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The Wrong Football

~ A UK American Football fan writes about the game he loves

The Wrong Football

Tag Archives: DeSean Jackson

Reacting to the Reaction

19 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts

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Tags

#TWFSafeties, Aaron Rodgers, Antonio Brown, Arizona Cardinals, Ben Roethlisberger, Blake Bortles, Buffalo Bills, Cam Newton, Clay Matthews, Cleveland Browns, DeSean Jackson, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars, Jameis Winston, Jordan Berry, Josh Gordon, Kansas City Chiefs, Kareem Hunt, Kirk Cousins, Le'Veon Bell, Leonard Fournette, Mike Evans, New England Patriots, New York Giants, NFL, Oakland Raiders, OJ Howard, Patrick Mahomes, Pittsburgh Steelers, Quarterbacks, Retirement, Rule Changes, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Seattle Seahawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Vontae Davis

Obviously the most important thing in the NFL last week wasn’t my terrible week of picks, but I fell into a common enough trap for fans (and boy am I kicking myself as I even referred to it when making picks) so as the dust settles on the week let’s take a look at what we can tell.

The mistake I made was reading too much into the week one scores and I said it was more likely that a team be 1-1 than 2-0 or 0-2 but as I said last week, as far as I’m concerned fans of the Bills, Giants, Lions, Texans, Raiders, Cardinals and Seahawks may now officially panic.

The Seahawks have the excuse of being on the road for both games so far but their offence is really struggling, the defence is changing, and so far the bright spot may be the Australian punter who tried drop-kick kickoff (it was a bad week for kickers as Vikings and Browns fans will attest). Some team’s troubles you could see coming like the Bills and the Cardinals, and there was plenty of talk about the Texans offensive line before they underwhelmed against a Tennessee Titans team quarterbacked by Blaine Gabbert.

Another team who are in an unexpected position is the winless Pittsburgh Steelers who still have Le’Veon Bell holding out and had Antonio Brown tweet out trade me to find out regarding a post about how Ben Roethlisberger had made him and also wasn’t there on Monday. Teams can get off to a bad start but this is not the kind of things you usually see in Pittsburgh and it seems like cracks are beginning to show in that team.

The strains in New England offence are obviously being felt as the Patriots have traded for Josh Gordon after the Cleveland Browns finally lost patience with the troubled receiver, apparently after he hurt his hamstring in a photoshoot. I have no idea if the change of scene and the famously strict Patriot approach will help the player but addiction issues are not simple and on a human level I just hope he finds a way to make use of his talents and be in a good place.

Meanwhile the strain was too much for Vontae Davis who retired at half of the Bills heavy loss to the LA Chargers. It’s not something I’ve seen before and there has been those supporting his decision and very vocal players upset by an action they take as quitting. I actually have sympathy with both points of view as in a sport as dangerous as the NFL that requires a physical commitment if you don’t have it, you don’t belong out there but if you’ve dressed for the game don’t you owe it to your team to get to the end as there are only so many corners.

Looking for more positive stories, the Kansas City Chiefs continue to have the most dynamic offence in the league, unsurprisingly toping the offensive DVOA stat thanks to the explosive skills players they have assembled and Patrick Mahomes’s stellar talent, which has allowed Andy Reid to pretty much do what he wants with the office. Even less expected is that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ offence is ranked second by DVOA as Ryan Fitzpatrick continues to do his best to keep the quarterback job whilst Jameis Winston is suspended. In Mike Evans and DeSean Jackson the Buccaneers have one of the league’s better receiving duos if their quarterback can get them the ball and if you haven’t seen it, watch the clip of tight end OJ Howard running in a seventy-five yard touchdown. Tight end is one of those positions that due to the complexity it often takes time for young players to adjust, but he has amazing speed for the position and could be the next tight end threat to terrify defences.

