Not furious like I have been in the last several losses to these guys were we played like shit and played right into their hands. They got a lot of very timely assists from the refs today (DIE YOU COCKSUCKERS, DIE A LONG, SLOW, HORRIBLE, PAINFUL DEATH).
McVay DID fuck-up on not challenging that fumble - it was pretty clear that the ball came out before Deebo was down. That would have been a big momentum swing, giving us the ball right near the red zone. Not sure what he was thinking.
To those I argued with on the "Trade Van Jefferson" thread during this offseason, in defense of Van, please accept my apologies - you were right. A couple of critical drops today and Stafford's second pick was because Van ran the wrong route. When Kupp comes back, I expect Van to move to WR4, WR5, or lower ... and if someone wants to trade for him, we should listen.
I'm still not buying the legend of Brock Purdy. He looks good when he has all fucking day to throw, but on the few times we pressured him he looked like fucking spazz. He also Garrapaloed two deep balls to wide open guys when he had time.
Not happy with TuTu not running the right route that cost us a TD, but not going to throw him under the bus because he has developed into a quality WR. He just needs experience. Also, I want whoever the ref was who decided that was intentional grounding by Stafford to get ass raped by Satan's barbed DNA rifle. What a fucking terrible call.
Puka ... wow. Completely proves that last week's performance wasn't a mirage, does it again against a much better D. And he did it dinged up too. NFL defenses, you are on notice - when we get Kupp back and he's on the field with Puka, you are FUCKED.
Also not gonna throw Kyren under the bus for the first Stafford INT, but he does have to do better obviously. But he's a better runner than Cam and he's more versatile. But we could use more depth. Maybe next week is time to call up Evans.
Raheem needs to do better dialing up pressure. And I want to see Tomlinson get some looks too.
Right now, there are two guys on our offense - Cam and VJ - who I would happily trade. If there is an edge rusher out there - and I'll be realistic, it doesn't have to be someone great, just someone better than Hoecht - we should look at swinging a deal for them.
If there is a silver lining in this cloud, it's that this team really is for real. They pushed those cocksuckers from Norcal to the limit and made them have to get timely ref assistance to put them over the top. This team is a good team and we can be at least a playoff team while getting a lot of young guys a lot of experience. Today was about growing pains, but we learned some valuable lessons.
Onto the Bengals.