Quote Originally Posted by Fritz View Post
While we've spent enormous amounts of time bitching about the defense, or Dom Capers, or whose fault that all is, and lots of time recently bitching about A-Rod, or his girlfriend, or MM's playcalling, the real undoing of this team this year will be the special teams.

It's been a running joke on this site that Slocum needs to be fired, and people are on record as wanting that, but it seems more jokish than vitriolic.

It's the special teams that will kill this team in a close playoff game. I don't know how they fix this tire fire, but for god's sakes - blocked field goals, blocked extra points, allowing punt return touchdowns, shitty punting.

These are the things that will undermine this team in the end.

I'm not worried about A-Rod or the offense. I believe a certain kind of defense - the Bills', the Seahawks', the Lions', the Cards' - can seriously slow down this offense. But I think they can score in the 20's.

And while I don't think it's a SB defense, that defense is better than last year's. It's not a great defense, but it's been okay much of the time. Not great, but okay.

So it will be that blocked field goal, that punt or kickoff return, that missed extra point, that will wreck this team in the end.

What can be done? Would it help to fire Slocum at this point?
Did we take Lang and Sitton off the line for FG attempts because of their nagging injuries so they'll be able to play on offense? I suspect this could be the issue on the blocked FGs but the punt and kick-off units have been poor for a while. Slocum has to go this offseason.