The Jacksonville Jaguars hosted the Patriots without their Pro Bowl running back Leonard Fournette but it was the much maligned Blake Bortles who took advantage of an aggressive game plan to throw for over three hundred and fifty yards with four touchdowns to one interception. If they can maintain a balance of improved offence to go alongside their frightening defence then they could very well go one better than last season and make it to the Super Bowl.

In my drive to document all safeties we had our first of the season when the Kansas City Chiefs visited the Pittsburgh Steelers and it demonstrates why special teams and the phases working together wins football games. The Steelers Jordan Berry sent a fifty-nine yard punt to the Chiefs’ one yard line, pinning them by the goal line that after an aggressive pass play on first down, led to Kareem Hunt being tackled in the end zone. Maybe a small part of me would have liked to see a quarterback get sacked but this is the essence of football, a game of territory where even if you don’t directly score, you created an opportunity that results in two points and you getting the ball back in good field position.

Speaking of sack, and the final thing I will round up this week. I think there’s been a lot of entertaining football so far this season, even if not all of the prime time games have been the ones to demonstrate this, but whilst we have fun offences and potentially good young quarterbacks to enthuse about, there’s also the familiar issues surrounding the rule tweaks. Despite the worry ahead of the season being around the lowering the head hitting rules, these haven’t been called that much or caused that many issues and the two bad quarterback hits I have seen have been in open play when the quarterback slides and the hit to Cam Newton just looks bad. The actual problem call has been the new landing on the quarterback rules. This essentially cost the Packers a game when Clay Matthews was called for roughing the passer despite making a pretty much textbook form tackle of Kirk Cousins. Now I get why after Aaron Rodgers’ injury last season, and given how much the league is hurt whenever one of their marquee quarterbacks get injured, that the league doesn’t want their quarterbacks being driven into the ground by three hundred pound defensive linemen but there’s only so much a defender can do and if we’re going to start penalising tackling as opposed to dangerous play then we are going to see ridiculous scorelines. They won’t change the rule now and I wonder if even the instructions to the refs will change given that I suspect what the league is worried about is keeping the quarterbacks on the field. I hope I’m wrong.

So on to the next week where we’ll get to see if the Browns can finally get that win having been competitive twice, if the remaining undefeated teams can remain so, and I can keep testing my search of pro-football-reference.com that should make sure I don’t miss any safeties this season.

2017 Pre-Season So Far

20 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by gee4213 in Pre-Season

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Tags

Aaron Rodgers, Andrew Whitworth, Carl Lawson, Cincinnati Bengals, DeSean Jackson, Dirk Koetter, Gerard McCoy, Hard Knocks, Jameis Winston, Jared Goff, Jeff Driskel, Jordan Willis, Justin Davis, LA Rams, Mike Evans, Pre-Season, Riley Bullogh, Robert Aguayo, Sammy Watkins, Sean McVay, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Wade Phillips

I like to follow a couple of teams through pre-season alongside my own Bengals and the major storylines. This will include the team being featured on HBO’s Hard Knocks as that gives you a chance to see all of the games that you get the highlights of and gives me an in to a team I don’t know.

So this year I am following the Tampa Bay Buccaneers thanks to them being on Hard Knocks, and the LA Rams who happen to have been last year’s Hard Knocks and Amazon’s All or Nothing team, but mainly I’m watching the Rams this pre-season to see how their new head coach Sean McVay does in turning around their offence. Even if at thirty-one he is making me feel like I’ve done nothing with my life…

I will pick up the week two games next week, but what have I learnt in the first two Hard Knocks episodes and the week one pre-season games?

Well, this years Hard Knocks has mostly been good fun with a strong cast of characters. I’ve been impressed with Jameis Winston who is clearly invested in trying to be a good leader for his team. Not only is he working hard and making his way round the whole team, but the moment that was eye opening to me was when he approached a group of smiling linemen during the Buccaneers game against the Bengals and almost quietly dropped a line about being glad they were enjoying themselves but that Ryan (Ryan Griffin, backup quarterback fighting for a roster spot with newly signed Ryan Fitzpatrick) was injured. It was an effective way of making his point.

