Tag Archives: Green Bay Packers

What Happens Next?

28 Wednesday Nov 2018

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Things managed to get worse for the Bengals this weekend and I will be writing about that, but I thought I would zip round the league first before letting rip to give those who don’t wish to indulge my reaction to the problems besetting the orange and black something to read.

There weren’t as many as in the previous week, but the NFL still managed to have four games separated by a field goal and a couple of upsets.

I’m going to start with a game I didn’t see, but on Monday night the Houston Texans won their eighth straight game to remain two games clear at the top of the AFC South. I suspect they are possibly the division leader I have written about the least this season and I will need to watch them again soon to get a better idea of what the transformation looks like. The obvious thing might be to take a look at their top five defence by DVOA that has JJ Watt and Jadeveon Clowney fit and combining for eighteen and a half sacks, but they are also getting enough out of an offence ranked twenty-first by DVOA to win and with them finding a way to run the ball and win with Deshaun Watson back at quarterback that side of the ball might be the more interesting study. Still, they have definitely established themselves as team worthy of more attention and I hope this paragraph doesn’t jinx them!

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a somewhat less successful weekend, losing on the road to the Denver Broncos. It feels like at least once a season the Steelers lose a game on the road they shouldn’t and as much as I admire what Mike Tomlin achieves in Pittsburgh this could once again lose them a shot of a playoff bye and home advantage later in the playoffs. They have a big game next week against the LA Chargers who got themselves back on track with a big win over the Arizona Cardinals and this meeting of AFC teams looks like it will be one of the highlights of the week thirteen.

With the Rams and Chiefs on their bye week, the New Orleans Saints were the only one of the top tier teams (according to me) in action in week twelve and ran out convincing winners in the evening Thanksgiving game against the Atlanta Falcon who will have to regroup in the offseason having been broken by injury. The New England Patriots got a healthy enough to win over the New York Jets but even though Rob Gronkowski returned to the field, he does not seem to be the same dominant tight end of previous years. Of their five remaining opponents the Patriots only have to face two with winning records and I will be very interested to see how they do hosting the Vikings next week and when they travel to Pittsburgh in week fifteen. I should also mention that the Patriots are yet to play the Dolphins in Miami where the Pats have lost in four out of the last five visits.

The Chicago Bears beat the Detroit Lions comfortably despite not being able to start Mitchell Trubisky and that leaves us with the NFC East as the only division that I haven’t discussed the division leaders. With Washington falling to the Cowboys on Thanksgiving and the Eagles scraping a win over the New York Giants on Sunday things remain tight in the east. The Cowboys have managed to get themselves equal to Washington but have the daunting task of hosting the Saints this Thursday night, whilst Washington and Philadelphia have the first of their two games against each other this weekend. Given the injuries to both Washington and Philadelphia most people seem to think the momentum is with the Cowboys right now and it certainly seems like the contest is going to go down to the wire in terms of winning the division. It is also worth noting that whilst the arguments about value are still valid, the Cowboys trade for Amari Cooper does appear to be making a difference and his breakaway touchdowns was pretty much the difference between them and Washington on Thursday.

This is your two game warning before I dig into the mess that is the Bengals right now.

The two games on Sunday I enjoyed watching were the Seattle Seahawks winning out over the Carolina Panthers despite the Panthers gaining well over double the amount of yards on the ground and seemingly moving the ball with more ease. However, costly failures in the red zone and some interesting decisions to go for it on fourth down led the Panthers to their third straight loss. I don’t know if a division game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is the right situation to try to turn things round, but they really need to get a win thus week if they want to stay in the race for a wildcard place.

Finally, whilst looking good for stretches of the Packers’ game against the Minnesota Vikings, it appears that Aaron Rodgers might be mortal after all. I would suggest the problem is more that the offence he has been given doesn’t seem to have evolved under Mike McCarthy in recent years despite the developments round the league, but after a good start that saw the Packers go 14-7 up at the start of the second quarter, they failed to score again until near the end of the fourth quarter and ultimately fell 17-24. At 4-6-1 the playoffs are not completely out of reach but they would have to run the table and hope to get lucky. The big sticking point in the final five games that jumps out on the schedule is their visit to Chicago in week fifteen, especially as the Packers have gone 0-6 on the road.

Okay, so here we go. Final warning.

So the Bengals season is hanging by a thread and only the most optimistic of super fans can even contemplate things turning around. Not only did the Bengals lose the battle of Ohio to the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, but they lost Andy Dalton to thumb injury for the rest of the season. Now as it happens Jeff Driskell is pretty good as backup quarterbacks go and it’s not as if the Bengals were competing for the Super Bowl, but there are real problems with this team which stretch further than the injury list. The offence still ranks sixteenth despite the injuries that have hampered this side of the ball but the defence have been woeful all season. The Bengals have already fired one defensive co-ordinator and there are now questions yet again about whether it is time for Marvin Lewis to step aside. Now I do think it is time for this to happen, in fact it might have been time a couple of seasons ago but I understand the reluctance to do so and it does make me nervous. Marvin Lewis took a perennially underachieving team and made them respectable, frequently one of the most talented rosters in the league who went to the playoffs five seasons in a row between 2011-15 but this looks to be the third season that the Bengals miss out and something has to change. However, as much I would like to see an inventive offensive minded coach take over the franchise as that seems to be what is required to win with the current set of rules, replacing Lewis worries me because of the tendency for Mike Brown to hire people he knows and the rumours that Hue Jackson is a potential candidate that surfaced over the weekend.

