Weekend Review: What are the Cleveland Browns?

So about a month ago I spouted off that the Browns were a good football team with an easy stretch of games in front of them. What happened? They lost to the Jaguars. So I wrote them off as being the same old Browns, but then they came back and won three in a row including a stomping of the Bengals two Thursdays ago. I thought they were back to being the good Browns again... NOPE! Just when I thought I had them figured out they come out on Sunday and get embarrassed by the Houston Texans (who somehow are only 1 game back of the Colts for the AFC South lead) at home.  Now I have no idea what to expect going forward from this team as they get back Josh Gordon. They go up against the Falcons and Bills in the next two weeks before a tough matchup with the Indianapolis Colts. It would make sense that the Browns could win the first two games before most likely losing to the Colts. But then again, if this season has taught me anything its that something dumb will happen. Whats the dumbest thing that can happen...oh I don't know maybe the Browns lose both of their next two games then inexplicably beat the Colts. Let's face it, nobody knows who this Browns team really is and what they are capable of. At this point would anything they do surprise you?

Now what I just said about the dumb thing happening in the Browns games is actually something I have noticed that is occurring at least once a week throughout the league. The theme here is find the dumbest outcome that could possibly happen in a week. Then check back after the week is over and boom it happened. Let me just recap some of my favorites... week 4: Buccaneers win at Pittsburgh, week 6: DOUBLE DUMB BONUS! Carolina and Cincinnati tie and the Browns crush the Steelers, week 8 Redskins win at Dallas, week 10: Jets beat the red-hot Steelers (if your scoring at home that's a 3 in the dumb lose column for the Steelers), and finally this week as the Rams beat down the Broncos. Not to mention if the Steelers lose tonight against the Titans, we could have another double dumb bonus which would also mean the Steelers would have four dumb loses. I believe at that point they get relegated to the Arena League. Anyways, how the hell does the dumb thing keep happening nearly every week?? Their is no way for me to explain it other than to say that the Raiders should be favored this Thursday against the Chiefs. A winless team against a 7-3 team who just beat the defending Super Bowl champs, I can smell the dumbness already.

On to the weekly review of the NFC North where we now find two ties in the division. The Packers and Lions are tied atop the division where as the Bears and Vikings are tied for last in the division (or third if you really want to be optimistic). Starting at the top, the Lions went out to Arizona where they were shut down by, in my opinion, the leagues best defense. The Lions were only able to put up 6 points in the game, which is a huge concern because of how much talent is on that team. The fact that a backup quarterback (Drew Stanton) was able to beat the Lions previously number one defense has got to be a frightening thing for Lions fans. However, for Packers fans, it was sure nice to see the Lions finally lose a close game after pulling out ridiculous wins week after week. The Packers did a little winning of their own this week, as for the second week in a row they won easily. This time, however, they played a team that was coming in hot and was supposed to be one of the top contenders in the NFC...WRONG! I know it is only two weeks but it looks like the Mark Sanchez experiment has taken a turn for the worse, just like every single player in Oregon Trail. The Packers were able to dominate all three phases of the game by scoring 4 offensive touchdowns, 2 defensive touchdowns, and a special teams touchdown. As I've said, going forward the Packers have a lot easier schedule than the Lions so it gives me every reason to believe that The Pack will be division champs once again this year. Now when it comes to the Bears and Vikings, well they played a rather ugly game on Sunday. Sure the Bears won, but did that performance really leave you thinking like the Bears have figured anything out. I know I didn't feel that way. Cutler threw his usual terrible picks but was able to connect on a couple of deep throws which was enough to outscore the stagnant Vikings offense. The Vikings actually looked like they had a chance to win this game and get back to .500, but they never seemed to be able to get it going. Good thing they play the Packers next week who will be trying to become the first team to ever put up 50 points in three straight games.

This week in funny John Madden things I would like to bring to your attention an article written to Mr. Madden about his Madden video game. The article is written by Ethan Albright, who looks like Beavis, about how he is upset at the player ratings he received in the 2007 game (which was new at the time). If you haven't read the article I would suggest you read it in a place where laughing out loud is not frowned upon as it is rather hilarious. If you have read it, it's always a good re-read to help lift your mood. Here's the link: 

http://www.woosk.com/2010/05/ethan-albrights-letter-to-john-madden-about-being-the-lowest-rated-player-in-madden-football.html 

Weekend Review: Are the Cardinals Screwed?

So last week my boss called a meeting with my department to discuss the fact that our production is down because everyone has been spending time doing non-work things at work. Therefore he fired one person whose production was worse than awful and told the rest of us that he was going to be watching more closely at what we do and tracking our production, which is why I'm writing this post at 10 o'clock at night instead of at work. I will no longer be able to write the posts at work (you know, cause I'd like to keep my job) so there is no guarantee when the posts will be written but I will try to do them when I get home at night as long as I don't have a shit ton of homework. Anyways, now that I got that out of the way, on to the actual post.

Coming into this weekend, the Arizona Cardinals were thought of as one of the best teams in the NFL. Though they won, they lost the most important player on their team, Carson Palmer. Everyone know that quarterback is the most important position in football, especially in recent years. While Drew Stanton has enjoyed success early in the year, it's hard to believe that he will be able to lead this team deep in the playoffs. The Cardinals have a great defense that will win them some games but there will be games that require Stanton and the offense to put up 30 or more points and it's just not realistic to ask that from a guy who has only attempted 280 career passes, with 8 touchdowns and 9 interceptions. The most likely scenario is the Cardinals find a way to squeak into the playoffs as a wild card and lose the first round. The most unfortunate thing for the Cardinals is that if Palmer would have stayed healthy and they got the top seed, they could have had the unique opportunity of having home field advantage throughout the playoffs including the Super Bowl, which is hosted in Arizona this year. At least they gave him a $50 million contract extension last week.

