The numbers may be good, but the game film doesn't lie. And in the recent USA 7s team camp, it's the rough parts of the footage that have put everything in perspective.

The USA men's 7s team ended last season in the World Rugby Sevens Series in fifth place, the best finish ever for the Eagles. They put two players in Perry Baker and Danny Barrett on the all-series Dream Team in May, and Baker -- the series' top try-scorer for 2016-17 -- should probably be named the World Rugby 7s player of the year later this fall.



But, in talking about the season with FloRugby, USA head coach Mike Friday put a pin in most of that and looked at the more difficult-to-watch moments.

"We finished fifth, and that was good, but I'd like to see us dig a bit deeper and continue to develop our resilience," Friday said. "We looked at the mistakes we made, simple mistakes that we shouldn't make, over the course of the series, and we gave away 23 to 35 points [in the standings]."

Adding 23 points would have put the USA ahead of third-place Fiji in the World Series standings. Add 35 and the Eagles would be, at worst, tied for second with runner-up England behind champion South Africa.

"We had four or five semifinals or quarterfinals versus South Africa, and we just made little errors at critical times to lose those games," Friday said. "We had other games -- the [Singapore] final against Canada, where we gifted them tries, really."



Friday and the players have been studying all of that. Poor passes, dropped balls, mistakes in defensive alignment, and other execution errors all contributed to losses at the highest level.

"I told them, we have the potential to win every time we go out there, and the only people hurting us, is us," Friday said.

Over the course of last season, the USA had moments in almost every tournament in which the team could have advanced farther but lost a close game. This is what Friday is talking about. 

In the first round of the series in early December, the Eagles lost 14-5 to Scotland and 19-17 to South Africa in Dubai. A win in either game would have put them in top eight.

A week later in Cape Town, the USA lost 24-19 to Scotland in the Cup Quarterfinals. In the third round in Wellington, the Eagles tied France 21-21 in an eminently winnable game. Had the USA won, it would have advanced to the top eight.



In round four in Sydney, a 21-10 loss to South Africa in the quarterfinals cost the USA points. In round five, a 20-17 loss in the semifinals to South Africa was all that stood between the Eagles and the final in Las Vegas. It was the same story a week later in Vancouver, with a 14-10 loss to South Africa in the semis.

In round seven, South Africa made it three in a row with a 29-24 semifinal win over the USA in Hong Kong, and then in Singapore the Eagles had a chance to win the final and then gave up the game-winner to Canada. The USA had few very close games in Paris in round nine, but in the series finale in London the Eagles managed to beat South Africa only to lose close games to Scotland and Canada.

Just following that list of games, the Eagles could have picked up 29 points in the standings, all from winning the extremely close games at key moments. Friday said that is where he wants to see improvement this season.