Football Outsider win predictions

[The Goat]

Originally Posted by 44Deezel

Yeah, and there's no reason they shouldn't have done better against the niners when absolutely nothing was on the line. I can understand needing an above average to dominant O line to be successful against the best defenses in the league, but there are no excuses against the likes of the Bengals, Rams and 49ers. Beating a dead horse I know, but there were a lot of other teams with weak receivers and dinged up offensive lines that still managed to field a credible passing attack and put more than 12 points a game on the board. They'll be better this year.

I think the explanation to this is simply having one of the worst, if not the worst, oline in the league over the long haul. It's not an easy pill to swallow but thinking about how that group was absolutely destroyed by Pitt, Baltimore, NY and Dallas during the 2nd half of the season then it's no surprise the oline never recovered...so even the Bengals, Rams the niners were a challenge.

It's interesting to see how focus on the state of the oline has waned this off-season within the franchise and fanbase. I want to believe we've done enough to avoid another collapse, but i can't agree w/ how our FO has handled the situation. We're literally one injury away from the line falling to pieces (Samuels) and if any two of the other starters went down the offense would grind to halt.