Yes Hue Jackson, who has a 11-44-1 overall record and who just went 3-36-1 with the Cleveland Browns. Now I’m not necessarily saying he’s a bad coach, he did great things with the Bengals’ offence as a coordinator before he left for Cleveland, but I’ve seen nothing that makes me think that as a head coach he could turn things round. Look at how the Browns have been doing in recent weeks. Not to mention the shots that Baker Mayfield has been taking both on the field and after the game in the press. There is still a lot of talent on this roster, and it might just need a new voice to turn things round or it could need more of a re-build but who knows if the Bengals infrastructure above the head coach can facilitate such efforts. I have no idea what happens next and that’s what makes me nervous. So much of an NFL franchise’s success lies in getting the behind the scenes right to get the right coach with the roster at the right moment, and yes with the right quarterback. It appears that as Bengals fans, we live in interesting times….

Anyway, I shall leave you with a comment from Dan as we were discussing quarterbacks after his misguided shot at the red rifle yesterday.

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Seasons on Life-Support

27 Tuesday Nov 2018

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We really are at the business end of the season now, and believe it or not the next time I post we’ll be in December – a scary thought! Thursday night will see the start of Week 13, meaning that most teams have just 5 games to either seal their position in the play-offs or at the very least finish the season on a high. But that is going to be a little easier for some than others…

Sunday started for me with a trip to the Rugby – I’m not a huge fan but my wife is a Leicester Tigers season ticket holder so I went to keep her company. And while there I did the hilarious thing that I always do… I referred to Tries as Touchdowns and time periods in Quarters rather than halves. I still don’t understand why when they kick the PAT they get 2 points rather than 1! So as you can imagine, I wasn’t particularly in her good books.

I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned this on the blog, but my wife is also a Cincinnati Bengals fan, so just imagine how little she must have enjoyed Sunday night’s pretty one-sided affair between the Bengals and the Browns, given that I’d already given her the raging hump! To their credit, the Browns looked good on Sunday night, but you do get the feeling that the Bengals season is very much on life-support, if it’s not already called it a day. This, largely, is due to the impact that the loss of Average Andy Dalton [How many times has Ryan Tannehill got your Dolphins to the playoff? – Ed.] is going to have on the team.

Luckily the Dolphins, while not able to get the W on Sunday against the Colts, have just got their Quarterback back under Centre, so I feel a little more optimistic than the Black and Orange half of this blog, but not by a huge amount. Miami played well in one of the later games on Sunday. In fact, I seriously think if it wasn’t for some poor play-calling in the last couple of drives, we would now have a winning record rather than a losing one. I do feel that for the first time this year, some of the blame for this weekend’s loss has to sit with Adam Gase and his coaching team. In the ‘fins final drive, with just a couple of minutes on the clock and the game tied at 24, we were backed up behind our own 15 yard line. Instead of really going for it, we played a couple of short inside runs, a throw for no gain, and I think there was even a loss of 5 yards through a Penalty. This unfortunately lead to us having to Punt it back to the Colts, giving them the opportunity to drive down the field and win the game with the last kick, which the did successfully.

It’s a frustrating one, because I actually thought other than that we looked pretty good. But with 13:36 remaining in the game, we were winning by 10 points. For me, we need to be a lot smarter with play calling in that situation. Tactically, surely we should have either tried to run down the clock and played for overtime, or go for it and try to win! The very last thing we should have done would be to turn the ball over. As it happened, we did just that, giving them the ball with 2:38 left on the clock, all of their Timeouts, and none of ours, and made it far too easy for one of the best (if not THE best) kickers ever to have graced the league to win them the game.

There was a bit of a scary moment too – once again with too many receiving targets already sat in the medical room, Danny Amendola took a serious knock which looked like it may have ended his game, but luckily he managed to shake it off and return to the field.

Oh and we scored on our first drive, and got our first Offensive touchdowns since Week 8!!

Elsewhere, the Vikings got the win over the Packers, and the Buffalo Bills got themselves a Win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. The latter of those two games has seen the announcement of some mid-season changes in Florida. Nathaniel Hackett has been relieved of Offensive Coordinator duties (a move which WR Dede Westbrook has said that the Offence need to take responsibility for), Blake Bortles has been announced for the bench next week in favour of Cody Kessler, and Running Back Leonard Fournette has been suspended for a game for Unsportsmanlike Behaviour and Unneccesary Roughness calls on Sunday night which saw him ejected from the game. Not a good time to be a Jags fan.

For the first time in 6 or 7 weeks now, the Rams aren’t the favourites for the Super Bowl in terms of betting odds – that position has been taken by the New Orleans Saints who to be fair are looking fantastic after another win this week over the Falcons. All in all, this makes the betting chart look like this:

So what’s coming up this week? Well, Rams/Lions will be a good game. The Rams are just being The Rams having lost just one game so far, and the Lions 4-7 record really doesn’t reflect how well they’ve played to this point this season. And the Vikings/Patriots match will be an entertaining affair too, I think – both good Offensive teams which should make for a good game.

And of course, I’ll score 6 in the Picks – because… that’s what I do at the minute.

Which games are you looking forward to? How are you feeling about your team going into the back end of the season? Drop me a line on twitter and lets have a chat!