Two other quick notes about the weekend before I get into the NFC North review, how the hell did the Jets beat the previously red hot Steelers and how are the Falcons, at 3-6 I may add, only one game out of first place in the NFC South. The Steelers looked like they were on their way to being a strong contender in the AFC after Ben Rapethisburger threw for 23854 touchdowns in two games, yet somehow they only had 6 points with about 3 minutes left in the game thanks to turnovers by Big Ben and Antonio Brown. They did score a crazy touchdown at the end to pull the game close before losing at the end because they were offsides when they recovered the onside kick. I wish I could have watched the whole game, because this makes absolutely no sense to me. Oh holy shit I just realized something, not only are we living in a world where the Detroit Lions are in sole possession of first place, but the Cleveland Browns are in first in their division two. This is a joke isn't it? Where are you Ashton? When it comes to the Falcons only being a game out, I don't even know what to say. They have looked like one of the worst teams in the league and it looked like their coach would for sure be fired at the end of the year. Now they have the chance to beat the Panthers this week, and if the Saints lose, the 4-6 Falcons would be leading the division. Seriously what the fuck!? I never thought I'd say this but I believe the NFC South is now without a doubt the worst division in the NFL.

So this was separation week in the NFC between the top two teams and the bottom two teams. Starting at the top, the Lions pulled off another comeback win over the Dolphins, making that three on the season (vs. Saints and Falcons as well). The Lions look like they are finally more disciplined and may be able to live up to their potential for the first time since 2011, when the made the playoffs and got smoked by the Saints. These come from behind wins are games that the old Lions would have lost, yet Jim Caldwell has this team believing they can win any game they are in. The scary thing is that the Lions are finally starting to get healthy (although Reggie Bush got hurt again on Sunday), so now their star filled roster will be even better. With only 7 games remaining for each team in the division, the Lions look to be in a race with only the Packers for the division, and it may just come down to their week 17 meeting in Lambeau. Speaking of the Packers, they destroyed the Bears on Sunday night in a game that was practically over halfway through the first quarter. Chicago’s defense was awful as always, and Jay Cutler was awful as always against the Packers. I’ve said it multiple times in these posts so I’m not going to spend too much time harping on it again, but Jay Cutler isn’t a competent quarterback. He has incredible talent around him and a supposed quarterback guru in Marc Trestman and yet he has not gotten any better, in fact he seems to be getting worse. Chicago simply looked like they quit after getting down 14 early and from then on it was just an embarrassment for them. The Packers, on the other hand, played a great game, although I would say a majority of the credit for this game goes to the Bears being awful. However, Rodgers did have two touchdown passes in the first half that only him and a handful of other quarterbacks can make to help give the Packers the lead from the start. Going forward the Packers have a schedule that works out very nicely compared to the Lions. The Pack have only 3 road games, at Buffalo, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay, none of which are terribly difficult games. They do have a few tough home games like this week against the Eagles, but any time they are in Lambeau they are expected to win. Whereas the Lions still have to go to Arizona, to New England, to Chicago (I’m imagining by week 16 they can’t be this terrible), and to Green bay on the last week of the season. I fan in me has every reason to believe that the Packers will end up winning the division and the Lions will end up in a wild card spot heading into the playoffs. The other team in the division, the Vikings, were on bye this week. As I’ve said before, they have a tough schedule going forward so unless they pull off some very surprising upsets, the Vikings will not be battle with the Packers and Lions for the division title. But hey, they might finish higher than the Bears, and who would’ve guessed that coming into the year?

This week in awesome John Madden things, I found some old quotes from him when he was broadcasting games. Here they are in no particular order of awesomeness:

“Now here’s a guy that can throw the ball to another guy and have him catch it sometimes.”

“Their either going to run the ball here or maybe pass.”

“The way to gain yards is to advance the ball down the field from the line of scrimmage.”

“There’s a lot of letters in LaDanian Tomlinson.”

“Ruben Brown made that play there… well I mean he missed the guy completely but he was able to create just enough room for Thomas Jones by whiffing. The air he created on the miss gave Jones enough space to score.”

And my personal favorite:

“Mark Brunell usually likes to soak his balls before a rainy game”

Weekend Review: Bye Weeks Suck

I really hate bye weeks, especially when they wipe out 3/4 of the NFC North teams. Because of all the bye week teams, I found myself watching more of the Lauren Hill basketball game (which was incredible) than the noon games. The Vikings/ Redskins game wasn't very intriguing to me until the 4th quarter and the other game on my television was that awful beat down of the San Diego Chargers. To make matters worse, when the Chargers game got out of hand, CBS switched over to the Chiefs/ Jets game which was just as much of an embarrassment. Any team that has Matt Simms at quarterback deserves to be 1-8. In fact out of all the noon games, there were no "must watch" games like there normally are (if Romo was healthy, the Cardinals/ Cowboys game would have qualified).

Now when it came to the late games, I was interested in watching Manning/ Brady 16. Unfortunately, the game was practically over by halftime. Like most of their battles, Brady out-played Manning on his way to leading the Patriots to a big win. The Patriots now have the best record in the AFC and would own the tie breaker over the Broncos, who are considered to be their competition for that top seed. After that awful game against the Chiefs a month ago, the Patriots have looked like a totally different team, thanks in large part to Gronk finally being completely healthy. They still have a few tough games left on their schedule, especially an important game for playoff seeding against the Colts in two weeks, but right now the Patriots look like the Patriots of old, as much as I hate to say it. I hope you all enjoyed that one week of bash Tom Brady and the Patriots while it lasted. Another quick point about the late games was how close the other two games were. First, the Seahawks barely beat the winless Raiders at home. Though the Raiders are getting better, I think this shows that the Seahawks are struggling to find themselves after all the turmoil with Percy Harvin, Marshawn Lynch, and Russell Wilson. With the way the Arizona Cardinals are playing, it looks like the Seahawks will have to be a wild card team if they make the playoffs, which means they would have to do something they struggle mightily at. Play on the road. The other game, between two of the Seahawks division rivals, turned out to be, in my opinion, the best game of the day. I'm always a sucker for a good defensive battle, and this game was just that. Both the Rams and 49ers struggled to move the ball (the Rams didn't even get to 200 total yards). Yet the St. Louis Rams, in accompaniment with the officials and great winning voodoo of Austin Davis, found a way to win the game 13-10. They should send a thank you letter to Colin Kaepernick as well as the officials for how the end of the game went down. It was still fun to see the 49ers lose though, so it was fine by me.

