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!