Until next time…

@TWFDan

The NFL Spectacle

21 Wednesday Nov 2018

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The NFL got what it wanted on Monday night with a spectacular game that lived up to the hype. With a game that ends 51-54 you can understand all the talk being of the Rams win and the offences involved (to be fair there was over a thousand yards), but there are a couple of other things I wanted to mention from this game. Firstly, for all the talk of the yards gained and quarterbacks, perhaps the best player on the field Monday was Aaron Donald got two sack fumbles and caused enough pressure with his teammates that Patrick Mahomes threw three interceptions and fumbled the ball away twice. In fact, if I was the Chiefs I would not be overly worried by this loss as despite five turnovers and one hundred and thirty-five yards of penalties they only lost by a field goal. On a neutral field they will still fancy their chances but both teams could do with learning the lessons of the late game as they each manufactured chunk gains and neither seemed to worry about running out the clock and this could very well have lost either team the game. I’m not advocating for the old fashioned three yards and a cloud of dust runs, but a little manipulation of the clock could have definitely given one team an advantage.

So if Monday was a feast of offence that also featured multiple defensive touchdowns, the rest of the week showed that as much as anything, competitive games is what drives interest in the NFL. In fact the winning margin for eleven out of the thirteen week eleven games was five points or closer.

Other notable achievements included Lamar Jackson carrying the ball twenty-seven (yes 27) times against the Cincinnati Bengals in the Ravens’ 24-21 win. A double blow as the Ravens managed to beat the Bengals but not quite by enough for me to get my pick right. The Ravens only had Jackson throw nineteen times and the number of carries he had cannot be sustainable, but I will be interested to see how they develop the offence for him over the next few weeks. I do wonder how much of this game plan was about attacking the Bengals’ porous run defence and their inexperienced linebackers. The injury situation doesn’t look to be turning round quickly for the Bengals, but they were at least competitive in this game and if they can get AJ Green back they could have some success in a schedule that looks like it might lighten up a little in the coming weeks even if there are still visits to Pittsburgh and the LA Chargers left.

I picked the Colts to win but did not expect them to blow out the Tennessee Titans 38-10 and having heard Robert Mays wax lyrical about their offence and what they have done for Andrew Luck this season I will be taking a look at that for my coaching tape study this week. The other blow out this week was the New Orleans Saints rolling over the Philadelphia Eagles whose injury problems at corner as reached critical in terms of numbers, but the worst injury news is Washington’s who lost Alex Smith who broke both bones in his right leg in thirty-three years to the day since Joe Theismann had the same injury. With the advances in training and medicine it likely won’t be the career ender that it was for Theismann but Washington’s hopes for the season now rest on Colt McCoy. The Houston Texans managed to win out in this game though to maintain their two game lead on the Colts and Titans whilst stretching their win streak to seven.

The Pittsburgh Steelers got their revenge win in Jacksonville against a Jaguars team who have not got the memo about how modern offences should be run. They called a run play forty-one times with Leonard Fournette having twenty-eight carries and not making one hundred yards. Clearly they didn’t want to put the game in Blake Bortles’ hands but they might not of had to if they had selected say Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson who were both available in the 2017 draft when they picked Fournette. This is not a direct comparison of players so much as a comment on taking a running back that early and using them in this old fashioned way. You can still feature a running back, look at Todd Gurley, Alvin Kamara or Kareem Hunt but they need space to work and the days of the workhorse back running up the middle have been well and truly superseded.

A team who are very much running such a modern offence are the Chicago Bears, who are getting enough production from a developing Mitchell Trubisky and a defence that ranks first in the league by DVOA and this got them a big divisional win against the Minnesota Vikings this weekend. However, one of the other NFC team of the tier below the Saints and Rams lost whilst going for two at the end of the game as the Carolina Panthers stumbled against the Detroit Lions. This only furthers my confusion at the Lions’ set of impressive teams beaten, but also asks the question of whether the last games the Panthers have lost is a blip or the start of a trend. As usual, only time will tell but with the Seattle Seahawks getting their win on Thursday night over the Green Bay Packers the Seahawks could still have a shot at the playoffs whilst the Packers have probably lost too many games already unless Aaron Rodgers really is a dragon.

The New York Giants recorded their second straight win, this time over the flailing Tampa Bay Buccaneers who look like they need a new plan in the offseason. It is too late for the Giants to pull themselves into the race for the NFC East even with Washinton’s problems at quarterback, and likely the same for the Eagles but with another win the Dallas Cowboys could get themselves back into the conversation, particularly as they host Washington this Thanksgiving. The Cowboys seem to have worked out how to feature Ezekiele Elliott more on offence and with a defence that I’m surprised is only ranked twenty-first by DVOA but has been good enough, they at least stand a chance of winning their remaining division games and getting themselves into the mix.

The LA Chargers run of only losing to really good teams fell to the Denver Broncos this week, which is the kind of divisional games that can cause such results but they hope this won’t be a return to the getting in their own way Chargers that started last season. The Oakland Raiders however, got their second win of the season against the Arizona Cardinals in a reminder that if you like the points, you should really take the points even if the team have been bad.