It's tough to tell, but I think that's a touchdown.

When it comes to the weekly look at the NFC North, yesterday was the one Sunday this football season that I was absolutely dreading. The week the Packers, Lions, and Bears don't play. It didn't even feel like a football Sunday without them. Now the Vikings did play, so they are the only team I can really talk about this week. Once again they found a way to win a close game against an even opponent. Like last week, however, Teddy Bridgewater was rather underwhelming yesterday. He missed a few long passes, none worse than over throwing a wide open Cordaralle Patterson in the first quarter that would have been an easy touchdown. Bridgewater's final stats did end up looking fairly decent, 26/42 for 268 yards and a touchdown. The Vikings now head into a bye week at a surprising 4-5 on the year and for now, they are not in last in the division. The last 7 games for the Vikings look difficult, outside of playing the Jets' traveling idiot show in week 14, but if they can stay competitive in some of those games, it will help build experience for the future.

So I decided to add a small segment on the weekend review posts called funny John Madden things. This week I would like to draw your attention to these illustrations of plays drawn by Mr. Madden (who may or may not be the Cub's new manager's long lost brother).















And what the hell is going on here?

Weekend Review: Big Ben Loves TD's

Well Then!

This week was filled with great quarterback performances. In fact, it was the first weekend in NFL history that four quarterbacks threw for more than 400 yards (Roethlisberger, Rodgers, Foles, Luck). The crazy thing about that stat is that three of those four quarterbacks were on the losing side of the game. The one that wasn't, Ben Roethlisberger. Big Ben had one of the best games for a quarterback in the history of the league, throwing for 522 yards and 6 touchdowns agaisnt the Colts. This is the second time he has thrown for more than 500 yards in his career, which has never happened before. The more important question that this brings up is whether or not Big Ben is a Hall of Famer. Even though he presumably still has quite a few years left, I wanted to take a look at Big Ben's career so far. Since being picked 11th overall by the Steelers back in 2004, he has lead the team to three Super Bowls, winning two of them, with a 10-4 career postseason record and a 110-56 regular season record (which is a winning percentage of 67%, ranking 4th among active players behind only Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees). Roethlisberger also has thrown 229 touchdowns so far in his career and he still has plenty time to rack up more. The biggest knocks on Big Ben are the allegations he faced off the field (twice) and on the field, the fact that for both of those Super Bowl championships the defense carried that team. I think he still has to prove more on the field, or atleast prove that he can carry that team to the playoffs when the defense isn't very good (so now). Also, he has to stay out of trouble off the field, he already has a bad enough public image, if something else happens he's going to be public enemy number one. Imagine if the allegations he faced were brought forward this year rather than when they were, he would be perceived to be even worse of a person than people think he is now. In the end, he probably makes the Hall after being on the ballot for multiple years, but the problem is, in this age of the passing game and star quarterbacks, what quarterback won't be?

On to a few other things that happened this weekend before I hit my favorite part of the post. First, JJ Watt destroyed Zack Mettenberger physically, emotionally, and in just about every other way possible. Apparently Mettenberger was taking "selfies" before the game and throughout the week, so when Watt sacked him he, of coarse, pretended to take a selfie. The best part of this was after the game when he pretty much told Mettenberger that he isn't a teenager anymore and he needs to put his big boy pants on if he wants to make it in this league. I have stated before that I am biased when it comes to topics involving J.J. Watt because he played for the Badgers, but what he did yesterday was awesome. It's nice to see a player actually understand how incredible the opportunity is to play in the NFL and to make the most of it each and every weekend. There are a lot of players doing stupid things off the field practically asking to ruin their own careers. They could take some lessons from Watt because I guarantee you his name isn't going to come up in any scandal.

Stanton tries so hard

Hey the Browns won! That's all I'm saying because if I talk about them anymore they will lose like they did last week. Another team that has been somewhat of a surprise this year got a huge win this weekend as well. The Arizona Cardinals improved to 6-1 on the season after beating the Eagles, a team I thought would crush the Cards. Many people said before the season that this Cardinals team was good, but after all the injury issues early in the year, it's hard to believe that this team has exceeded expectations. Hell, they had to use 3 different quarterbacks in four games (one of which was called a Drew Stanton, yuck). The Cardinals will enter week 9 of the season two games up on the 49ers and Seahawks, you know the teams that played in the NFC championship last year. That just proves how great of a start the Cards have gotten off to. They still have to play Seattle twice and at San Fransisco so they are in no way running away with this division, but they will sure be in the conversation for division champs and maybe even for a number 1 seed.

Who is he throwing to??

