If we’re going to turn things around against the Jets on Sunday in New York, it’s simple: we just need to make the plays when they come our way.
I know that’s a stock answer, but that’s just how this game is. It’s so close, like in last week’s 6-3 loss to the Browns, but even in games where you think somebody got whooped losing 28-14, sometimes the game comes down to just two or three plays.
You just have to make the plays when your name is called. We also have to be a little smarter; we took way too many penalties last Sunday. I don’t watch all the game films and I’m about the least informed guy in the building in terms of what an offence and defence is supposed to do, but I think the penalties were more than we could afford to give up.
We just need to be smarter and make the plays when they come our way.
The preparation for a special teams player like myself varies quite a bit from the rest of the team. As a unit, the special teams players look at blocks and anything that might have gone wrong, just like any other facet of the game. We also look at an opponent’s tendencies to see if we can pick anything up.
But as far as my preparations specifically as a kicker? I just worry about myself and snapping. For kickers, it’s pretty much all on you in terms of having a game plan.
The message from the coaching staff remains the same: Stay together and keep playing hard.
You wouldn’t know it with my coming from Vancouver, Wash., (a neighbouring city to Portland, Ore.), but I’m a St. Louis Cardinals fan and I did watch them in the playoffs, too much of it as it turned out.
Baseball is so streaky. You could put the Royals in right now and they might win a series if they get hot. I don’t want to say it’s unfair, that’s just how it is.
I was a shortstop growing up playing in Little League and I was a huge Ozzie Smith fan as a result. He seemed to be the guy to watch growing up and the Cardinals were pretty good back then too, being in the World Series in ’85 and ’87, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll root for these guys.’
That’s kind of a knock on the Seattle Mariners I guess, but they really weren’t too good back then. I was still about three hours away (from Seattle) so it’s not like they were shoved down my throat either, so I was a rogue fan that just picked up the Cardinals.
After the all-star break, the Cardinals picked up Matt Holliday and started cruising, but then I think went something like 2-8 down the stretch and t they just couldn’t get out of it.
Being a kicker and someone familiar with pressure situations, I do have sympathy for what happened to Holliday. People can get pretty vicious sometimes. The guy came in, tried to make a play and it didn’t work out. It’s not he like he tried to play it off his stomach.
I’m also not 13 anymore where you’re yelling at everything that goes wrong. Now it’s more kind of like, "OK, so they lost. What’s for dinner?"
I know that baseball is a lot harder than it looks, so as a fellow athlete I definitely give the players on my favourite teams a little more room for error.