Last week was arguably the most brutal week the NFL has seen in off-the-field drama in a very long time, possibly ever. The latest horrifying story line with Adrian Peterson and his alleged child abuse made for two players who had been perceived to be really good guys in the eyes of the public but now have their reputations tarnished, to say the least. This weekend, however, things finally felt like I could concentrate more on the on-field action, so if the NFL will allow a simple writer to borrow a catch phrase, we can get back to football.
1. At least some of the remaining unbeaten teams are going to come back to Earth. Buffalo, Houston, Carolina, and Arizona are all to some degree already looking better than they really are. I had expected Arizona to compete for one of the NFC Wild Card spots by the end of the season, but I don't expect any of the other three to be truly good teams this year. Houston, amazingly enough, started last season off 2-0 as well, and then went on to lose their next 14 games. Buffalo isn't quite playing with house money yet, but they've clearly overachieved by winning last week in Chicago and then beating up Miami. Carolina still has an elite defense, but I don't believe in their offense being able to score enough points every week to play with the big dogs in the NFC.
2. Meanwhile, some of the 0-2 teams have to be better than they've looked so far. This comment mainly applies to the Saints and Bucs, who can't be as bad as their records would otherwise indicate. The Saints managed to lose a heart-breaker to their divisional rival Falcons last week, and then Sunday they had to merely stop the Browns on their final drive to get the win in Cleveland. Instead, Brian Hoyer led the Browns down field into field goal range, where Billy Cundiff had to kick what had amounted to little more than a chip shot for the Browns to win the game (more on the Browns in a moment).
The Bucs managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by a rarely-used rule at the end of the game. Inside the 2-minute warning of either half, if a player is injured on the field, the player's team can call for an injury time out to stop the clock. The Bucs' Mike Evans caught a key pass with 8 seconds left on the clock, but he was hurt on the hit he took after making the play. The Bucs' trainers had to rush him off the field, but the Bucs were hit with a penalty for not having any time outs left for an injured player, so they were forced to run 10 seconds off the clock. There's your ball game.
3. The Browns are not push overs. Last week, the Browns managed to come back from down 27-3 against the Steelers, and Sunday they were neck and neck with the Saints before pulling an improbable victory for themselves (they had even jumped out to a 10-0 lead early on). I still see the Browns losing double-digit games this season, but they aren't going to be blown out 30-10 every week. If there's such a thing as a Pyrrhic victory in football, it will be that the Browns will finish around 5-11, but only have a minus-20 point differential, give or take. That should give them something to build on for 2015.
4. Some teams are going to miss some key players for a significant portion of the season. Take a look at some of the players who had sustained potentially serious injuries this weekend: Robert Griffin III, DeSean Jackson, Jamaal Charles, Knowshon Moreno, A.J. Green, and Ryan Mathews. The severity of some of these injuries is still unknown at this point, but Griffin, Moreno, and Mathews are all going to miss a minimum of four to six weeks at least (Griffin's dislocated ankle could even possibly end his season). From a fantasy football perspective, these injuries are going to affect a lot of fans out there, but from an on-field perspective, their respective teams will have to make some serious adjustments for the rest of their seasons.
5. Here's a rather crazy thought: Philip Rivers may actually be the best quarterback from the 2004 NFL draft class. Rivers is clearly in the shadow of Eli Manning and Ben Roethlisberger, considering those two guys have each won two championships so far (and Manning has two Super Bowl MVPs to go with his rings). Rivers has still managed to be a really good quarterback for the bulk of his career and won a lot of football games for the Chargers. His performance against the Seahawks was virtually perfect, and his three touchdown passes to Antonio Gates were all beautifully thrown balls. However, if you go back to comparing Rivers's stats to Eli's and Ben's, he has them both beaten in career completion percentage, QB rating, and touchdown/interception ratio. If Rivers never wins a championship he'll never measure up to Manning or Roethlisberger, but he could well be the best QB to never win a championship since Dan Marino (which is quite a backhanded compliment).
6. The Goat of the Week Award goes to Marty Mornhinweg. The Jets were up 21-9 late in the first half in Green Bay, and were driving well into field goal range with the ball. They were also due to get the ball back after halftime as well, so they could potentially have put the game away. With just under 2 minutes to go in the first half, instead of running the ball to get a little closer for another field goal, Mornhinweg called for a pass to make a play for the end zone again. Instead, Tramon Williams picked off Geno Smith's pass, putting the ball in Aaron Rodgers's hands. The Packers then took the ball all the way down the field to score a touchdown, down only 21-16 at the half. The Packers went on to win the game 31-24.
7. The Ravens avoided digging themselves into an incredibly deep hole Thursday night. The Ravens were front and center amid the worst off-the-field week for the NFL in a very long time. Coming from the perspective as a Ravens fan for a moment, I had firmly expected them to be clobbered by Pittsburgh Thursday night. I thought the short week coupled with the Ray Rice drama was going to affect their ability to play well to say the least, but they brought their A-game on the field. Had they lost that night, they would have been 0-2, in a complete disarray as a team, and face going on the road into the aforementioned not-push over Browns. How well they fare on the road in their next game will start to show whether they're truly improved as a team this year over last. Their running game has done well so far in their first two games, but Joe Flacco needs to play well on the road for a change.
8. The Colts are not in trouble...yet. I kept the Colts as a separate talking point from the rest of the 0-2 teams in the league because they were my pick from the AFC to reach the Super Bowl. If the Colts played in any other division, I'd probably be super concerned about their season. Losing to two very good teams (including my projected Super Bowl champ last night) is not going to break the Colts' season when they have three average to bad teams in their division. Three of their next four games are against the other teams in the AFC South, so they can put themselves back into first place and bounce back from a tough start to their season.
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