Tag Archives: Indianapolis Colts

The Contenders, the Changes, and the TWFSafties!!

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

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It’s getting to that time of the season where the games take on added significance through context as whilst each game is still one sixteenth of a team’s season, we are now seeing teams fall out the hunt of the playoffs and the consequences are pretty immediate. Gone are the days when teams waited until the Monday following the final game of the season to make their coaching changes and in fact some are even trying to spark a late season run, so with all that in mind let’s take stock of the week fourteen games and what’s been going on around the league. Oh yes, and I have two safeties for you luck people as well!

In the AFC, three of the division leaders lost with the New England Patriots losing in Miami in something that is fast becoming an unwanted tradition for the Patriots. The Pats’ coaching staff might have outsmarted themselves by having Rob Gronkowski on the field to defend an unlikely Hail Mary from Ryan Tannehill (who was nursing an ankle injury as well as only recently coming back from a shoulder injury) but what they came up with was still a fantastically exciting play that will be part of every season roundup.  The best thing to do if you somehow haven’t seen it, or missed Dan writing about it is to have a look at the highlights here. Whilst the Patriots should sail into the playoffs still, they look to be settling into the number two seed which they will have to hope is not too costly if the Chiefs continue their current streak into the playoffs. Meanwhile the Pittsburgh Steelers saw their hopes of taking the Raiders into overtime dashed when their kicker Chris Boswell slipped on his last second field goal attempt and missed for the second time that game. The bigger question is what took them so long to get Ben Roethlisberger back into the game in the second half once his rib injury had been cleared as he was seen stood on the sidelines whilst Josh Dobbs struggled to do much as his replacement. As for AFC South, the Houston Texans had their nine game winning streak ended by an Indianapolis Colts team looking to bounce back from their loss to the Jaguars and hoping to stay in contention for the playoffs.

The Colts are one of five AFC teams with seven wins trying to make said playoffs. The Dolphins are still in the mix, although they could just as easily finish eight and eight but given the injuries they have suffered Adam Gase has pulled off another impressive coaching job to keep them in contention. It feels like whatever happens in Miami they need to find a quarterback who can play effectively who is not as prone to injury as Tannehill. The Ravens remain on seven wins thanks to their narrow loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, but they were at least competitive and it looks like the competition for the AFC North will go down to the wire and perhaps the Bengals will have one last say in events in week seventeen when they face the Steelers. I should point out that Patrick Mahomes threw a no look pass and an impossible across the body throw on fourth and nine that very few other quarterbacks could plausably attempt and likely only Aaron Rodgers could carry off. The Tennessee Titans literally ran out winners in their game against the Jacksonville Jaguars with Derrick Henry amassing two hundred and forty-three yards and an amazing ninety-nine yard touchdown that featured three separate stiff arms as he rumbled the length of the field.

These five teams with seven wins are involved in two interconnected races, for whilst the Ravens and Steelers are duking it out for the AFC North, all look to be competing for one last wildcard spot as with a three game lead and still in with a chance of winning the AFC West – the LA Chargers should make the playoffs having already hit the magical ten win total with three games left. They did enough to beat the Bengals without extending themselves in a game that featured one of my worst picks of the year.

On the NFC side of the league, three out of the four division leaders won with the Dallas Cowboys riding their luck in overtime to beat the Philadelphia Eagles in a game that was marred by more officiating controversies. The Chicago Bears won a defensive game with the LA Rams that featured lots of interceptions and provoked questions about the Rams ability to function in the cold. It’s an easy narrative to grab but we shall have to see if over more games if it is genuinely a thing. However, it’s not often that we have seen Sean McVay struggle and I’m excited to see how this team does in their second trip to the playoffs under this regime. Meanwhile the New Orleans Saints got back to winning ways with a comfortable win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and remain in contention for the number one seed in the NFC.

It seems likely that we know the winner of each division of the NFC and like in the AFC, there is a clear contender for the first wildcard place as with their convincing win over the Minnesota Vikings, the Seattle Seahawks have a two game lead onver any other challenger.