The teams at the bottom of the league all seem to be taking games off each other whilst the cream of the NFL really seems to be rising and it seems like the season is slipping away for all three of us at The Wrong Football. There’s still time for one of our teams to build their way into a winning record but I would be surprised if they all did and I’m not sure what it will take for the Bengals to win a playoff game. Maybe it really is the time for a fresh start in Cincinnati, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves as there’s plenty of football left to watch this season and a lot of it has been really good. Let’s hope we can keep this momentum.

Never has a team needed a Bye week so badly!

13 Tuesday Nov 2018

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We’re 10 weeks into a pretty good season now, and everyone’s left with just 6 or 7 games remaining. Bye weeks are often a bit of a distraction from football (even a pain in the arse if you’re running a fantasy football team!) but let me tell you – never have a team needed a Bye week more than the Dolphins do this coming weekend. Even last year when our Bye Week was effectively in week one due to the hurricane in Tampa, we didn’t look as beat up as we do now at any point during the season.

This week saw the Dolphins take a trip up-north to the frozen tundra that is Green Bay (ok, it’s not that bad, I know) and struggled to warm up all game. We went into the game battered and bruised, but with a surprising winning record, and unfortunately returned back to Miami even more battered, but without that winning record, so… not a great week if I’m honest!

As we know, Brock Osweiler has been under centre since Week 6 due to Ryan Tannehill’s injured shoulder, and he definitely didn’t have a good one this week. He was sacked 6 times for a loss of 50 yards throughout the game. Now, that wasn’t all his fault – the O-line was patchy at best, but what doesn’t help is his huge tell – when he’s under pressure, Brock always steps out to his right. Seriously, go back and watch the tape – he does it every single time. So the Packers knew that all they had to do was put some pressure on him down the middle, and then sweep him up after he rolled out to his right.

He’s also quickly running out of targets too. He was already without Albert Wilson (WR) and MarQueis Gray (TE) going into this one, but during the game, both Jakeem Grant and DeVante Parker left the field in a bad way with Leg and Shoulder problems respectively. Adding to that a shoulder issue for Kenyan Drake at Running Back, and it’s difficult to see where the points are going to come from. What I will say, is that Frank Gore is more than picking up the slack at the RB position, adding another 90 yards to his season tally on Sunday. [I have to add that at age 35 I find Gore’s productivity this season a feat that should be more celebrated – Ed.] And it’s not just on Offence we’re struggling – I commented on Sunday that I felt particularly bad for Bobby McCain (CB) who looks like he could have picked up a bad concussion. So, I think you can see why we badly need a week to heal up!

Strangely, we actually moved the ball fairly well. It was just the final product that we struggled with. I lost count of the number of times we got to within 10-15 yards [According to ESPN zero out of three red zone visits], but couldn’t finish it off. This lead to us only picking up 4 field goals during the game.

Here I go again, not giving our opponents the credit they deserved. The Packers looked good – it took them a little while to get going, but when they did, their game really came together. Aaron Jones (RB) was devastating, finding some huge holes in our Defence, including one especially long run at 67 yards. They fully deserved their win, and I don’t think anyone who watched that game would think anything otherwise.

What was really nice was connecting with an old school friend (and Cheesehead) Andy, now living in Australia while watching the game. He was surprised at how well the Green Bay Defence did, having had what he described as a ‘truly awful’ season to this point. The NFL really is a great connector!

I feel I’ve suitably rambled on about our game now, so lets have a look what happened elsewhere.

You’ll know by now that I have something of a fascination with the Kicking game. Well, Chicago kicker Cody Parker had a difficult week this week. Not only did he miss 2 extra points (something almost unthinkable a few seasons ago!), but also a couple of Field Goals, and all four hit the goalpost, which he couldn’t do again if he tried. I’ve said before that I feel for kickers as it doesn’t take many misses to find themselves on the chopping block, so I can’t imagine it’s a particularly nice week for him in training this week!

The Rams are marching on, with another win, making the Betting chart look like this:

They’re really making it look more and more like there’s a 2 horse race in the NFC. I caught the majority of the Bengals game this week, and while I will leave the majority of the coverage to Gee, in short, the Saints absolutely took them apart. It was a difficult watch to be honest, so I know how much Gee will have struggled with it.

And elsewhere in the pick’em competition, I’m 5 points away from Gee, and 6 from my Dad (I can’t even call it beginners luck for him this year!) which is annoying me. I feel like it’s too big a gap to catch at this late stage, but I’m sure there are some surprises still to come which may help me along.

But that’s it for me this week. Speaking of surprises, my Twitter topic this week will be surprise packages of the season – who’s not having the season that you expected them to have this year, good or bad? Drop me a line on Twitter and lets have a chat!

Until next time…

@TWFDan

The Battle of the Big Guns

07 Wednesday Nov 2018

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I had a serene Sunday with the Bengals on a bye, although I have a creeping dread more worthy of the Halloween that just passed about the upcoming game as the New Orleans Saints are visiting Cincinnati and that bodes ill for the rested but injured Bengals team.

Still, before we get to the future outlook of the team there’s the minor matter of this week’s games to contemplate and the interesting results that occurred.

The obvious place to start would be the pretty amazing run of late games that I think entertained everyone. Although watching back later, I saw two games in sequence before circling back to the best game of the week once the UK Gamepass blackout had cleared. The first of these was the LA Chargers going into Seattle and demonstrating the faith I had placed in them was not misplaced with a relatively comfortable win against the Seahawks. It could have been even more comfortable had Caleb Sturgis not missed two extra points and a field goal, which also resulted in a missed two point conversion attempt by the Chargers trying to get back the original missed extra point back. Unsurprisingly the Chargers have moved on from Sturgis and reinstated Michael Badgley who was also on the roster, but that still means they have had seven kickers in the last three years! At this point surely some question are surely being asked about the special teams evaluation process of the front office as the Chargers have also had four people punt for them during this period.

