Here is what I look for in a preseason game....

[John from Hemet]

....first of all...NO INJURIES

.....I dont pay attention to the weakness so much as I do the things that are done right....you NEED to see your weakness so you can improve upon them in preseason

.....We emply a defense that relies a lot on stunting, blitzing, and gambling plays....you run a VANILLA DEFENSE in the preseason....(Cinci was doing it...but their coach is a @rick.....

.....Even though they were blitzing....I thought Buffalo was doing a much better job then last year of picking it up....anybody remember last year.....here comes the kitchen sink....qb is now limping.....offensive line is standing their with their hands on their hips.....

BLEDSOE WAS EXCELLENT.....if he puts just a little air under that interception ball he has 3 touchdowns instead of two.....

[WG]

"...offensive line is standing their with their hands on their hips....."

Yeah, I remember it. I think they got it from Phillips!

Good points. I'm only concerned b/c we have two easy games against poor rush Ds but teams that have a lot of offense to open the season followed by what figures to be 3 really tough games.

Drew was impressive. I hope he continues that. I agree w/ ya that the OL will be vastly superior come opening day. I guess at this point I'm starting to question how good Henry really is since he can only seem to play well vs. crud rush Ds.

[TigerJ]

I think when watching preseason games it's only important to look at the team play when first line players are in the game. By the third and fourth quarters it is only profitable to look at individual play. Coy Wire stood out for example. When Andre Rone drops a ball, who really cares. We all know he's gonna get cut in a few weeks. But his dropped ball can cause a drive to stop and affect team results in the second half. I don't worry about our line play at this point because I know it'll take a little time to gel. I'm confident that the quality of the personnel is greatly improved from a y ear ago and things will come around. I'm confident that will include production in the running game.

I'll worry about the D-line's ability to stop the run, however, until I see them actually do it.

[Halbert]

What happens in pre-season is really important.

... right up until the regular season opening kickoff. After that it's completely meaningless.

I think the sky is still up there.

[WG]

Tiger, Henry was 7 for 11 w/ the first team. We also passed 13 plays to 7 rushing. That's clearly not gonna happen during the season on any kind of a regular basis.

All eyes will be on Henry this Friday evening. If he cannot put up a good game, criticism will start to trickle in...

[The_Philster]

We should have Ruben back in there so that should help Travis increase his productivity.

[HenryRules]

Personally, I look for two things in preseason.
1 - as with you, no injuries. This is such a huge #1 that #2 should be in a separate list.

2 - how people challenging for jobs, changing positions, new players are doing. This is where the main improvement/regression is going to take place on the team. For returning players, I don't really place much emphasis at all on training camp unless they fall into one of the previous categories.

Judging by these 2, the first preseason game went alright as far as I'm concerned. I don't think we really had any injuries in the game and Bledsoe, Jennings, Mike Williams, and Reed all looked pretty good.

[TigerJ]

Wys Guy: "All eyes will be on Henry this Friday evening. If he cannot put up a good game, criticism will start to trickle in..."

Agreed. We can't do anything about the first preseason game anymore, so I'm not gonna worry about it, but if there is not some marked improvement in the running game the number of people questioning what the team is doing will rise dramatically.