Monday, September 8, 2014

The Week in Football: Antonio Brown Head Kick Edition

Yesterday, Antonio Brown was harmlessly returning a punt and looked like he might have been able to score. As he broke through the Cleveland defense, only one man stood in his path: Browns' punter Spencer Lanning. Instead of cutting to the outside, which actually appeared to be a viable option for Brown, he instead decided to try and vault over Lanning, which could not have ended worse for Lanning, but more hilarious for all of us watching. About halfway through his jump, it appeared that Brown decided it would be easier to just kick Lanning square in the helmet and continue to run, which is exactly what happened. You can see him lower his leg slightly and aim it directly at Lanning's facemask. Sadly, he was tackled shortly after, and he may even end up facing some type of fine or suspension from the league office. Lanning appeared to be ok, and even tweeted a photo of the kick after the game making light of the incident. The only dropkick this weekend that was worse was the collective one the rest of college football gave to the Big Ten on Saturday. But we'll get to that later. If you haven't seen the video of Brown's kick, you can watch it  right here.

If you're wondering why I'm writing, I encourage you to read my first blog post, which I published last Thursday. You can find it right here.

So from now to the end of the season, I'll be writing a few thoughts about the happenings in football over the weekend. I'll always publish these on Monday.

College Football

The Worst Possible Saturday for the Big Ten

As mentioned above, the Big Ten got dropkicked this weekend. The conference was involved in three of the biggest games this weekend (Michigan State at Oregon, Michigan at Notre Dame, and Ohio State hosting Virginia Tech). I'm not sure they could have had a worse showing. Oregon blasted Michigan State 46-27 by scoring the final 28 points; Notre Dame became the first team to shut out Michigan since 1984, winning 31-0; and Virginia Tech badly outplayed Ohio State in their own house and won 35-21, giving Urban Meyer his third loss as the head coach of the Buckeyes. Honestly, I expected Oregon to win by at least two touchdowns, just because Autzen Stadium is such a tough place to play and Oregon can easily get on a roll once they start scoring, but the other two losses were just puzzling to me. Michigan just didn't show up, and Devin Gardner was awful (3 picks). And Ohio State just really misses Braxton Miller. Their offense doesn't have the same explosiveness with him sitting on the sidelines and J.T. Barrett running the show. Barrett also struggled, completing only 9 of 29 passes and throwing three huge intereceptions, including one that was returned for a touchdown at the end of the game, which killed their last chance to come back.

But these losses go beyond just the embarrassment of this week. They really hamper the Big Ten's ability to get a team into the college football playoff at the end of the year. If you toss Wisconsin's loss to LSU last weekend in with the games this weekend, 4 of the Big Ten's best teams all lost important early season out of conference games. Now certainly, they haven't been eliminated from the playoff picture, but if it came down a one or two loss Pac 12 champion, one or two loss ACC champion, or one or two loss Big 12 champion, or even a one or two loss SEC runner up, and a one or two loss Big 10 champion for the final playoff spot, can you see the selection committee ignoring all of the results from these early season interconference games and deciding that the Big 10 champ is better and therefore, more deserving? I don't.

Defense? What?

My favorite game of the weekend was definitely USC at Stanford. Why? Because sometimes, I appreciate a game that is ugly. I appreciate a game where the defense wins most of the time. Too often in modern college football, I feel like the coaches plucked all the biggest kids from local middle schools and threw them out there to play defense for them. That's what happens when all the rules favor the offense, like they do now. You can't touch quarterbacks anymore. Receivers have no fear running over the middle. Heck, Spencer Lanning took a harder hit this weekend than any receiver or running back. It feels like the game of football is missing something, and I think it's those hard hits, those physical plays by the defense. And no, I don't like helmet to helmet hits, or guys playing dirty, but I do like physical, hard hitting football. That's why I loved the "Game of the Century" back in 2011 so much. Yeah, that's right, LSU-Alabama. A 9-6 overtime victory by the Tigers which featured what seemed like a zillion missed field goals and 500 turnovers. That was riveting! I loved seeing the offensive guys struggling and clawing for every yard. Then again, I may have just loved seeing Nick Saban want to murder his kicker and entire offense because they were playing so badly (Thinking.... Nick Saban mad + Alabama struggling + Alabama fans feeling a gut punch loss = Happiness). USC-Stanford reminded me of that game a little bit. The stakes weren't as high (it wasn't #1 vs #2, with the winner having the inside track at the SEC West title), and the offenses performed marginally better, but Stanford did have 9 drives that finished inside the Trojans 35 yard line and only came away with 10 points, including 4 drives that ended with two fumbles and two missed field goals.

Don't games like this one just feel more intense? I'm sorry, and I know this an extreme example, but when the final score of a game is 70-63, like West Virginia-Baylor was two years ago, that doesn't scream "intensity" or "great" or "fun to watch" to me. It actually screams "We care about defense about as much as Darth Vader cared about being a good father".