Now to the fun part, the weekly look at the NFC North. This week, however, is not so fun to look at for me personally. Starting at the top, the Lions pulled off a crazy comeback win in London Sunday Morning. First of all, it was awesome to wake up and have football on. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. When I turned the game on, the Falcons were dominating cruising out to a 21-0 lead. Unfortunately, the Falcons remembered they suck and ended up choking the game away thanks to some terrible mistakes, including one of the worst interceptions you will ever see. The game also was seen as a big success by the NFL as they have now announced that there will be 5 games in London next year. It's only a matter of time before there is a team over there. The next stop in the division was in New Orleans where the Packers ran out of gas in the second half. I had a bad feeling about this game going in and all my worst nightmares came true. Brees was on fire, Jimmy Graham had a solid game, Mark Ingram ran all over the Packers defense, and the Packers had a couple tipped passes unfortunately land in Saints' defenders arms. The Packers had some questionable play calling throughout the game that put them in some tough spots, but what really changed the game was the turnovers. After the first turnover, the Pack still had a chance for a comeback, but Davonte Adams mistakenly read the coverage wrong and stopped his route (never a good idea) which lead to the ball being thrown where he was supposed to be and not where he was. The ball ended up tipped and picked and that ended all hopes of a comeback. As Louie pointed out to me in an email today, we now live in a world where the Detroit Lions are in sole possession of 1st place in the NFC North. That's a scary thought isn't it? Now on to the bottom two teams who are tied for 3rd place in the division. Chicago, who was coming off an awful lose to Miami at home, got throttled in New England thanks to a 2nd quarter burst by the Patriots, not to mention they got Gronked. Tom Brady easy picked apart the Bears defense to the toon of 5 touchdowns (Gronk caught 3) while the Bears offense struggled to move the ball. As I've said before, this Bears team has a lot of talent around Jay Cutler but they still lose. In two weeks they play the Packers at Lambeau, If they lose they can kiss their season goodbye because at 3-6 they would have to win out just to have a shot at a wild card. Down in Tampa Bay, the Vikings got an interesting win over the Bucs. It felt like the Vikings were the better team for about 3 quarters but Teddy Bridgewater couldn't hit his open receivers. When the Bucs did come back in the 4th I thought they would hold on, but I forgot they only have one win this year for a reason. Even in overtime I figured they would go down and score but Anthony Barr made a play to win the game. This was a game the Vikings needed to win since they were playing one of the few teams in the league that are worse than they are. Teddy Bridgewater still has a lot of growing to do and it showed on Sunday. Looking forward to this weekend, the Vikings have another winnable game against the Redskins at home so it will be interesting to see if they can continue the momentum from this weeks win and take over sole possession of 3rd place in the division. After this week, though, they only have one game that looks winnable (week 14 vs. Jets) so they will most likely lose that spot by the end of the year. Overall, that game against the Redskins is the only game of the week for the NFC North this coming Sunday, everyone else is on bye. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life, but I do know this, bye weeks really suck.

Peyton's 509

Well it happened last night, Peyton Manning broke the career passing touchdowns record that was held by Brett Favre. I am glad to see him break the record partially because of how great he is and partially because of how sour I still am towards Favre. Looking back through his career, Manning has done everything the right way since being in the NFL. You never hear about any off field issues with him or even issues with teammates. He is the classic case of a quarterback who makes everyone around him look great. Hell, he made Austin Collie look like a superstar before he broke his brain. I remember the few times the Packers played the Colts when I was younger and it would be Favre vs. manning. Those games were always exciting and usually each team would put up video game type numbers. I think the thing about Peyton that is so great is that he didn't take long to celebrate his accomplishment, instead he just high-fived his teammates, saluted the fans quick and then sat down and started looking over the play sheets. But then again I didn't really expect anything different. The best part of this was the big smile he had on his face the entire time after he broke the record. For a guy that doesn't show a lot of emotion on the field, it was nice to see him laugh and celebrate with his teammates. Nobody knows just how long he is going to keep playing, but I would imagine it won't be more than a year or two (especially if he wins the Super Bowl again). When he walks off the football field for the last time, the game will miss him dearly. I don't believe there will ever be a quarterback that can manipulate a defense and make the right adjustments at the line like he does. For me personally, Manning is one of the last players from my young childhood that still plays, so when he eventually decides to hang up the cleats it will finally be the realization that I'm not just a young kid watching all these big grown-ups anymore. However, for now I'm going to keep holding on to that childhood feeling just a little longer, and hope that Peyton makes it back to the Super Bowl again and goes out with a championship like every legend should.

John Kruck in the top left?

So there were some other noticeable things that happened this weekend besides Peyton Manning's record breaking night. The first of which is the Jacksonville Jaguars getting their first win, beating the Browns 24-6. I've been gushing about the Browns for the last week or two and then this happened. They were in prime position to improve to 4-2 on the season against a team that has not won, and has looked terrible in most of their games. After this loss, the talk went from how great the Browns are playing and how they have a shot at a playoff spot to how the Browns are the Browns and they can't get it together. I still think the Browns will finish with a decent record, but this lose may be the difference between making the playoffs and watching them from home. The other thing I noticed is that the Redskins won with superstar quarterback Colt McCoy. Maybe they should see if they can trade him for a first round pick. After all the talk the past couple years about how great Kirk Cousins is, when he finally had his shot he severely underperformed. I'm sure the skins wish they would have traded high on Cousins to get something back because now I believe he has lost all his value. Washington has gone from two good quarterbacks to having one injury prone guy and two underwhelming back-ups.

Now for my favorite part of the weekend review posts, my weekly look at the NFC North. We will start with the Packers who thoroughly beat down the Carolina Panthers in Lambeau on Sunday. The Packers offense and defense looked spectacular through the three quarters, they pulled their starters at that point as the score was 38-3. Its important to point out that the Panthers had previously beaten the Bears and Lions this season, although they were at home for those games. Overall, the Packers look like they are on a roll and maybe catching the Saints (who they play this week) at just the right time. So about those Saints, they went up against the other leader in the division, the Detroit Lions. I don't know what is wrong with the Saints but they just can't win on the road, even when it is in a dome. Drew Brees made a horrible unBrees-like throw late that was interception and helped the Lions pull out the come from behind win. The Lions didn't play great but they got the win, which has kind of been their motto all year. That defense has looked incredibly good, which is a scary thought if that
offense starts to click again when Calvin Johnson comes back. The Lions have the 8:30 am game against the Falcons this Sunday (yes that is the correct time, they are playing in London). I'm not sure how much of the game I will wake up to watch since Homecoming is Saturday, but I love the idea of waking up in the morning and football is already on. Now on to the roller coaster ride of the Chicago Bears. Here's what happened, Jay Cutler turned the ball over twice---> Bears lost. That has how its been ever since they traded for him. Everyone who supports Cutler tries to say it is the offensive line's fault or the defense is bad or there was a crying baby in row 35. The truth is Cutler is not a top tier NFL quarterback. He makes way too many mistakes to be considered a good QB. In fact, not only is he not a top QB (like Rodgers, Manning, Luck, Brees, and Brady), hes in the bottom half of QB's in the league. Does Joe Flacco, Matt Ryan, or Tony Romo start 3-4 with this kind of talent around him? What about Cam Newton, Phillip Rivers, or Colin Kaepernick? Or even Alex Smith, Andy Dalton, or Nick Foles. Didn't think so. Cutler is a guy that has always had an excuse for why his team doesn't make the playoffs but in the end the biggest reason is himself. The bears threw away a ton of money on his contract and all they did was assure the Bears aren't going to be playing deep into January for the next 7 years. Not to mention his teammates are now calling him out in the locker room according to many reports and that team is starting to turn against one another. I read one report that said Robbie Gould was apparently getting involved and someone told him to "shut the hell up, you only kick the ball". Sounds like things are going great. The last stop on the NFC North carousel is Buffalo where the Bills pulled one out of a hat against the Vikings. The Bills converted a 4th and 20 on the games final drive which concluded on a 1 yard touchdown pass to Sammy Watkins. Though the Vikings lost the game, they were at least competitive which is always a good sign when you have a 1st year quarterback. I remember when Aaron Rodgers took over for the Packers and they went 6-10 in his first year. The overall record wasn't good but the games were close and it gave the team a sense of hope heading into the next season. This could be the case for Teddy Bridgewater and the Vikings, although he still has a lot of learning to do. The Vikings will finish last in this division because of how talented the rest of the division is, but if they can continue to put up a fight in these games and if Teddy can learn to not make the dumb rookie mistake this team may have a chance to climb in the standings in years to come.

