The Portis Effect

[Schneed10]

I was thinking, and this is merely speculation on my part, but is it possible that the injury to Clinton Portis (and his subsequent rant in TV interviews) had an effect on the team's morale when it comes to preseason games?

Is it possible that most of the players agree that they shouldn't be out there for preseason play, and perhaps they went after the Jets pretty half-heartedly?

I'm probably off-base, because this wouldn't explain what happened to the special teams. Those guys are all fighting for jobs, they need the preseason. And it wouldn't explain the defense's overpursuit on the reverse that went for a TD, if anything they were too aggressive on that play. And you saw individual efforts like Randle-El come surfacing up as positives.

But maybe some of the team came out a little flat because they've heard one of the popular players on the team saying that basically these games are meaningless and dumb? Or are they getting overconfident and starting to believe things will come easy to them? Or did they just plain eff it up the other night?

I thought it was worth discussing.