A Look Back at Week 2

I did not do a set of picks for Week 2 of the NFL season. Why? Because I was in Maine, and there happened to be no internet where I stayed. So there. In fact, I didn't get to see the Monday night contest from Week 1 for the same reason. I'm not recapping it, it's old news. My final record from Week 1 was 11-5. That's week 1, and I made the picks a good week early. Only a moron would suggest I'm not the greatest.

I'll keep the recap short. I didn't have any picks, so I won't have any bragging to do.

Panthers over Bears, 20-17
Had I picked this game, I almost certainly would have picked the Panthers to win, and I would have said something like, "the Bears are some tough son-of-a-bitches, they'll keep it close". And you had to know it'd go down something like that. Neither team has enough juice to pull away from anybody, and both teams play the kind of defense that'll make it tough for another team to move the ball up and down the field, but won't create a lot of turnovers or big plays. That's what you had here. The Panthers actually are this good, though. The truth is, John Fox was never a bad coach, and injuries really have played a large part in derailing his teams in years past. The Panthers are surely good enough to win the NFC South, especially if they can continue to get decent production on the ground.
As for the Bears, there will not be a time this season when the Bears don't compete like professionals. That's what you get from Lovie Smith. You give this same roster to Herm Edwards or Norv Turner, and you've got a 3-win team. Lovie will do enough with this bunch to get them to somewhere between 6 and 9 wins, miss out on the top of the draft and all the game-breaking talent, and leave the city of Chicago bemoaning the lack of studly playmaking on the roster for another season. There's a certain cycle a good coach with no talent on the roster gets stuck in, and if the owners aren't patient (like they are in Tennessee, God bless 'em), they can be tricked into thinking they've got a mediocre coach on their hands. The shitty thing about being a good coach on a team that's done bad, bad things with cap space is they'll continue to coach guys up to the level of mediocrity and then miss out on all the top-tier talent in the following draft. That's why the Bears need to get back to replenishing their trenches in the draft: there's always plenty of depth to be found for those units in the middle rounds of the draft, and sooner or later you have what they have in Tennessee, which is a deep team with loads of talent up front on both sides of the ball, with a head coach that can squeeze everything out of the mediocre talent at skill positions and get you in the post-season.
Wow, that was a tangent. I thought I said I'd keep it short!

Tennessee over Cincinnati, 24-7
Speaking of Tennessee . . . but I digress. Was there ever any doubt about this one? Seriously, if the Titans had lost maybe another key offensive player or two during the week, this still wouldn't have been a contest. On these Titans, it doesn't matter who you have at skill positions against a butter-soft bunch of pansies like the Bengals. They'll just beat 'em up in the trenches until the Bengals self-destruct. With that defense, there's no way this fractured, dysfunctional, mercenary Cincinnati team would put up much of a fight. Just punch 'em in the mouth and wait for 'em to fold. That's what happened. There will be more games this season where I predict Carson Palmer will throw 2+ interceptions than games where I will not predict it, and I'll be right at least two-thirds of the time.

Green Bay over Detroit, 38-25
Aaron Rodgers played well, really well, well enough to distract people from the fact that the Packers haven't been able to get the ground game going and very nearly blew a huge lead to the horrendous Lions. Imagine if the Packers had lost this game. We'd all remember how well Aaron Rodgers played, and we'd all be scratching our heads like hungover rummies, trying to figure out how the Packers seemed to have won the game in every possible way except maybe the scoreboard. You can't really consider your secondary one of the best in the business when you get absolutely lit up by a Lions offense that can't run the ball, can't pass protect, and can't really get on the field to establish a rhythm. The Packers host the Cowboys next week, and if they need an ugly self-destruction by Jon Kitna to take a win against the lowly Lions after jumping out to a three-score lead, they're sure to have their hands full against the class of the NFC.
As for the Lions, blech. That defense is unbelievably bad. Rod Marinelli's head is in the right place, trying to establish the run to help keep the defense on the sidelines, but they need to start thinking about ways to get on the board very early in games, and maybe then go to the run game later as a way to salt things away. Clearly they have some big-strike ability, but they won't win many games when they spend the middle quarters trying desperately to get back into the contest.

