not expecting Ashton Dulin to look like Marvin Harrison or for Hunter Wohler to morph into Bob Sanders. The guys they’re replacing we’re mostly average and we only need a little more than that.