The USA men's sevens team went 0-5 and finished last at the Dubai Sevens to open the HSBC World Series this weekend. It's been commonly held that Dubai is a really tough place for the Eagles to start the season but, still, winless and last? Ouch.

It all started very badly for the USA, with World Sevens Player of the Year Perry Baker seeming to suffer a concussion in the first half of the Eagles' 22-14 loss to Argentina to open Pool D play on Friday. Baker played no further part in the tournament, so you'd have to assume that the "seeming" part of that sentence isn't really needed.

Down 5-0 (Argentina scored on the play in which Baker was injured), the USA momentarily recovered. A brilliant piece of tap-dancing from Carlin Isles set up a try for Stephen Tomasin, and you'd be forgiven for thinking "OK, they're back on track."

They weren't.

Instead of giving you a play-by-play account of how the USA lost to Argentina, and then Samoa (26-14), and then New Zealand (22-12) on Friday, followed by a 10-5 overtime loss to Canada and a very poor 31-21 loss to Wales on Saturday, it would be better to touch on a few issues:

Mistakes Kill Confidence

A few errors here and there — a pass bouncing off someone's face, a ball dropped in contact — started to make players appear to doubt themselves and their teammates. Teamwork started to suffer.

Defense

Even-up matchups started to go against the Americans. A two-on-two one time would see both USA defenders turning sideways and running backward and then getting torched. The next time, the outside defender would come in to tackle the inside ballcarrier, leaving the support wide open for a try.

Unwilling to miss a tackle, players started to make little hand-stops rather than lay a shoulder into someone.

Weird Things

In overtime against Canada, Carlin Isles had space out wide and cut back into two defenders. Are you shaking your head at this? We are.

Health

Danny Barrett didn't look 100 percent. His arm hurt. He lost the ball in contact in Dubai more than he did all last season (that's a guess, made to illustrate a point). He was put on the team because Mike Friday wants him there to provide grit and veteran leadership. But Barrett didn't look comfortable.

Good News (Sort Of)

All of this is eminently fixable. Get the ball handling right, play a little harder in support, and knock a few more guys down to the ground and the results turn around pretty quickly.

The Eagles can't exactly get much worse.