CruzDude said:
This mornings Bee article where RA looks for consistency hits this nail on the head: the teams mental state. Maybe they are still figuring they can just show up to beat many teams when in fact now they cannot. But for 4-5 years that attitude got them 55 wins and one year more than 60.
Without the supporting cast it gets dangerous to keep old habits and without a change in attitude even more so. But as we all seem to be asking now, what IS a solution? How about bringing in Evans earlier for Christie, to save DC's foot. Or.....? or........? arrgghhh
I don't think its the same attitude we've had for the last 5 years. Was a point we were hungry to kick everybody's butt everytime we stepped on the floor.
What I worry about with this team is that its just tired. Not physically so much as mentally. Burnt out on all of the close calls, all of the adversity. Feeling the barbs of the call in radio boobs. Aware that there is not a thing it can do right now to shut people up. That no matter how well it plays in the next few months, people are still going to question them, still going to say "yeah we've seen this before". Same way that many fans or former fans will simply refuse to get excited about this team because "been there, done that, won't believe you can do more until you actually pull it off", I worry that that attitude has infected the team too. What does it matter? They have no chance at redemption until June anyway, so what does it really matter? The crowds won't get excited for them, nobody's going to give than any credit in the media, even their owners seem less present this year. So for the team, maybe just perhaps a lack of consistent focus because somewhere down deep, it means more than to the other team than it does to us.
Basically I worry that we are burnt out on the regular season. Like a championship team perhaps, but without ever having won it all. And of course the bad part is once that attitude sets in on a championship team, they aren't champions much longer. Sets in for us, and we never will be.
We're weary, dogged, focused on a distant goal. The team has and has always had great heart. But I worry that somehow we've started to become numb. That we're dogged, but not enthusiastic, not so much excited about the possibilities and willing to lay it all on the line to pursue a dream we've all had, as just determined to hang in there, to persevere, not to give up.
And if all of that is true, the question becomes do you let them soldier on until they run into a younger, more excited bunch on the way up rather than just hanging on, or do you shake it up? Our guys need their excitement back -- they need to start viewing big games as an exciting opportunity to strut their stuff rather than an exhausting opportunity to fail, an ordeal which must be passed.
