Sunday, October 12, 2008

Frye WILL start

by: Chris Sullivan

Just a heads up, guys and gals, Charlie Frye will officially be starting. This isn't really news, because we all expected it, but any last hopes of seeing Matt have been dashed. It appears he'll be our emergency QB, but there's also a chance that Bryan Russell will act as our emergency QB if we really don't want to risk Matt.

While I think we are all a little nervous about pinning our hopes of salvaging the year on Charlie Frye, here's why it may be okay:

  1. Charlie Frye has a career QB rating of 71.1, which is not great, but it's still better than Matt's this year (57.7)--though, in all probability, Frye will be affected by the same factors affecting Matt's QB Rating, namely WR play.
  2. Charlie Frye has never started a regular season game with blindside protection. Walt and Wahle will make all his wildest dreams become a reality!
  3. We still have not seen the inactives list for the Hawks; it is still an outside chance that Jordan "Security Blanket" Kent will be in there for Chucky.
That said, here are my keys to the game:
  1. Charlie Frye must not make many errors. He doesn't have to set the world on fire, but he cannot set the Seahawks aflame either.
  2. The Secondary must control Greg Jennings. In an ideal world, Trufant would just match up with him on every play, but I don't like the idea of us throwing our whole system off to cover one player. Wilson has the spotlight on him, and he could earn a starting spot for the season if he really steps up today. Grant must wake up, and Russell must step up and become the safety he was last year. The secondary is key.
  3. Ryan Grant is not the same player he was last year, but he is still a player. The D-Line needs to step up and kill that threat early in the game. Grant has lost twice as many fumbles in the first five games as he did all last year (2 versus 1, hah). If we can shake his confidence, we can keep him off-kilter.
  4. Julius Jones & Co. must--repeat, must--have a big game. We cannot rely on Frye, though I think he will have a decent game.
What do you guys think? END