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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment