This is my first college football free edition of “The Week
In Football”, and it’s a shame. I really enjoyed writing about the college game
this year, and it’s a bummer that there aren’t any more regular season games
until next August. Fortunately, we’ve got an innumerable amount of bowl games coming
up, including the inaugural college football playoff, and the last two weeks of
the NFL’s regular season, and that sports’ always exciting playoffs. There’s
still enough football left on the schedule for me to get my fix before next
season begins.
But, without further ado, let’s move on to my NFL thoughts
for Week 15….
Has Dallas
Last night’s game in Philadelphia
felt like a lot of big Cowboy games from years’ past, ones that Dallas
would inexplicably lose. Big D jumped out to a 21-0 lead, and looked
unstoppable, before Philly started to gain their footing a little bit, and make
some big plays. Trailing 21-10, the Eagles got a long Jeremy Maclin catch and
run that took the ball to the 1 yard line (they punched it in for seven on the
next play); and then, on the following Dallas possession, they forced a Tony
Romo fumble, which set them up with a short field, which ended with a Darren
Sproles touchdown run. All the sudden, the Dallas lead had been erased, and they
were trailing 24-21. You could feel the wheels coming off, and I was mentally
preparing myself to bury Dallas in
this space, and make a zillion “Romo sucks” and “Cowboys got run over by December”
jokes. We’d all seen this story before. Honestly, I can’t think of a more Dallas
thing than for them to blow a 21-0 lead to their heated rivals, starting Mark
Sanchez, on Sunday Night Football, in a late season game. But then, something
incredible happened. They, strangely, and unbelievably, on probably the most
important possession of the year, responded with an enormous 8 play, 78 yard
touchdown drive to take back the lead. They then followed that up early in the
4th with a series that ended on a 25 yard touchdown strike to Dez
Bryant, his third of the night. Dallas ,
inexplicably, played the most un-Cowboy like game possible yesterday, and
frankly, I’m still shocked. Games like this one, for the division lead, are
ones that Dallas has almost always
lost during the Romo era.
So have they turned the corner? Have they eradicated their
December problems? I have no clue. Despite the fact that they now have the
division lead, there’s still two weeks for them to screw it up, which is they’re
entirely capable of. Then again, with the way they’ve been running the ball, I
could see them pushing both the Colts and Redskins around next two weeks, allow
themselves to finish 12-4, and win the division. I think its funny how there
haven’t been any “Oh my gosh Romo, where the BLEEP were you throwing the
football?” moments this season, because the Cowboys haven’t had him dropping
back and slinging the ball 50 or more times in multiple games, like they have
had him do an exorbitantly high number of times since he began starting.
Obviously, it helps that Demarco Murray has been able to stay healthy, but they
also seem to have really made a conscious decision to pound the rock behind
that offensive line, which is the strength of this team. When they’ve been
successful this season, they’ve been able run the ball effectively, control the
time of possession (which allows them to keep their suspect defense of the
field), and get a few exciting plays per game from Dez Bryant.
Speaking of Bryant, pay the man! I know, I know, the cops
have been called to his home six times, and he yells on the sidelines a lot,
but he’s also one of the three best receivers in the NFL, and an absolute match
up nightmare for every team (including the Eagles, who he torched for 114 yards
and 3 TDs last night). If they have character concerns about him (and I know
they do), then just do a Kaepernick-like contract, where it’s basically a
year-to-year deal, with the team holding a bunch of ways they can get out if
Bryant ever does something really stupid. You don’t want to lose a guy like
that, with as much talent as he has, for nothing.
Johnny Football????
What a terrible debut in the starting lineup for the Manziel
era in Cleveland . He had built up
so much momentum around himself after he led the Browns on a touchdown drive in
the Buffalo game two weeks ago, and the fan base had spent the last two weeks
clamoring for him. That’s what you wanted? I mean, 10-18 for 80 yards, two
interceptions, and a 30-0 beat down by Cincinnati, a division rival that has a
propensity to lose stupid games (like this one could’ve been)? Sheesh. I know
Brian Hoyer wasn’t exactly lighting it up this year, but was he ever THAT bad? At
least Hoyer was putting some points on the scoreboard every week. Manziel
looked lost, rushed, out of place, and uncomfortable the entire game. I’m not
going to overreact to one bad game from a 22 year old quarterback making his
first NFL start against a pretty good defense, but that was an abysmal and
inexcusably bad performance.
