I have let panic creep in a bit, but I am still in wait and see mode. Someone in another thread made a great point about the preseason being so thoroughly over analyzed due in part to all of the information being thrown around on twitter/blogs/etc. We have never seen such a dissection of preseason and training camp football before. I think my primary concern in EJ's overall accuracy, more so than Hackett's calls.
As far as preseason is concerned remember this:
1. Marrone is said to be uber paranoid and the playbook during the preseason was extremely limited (even the biggest "realists" have to admit this). Should they be able to score with 10 plays? Yes, probably, but I still dont think it is a fair comparison to regular season game planning.
2. From what I witnessed after the booing at halftime against Tampa, the playbook opened up. I dont know if this was from Marrone finally cracking a little because of the fans, or to just give his guys (mainly EJ) a little confidence but they ran 2 plays in the 3rd quarter that made me feel much better.
-- 1st and 10, midfield, 8:35 in the 3rd Q. EJ fakes a hand off to the right to Spiller, then pitches left to Chandler. This was a great play call and a solid 7 yard gain at midfield.
-- 2nd and 1, Tampa 9yd line, 2:45 in the 3rd Q. EJ pitches right to Fred and a convoy is out front blocking for him. Mike W., Henderson and Chandler (Chandlers block is great) plow the road and Fred trots in for the touchdown. I had to watch it twice because I couldn't believe they were not just slamming it up the middle. This is the type of running play our o-line is built for.
No where in any other preseason game are either of these plays used. I am not saying that we have a stash of secret plays that no one can defend, but I do think we have a lot more to keep defenses off balance than we showed. That is really what offense is about, keeping a defense guessing. I think that, especially with regards to the run game, we have a lot more planned than we have seen. At least this is what I'm going to tell myself for the next 5 days.