The Vikings are one of four teams with six wins and so need to make a push in these last three games if they are to claim the last wildcard place. As a team with a high profile quarterback free-agent and an offence that hasn’t quite come together it is perhaps not a surprise that the Vikings have let go their offensive coordinator John DeFilippo, but it is a blow to the coordinator who was being quoted as a likely head coaching candidate before the season. There is however, a big difference between being the quarterback coach for a Super Bowl winning team and being the offensive coordinator, yet alone a head coach. I do idly wonder whether DeFilippo might find a quick rehire to lend a hand in Philadelphia given the struggles they have had on offence after the brain drain of the offseason, although the lack of deep threat doesn’t help either. Having lost to the Cowboys it feels like the Eagles won’t win the division, although technically it is still possible, but they have six wins and are one of the three teams that I think have actual shot at making the playoffs. Things are not exactly looking great for the Carolina Panthers as they lost on the road to the Cleveland Browns and there’s talks of issues with Cam Newton’s shoulder. The Panthers have also had changes in coaching staff, this time on the defensive time but having now lost five straight games they are running out of time to turn things round. I suspect it is already too late for six win Washington who at least scored some points when they brought on recently signed quarterback Josh Johnson, but when you lose to the New York Giants this badly it is a sign of a team who needs to rethink their approach.

That pretty much covers all the teams in the playoff race, but I thought I should mention the Green Bay Packers because of the news that’s surrounding them. Having fired Mike McCarthy last week they got back to winning ways against woeful Falcons and now stand at 5-7-1. It will be interesting to see how they try to retool on the fly given the age of Aaron Rodgers, and it was interesting that long-time coach Winston Moss tweeted about, ‘…Find somebody that is going to hold #12 and everybody in this building to a #LombardiStandard!…’ shortly after McCarthy was let go. The team may have bounced back with a win this week but after such a period of stability who can foresee how the offseason will go with the recently hired GM and his search for a new coach?

Finally, or at least the last thing before I finish up with the week fourteen safeties, I have to comment on one the teams whose major effect on the playoffs could well be that win against the Steelers this week. On Monday the Raiders let go of general manager Reggie McKenzie, which possibly wasn’t a surprise given that the Raiders have traded away such draft picks as Khalil Mack and Amari Cooper. The power dynamic for the Raiders obviously shifted when they handed Jon Gruden a ten-year $100 million contract and they will now have to find someone to work closely with Gruden but whoever they hire won’t have the power of a usual GM so only time will tell whether this will ultimately result in a more competitive team. However it works out, it is pretty clear that Gruden is central to the Raiders’ plan and the defining factor in the success of the team is the design and execution of Gruden’s plan by Gruden. There won’t be much room to hide whatever the result.

So we had two safeties this week and I got lucky enough to pick both games to watch anyway. The first took place in the Thursday night game and re-affirms the importance of special teams play when the Titans’ Cameron Batson muffed the catch and recovered the ball to be tackled into the end zone. In one play the Jaguars scored two points and got the ball back, they just failed to capitalise on that chance. The second took place early in the third quarter and is the kind of thing that drives an offensive coordinator round the bend as on second and fifteen on their own eight yard line Jared Goff took the snap and drifted back into the end zone where Eddie Goldman just beat Akiem Hicks to the sack and the safety. It’s the kind of play where situational awareness is so important and there is so much for a quarterback to learn so I don’t want to judge Goff too harshly but it makes you appreciate the Tom Brady or Drew Brees who stilllmake mistakes and take sacks but you think would have got rid of the ball in that situation. Still, the important thing is that the quarterback got sacked for points because that is what should happen to the glory hunters every now and again to keep them grounded. Let’s hope for some more next week and for those counting these were the ninth and tenth safeties of the season.

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AAF: Texans Offence

02 Sunday Dec 2018

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So having written in the week that I hadn’t paid enough attention to the Houston Texans given their current eight game win streak and place atop the AFC South, I thought I would make them the focus of this week’s amateur adventures in film. I was obviously tempted to watch their defence given how well JJ Watt is playing, but the bigger unknown for me was what they were doing on offence so that is the tape I watched, although this also led me to watch a second team putting up a lot of points against the Titans’ defence.

