State of the team, pissed at the thermometer

I was surprised to see that Jeff Lurie made a lengthy appearance yesterday where he gave his thoughts about the team’s performance this year. I watched the entire 34 minute and change video.  To be honest I was quite surprised that I came away from it feeling better about having Jeff Lurie owning the team, despite his affirmation that Andy Reid will be back next year.

Lurie was very honest with his feelings about the season.  There was no mistaking his genuine disgust for the way team performed as any sort of act.  He did not pull any punches using strong words to describe the team’s underwhelming performance as a whole this season.  I found it refreshing to hear the owner echo much of what I felt throughout this frustrating season.

He did a good job of balancing his feelings of disappointment and anger with explanations of his logical thought process regarding how to move forward.  I liked that he verbalized how he doesn’t want a player’s coach, he wants a tough coach first.  He also did his best to explain one of Andy’s most frustrating aspects, his media persona.

I have complained for years about how incredibly annoying it is to see Andy say basically the same four or five phrases every press conference after a loss.  His refusal to call players out publicly in these situations is not what a fan wants.  We want the the coach to express the same anger towards players that perform poorly that we feel.

Lurie said he understands that frustration but he pointed out that it isn’t the real Andy, whom he claims expresses his thoughts openly behind closed doors which if I am being a realist, is the way it should be.

I thought Jeff also did an equally good job of fielding questions from the press after his statement, logically breaking down his explanations in a way that generally made sense.

Sure there are problems, major problems with the way the team came together in 2011.  I did not get the impression that if the team would again fall on it’s face in 2012 that Lurie would be willing to give Andy another pass.  We have a long time to discuss it and even longer time to see if it was the right move or not.  All I know is I feel good about the owner of the team today. I even feel better when I realized Jeff and his wife were one of the producers of Inside Job.

I was cursing mother nature yesterday when I heard that the thermometer was supposed to dip dangerously close to the freezing mark tonight for the first time this year.  I was f’ing angry.

It seems for the past 3 or 4 years just as the garden is starting to hit it’s stride we get whacked across the knees with cold weather that kills/damages a good portion of our crop.  After work I headed out in my insulated sweatshirt to quickly cover up the plants in the garden I knew were most sensitive to the cold.  I didn’t even bother to cover the landscape plants, f it.

This morning I saw the thermometer was at 34 degrees, above freezing but cold enough to kill/damage certain things.  I won’t know how the garden survived until after Ali pulls off the blankets.  We had frost on the grass and on the windshields of the vehicles.  This just shouldn’t be an every year occurrence.  I swear when we first moved down here I have no recollection of it getting THIS cold year in and year out.