Moving on from the special teams’ conundrum that is the Chargers, we saw this week’s contender for the best game of the season when the New Orleans Saints hosted the LA Rams and ran out 45-35 winners. The Saints built a big lead only to see the Rams close the gap back to 35 all in the fourth quarter before the Saints extended the lead once more for the win. It was an entertaining game, even if someone like me would have liked to see a little more defence, and that could be the Achilies heel of the Rams. It seemed like Marcus Peters was being picked on in the continuing absence of Aqib Talib who is seen as likely to return from IR in week thirteen. However, whilst the Rams defence has some very high profile names on it, including Dante Fowler who joined the team via trade on deadline day, doesn’t look to have quite gelled yet and are currently ranked only sixteenths by DVOA. The ranking against the run of twenty-fourth by DVOA showed up as Alvin Kamara and Mark Ingram did the work on the ground whilst Drew Brees threw for four touchdowns and three hundred and forty-six passing yards. The Rams and Jared Goff were not quiet able to match this efficiency in the air whilst Todd Gurley finished with a modest sixty-eight yards on the ground and now the jockeying at the top of the NFC will get really interesting.

Finally, on Sunday night we had the battle of the 12s as the Green Bay Packers visited the New England Patriots but whilst keeping it relatively close for a lot of the game, the Packers were ultimately done for by the Patriots better consistency. The use of Cordarrelle Patterson as a makeshift running back in this game was effective enough that we might see more of it going forward even when Sony Michel comes back from injury whilst Josh Gordon caught five balls from ten targets to go over one hundred yards for the first time as a Patriot. What this game really showed however, is that so much of a quarterback’s success depends on the infrastructure around them and you get the feeling that there could be a coaching change in the works for Green Bay given the moves the newly installed GM is making.

Other notable things around the league include the Kansas City Chiefs beating the Browns convincingly and the Chiefs have one of the best offensive DVOA ratings ever. Conversely the Buffalo Bills have an historically bad offence, with their offensive DVOA of -53.9% putting them in the bottom ten of offences for the last thirty years. The Chicago Bears beat the Bills to stay atop the NFC North and now have two forty point blowout wins this season. The Carolina Panthers continue their quiet challenge for the playoffs with a big win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to take them to 6-2 whilst the Pittsburgh Steelers managed to do the double over the Ravens to stay atop the AFC North. The wheels came off for Washington when they lost both starting offensive guards to injury against the Atlanta Falcons and got beat badly. This could give Washington real problems going forward although they stay a game clear at the top of the NFC East whilst the Falcons have now won three straight and still have an outside shot of pulling themselves back into playoff contention. Speaking of streaks, the Houston Texans have now won six in a row while the Denver Broncos continue to struggle.

Finally, it is my mission to bring you every safety of the season and whilst we did not have any this week, we had three in week eight that I didn’t bring you because I was rushing off to London. That’s a total of eight so far this season and the 28th of October was second Sunday in a row where we had three safeties.

The first I’ll mention is a classic of joined up football where an LA Rams’ punt pins the Green Bay Packers up against their goal line and on their first down of the drive running back Aaron Jones gets met in the hole by Mark Barron and stopped for the safety. The second is combination of comedy of errors and situation awareness as on 3rd & 7 on the eight yard line, the Arizona Cardinals’ Josh Rosen starts in a shotgun formation and drops back to pass into the end zone, and whilst getting tackled tries to throw the ball away and gets called for intentional grounding, giving up the safety anyway. You can’t hold on to the ball in this situation and once again this is what happens to an offence when pinned against its own goal line by a punt. The final safety was again after a punt but this time it was a holding penalty called against Desmond Harrison of the Cleveland Browns in the end zone that results in the safety, and if you seek out the play from the week eight game against the Steelers you will see that it wasn’t exactly a marginal call.

Speaking of which, is it me or have the rule changes settled down over the last few weeks even if the defences to seem to be really struggling to contend. Anyway, I’m off to worry about this weekend’s game, the awful lines we’ve got this week, the trivia question I’m utterly stumped on, and to get on with this week’s newsletter.

Bring on Thursday night football, which looks to be a cracker of a matchup!

Back To My Old Self!

06 Tuesday Nov 2018

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Firstly, I just want to say thank you to everyone who read my post last week – it was my highest viewed post since I’ve been contributing, but more importantly, it was REALLY cathartic to write.

With that said, I’m back to my old self this week, and luckily for you I’ve watched some football! Although, that’s a fairly loose term for what I saw during the Dolphins/Jets game on Sunday night. It was one of the most boring games I’ve watched for a long time, which was highlighted especially as I fell asleep while watching the game for 10 play clock minutes in the third quarter, and missed absolutely nothing! Seriously… I’ve been back and watched it… nothing happened!

That being said, I can imagine Gee would have found some positives in it. The Defences were both pretty strong, helped along by two particularly poor offences. Jets’ rookie quarterback Sam Darnold looked… well, very much like a Rookie. He seemed a bit off the boil, and very much a different player to the one I watched in the Away fixture in week 2. He definitely wasn’t helped by a Centre with a broken finger who was providing him with dud-snaps all game, but to throw 4 interceptions in one game is pretty unforgivable.