Winston is still searching for the right blend of risk taking and protecting the ball, a discussion we saw him having with head coach Dirk Koetter, but only time will tell if he can find it.

Winston is not the only player showing leadership, and it was a surprise to number 49, Riley Bullogh, to be singled out by Koetter in a meeting about displaying leadership, since he was their third string mike linebacker. Most teams don’t carry three mike linebackers if they play a 4-3 defence, but I was impressed not only with the way Bullogh has been portrayed on Hard Knocks, but also with the way he played and he also managed to catch the eye whilst I was watching the game against the Bengals. I think he may well make the team.

Sadly, we’ve already had our first painful cut, and it is always hard to watch someone go through this, but second year kicker Robert Aguayo seems to have struggled ever since being picked in the second round by the Buccaneers last year. He was an incredibly accurate kicker in college, but whether it is the pressure of being such a high round pick for a kicker, or simply the reality of kicking in the NFL, he has not managed to be consistent in the NFL and although he was picked up on waivers by the Chicago Bears, it hard to know if he’ll be able to turn things round. The problem is likely to be that this narrative will follow him around, as will the questions about his career, and you would have to be incredibly tough minded to set this aside when you know it will keep following you. I hope he turns things around, but only time will tell.

I’ll pick up other players as we go forward, the duo of new signing DeSean Jackson and establish receiver Mike Evans have featured heavily and should provide Winston with a nice balance on offence, but the other player who seems to be a genuinely good guy as well as a wrecker of offences, both in practice on game day is Gerald McCoy. Seeing this seven-year veteran carrying others pads around, dressed in a kimono, and testing the waters of what is an acceptable celebration has been a lot of fun. It’s always nice to see a different side of players who you so often only get to see in a helmet and pads.

So as the Buccaneers played and lost to the Bengals, what is there to say about the team from Cincinnati?

Well apart from getting a win, the Bengals offence line seemed to hold up and there were promising signs on offence, although you can only tell so much in pre-season. However, with a running and passing touchdown, third string quarterback Jeff Driskel made a claim that the Bengals should keep three quarterbacks on the roster this season. Given the number of receivers that they might want to keep, this could be difficult as the Bengals have only been keeping two recently, but I suspect Driskel would get snapped up by another team if they tried to stash him on the practice squad.

It is hard to say too much about pass coverage when you only have the TV copy to watch, but on defence the pass rush did catch the eye, particularly Jordan Willis although Carl Lawson looked good as well and I think both players could help add and an extra pass rush element to the defence this season. However, the pass coverage in the middle of the field was soft, and this is definitely something to keep an eye on.

So if the Bengals looked solid, how did the LA Rams go in their first game against the Dallas Cowboys?

Well the major thing that struck me on the offensive side of the ball was ball security. I suspect this will be a point of emphasis in the coming weeks as the ball was put on the ground a lot. Fumbles and drops hampered the team, and although McVay won his first game, there is still a lot of work to do. That said rookie running back Justin Davis caught the eye when he wasn’t fumbling with his burst and ability to make defenders miss, and so if he can secure the ball he could become a useful backup to Todd Gurley. Only time will tell if the o-line will play better through the season, but it was certainly strange to see Andrew Whitworth playing in the blue and white of the Rams. I’ll need to see more of second year quarterback Jared Goff to form any serious opinion, but he hasn’t shone yet and that has to be worrying given what the Rams gave up to select him number one in the 2016 draft.

Still, the Rams traded for Sammy Watkins last week and it will be fun to see if Watkins can stay fit this season, and if he can help the Rams turn round their passing attack.

The defence for the Rams looked good though, they seemed to be picking up the defence of new co-ordinator Wade Philips quickly and this was without Aaron Donald, although I will be interested to see how the disruptive tackle lines up in Philips’ 3-4 defence.

This leaves with one final point to make about the pre-season so far before I start catching up with the week two game, the Rams switch to the blue and white helmets with the white face-masks is definitely a good one as they look great.

Who says you do not learn anything in pre-season!

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