Buffalo over Jacksonville, 20-16
Wow. Definitely gulp time in Jacksonville. David Garrard seems to have lost the magic, and they can't seem to get the ground game going with all the injuries up front. I still think they have the pieces to be a tough team, but I also feel like I've had a revelation about that team. See, so much of what we think we know about the Jaguars and Jack Del Rio is based on an assumption we've all made that David Garrard was not sort of a one-year wonder type of quarterback. I really like Garrard, I hope he's the real thing, but seriously: even if he's not a fluke, there can be no argument that 2007 was his first good season in the NFL. Hell, it was practically his only season in the NFL. Let's say he goes on to be a great NFL quarterback; surely we can expect the rest of the league to be better prepared for the guy in his second season as a starter than they were in his first. Yes, he's been in the league for a few years now, but people seem to forget that, for all intents and purposes, this is only his second full season actually playing on gameday. If he has a sophomore slump, there's no way there's enough talent on the field around him to make a contender. No way at all. And I'm someone who genuinely likes guys like Fred Taylor, Maurice Jones-Drew, and Reggie Williams. They need Garrard's steady hand to make it tick, and if he's off or the rest of the league has caught on, they're in trouble. They're already in a hole in their division, that's for sure.
The Bills played a nice game, getting decent production from all parts of their offense and another solid showing from their defense. It's funny, with Trent Edwards' numbers, you'd expect them to have put up a bigger number on the scoreboard, but I guess you chalk it up to the stoutness of Jacksonville's defense and move on, happy with the win on the road.

Oakland over Kansas City, 23-8
The less said about this situation, the better. I think you can guess how I feel about the Al Davis/Lane Kiffin/Rex Ryan fiasco. I've spent a lot of time praising Lane Kiffin, whereas virtually nobody with integrity or credibility has said a nice thing about Al Davis in years.
The Raiders ran and ran and ran. Good for them. Good strategy, executed well.
The Chiefs weren't so awful on defense, they just couldn't get off the field. But we already knew the Kansas City offense wouldn't be able to put any drives together, so what else could we expect?

Indianapolis over Minnesota, 18-15
Really an ugly game to watch, with the noted exception of several explosive, breathtaking bursts from Adrian Peterson. The Colts were out of sync all afternoon, until suddenly they were in sync, and suddenly it was like you'd known all along they'd be in sync and win the game. Hopefully that was just the start of them getting their act together for another big season. Somehow, an NFL season without a sharp, professional, dominating Indy team is like, well, an NFL season without a hungry, pissed-off, swaggering Philly team, in that I'll feel very disoriented and cagey about it.
Watching the game, a few things stood out to me about Minnesota's offense: 1. I'm extremely worried that Tarvaris Jackson is the Scruffy the Janitor (of Futurama fame and glory) of the Vikings offense. Stay with me here: Scruffy perhaps interpreted his rights and responsibilities too literally when performing his job. I'm sure you don't want a lengthy explanation of how this manifested itself on the show, but suffice to say, Scruffy did only what was expected of him within a very limited, literal interpretation of his position. I worry that perhaps Tarvaris Jackson is taking the whole, "drop back, execute playfake, take what defense gives you, throw to open man, go sit on bench" thing a little too literally. On third and seven, for instance, I'd watch him drop back, execute a crisp play fake, find an open man, and fire him the ball, nevermind that the open man was only two yards past the line of scrimmage, pinned against the sideline with no hope of getting the needed yardage to sustain the drive. Then I'd watch him trot off the field without any air of disappointment or frustration. That worries me, like maybe he knows the notes but not the music, you know? 2. The system is devouring the player, in the case of Tarvaris Jackson. Jackson runs like a runningback and has a big-time cannon for an arm. Virtually everything that made this guy interesting as an NFL prospect was his ability to make plays with his feet and throw the ball a long way. Minnesota went out and drafted Troy Williamson's blazing 40 time just to take advantage of Jackson's arm strength. Now he's stuck in the pocket throwing 6 yard outs, and I just don't see it. I'm not saying he can't be a West Coast quarterback. As a rule, I hate it when asshole scouts, coaches, writers, radio-hosts, fans, or anybody else says an NFL quarterback can't run one kind of system or another. Maybe Jackson can be a West Coast quarterback, but for whatever reason, he looks tentative in a million little ways on the field. Even his throwing motion looks uncertain. This guy needs a few times a game where they call a quarterback draw, or a naked bootleg, or a goddamn option play, something to let him just cut loose and make a play. He can be an asset, I swear. But right now, his play is hurting the Vikings and he probably feels like shit about it. That can't be good for his confidence on the field, and that can't be good for his play.