Weekend Review

Another Football Tie

So last week in our fantasy league we had the third tie in the history of the league. This week, the Bengals and Panthers decided to copy us, making it two years in a row that there has been a tie (remember that awful Packers/ Vikings tie last year). First of all, the Bengals should have easily won that game if Mike (Not Ted) Nugent would've made a chip shot field goal at the end of overtime. That being said, I think it is dumb that NFL games can end in ties. The easy fix to this is simply just go into a second sudden death overtime. With the way the offenses can move the football now, it wouldn't take that much longer for a team to get into field goal range again. I think ties are probably the worst part of football since nobody wins and everyone is left unhappy. If you get a chance you should listen to Andy Dalton and Cam Newton's post game press conference, neither one of them knew what to say. Both head coaches even siad that they had no clue what to tell the players after the game. It's dumb and should be fixed for next year (I know it won't because its been a rule forever).

G.O.A.T.

There were plenty of other big storylines this week including Peyton Manning's march to 508. I was actually suprised that Peyton only threw 3 touchdowns agaisnt a horrible Jets secondary that lost Dee Millner in the first quarter. Peyton is only 3 touchdowns away from breaking Brett Favre's record, and he may very well break it this Sunday night on national television against the 49ers. This brings me back to the day Favre broke Marino's record agaisnt the Vikings in the Humpty Dumpty Dome. I remember when it happened hoping that Manning wouldn't catch up because of how much I loved Favre. Now, I find myself cheering for Manning to break the record and take it away from Favre after all that he has put Packer's fans through. Now when it comes to the best quarterbacks of all-time, I think Peyton Manning has entered into my top 3, surpassing Marino and Unitas. The only thing that Peyton could do to increase his all time status at this point is to win in February, otherwise he's pretty much stuck at the 3rd spot. If I were to list the best QB's of all time as of now they would be: 

5.Dan Marino (1 MVP, held a ton of records when he retired)

4.Johnny Unitas (3 NFL Championships, 3 MVP's)

3.Peyton Manning (1 Super Bowl Championship, 5 MVP's)

2.Joe Montana (4 Super Bowl Championships, 2 MVP's) 

1.Otto Graham (7 Leauge championships, 3 MVP's, highest career winning percentage for a quarterback in NFL history)

Taking my weekly look at the NFC North shows that once again the divsion looks to be a three team race (sorry Minnesota). The Packers came away with an incredable last second victoy thanks to some terrible play calling and game management skills by the Dolphins. The Bears went into Atlanta, which is always a tough place to play, and put together 4 full quarters of football on the way to beating up the Falcons and Matt Ryan, which lead to the demise of my fantasy team. The Lions got an always important road win within the division, and simultaneously putting in end to all the talk about how great Teddy Bridgewater and the Vikings will be this year. All in all, after 6 weeks of the season this division looks about how everyone imagined it to. Detroit starts out of the gate strong, the Packers start slow at 1-2  for the third year in a row but rebound to win 3 straight, and the Bears are one of the biggest roller coaster rides of any team in the league.

There are a couple other things I would like to mention. Last week I said the Browns have an easy schedule going forward after this week, well they won this week too and now look destined to be 6-2 halfway through the season. If they can find a way to sneak out a couple of victories in the second half of the year, this would have to be one of the most suprising seasons by any team. Another thing, I talked about it going into this weekend but I didn't actually think it would happen but the Cowboys outmuscled the Seahawks in Seattle. That Dallas O-line is tough and as long as they continue to stay true to the running game the Cowboys could be a tough team to beat this season. For some reason however, I feel like they, along with the Lions, will falter down the stretch as they always do because both of their quarterbacks are prone to terrible mistakes.

The final thing I took from this week was how close the Jaguars and Raiders were to winning their first game only to come up short. Derek Carr made a rookie mistake to cost the Raiders and everyone watching the chance to see Sebastian Janakowski attempt a game tying field goal from the other side of the state. But to me the Jaguars loss was even more heart breaking. After pulling to within 16-14 and miraculously recovering an awful onside kick, they decided to kick a 55 yard field goal on 3rd down with 12 second left. It's these kinds of situations that frustrate me as a fan. How do you not take atleast one more shot towards the sideline to try and chip away some of the distance? Instead you decide to just kick the 55 yarder with Josh Scooby Snacks, which means he's got to keep it low and it ends up being blocked. A final side note, how do the Titans' fans fell? Year after year they are supposed to be better and year after year Jake Locker goes down and they suck. This year started out with a promising win at Kansas City and was then followed up by 4 straight loses, the last of which after leading by 25 points at home, until this "exciting" 16-14 toilet bowl win over the Jaguars. Must be nice to be the Colts and get to play these two twice a year!