On the Miami Offence, one thing that baffled me a little was Frank Gore out snapping, and out running Kenyan Drake by 20 attempts to just 3! I’m not sure if there’s more to it than meets the eye here, but it’s a strange choice to allow the veteran 35 year old more carries than the up and coming potential future of the team’s Running Game who is just finding his feet in his third season in the league. Osweiler wasn’t great either. He’s said he wants to make it impossible for Adam Gase to put Ryan Tannehill back into the lineup when he returns to fitness, but if he wants to do that, he’s got to try a LOT harder when he has the opportunity – his deep passes over the last few weeks have been woefully poor, and his accuracy even at mid-range isn’t where it needs to be.

But, a win is a win as they say, and next week it’s on to… oh no… Green Bay.

Speaking of the Packers, they visited the Patriots on Sunday night [The clue is the big Gillette in the above photo – Ed.] , in what (barring an increasingly unlikely meeting at the Superbowl) looks like it’ll be the last meeting of the 12’s before Brady hangs up his cleats. It was a good game too and had a bit of everything including a nice trick play with Julian Edelman completing a pass for 37 yards. What is really encouraging is that Josh Gordon seems to be finding his feet in New England and is connecting well with Tom Brady. Especially nice to see given the knowledge of his off-field problems which have hindered much of his career.

Elsewhere, the Rams took their first loss of the season, meaning there are now no unbeaten teams. They’ve done well to get this far though to be fair, and the Saints are looking equally good in recent weeks. We could very easily see this being a pre-cursor to the NFC Championship game in January – you heard it here first people! Oh, and that had a slightly negative impact on my bet too, which means the chart now looks like this…

I don’t think Gee or I have mentioned yet that London will be hosting 4 games next year, between Wembley and the new Tottenham stadium. Good news all round, I think. There’s only 3 teams who are yet to play in London, so I would expect at least 2 of the Packers, Panthers and Texans to make the trip over the pond. Selfishly, I really hope the Dolphins come over again, but assuming there are no teams playing here more than once next year, a quarter of the league will be visiting London, which is great! This year’s games were a really good advert for the league too, and caused a lot of people to catch games who wouldn’t normally… although most people seem just to be talking about the toll that 3 games in 3 weeks had on the Wembley turf!

What’s your favourite game that we’ve seen over here in London? And what’s your usual pre-match routine when you visit Wembley? Get in touch on Twitter, and lets have a chat!

Until next time…

@TWFDan

Week 5 – the Week of the Kicker

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

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We’re well over a quarter of the way through the season now – seems far too early for that to be the case, but it is! There are two teams still undefeated, and unfortunately, since I last wrote, the Dolphins are no longer one of them.

I won’t go into the Patriots game, as I’ve somewhat moved on since that drubbing, but what will take me a while to get over is the loss in this year’s ‘Wrong Football Bowl’ against the Bengals. When I was messaging Gee on Sunday night, I used the word ‘Angry’ to discuss how I felt about how things went down, and while there’s definitely an element of that, 24 hours removed from the game, I think it’s more a feeling of disappointment and one of being more than a little let down.

So for those of you who don’t know, the Dolphins went 17-0 up just after half time, and with the help of one pick six and one returned fumble TD, the Bengals scored 27 unanswered points and won the game. Yes, there are definite positives in how the Dolphins are doing things, but it’s seriously frustrating to give up a 3 score lead in less than a half of football. I’ve seen a lot of people on twitter putting the blame squarely at Tannehill, and it’s easy to see why. Where in the last few weeks he has been making some great throws, this week he seemed a bit clumsy, was taking too many risks, and held onto the ball too long at times. But for me, the injury to Tunsil was more of a turning point – when he went off, he was replaced with rookie Sam Young, who really struggled to give Tannehill the time in the pocket that he needed. [It also doesn’t help that Tunsil is the third offensive linemen of the Dolphins to pick up an injury – Ed.]

Also, too many 3rd and Long situations… that’s never good.

On the plus side, the run game was pretty good again this week, and Jakeem Grant is just born to return kicks, which is always useful. And I must say, all of this takes nothing away from the Bengals, who had a great second half – I know Gee was worried specifically about the absence of Tyler Eifert, but he didn’t need to be on this performance. Oh well, to paraphrase Boring Bill, it’s on to Chicago next week!

But enough about the Dolphins, what has been happening elsewhere? Well, one thing that caught my eye was the situation in the Blue half of New York where the Giants haven’t had the start to the season that they wanted, and now sit at 1-4. Before this week though, Odell Beckham was asked about how he felt about things – more specifically the Quarterback situation. He said that he ‘didn’t know’ if there was a problem under centre, which of course meant that some facets of the media decided that they hated each other. During their game this week though, Mr Beckham got chance to show what he could do with the ball and threw a 57 yard Touchdown! They lost the game in the end, courtesy of a last second Panthers field goal, but keeping it close will have helped their confidence a little.

