Wow. I’m speechless.

In the summary of the many of games you cited how a lack of depth was the cause for a significantly poorer performance in the second half of many games. During the season I remember many of the recaps citing that the main cause, at least on offense, was the lack of a complete playbook: we could exploit opponents with new wrinkles in the first half and faired significantly worse in the second half once they were able to adjust. Depth was clearly an issue in cases where, for example Steven Threet got hurt and Nick Sheridan played the second half, but I wonder to what extent the lack of a full playbook compared to the lack of depth and experience at various positions.

This is an interesting discussion because while the offense will certainly be working with a lot more tools from the start next year and we should see the corresponding bump in competency, I’m not sure to what extent they will really be working with more depth.

It seems that the defense was working with a complete playbook from the start, and with a new defensive coordinator, they are not likely to see any kind of change from last season whether they were or were not, so I suspect that a lack of depth and the competition for a starting position that accompanies this was more prevelant on the defensive side of the ball.

All in all, its pretty encouraging to remember how close we were to winning some of those games, but also daunting to remember how far we are away, especially on defense.