(12-26-2023, 12:47 PM)JagFan81 Wrote:

(12-26-2023, 11:27 AM)NYC4jags Wrote: Tough call

The kid is a competitor and will push to play on one leg while hallucinating tweety birds encircling the Center's helmet.

If trainers are telling coaches "technically, he is safe to play" they are stuck making a really tough call about a backup with inferior ability or a starter with better ability but currently making bad decisions.

I'd be OK giving the kid a week off, but I reckon it will be TL starting and CJ poised to take over if the turnovers rear their ugly head again.

The problem is the coaches are wrong whatever they do. They get told Lawrence can go so they play him and that was a mistake. If Beathard was out there making mistakes and we lost and then knew Lawrence could go but they rested him, the coaches would get killed for resting him for a game we needed.

They can't win whatever they do with this fanbase right now. The other option is always the right one.

You're correct.
I'd go a step further and say that in the internet-age of sports fandom, most every franchise in most every sport is dealing with this brand of hyper criticism. Most of it ill-informed, unfounded, often hypocritical to last week or last month's brand of whining, and rarely more than 17 different versions of overreaction. 

It gets harder to tune it out sometimes when the teams is legit struggling. Just gotta' steer the rudder and try to even your own keel.

When the team gets into a rut like this I stop trying to explain the flaw in every misplaced criticism and just focus on a few things that may help the team get better. 

Real help is not on the way until the offseason (we hope) , but if this team can get a few more injured guys healthy in the coming weeks, and TL can slow down the anxiety of trying to overcome that line and just be a bit smarter, they may have a shot at salvaging a bad second half of the season. 

Whatever happens, we can be certain that many in this fanbase will criticize any decisions made that don't match the ones they've personally decided are the best way froward.

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