Record Breaking Weekend

So this weekend's football games, both college and NFL, were outstanding. I want to start with the unbelievable amount of upsets on Saturday. It was the first time in college football history that 5 of the top 8 teams in the AP poll lost (#2 Oregon, #3 Alabama, #4 Oklahoma, #6 Texas A&M, and #8 UCLA). Now three of those teams were on the road against another team in the top 25, however Oregon and UCLA were at home against unranked teams they were supposed to beat easily. I wasn't able to watch much of either teams lose, but what I've seen from the highlights is that Oregon has a terrible offensive line and UCLA has no rush defense. In addition to all this chaos at the top of the rankings, every team ranked 14th -19th lost, which lead to a huge shake up in the rankings this week. Unfortunetly one of those teams was the 17th ranked Wisconsin Badgers. I watched the first half of the game with Louie and even turned to him when it first started and said that I was concerned becasuse the Badgers never play well at Northwestern. Obviously my fears came to reality, even though Melvin Gordon ran for over 250 yards and a td, they still found a way to give the game away through the amazingly terrible quarterbacking of Joel Stave and Tanner McEvoy (who played safety last year). I was hoping the Badgers would contend for a birth in the new college football playoff, now I have no clue what to expect.

This describes the entire second half of the game

Or maybe this does

Enough with my rant about the Badgers, the NFL was crazy on Sunday. There were a ton of milestones reached, the biggest of which was Peyton Manning throwing for touchdowns number 500, 501, and 502 which leaves him 6 behind Brett Favre for most all time. Manning may juist break the record this week because he is playing the Jets and their grade school secondary, if not it will happen sometime this month I'm sure. Some of the other milestones were Jason Witten becoming only the third tight end to go over 10,000 career recieving yards. He is behind only Shannon Sharpe (by about 40 yards) and Tony Gonzalez (by a lot of yards that he will never reach). Another milestone was the Browns comeing back from down 25 points to beat the Titans thanks to Jake Locker getting hurt and Hoyer the Destroyer being ,well, a destroyer. When I got home Sunday, this game was 28-10 Tennesse and the first thing I thought of was how they made a big comeback week one and it would be funny if they did it again...and then it happened. I hate to be that guy that overreacts to the first four games of the season, but these Browns aren't that bad. The interesting thing is that in the stretch of the next 4 games, 3 are against bad teams (including back to back games against winless Oakland and Jacksonville). So even if they don't beat the Steelers at home next week (even though they very well could because the Steelers have looked awful the last two weeks) they could still win 3 out of the next 4 and go to 5-3 halfway through the season! The second half of the season isn't quite as easy but if they can steal a few wins, there is no reason they can't make the playoffs. The final milestone that was reached was Drew Brees becoming the fastest to pass for 40,000 yards with one team. After all he went through when he came out of college when everyone said he was too small and with the whole Phillip Rivers situation causing his exit of San Diego, it's nice to see he has proved everyone wrong. Brees seems to be one of the real good guys in the NFL so it's always good to see him do well, but the part of this that really shocks me is that he reached this milestone so much faster than anyone else. He did it in 21 less games than the previous record holder Dan Marino and even though the game has changed a lot since Marino's days, it is still shocking that someone would shatter one of his records by that much.

Kyle Orton likes to party

When it comes to the action on the field, I was only shocked about a few games. The first of which had to be the fighting Kyle Orton's coming back from down 14-0 in detroit to win 17-14. Normally the Lions fade late in the season and these kind of loses occur, but for whatever reason they blew a game that they should've definetly won. Now it is possible that the Bills are better than everyone thinks since they are 3-2 including wins over the Bears and Lions, but I have a hard time believing they are actually better than those teams. It's also noteworthy that the Lions kicker Alex Henry, who was just signed after thier original kicker was cut for missing so many field goals, missed all 3 of his field goal attempts. No suprise the Lions cut him today, which means they will have their 3rd kicker swap in 3 weeks. The only other game that shocked me was the shalacking that the Patriots put on the Bengals. I knew that the Pats would come out with some fire after everybody was saying they're dominant AFC years are over, but I never expected them to pick apart a good Bengals defense the way they did. Not only did this game show me that the Pats are still one of the best teams in the AFC, but it also showed me that the Bengals still can't win on the big stage. These are the kind of games the Bengals have to win if they want to be considered as contenders this year because their recent playoff history hasn't given anyone any reason to believe in them.

Ankles are a Bitch

Unfortunately I couldn't find a
picture of Jason pissed off

This weekend's games were stunning. That's about as simple as I can say it. It actually started on Thursday night when Eli Manning and the Giants destroyed the Redskins. It's crazy to think of how bad this team was just two weeks ago when they fell to 0-2. Now they've reeled off two wins and analysts are starting to say the Giants are back. This is extremely frustrating for me, not because I dislike the Giants, but because I love seeing the Eli face. It reminds me of a young Jason Kamrowski (owner of Multiple Scoregasms) when he would be losing a game in Madden. Yeah I just called you out buddy, what are you gonna do about it? I don't know if I've ever laughed harder in my life than the times Jason would be losing in Madden and would just lose him mind, yelling at the TV, chewing out every single animated player on screen, and being grumpy afterward. #Bahring













Another surprise this week was the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints both losing in games they should have won. The Falcons went up against an impressive first start of Teddy Bridgewater. The Vikings did a great job developing a game plan for him to help take the pressure off, especially those short passes to Jaruis Wright. For you Vikings fans there is one possible problem here, Bridgewater sprained his ankle and the man, myth, and legend Christian Ponder stepped in. The glorious Ponder may end up having to start against the Packers this Thursday night and I think we all now how good that will go for him. When it comes to the Saints losing in Dallas, it wasn't that they lost but how they lost. They were smoked in Jerryworld. The game was over by halftime which I don't know if I've ever seen happen to the Saints since the Drew Brees era started. Here's a fun fact, the Saints and the Buccaneers have the same record. Yeah the same team that got beat 56-14 last Thursday has the same record as many people's NFC favorites. By the way the ending to the Steelers / Bucs game yesterday was crazy, I would say it was the biggest "upset" (I don't really like to use this word for NFL games but I didn't know how else to say it) of the year so far in the NFL. Anyway after yesterday, it just solidified my thought that both the Falcons and the Saints simply can't win on the road. For whatever reason, neither team looks the same when they are away from their dome sweet dome.