Just for fun, I went and looked up Jamarcus Russell’s numbers
from his first NFL start, and ended up spending way too much time looking at
his game-by-game stats, scratching my head, and wondering how someone could start
12 games in an NFL season and finish with just 3 touchdown passes, a feat he
accomplished in 2009, the year that basically ended his NFL career. But anyway,
just for reference, Russell’s first start was shockingly impressive, as he went
23-31 for 224 yards, with one touchdown and one pick, in Week 17, in 2007. Not horrible
right? It just goes to show that your first NFL start isn’t the most important indication
of long term success, but also that the Johnny Football era got off to a worse
start than the overweight, too-much-fried-food Jamarcus Russell era. Never a good
thing.
No Electricity On Offense In San
Diego
My Chargers, who I’ve basically adopted this season as my NFL
team, have been mostly terrible on the offensive side of the football since we
entered the month of November. Here are their point totals the last six weeks:
0, 13, 27, 34, 14, 10. And don’t forget that the offense only scored 7 of those
14 points against New England last week, meaning that
unit has managed just two touchdowns the last two weeks, which is shockingly
bad in this era of football. You aren’t going to win the Super Bowl, or even
make the playoffs, if you can’t consistently put up some points each week.
Injuries and dysfunction on the offensive line have killed this team, as well
as the amount of guys they’ve had banged up in the backfield. Philip Rivers,
after starting out extremely hot, and getting some early season MVP buzz, has
really cooled off as the season has gone on (7 TD passes and 8 interceptions
since the start of November), and I can’t help but blame those offensive line
injuries for that. Rivers, who doesn’t move that well as it is, is literally
running for his life and taking shot after shot during every game. He just
doesn’t have the time to drop back, scan the field, and find open receivers
like he did in September and October.
Fortunately for San Diego ,
the defense has actually played pretty well, as they’ve only given up 45 points
the last two weeks. That number may seem high, until you remember that they’ve
gotten almost no help, or sustained drives, from the offense. That defense has
kept the Bolts in all these games, and done a good job of covering up just how
terrible the Chargers offense has been.
Is there any other good news for this team? How about their
final two games, both on the road, at the offensively challenged 49ers and
Chiefs? Yes, both these teams have physical, swarming, top 10 defenses, but if San
Diego can just get a little bit going on offense, they
can win both those games. It’s not like San Fran or K.C. is going to be able to
consistently drive the field on them. Colin Kaepernick and his shaky play start
at quarterback the Niners, and the Chiefs are so bad on offense that it’s been
over a year since a wide receiver caught a touchdown pass. All you need is two
touchdowns in both games the next two weeks. The Chargers can manage that
right? Right?
Regardless, even if they win the next two games, San
Diego will still need some help from the teams above
them. And by “help”, I mean, “losses”. They have a head-to-head victory over Baltimore ,
but the Ravens are a game up on them, as is Pittsburgh .
Kansas City has the head-to-head
tiebreaker over them, but the Bolts will have a chance to correct that in two
weeks. One thing that would help them (and me, so I won’t look like such a
clown for supporting them all season) would be if one of the three AFC North
teams ahead of them, Baltimore , Pittsburgh ,
or Cincinnati , lost their last two.
Of those three, is their any question who the most likely culprit is? Yeah, you
guessed correctly, it’s the Carrot Top-led Bengals. They screw up winnable
games all the time, and the end of the season is just brutal for them; they
host Denver on Monday night, and
then travel to Pittsburgh , in a game
that could be for the division title. If the Bolts can win their last two, and have
Cincy flame out in their last two, they’ll be ahead of them by half a game, and
in the playoffs. After that, who knows what could happen? I’m counting on you,
Andy Dalton, to make this happen for me. Just be yourself!
My New England
Patriots Revelation
All season, I’ve been saying that the Pats, while being
really good, and the best team in the AFC East, aren’t serious Super Bowl
contenders, because they don’t have any game-breaking receivers on the outside
that help make it easier for them to score points in a playoff game. That’s
been the downfall for them since they won their last Super Bowl, and in a
sense, it’s still a problem for them now. Then again, they literally have
everything else covered. The Brady-Belichick combo is still intact, they have a
physical freak/animal/insane athletic specimen in Gronk, and an offensive line
that’s gotten better as the season has gone on. Then, there’s that defense,
which I think is the best one they’ve had since their last Super Bowl victory. The
Darrelle Revis-Brandon Browner cornerback duo is the best in the league, and
they’ve got like seven insane, multi-position pass rushers. They run the ball
well, and they’ve bottled up almost every offensive unit they faced since
October. New England has looked impressive in a lot of
regular seasons before, but I can’t remember a Patriot team looking this
overwhelmingly dominant since the 2007 team that started out 18-0. I’m
interested to see what happens when they get to January, but for now, there’s
no question who the favorites are in the AFC. Good luck traveling to, and
winning in, Foxborough, next month. I mean, they absolutely took apart a pretty
good Dolphins team yesterday, and barely broke a sweat doing it.
