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.