Now I have to talk a little about my favorite game of the weekend, the Packers huge win at Chicago. After last week, it seemed like most people were saying that the Packers aren't that good this year and that it is the Bears and Lions division. Well hold that thought! Yesterday the Packers showed why they are still the team to beat in the NFC North (you can argue this all you want). Rodgers was playing like his usual self and well, Jay Cutler was playing like his usual self. Cutler had a couple of nice touchdown throws like he usually does, and a couple of interceptions like he usually does. You could make a case that the second one was on Marshall and you'd probably be right, but the first one was definitely a bad decision by Cutler. Tramon Williams was shaded inside to cover the slant route and Cutler still tried to force the ball to his receiver which led to the tip and the interception by Clay Matthews. Like I said after week 1, until Chicago has a different quarterback under center they will not be playing late in January. One other thing I saw in this game was poor clock management by Mark Trestman. With a minute left in the first half he decided to run the ball twice, wasting a timeout the first time and wasting about 15 seconds before the next snap the second time. This lead to the time running out on the last play of the half when Martellus Bennett was stopped short of the endzone. That play changed the entire game and gave the Packers the upper hand with having the lead and getting the ball to start the second half.

There were a couple other things that happened this weekend that caught my attention, one of which was the fact that Derrick Carr hurt his ankle. This means the pick 6 machine, Matt Schaub, may have a starting job again in two weeks when Oakland comes off their bye to play the Chargers. The other thing I noticed yesterday was that LeSean McCoy has been an after thought in the Eagles offense. The guy that was a number 1 pick in most fantasy drafts has not put up the stats people thought he would. I believe a lot of this has to do with the addition of  Darren Sporles to this offense. In the first two weeks of the season, McCoy was at least able to get involved in the passing game along with the running game to put together 115 and 102 total yards. However, he hasn't caught a pass the last two weeks and has only ran for a total of 39 yards. Just to put that into perspective, McCoy's yards per rush attempt or pass reception in the first two weeks was 4.25, the past two weeks it's been 1.3. For an Eagles offense that is supposed to be so explosive (although they didn't score a point offensively on Sunday) this is a troubling scenario for McCoy's fantasy owners, which in are league is the defending champion Rolling Meadows Mustangs.

It's Rookie Time

This weekend of football had some very interesting happenings but I have to start this post talking about a couple things that happened to me this weekend. I was looking forward to this weekend for quite some time. It started with my buddy's 21st birthday on Friday night. I witnessed something that night that completly blew my mind, a women fell into the street. Just poof and she was gone! How the hell would that happen? Well, a guy had decided a couple minutes earlier to take the storm water drain cover off on the street leaving a human sized hole in the road. This girl came walking along and happened to step right over it and poof! Luckily the drain wasn't terribly deep and there were cops right there to help pull her out, but it was the strangest thing I have ever seen while being out on the town. I had to text my friends Saturday morning to ask if it really happened or if I just imagined it.

Saturday morning started out with some awesome (or awful, depending on how you look at it) golf from me. First of all, I would like to say congrats to John who beat Louie and I. I would like to say that I only lost to Jonathon T. Sisler by 16 strokes (this is totally skewed because I took about 80 mulligans throughout the 18 holes). If anyone is wondering what my golf game looks like, imagine a golf ball going up into the air and then taking a sharp right turn and getting lost in the tall grass/ field near by. Or if there is any water hazard in front of me, I will find a way to hit multiple shot directly into it. I even hit the ball so bad once that with the backspin it rolled behind where I started from. So I'm pretty much the next Tiger Woods. But anyways on to the football.

This is Blake Bortles girlfriend. Looks like he does good off
the field as well.

Week 3 of the football season brought us some great games, including a Super Bowl rematch in Seattle, but the biggest story lines to me from the weekend were the two rookie quarterbacks that were brought in. In Jacksonville, Blake Bortles made his first appearance of the season as the Jaguars were getting taken behind the woodshed by the Colts. I remember hearing all preseason long how good Bortles looked but Jaguars management kept saying they weren't going to play him this year and that it was Chad Henne's team.Well two and a half blowouts later it was Bortles time. He came into a game that the Jags were losing 35-0 so the stats are a little skewed since a lot of backups were in but Bortles looked fairly good for his first start. He completed 14 of his 24 pass attempts for 223 yards and 2 td's. He did throw two interceptions to go along with it but that is to be expected when your a rookie seeing your first regular season action. With that performance, the job and the future of the franchise will definetly be handed to Bortles. It will be interesting to see if Bortles can help the Jags win enough games to keep the coaching staff around. If not they may be looking at a new coach next year which is never good for young quarterbacks.

This is your quarterback Minesota.

The other rookie that made his first game appearence was Teddy Bridgewater for Minnesota. This move was forced do to an injury to starter Matt Cassel. Cassel apparently broke some bones in his foot and according to ESPN, may be done for the year, not that it really mattered anyway. I had this game on my computer while watching the Packers game on TV with Louie. When we saw Teddy come in we both said Cassel just lost the job. Even if Cassel wasn't hurt, once the Vikings brought in the new exciting rookie Bridgewater, they couldn't go back to the same old guy who keeps losing games for them and throwing picks. Teddy went 12 of 20 for 150 yards in a game that was suprisingly close all the way to the end. Not bad for being unexpectedly thrown into the game. Going forward, the Vikings have an incredably tough schedule so Teddy will have a chance to show if he can beat some of the best teams in the conference. Barring any kind of injury going forward, the Bridgewater era has begun in Minnesota. Let's just see how long it takes the fan base to turn on him.

Comebacks and Injuries

After all the off-field problems in the NFL all week, it was nice to finally get back to actual games this weekend. The great football weekend actually started off on Saturday when #9 USC lost to got ran over by an awful Boston College team. In case you missed it, BC ran for 452 yards against a defensive line that was supposed to be one of the best in college football (USC ran for only 20 yards). This brought up a tough decision for me of which I love more: USC football losing a game or Duke basketball losing in March. Both of which of great.

