1) The players. Too many bonehead penalties, missed assignments, and so on. Some of the OL was atrocious yesterday. I don't want to take away anything from the Vikings DL, but it's not one that should manhandle an OL, certainly not one that is starting all veterans who have had some level of success in the league. One really bad throw by each of the QB's lead to 14 points for the opposition.
2) The coaches. How the hell could they have not had these guys ready for the game? What were they doing the past few weeks? There are a number of decisions that can be second guessed. And they need to seriously emphasize reducing the penalties. Fair or not, the Rams are not going to get the benefit of the doubt, so we have to do what we can to eliminate penalties. If we still get screwed, then we can blame the refs. But we can't blame them for three false starts in our own building. The coaches have a lot to fix.
3) Lady Luck (that f--king wh-re). Remember in 2008 when Brady blew out his knee? Remember when Cassel came in and won 11 games? And then, as valuable of a backup they traded Cassell away before the 2009 season and went with ... who (for backup)? I don't remember, and I bet most of you don't either, at least not without the aid of Google. Did they get burned by not having a great backup? Nope, Brady's knee held up fine. Whoever his backup was became an irrelevant issue.
Or how about the Denver Broncos since 2012 ... they sign an old QB named Manning who missed the previous season with a career threatening back injury. And who have they had as a backup in that time? Brock Osweiler. And we know that if Manning went down for an extended period, it would probably be catastrophic for Denver. And yet the old guy who had a career threatening back injury hasn't even missed a start. Sure, he's been hit, been sacked, and he's old, but held up fine.
So, it's reasonable to think that we could go into the season with Shaun Hill as a backup, but Sam would probably be fine, right? Nope. Where other teams avoided getting struck by lightning twice, we get it right in the same knee. We lose our QB who looked to be finally surrounded with decent talent. For the year. Same knee. How many other guys have come back from an ACL tear the next year and not had a problem with it? Many. But our QB? NoooooooOOOOOOOOOooooooooo. Rams can't have that kind of luck. We have to lose him for the year, again. And then to add insult to injury, we have to lose our backup QB 30 minutes into the season.
For the last 10 years, we've seen entire units wiped out by injuries. One year it's WR's. The next year it's OL. The next year it's DB's.
This one is the most frustrating, because #1 and #2 are somewhat within the team's control. But on this one, Lady Luck has bent us over, put on a strap-on, and pegged us in the ass without even having the decency or courtesy to use Vaseline or give us a reach around. And while a team can overcome some bad luck, everything has its limits. You can't overcome luck this bad.
Ok, rant off.