For those of you who have followed us for a while, you’ll know that I have a lot of respect for the kickers of the league, so I can’t really sign off this week’s post without at least a brief look at Mason Crosby in Green Bay. He’s missed a few crucial kicks over the last couple of weeks, including 2 potential game winners against the Vikings the other week, but this weekend he missed a PAT and 4 Field Goals… I’ve mentioned it before, but the world of the kicker is a cut-throat one, and it often doesn’t take much for a kicker to find themselves on the sharp end of the cut. With figures like this, I worry that it won’t be long before he’s out of a job, so lets keep an eye on the situation there.

And on a similar note, I almost missed the opportunity to bring up Graham Gano’s incredible 63 yard field goal winner for the Panthers – amazing to think kickers can make them from that far out!

Oh yes, and you’ve not had an update on my LA Rams Super Bowl bet for a couple of weeks have you! Don’t let me hold you back any longer…

I’ve had chance to watch a couple of their games recently, and I am REALLY impressed! I couldn’t think of a better team to have my money on at the minute which is always a positive.

But who is your money on? What odds would you give your team of making the Super Bowl this year after 5 weeks? Give me a shout on Twitter and lets have a chat!

Until next time…

@TWFDan

Quarterbacks and Injuries

03 Wednesday Oct 2018

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Image Credit: milehighsports.com

Here we are, preparing for week five after which all the teams will have played four games and I can try to run through the entire league in a panic at the quarter pole post, but we are already beginning to get a bit more of a feel for how the league is shaping up.

Of the young quarterbacks that seem to be the story of the league so far this year, Patrick Mahomes traveled to Denver Monday night and struggled comparatively for him so far this year but still found a way to get the win for the  Kansas City Chiefs against the Broncos, whilst Mitch Trubisky threw for six touchdowns as the Bears thumped the Tamps Bay Buccaneers. I have only seen the highlights of the Bears game and yes there were a lot of wide open people catching the ball, but I thought Trubisky looked good in terms of his footwork and whilst you can’t expect this every week it is a promising sign that Matt Nagy can find a way to keep his team competitive in the division with Trubisky as his quarterback.

Speaking of the NFC North, the Green Bay Packers pitched a shutout against the Buffalo Bills who reverted to type and were bad in this game. This leaves them one game behind the Bears but one ahead of the Minnesota Vikings who could not keep up with the LA Rams on Thursday night but then no team has this season. With quarterbacks on the mind I should also mention that one of the reasons the Rams look so good is that Jared Goff is absolutely thriving in Sean McVay’s office and threw some absolutely amazing balls to beat the Vikings coverage. The Detroit Lions lost a close game to the Dallas Cowboys who managed to find some offence this week, which is not how the Lions and Matt Patricia will have wanted to follow up their impressive win against the Patriots.

I hesitate to do this, and it is perhaps lucky that Dan is on holiday this week as the Miami Dolphins got demolished in New England. There is a reason why everyone was hesitant to write off the Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, and this was it. They ran for one hundred and seventy-five yards and got themselves back to 2-2 before Julian Edelman comes back next week. Things could well still go wrong but it would surprise no one if come December the Patriots are once again top of their division.

The other perennial contender that is struggling at the start of this season were not so lucky as the Pittsburgh Steelers failed to win their second division game as they lost at home to the Baltimore Ravens to go 1-2-1. We have seen dips of form before with the Steelers, but with the Le’Veon Bell situation rumbling on and a defence that is not the kind we usually associate with this franchise there could be real problems. They face the Atlanta Falcons next week in a game that will very much be decided by who can score the most points as the Falcons are struggling to stop anybody on defence. In week four this benefited the Cincinnati Bengals who squeezed out a 37-36 win game despite losing Tyler Eifert to a season ending injury for the third straight year. This was heart breaking as Eifert had finally had a healthy offseason and it was a horrible ankle break, but at least it wasn’t connected to his previous back/ankle injuries. Eifert has so much talent and it’s really sad he’s so seldom been able to make the most of it or get to that lucrative multi-year second contract given what he has produced when he has been on the field.

The other big injury from the weekend was to Earl Thomas who had been playing well for the Seattle Seahawks despite hardly practicing in protest at the Seahawks refusal to trade him after not giving him a new contract. The middle digit he offered to the bench was a sign of the frustration a player must feel when what he feared materialises, but a broken leg is at least an injury that shouldn’t affect him next season. That may not be that much comfort to a safety going into his thirties though, particularly given the lack of activity in signing veteran free agent safeties this off-season and this is exactly why Le’Veon Bell is holding out as he fears a similar injury when running backs are treated with even more scepticism as they approach thirty.

I think I will end this week’s round up though with a team who may not be playing pretty football week to week, but have got themselves a winning record despite multiple injuries. In week one the teams with new head coaches went 0-7 but rookie head coach Mike Vrabel and his staff have now won three straight games despite Marcus Mariota sustaining a nerve injury in week one that has led to numbness in the fourth and fifth fingers of his throwing hand as well as grip issues, and his backup Blaine Gabbert being lost to a concussion in the opening quarter of their week three game against the Jaguars. The Titans may only be ranked twenty-sixth on offence by DVOA and fifteenth by defence, but they are top ten in special teams and are finding a way in win games. It also helped that Mariota looked better in this week’s overtime win against the Philadelphia Eagles where Mariota played with a modified glove on his throwing hand where the first and second fingers had been cut off so he could feel the ball but the glove could help his week fingers/hand. I’m sure this is not what offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur was not expecting to have to deal with this when he joined the staff, but the Titans have remained competitive in the AFC South and will be looking to build on this solid start. This is a pretty impressive achievement for Mike Vrabel who does not have that much coaching experience compared to a lot of coaches yet alone experience running a team. Let’s see how sustainable this is.