And now that I’ve come around on the Pats, and declared my
affinity for them, they’ll probably blow their first home playoff game. Sorry
for rubbing my stink on you New England .
Probably, at least to me, the most shocking result of the
day. There was a lot of “Buffalo is
a really good team, and will be a tough match up for Green
Bay ” momentum building late in the week, and I, like
normal, stupidly ignored it. “The Packers have one of the best offensive lines
in football, and Aaron Rodgers, this year’s NFL MVP! Plus, the Bills Kyle
Orton-led offense is terrible! They’ll be fine!” was my erroneous thought
process. The Bills whipped Green Bay ’s
O-line the whole game, and got an immense amount of pressure on Rodgers all
day, causing him to play his worst game of year (185 yards, 2 picks, no TDs).
It also helped that the normally sure-handed Jordy Nelson shockingly had what
would’ve been a touchdown pass bounce right off his hands in the second half.
It just kind of felt like the air went out of the Packer sails after that drop.
The Titans Are Terrible
I’ve avoided writing about the Titans for most of the
season, because they’ve been one of the worst teams in the league, as well as
one of the most consistently boring, but what a horrible, puzzlingly bad
football team. They lost a home game to the Jets yesterday, the only franchise
that might be more dysfunctional and clueless than Tennessee
is right now. Remember the Titans’ impressive victory over Kansas
City in Week 1? Yeah, they’ve won exactly once since
then, and have both a four and eight game losing streak under their belt this
season. They don’t have any clue at quarterback, or anywhere for that matter.
Plus, they’re about to subject us to the worst nationally televised game in the
history of the NFL, as they’ll play Jacksonville
on Thursday night. I literally might watch three seconds of that game. What a
terrible match up. Jim Nantz probably hasn’t done play-by-play on a game that
bad or meaningless in the history of his career at CBS.
The only silver lining from their lackluster play yesterday
was that they, by not winning, kept themselves closer to the top of next year’s
draft, which might enable them to grab a stud quarterback, like Marcus Mariota.
That’s the best possible outcome for them. Jameis Winston is probably a more
traditional and natural quarterback than Mariota, but he clearly has issues
above the shoulders. Mariota seems like a real humble, nice, hardworking guy,
someone that legitimately cares about the game of football, getting better, and
not making dumb decisions. In terms of his off the field activities, he’s basically
the anti-Famous Jameis. Give me that guy all day. And if Mariota ends up being
as good as I think he will be, that’s the first stepping stone in the Titans attempt
at returning to relevancy. Plus, it would give the franchise some flash, and
make them interesting again, the first time that’s happened since the Air
McNair days.
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Finally, my Angry Old Man, who threw his hands up and
berated me angrily when I saw him yesterday. His angry ramblings are normal, so
I’m used to them, but this one was different. From my Pops:
“You fool! When are
you going to stop shaming our family name, and start being at least 25%
accurate on your weekly football picks? I thought hearing Snooki talk was an
insult to my intelligence, but then, I started reading your picks every Friday.
Talk about a head injury!”
Hey, what can I say, it’s kind of been a rough year for me
with predictions. I was going back and reading some of my earlier posts from
September and October, and there were plenty of “What were you thinking”
moments, like announcing that Cordarrelle Patterson was going to have a big
year (just 32 catches for 366 yards, and 1 TD. Whoops.), or continuously picking against the schools from the Magnolia State
(Mississippi State and Ole Miss), despite the fact that both those teams were
actually really good. Hey, what can I say, sometimes I’m an idiot, and I’ve
admitted that multiple times throughout the season. But it’s not like every
week has been horrible! Like this week, for example, I went 10-5 on my NFL
picks, with the Monday Night Game still left to be played. That’s not horrible
right?
My biggest problem is that I’m a stubborn guy, and I’ll
defiantly dig into a position (or in this case, a team), and make dumb
decisions like, “IT’S JOHNNY FOOTBALL TIME” which happened last week, after I decided I needed
to stop picking the Bengals for the rest of the season, solely out of
principle.
But here’s what I’ll do for you guys this week: I haven’t been keeping up with my yearly college football and NFL picks record, but on Friday, at the bottom of my Week 16 picks, I’ll post my college, NFL, and overall record for this season. And honestly, it's mostly just for me, because I doubt there's really anyone losing sleep over my picks record, like I am. It's time I knew the truth.
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