I will say in our favor, there are very few teams that are looking pretty "clean" right now, and many of the preseason favorites are looking pretty sloppy overall. The Chiefs are on a really good run now, but started 0-2 and are currently 3rd in their division. The Texans won the division last year, but currently sit at 2-3. The Ravens were a trendy super bowl pick and they look AWFUL. Burrow is done (and as such probably the Bengals too, regardless of Flacco's relatively solid play in his stead), and somehow the Rodgers-led Steelers are heading up that division. And the Bills, another trendy SB pick, have also looked very unconvincing in spite of their 4-2 record. There you have the worst-to-(currently) first Patriots on top, but they feel a bit "too early" if that makes sense.
Over on our side of things, it's a lot more of the same. The Bucs are the top team in the NFC, who would've guessed that?? Reigning champs Philly are still on top of their division, but they have also been very sloppy and don't look nearly as dominant as they did last year. The NFC West is shaping up like a real dogfight with three solid teams but none that look (to my eye) to really be elite and/or putting that much distance between the others yet. And then there's us, who have just been kind of...weird? We faced arguably our two toughest tests in week 1/2 and passed with flying colors...then came back to earth a bit in recent weeks and now look like we are still working on finding our footing.
So it's not like it's all bad by any means. All things considered we are in a good spot as it stands and should hope to count on things improving. Yes, some of our wins have been closer than they feel like they should have been...and we probably should've put away Dallas, but we also only have one loss and it's on a time-running-out FG.
In all of these contests you can argue we should have done better (and I would agree) but that is still ultimately a better run of form than pretty much any other team can say right now.
Even the NFC-leading Bucs are just a half game ahead of us (5-1 vs 4-1-1) and theirs have come by way of a 3pt win over the Falcons, 1pt win over the Texans, 2pt win over the Jets, 3pt win over the Seahawks, and a 6pt loss to the Eagles that wasn't particularly close until "garbage time," they just have one "big" win so far.
So, you take the good with the bad. Celebrate the wins for what they are but recognize/acknowledge the things to improve on all the same. In some ways I think our big wins over DET and WAS to start the season maybe changed expectations for many. Heading into the start of the season, if I said we'd be 4-1-1 after 7 weeks, almost everyone would be perfectly happy with that. Many probably had already penciled in losses to DET or WAS or DAL to start the season off. Not many would've picked a tie or a loss to the Browns but most would be happy with 4 wins out of the first 6 all the same. In starting with 2-0 over the two toughest teams arguably, it makes the following weeks' performances get judged a bit differently, I guess. Ironically, if we had started 0-2 or 0-1-1 and then rattled off 4 wins, most would probably feel better about things right now lol