At the beginning of the year, I thought Stanford would win the Pac 12. I still think they have an excellent shot, particularly with how UCLA has looked the first two weeks. Plus, I think they've got that Oregon matchup figured out. They've been the only team to really shut them down the last two years, and I wouldn't be shocked if that happened again. They've got a young offensive line, but I expect those guys to figure it out as the season goes on. As far as USC, obviously this was a huge win for Steve Sarkisian, particularly with all the bad news that's come out of that program over the last two years, which included everything that Lane Kiffin touched, and more recently, the whole Josh Shaw saga/story, and the player who quit the team and then accused Sarkisian of being a racist. It was huge for that program to have a big win like they did on Saturday.

Vols Roll to 15 point Victory

Tennessee beat Arkansas State 34-19 on Saturday, and while I realize that Arkansas State is a good program (they've won the last 3 Sun Belt conference championships), I really don't have a feel for the Vols yet. Obviously it's important to win all the games on your schedule, but I don't really think I can draw much from Tennessee's last two wins. They look pretty good defensively, and Justin Worley looks much better and much more confident throwing the football down the field, but all this came against Utah State and Arkansas State. Not exactly the stiffest competition. However, I am all in on the Butch Jones bandwagon, and I love everything that's happened down there since he took over (with the exception of starting Nathan Peterman against Florida last year, and then sticking with him through the entire first half even though he was playing the worst half of college football at the quarterback position in the history of the sport. And no, I don't have any data or facts proving that assertion, it just seemed like that was true. I still maintain that if any other quarterback on the roster, like Worley, had started, Tennessee would've won that game and ended the Gator's winning streak over us, because Florida had an equally abysmal first half. Alas. The struggles of being a Tennessee fan). I'm interested to see what happens at Oklahoma this weekend. This game will tell me more about the Vols than anything that's happened the last two weeks. But more on this game later in the week.

The NFL

Don't Overreact to Week 1

This is just a general rule with the NFL, and all sports really. I try not to make too much of the first game of any NFL team, because it's the first week of the season, and every team is trying to incorporate new guys into their system, and make all of these new pieces fit together. The Bears, who I liked a lot going into the season, lost to the Bills. The Patriots surrendered 23 unanswered second half points to the Dolphins and lost. Tony Romo threw 3 enormous and soul crushing picks against the 49ers and repeatedly killed any momentum that Dallas had built (just kidding about this one. Dallas sucks and I think this is finally the year that Dallas breaks out of the 9-7 or 8-8 funk they've been in. Meaning that they'll go 6-10 or 5-11). Don't overreact to these things. The Bears have a great offense with weapons like Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery, and Matt Forte, and a offensive mastermind head coach in Mark Trestman. The Patriots have Brady and Belichick. I didn't think New England was a Super Bowl contender anyway, because they still have no weapons on the outside, and maybe the Bears defense is just going to suck all year, but both those teams will be in playoff contention at the end of the year. Every year, we see teams win or lose games in week 1, and it ultimately amounts to nothing. So don't overreact. Even if the Bears drop to 0-2 next week, which is entirely possible because they are playing at San Francisco, which is opening its brand new stadium, I still wouldn't count them out. It's a long season.

No One is Winning in Seattle

Come back with me to Thursday night, the opening night of the NFL season, which featured the most impressive team of week 1, as well as the best team. The Seattle Seahawks, just like last year, have the best roster in the entire league. They absolutely dismantled a fairly decent Packers team, holding Aaron Rodgers to just 189 yards passing and 1 passing touchdown, as they won 36-16. Green Bay didn't even bother challenging Richard Sherman the entire night, as he had no passes thrown his way. I realize there are some great cornerbacks in the NFL, but no one is quite as good as Sherman. You may hate his attitude, his swagger, his mouth, but no one strikes fear into the hearts of QBs and receivers quite like Sherman. I know Patrick Peterson, Darrelle Revis, and Aqib Talib are all excellent players, but they get thrown at every game, multiple times. Literally, he shut off an entire half of the field. Revis was like that at the peak of the Revis Island Days, and I remember Talib completely shutting down Jimmy Graham in a regular season game last year, but none of those guys, at least now, are as consistently dominate as Sherman is. I just find it really interesting that Aaron Rodgers, one of the best quarterbacks in the league, decided that it was in his best interest to not challenge Sherman the entire game.

But Seattle is more than just Sherman, and the schedule breaks pretty nicely for them. They are at San Diego next week, and then they host Denver the following week. They also travel to Carolina in Week 8, which may or may not be a tough game, just depending on how good Carolina is playing at that point. They also have two games with the 49ers, one away from home in Week 13, and one at home week 15. The rest of their games aren't all that challenging, and even if they lose two or three games during the season, I'm fairly certain 14-2 or 13-3 will be good enough for the one seed in the NFC. And if they get the one seed, I don't see any team being able to go into Seattle, facing the raucous and fiery 12th man screaming for 3 straight hours, in addition to the intimidating and ferocious Legion of Boom (Seattle's secondary) and coming out victorious. Remember, San Francisco, an almost equally talented team, played about as well as they could in last year's NFC Championship game and still came up short. I'm going to go ahead and pencil Seattle in as the NFC Super Bowl representatives, and that won't change unless they have a few major and debilitating injuries, the 12th man collectively contracts laryngitis and can't shout anymore, or the entire Seattle team is suspended for taking Adderall (and don't rule this out).

As always, I appreciate anyone who read what I had to say. If you enjoyed what you read, please share it with someone. And feel free to comment. Thank you.







 


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