Plays, Penalties, and Injuries

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

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18-09-26 Josh Allen TD

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So Wednesday marks the transition from one NFL week to the next as I move from catching up on games and highlights, evaluating the news to preparing to make picks, even if I won’t start the coaching tape for Week three until tomorrow, but more of that later.

I’m currently reading The Score Take Care of Itself by Bill Walsh, and whilst I haven’t got very far yet, the section on the 49ers losing to the Miami Dolphins and coping with adversity rings ever so true. This week we have some coaches who will be facing down despair and problems, whilst others will have taken a moment to savour a win before swiftly moving on to the next week’s game.

The usual king of this, as exemplified by his famous, ‘We’re on to Cincinnati.’ press conference back in 2014, is Bill Belichick who will be trying to turn around the fortunes of his 1-2 team who got thoroughly outplayed by the Detroit Lions. I’m not sure too many people saw that one coming and we had a couple of reminders in week 3 of the old maxim that anything could happen on any given Sunday. The Patriots struggled on offensive as they continue to falter when running the ball and haven’t found the right mix in the passing game. We may see Josh Gordon if they can get him worked into the mix this week and after they take on the Dolphins this weekend they will have Julian Edelman back from suspension but it could take a while for this be sorted. I’m not going to overreact as it is early and I’ve written several times about how the Patriots plan to peak later in the season but for context the Patriots haven’t lost three straight since 2002 when they had a four game losing streak and missed out on the playoffs (they still had a winning 9-7 record).

Perhaps more surprising even than the Lions getting a win over the Patriots was the Buffalo Bills travelling to Minnesota and beating the Vikings 27-6 as Josh Allen managed to rushing touchdowns as well as a passing one. The Vikings will be looking to shake things off quickly as they are on the road in LA for the Thursday night game against the Rams and I’ve heard several people suggest that the Vikings had one eye on this game and that is why they had such a surprisingly poor game against a team they overlooked. I always find such talk a little troubling as I have no way of verifying and the infrastructure for the Vikings is such that my default would be to think it was an aberration that will quickly be righted but given the Packers (who the Vikings drew with last week) lost to Washington this week and the only team the Vikings have beat are the 49ers there is perhaps some concern that there might be deeper problems. Definitely one to keep and eye on, whilst I will have to take a look at Josh Allen on coaching tape this week to find out just how he managed to lead the Bills to a comfortable win.

In fact, there’s quite a lot I wish I could watch in more details including games I didn’t even see the highlights for. Apart from the two upsets I have already mentioned, the New York Giants travelled to the Houston Texans and won, surely placing even more pressure on head coach Bill O’Brien, whilst the Tennessee Titans managed to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars despite starting Blaine Gabbert and then having to play Marcus Mariota despite the limitations he has from a nerve injury when Gabbert was ruled out the game with a concussion. It has to be said that Mike Vrabel has done well to win two games given his quarterback situation and whilst it is far too small a sample size to draw any big conclusions about him as a coach, it is encouraging. Less encouraging is a third loss for  Oakland Raiders under Jon Gruden who along with the Arizona Cardinals join the Texans as the only teams yet to register a win this season.

The Atlanta Falcons lost a barnstormer of a game 42-37 to the New Orleans Saints, with Drew Brees spinning to get the winning score and the Falcons losing a second starting safety for the season to injury so things are getting increasingly tough for them.

Sadly for the San Francisco 49ers, Jimmy Garoppplo was lost for the season with a torn ACL as he tried to gain some extra yards rushing out of bounds. There has been a lot of focus on the steps the NFL are taking to protect the quarterbacks and with the effect losing that one player has on a team I can understand it up to a point. However, with another seemingly form tackle by Clay Matthews resulting in a penalty, not to mention the string of penalties some linemen are picking up in games the new interpretation of the roughing the passer penalty is definitely a huge talking point. In fact the Dolpins (who I’m sure Dan would like me to remind you are 3-0) lost William Hayes to a torn ACL on a sack that head coach Adam Gase is blaming on the new rules. If players are injuring themselves trying to comply with the new rules and some of the bigger name quarterbacks are suggesting that things have gone too far then perhaps the league will look at it. I don’t want to argue that the league has gone soft, and frankly I think this has more to do with keeping the star quarterbacks playing the safety concerns, but a lot of the plays that have been penalised were simply tackles and I have no idea how a two hundred and ninety pound player fighting his way past an offensive linemen to tackle a quarterback, who are often not exactly small themselves, are supposed to lay said quarterback gently to the turf so they don’t risk an injury. You need a certain amount of momentum to tackle a player and explosiveness to get there before the pass is thrown so a lot of these defenders are being put in a very difficult if not an impossible position.

There have been a number of exciting games, and I think we’d all much rather be focussing attention on say the amazing start to the season Patrick Mahomes has had in Andy Reid’s offence or how the LA Rams are ominously rolling through the season, but until the roughing the passer penalties slow down the conversation about the zebras could keep dominating the conversation and frankly I’d much rather be focussed on the surprises and the good play that is happening in the league. After all, the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Bills won this week, all things are possible.

Reacting to the Reaction

19 Wednesday Sep 2018

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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.