Ripple Effects

The Fire continue to make fairly catastrophic, Zat Knight-eqsue mistakes on defense. Nobody picked up Kenny Cooper on a through-ball, allowing him to break in alone on goalkeeper Matt Pickens, resulting in an utterly non-controversial penalty kick. Then nobody picked up Juan Toja at the top of the box, and he rifled a shot that deflected off defender Gonzalo Segares and past a helpless Pickens.

Calen Carr got one back once we threw everything and the kitchen sink at FC Dallas, but it wasn't enough. So that's three games, three losses, and eight goals against. Was Tony Sanneh that important in the second half of last year?

To be honest, I don't think so, although that may just be my own reluctance to throw Jim Curtin under the bus. What I'm starting to wonder is whether or not our lack of offensive creativity is negatively affecting our defense's ability to deal with, well, offensive creativity. In training, our defense has to face our own offense, and if our own offense struggles in game situations, doesn't it follow that they may struggle in practice?

To be fair, this is just a crazy theory at this stage, and there are two strikes against it already. First off, neither scoring chance from Dallas came off of the kind of busted play that typically does our defense in. Second, there are some guys on the second team -- and I'm thinking of Calen Carr, Floyd Franks and Brian Plotkin here -- who have actually shown some creativity. But they are still young, and maybe they're not enough to prepare the defense for guys like Kenny Cooper or Taylor Twellman or Steve Ralston.

Like I said, food for thought.