Hoping to improve on 13 and get a win...

I woke up Sunday morning with butterflies, excitement and my adrenaline pumping. I had the same feeling going into my first professional game as I had during my playing days at Bama and in high school. I can honestly say I wasn’t nervous. I had the feeling I was well prepared and was comfortable enough to know I could run around and have fun.

Once the game started those butterflies from earlier Sunday morning had left and it was back to business. As I stated last week, facing Donovan McNabb and the Eagles would be a tremendous challenge, and it was. They are so multi-faceted on offense. Defensively you have to be great in the passing and running game to shut this team down. While we held him to 70 yards rushing, McNabb threw for over 250 yards.

Much talk has been made about my 13 tackles in my first NFL game. Each week I hope to improve but realize it will be hard to surpass the 13 mark. Personally, it was a great performance. But football isn’t like tennis or golf. Football is a team sport, so my statistics don’t matter when we lose the game. Winning is far more important than personal numbers.

Things do not get any better for us this week. Peyton Manning and the Colts come to town. Peyton isn’t as much a threat to run as Donovan was but he is known for picking a defense to pieces. This game more than ever, I’ll need to be on my toes and recognize situations and offensive sets to ensure I get all our guys in the right alignment. In doing this you always have to realize that Peyton will do things to get you out of position. The guy is a master on the field.

We began putting in the game plan for Indy today and will continue to improve on it throughout the week. We’ll have a practice session on Saturday morning before flying to Indianapolis that afternoon.

Saturday evening will involve some team meetings and reviewing the game plans. Of course, I’ll have a watchful eye on my former team Alabama as they play Louisiana-Monroe. This should be a good match-up for the Bama before they open up SEC play against Arkansas next week. A good test for the young defensive unit, as ULM has a pretty athletic and cerebral quarterback. Like we are in Houston, Bama is a young team and will be just fine when they stop making mistakes that defeat themselves.

 Until next week,

DeMeco