Jordy destroyed the Jets in the 2nd half

Inspector gadget to the rescue

Now to the NFL, this weekend was full of big comebacks and some interesting upsets. Both the Packers and Bears came back from down 17 points or more. However, these two games felt completly different than each other. In the Packers game, the Jets got off to a quick 21-3 start but it never felt like they were going to hold on to that lead. It may be my optimism as a Packers fan but I felt like they would come back and win since they still had 3 quarters of the game to play and Aaron Rodgers at quarterback. However, in the Bears game it was completly the opposite. The Bears looked done late in the 2nd quarter down 17-0. They had two recievers who looked like wounded ducks for most of the game and yet they still came back. Part of the credit for their comeback should go to Colin Kapernick who apparently decided that Bears cornerback Kyle Fuller is on his team as he threw the ball to him twice. Most of the credit, however, should go to Brandon Marshall who went all "eye of the tiger" in the second half and caught anything thrown his way including two touchdowns. So after those two comebacks and a couple of stompings in Carolina and Minnesota it leaves every NFC North team at 1-1 after two weeks of the season. This division race could very easily be a three team race all the way to the end (sorry Vikings fans but you won't be along for the ride), so these comeback wins now will most likely play a huge part in who takes the division title in January.

Stop Blitzing!

In the upsets category this week we have the Saints. I really don't know what to say about the Saints other than they don't play well on the road. They started off the year as many expert's NFC pick for the Super Bowl, but they are now 0-2 on the season with loses to a couple of teams with a combined 8-24 record last season. Last weeks loss was easy to push aside since it was on the road in Atlanta which can be a very tough place to win for any team, but to lose to the Browns, that's just terrible. The Saints defense made the Browns look outstanding throughout the whole game, and especially on that last drive. The Saints kept blitzing and not getting to Hoyer which meant wide open recievers down the field and easy completions. If you watched the game, you saw Sean Payton screaming at Rob Ryan (Rex's long hair don't care brother) on the final drive when the Saints couldn't stop anything. I'd imagine it had something to do with Ryan continuing to call blitzes when they weren't working and they were giving the Browns easy yards. Next week the Saints finally go home to take on the Vikings so they should finally be able to put a 1 in the win column, but it will be about 2 weeks later than most people thought.

When it comes to our fantasy league, I don't want to dig into anything yet since the games aren't all over and I'm going to talk about it tomorow in the recaps. I will say this, Josh's team has bit the injury bug hard! He called me yesterday to congradulate me on my victory at about 4 o'clock after Jamaal Charles went down, making that his third injured player on the day (Doug Martin &RG3). Check back tomorow for the full recaps of each game and more football non-sense that runs around in this brain of mine.

Prepare yourself for the closet Vikings fans!

Seriously! Three people have told me this already today!

Crazy endings and some incredable upsets highlighted yesterday's week 1 action. I was extremely excited for the first Sunday of the season and it did not disappoint. There were 3 games that were won on the last play of the game, and 7 of the games were decided by 7 points or less. Watching Tom Brady get crushed on nearly every drop back in the second half made me smile and seeing Tony Homo throw three awful picks on three straight drives was a thing of beauty. I did however, make the horrible decision of watching the murder of what used to be the St. Louis Rams. The Rams looked awful without Sam Bradford and even worse without Shaun Hill, and when Chris Long went down I think it was a sign that it's going to be one of those kinds of years for the Rams this season. I know there are plenty of dilusional Vikings fans that I'm going to have to deal with at work, on campus, and other places that aren't going to shut up about how they beat the Rams by nearly 30 points. However, I can honestly say I don't think they really did much to win that game; it was mostly the Rams gifting the game to them. I can't wait for the next 5 weeks of the season when the schedule for the Vikings is New England, New Orleans, Atlanta, Green Bay, Detroit. The Vikings fans can enjoy the 1 win now because that still may be the only win they have in late October.

Nobody cirlces the wagons like the Buffalo Bills!

Another crazy thing that happened this weekend was the Buffalo Bills going into solider field and beating a Bears team who many are predicting can make a deep postsesason run this season. I'm sorry Louie, Zach, and T but it has to be said, they won't make that kind of run with Cutler as there quarterback. Yes he has the arm strength, yes he has the size, yes he has the weapons, but what people seem to have forgot is that in his 9th year in the league he still has the knack for attempting some of the most idiotic passes. If you watched the game, can someone please explain to me how throwing the ball directly into 300 pound defensive tackle Kyle Williams' gut is a good idea. This Bears team is going to win their fair share of games this year, but until they get a quarterback who makes better decisions, especially in the 4th quarter when the game is on the line, they won't be making any noise in January. Also from this game, a hat tip goes to Fred Jackson for making Chris Conte look like a rag doll on that overtime run.

Can I get the ball more than 7 times Andy?

Some other interesting things that I noticed from the games yesterday were that Joe Flacco attempted 62 passes against the Bengals. If this is the Ravens plan to get back to the playoffs they are screwed. The only reason I can imagine they had him throw that much was becasue Ray Rice is suspended* sidenote: a new video was released from the Ray Rice incident and it makes you wonder how he is not in jail somewhere and suspended for the entire year* and because the Ravens are trying to get there moneys worth out of Flacco after giving him that awful contract a year ago. The other thing I noticed yesterday was that Jamaal Charles had 19 yards on 7 rushing attempts against a suprisingly strong Tennessee defense. I can imagine this is not what Josh was expecting when he drafted Charles with his first pick in the draft. Unless Kennan Allen goes off tonight and Nick Novak kicks a few 50 yard field goals, Josh can thank Charles and Doug Martin, who put up a goose egg, for his loss to Zach this week.

So after the first weekend of the season the crazyiness of the NFL season is in full swing. All five games in our fantasy league still have some players left to play in the Monday night double header so its still unclear as to who is going to win there matchups, so check out the blog tomorow to see the final scores and a recap of each matchup.