New York Giants over St. Louis, 41-13
Ok, even I'm not laughing anymore. This St. Louis situation is sickening to the point of actual nausea. I hate certain players and coaches on this team on behalf of other players and coaches on this team. What a disaster. Generally speaking, I'm strongly opposed to firing a coach during his first 3 years on the job, and I've been adamantly opposed to ever firing a guy mid-season, but Scott Linehan is forcing my hand. I'm sure he's a good guy, I'm not advocating for this guy to lose his job because he's breeding a dysfunctional culture, or undermining his players, or selling anybody out, or even being a jerk-ass like Bobby Petrino. He just can't be a head coach at this level, not at all. I can't remember it ever being so stark, such an easy call. Well, maybe in the case of Art Shell's second tenure in Oakland, but even then you could look back at his previous term and deduce that the guy could craft a respectable team. I'll applaud the brass in St. Louis if they have the patience and civility to wait out the season before shit-canning the guy, but I'll be booing loudly if they don't then do it, for God's sake fire him immediately after week 17. But in this rare circumstance, if they were to fire him right now, I might be able to muster a pitiful head-shake for Linehan, but that'd be it. The writing isn't just on the wall, it's tattooed on Linehand's colon. This guy is D-U-N.
Hey, Giants, great win! You did what your division rivals in Philly did last week, which is make mince-meat out of the corpse of the St. Louis Rams. That's what good teams do. Ever since the Super Bowl, I'm awash in warmth and loyalty to the New York Giants. Kick ass, G-Men.

Washington over New Orleans, 29-24
You caught the part where I said I was out of town during week 2, right? Did I mention I was unable to watch the Redskins game, because apparently some idiot in Maine thought the good folks of New England would rather watch the fascinating match-up of New York's forks and steak knives versus St. Louis' tenderized prime cuts of rotting corpse instead of a match-up between a 2007 playoff team and the team picked to win the NFC South?
So the Redskins won. Most importantly, the Redskins had 10 drives that were not ended by the end of the game, and of those 10, only 2 did not result in a scoring opportunity. That's right, the Redskins punted only twice in the game, did not turn the ball over (offensively), and had 8 drives result in scoring chances. 2 missed field goals, 3 touchdowns, 3 made field goals. That's great, great, great production from the offense and a huge step forward for a team that converted 3 of 13 first downs in week 1 and looked damn lucky on those 3. When Jim Zorn talked about improving Washington's offense, he talked about adding 3-4 points a game over the course of the season. The key to that statistic is sustaining drives and getting into the red-zone. There's admirable (albeit antiquated) sensibility and self-restraint to Joe Gibbs' first half field position battles, where he'd cram the ball into the line for a quarter and a half and try to keep the opposition pinned deep, giving him an opportunity to make adjustments at half time and come out scorching, but even the biggest Gibbs fan has to admit ol' Joe's recent offenses lacked punch in a big way. It will be a significant change for Redskins fans if Zorn can give us an offense that moves the ball into scoring position with determination drive after drive, and this was a good start. I almost broke into tears of joy when Fox cut from the end of Giants/Rams to Skins/Saints and a nice, bright graphic showing Jason Campbell's numbers, just in time to watch him sling an 8 yard dart to a slanting Santana Moss on 4th down to seal the deal. Beautiful.

San Francisco over Seattle, 33-30
How the hell do you lose a game when you sack the opposing quarterback . . . wait, no, when you sack J. T. O'Sullivan 8 times and put up 30 points? How do you lose when you out rush your opponent 165 yards to 93? When you complete passes to seven receivers and your opponent completes passes to only five? When you jump out to a 14-3 lead in the first quarter, stuff the run, sack the opponent 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 times, run the ball successfully, spread the completions around, and field a defense that sent 4 players to the Pro Bowl against an offense quarterbacked by J. T. O'Sullivan?
You effing choke, that's how. You reveal yourselves as totally phony, as predicted by every football-knowing son-of-a-bitch East of the Mississippi. Your quarterback implodes under the pressure of playing with a new set of receivers. Your soft, overrated defense falls prey to a glitzy, shiny offense that was invented in your division only a few years ago. The goddamn Seahawks suck ass, they don't have an ounce of mojo between the lot of them. Gimme Arizona any day.

Tampa Bay over Atlanta, 24-9
Meh. It happens. Forget about both of these teams. Neither one is worth a damn. Give the Falcons a few years and they'll be a fun team again. In a few years, not only will Gruden be gone from Tampa Bay, but the whole roster will have been turned over.

Arizona over Miami, 31-10
Miami is crap. Let's move on.
Arizona has a really deep set of talented players at skill positions. Kurt Warner is exactly exactly exactly the right guy for this offense, a gunslinger who barely even notices receivers who aren't 15 yards down field. Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin have the ability to beat pretty much any secondary and allow Warner to just fire it into traffic and see what happens. You can't slow this offense down without getting a lot of heat on the quarterback, but if you do manage to get some pressure in the pocket, Kurt Warner is a mortal lock to start dropping the ball. I like the guy, I wouldn't call myself a fan, but I like him. The truth is, the Cardinals have a very definite ceiling on their production, and it's probably something like 4 significant hits on Warner in one half. After that, he'll go scattershot. I'm not trying to shit on him, he'll almost certainly do enough to get them into the playoffs, especially if their defense continues to perform. For the second week in a row, the Cardinals were like the varsity version of the NFC West, while the rest of the division was like the local Pop Warner team, playing with t-shirts stretched over their shoulder pads and different color face-masks. The NFC West is a train-wreck, but emerging from the wreck like a pissed off T1000 is a pretty professional, very athletic Arizona team with the exact right quarterback. They could do a thing or two.

Denver over San Diego, 39-38
Look, enough with the bullshit. Any chance that happens to any other team in the NFL? Any chance a game like that goes down with Bill Belichick on the sidelines? Tony Dungy? How about with Jim Johnson running the Chargers defense? Or maybe Monte Kiffin? Any chance a team that had been coached for two seasons by Marty Schottenheimer or even Jim Fassell loses like that?
Right, so quit the bitching. The Chargers needed a fluke fumble, akin to Tony Romo dropping the snap in a playoff game against the Seahawks, to have any hope of keeping the Broncos out of the endzone. With that much talent, no way a better coach lets an opponent get up to such an absurd lead in a division contest, no way. No way a better defensive coordinator lets that much talent go out there and get reamed up and down by the goddamn Broncos. You watch - some far less talented teams are going to go out and put a hurting on Denver's one dimensional offense. That goddamn phantom fumble completely let San Diego's coaches and players off the hook, and instead of having the cojones to stand at the podium after the game and say "We're supposed to be the most talented team in the AFC, no way we lost that game because of a missed call with under a minute left on the clock", Norv Turner goes up there and cries like a bitch. Well boo friggin' hoo. The Patriots are 2-0 despite playing without Tom effing Brady for all but two series, whereas the fake-as-hell San Diego Chargers are 0-2 after a home loss to the Steve Smith-less Carolina Panthers and a road loss in which they found themselves down 31-10 in the first half. Neither of the teams they've lost to won more than 7 games last season and neither one did a damn thing other than get healthy to improve this off-season. They're lucky beyond belief that they were within a single blown call of winning that game, and the fact that they weren't even the engineers of their own luck (regarding the fumble) pisses me off beyond words.
I'm done with this shit-fest.

New England over New York Jets, 19-10
Neither team really did much to deserve the victory here, and it came down to limiting mistakes. If I said this game would be decided by which team limited mistakes, and you pointed out that one team had a quarterback who hadn't started a game since high-school and the other team had Brett Favre, well, I would have called it a coin flip. Eat it, Favre!
To be honest, I'm frankly appalled that anybody in Vegas thought it was a good idea to make the Jets the favorite. That's just unbelievable. The Patriots were undefeated in the regular season last year and had by far the greatest regular season in NFL history. The Jets were garbage. It's a testament to how overrated the quarterback position is and how overrated Tom Brady is that people would expect a team that did not lose a regular season game last season and came within one miracle play of winning the Super Bowl would lose to a garbage team just because Brady went down. Interestingly, I'm wondering if Brady had only had like a sprained toe or something and was only going to miss this game if people still would have picked the Jets to win. Like maybe the gravity of knowing Brady was done for the year made people think the Patriots were as devastated by the news as perhaps the gay gay media has been. I'm betting the Pats would have still been favorites.

Pittsburgh over Cleveland, 10-6
Not much to say about this game. It was ugly. There was one big, bright, hideous, really troubling red flag for the Browns, though.
The Steelers were up 10-3 late in the game and the Browns had just had a rare successful drive deep into Pittsburgh territory. Facing 4th and 7 with only 2:30 left on the clock, Romeo Crennel elected to kick a field goal. What the hell does a field goal do for the Browns in that scenario? They hadn't moved the ball well all day, their only sustained drives of the night had taken more than 6:30 off the clock, and they would still need a touchdown after kicking the field goal. Here they only needed 7 yards to sustain the drive and 20 yards for a touchdown to tie the game, but instead of going for it, Crennel kicked a meaningless field goal and gave the ball right back to the Steelers with essentially the same lead, counting on his porous defense to get a stop down the stretch. Well, that they did, giving the ball back to the offense with 26 seconds on the clock, no time-outs, and 74 yards to make up. So, without actually effecting the status of the game at all, Crennel cost his team more than 2 minutes and about 55 yards. Nicely done. That, my friends, is called giving that game away.

Dallas over Philadelphia, 41-37
Big spectacle! Lots of scoring!


This week I will be doing picks. I had to forfeit any chance of winning in the ESPN Eliminator because I wasn't around to make a week 2 pick, and the Pigskin Pick'em is now pretty much out of reach. Luckily, my fantasy team did well behind big games from Eddie Royal, Calvin Johnson, and Jason Campbell. Not sure whether I'll stick with Ben Roethlisberger into week 3; his shoulder was acting up and he's got Philly's defense to contend with. I'm taking a long look at Aaron Rodgers.