So much like the Colts offence I watched last week, the Texans used a lot of 11 personnel in a shotgun formation and 12 personnel in singleback formation with the quarterback under centre. However, the execution was pretty different and part of that is due to the difference in quality between the two lines. It wasn’t that the Texans’ o-line would get no push, and they were also pulling offensive linemen and tight ends in the running game like the Colts would, but they were not as effective or efficient in-between the tackles. The Texans also have a two back rotation and the real effective running attack was when Lamar Miller attacked the edges of the defence. He only had to escape two would be tacklers on the run that went ninety-seven yards for a touchdown as once he’d got past the linebacker and safety it was foot race to the end zone, but even if you take out that run he still averaged 5.9 yards on eleven carries. What made the Texans run game so effective was the combination of this production from Miller with the read-option threat of Deshaun Watson who also had seventy yards on nine carries. One of those was a scramble where the defence opened up before Watson who was able to use his athleticism to exploit a seam in the defence. The other back who saw continued usage, Alfred Blue, was not as effective in the run game as he tended to run between the tackles but he was also used as a slot receiver close to the line as part of empty backfield looks and did catch a pass for thirteen yards as well as lead blocking for Lamar Miller on a play.

If that was the source of the Texans success running the ball, the word I would use to describe their passing game was efficient with a few deep shots thrown in, but in the main Watson was not asked to drop back and make complex reads of the defence. Often the ball would come out quickly for receivers who had been schemed open, or for short passes over the middle. Still, Watson completed nineteen of his twenty four passes for two hundred and ten yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. Yes he gave up four sacks where on occasion you might want him to throw the ball away, but with his athleticism you can understand why he is confident in his ability to escape the rush and on one play he actually managed to duck under an attempted sack and scramble for a gain. The other nice thing was that I didn’t see Watson taking the kind of shots that earlier in the season meant he had to play games with broken ribs and for one game saw him take a bus to a road game rather than fly. It should also be pointed out that Watson distributed the ball nicely, with nine separate players catching a pass.

In terms of receivers the Texans used Keke Coutee a lot in the slot and he could be seen running a lot of jet motion although the Texans didn’t actually ask him to run the ball. The obvious stand out is still DeAndre Hopkins who had a relatively quiet game, although when you generate two hundred and eighty-one yards on the ground that will happen, but is still an incredibly dynamic player whilst Demaryius Thomas is playing as a solid complement and caught both of Deshaun Watson’s touchdown passes.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the Texans would often have two tight-ends on the field with Ryan Griffinin leading the way in terms of receiving yards, but him and Jordan Thomas spent a lot of time on the field with Thomas often moving in motion and pulling to block a lot. Meanwhile Jordan Akins played more of a H-back role as line up and lined a full back a number of times as well as playing tight end.

I would say that you can still tell the Deshaun Watson is a young quarterback, but the offence has clearly developed over the season and Watson was working his way back from a nasty knee injury so it makes sense that it would take some time to get back to his best. The form he had last season before the injury was never going to be sustainable in the long term, but this offence has been effective although Watson still takes unnecessary sacks at times and can be flustered in the pocket, but with time and and an improved offensive line the sky is the limit for this team in the near future.

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

AAF: Colts Offence

25 Sunday Nov 2018

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For this week’s amateur adventure in films I have looked at the Indianapolis Colts’ offence against the Tennessee Titans, taking my inspiration from the Ringer’s NFL Podcast and Robert May’s enthusiasm for what was going on in Indianapolis.

There was a lot of flux for the Colts this offseason, not least of which was that they thought their new head coach would be the Patriots’ Josh McDaniels but after he had a change of heart and decided to stay in New England after the Super Bowl loss they has to find someone else. They decided to grab the winning offensive co-ordinator from the Super Bowls in Frank Reich whose main job was to revive the form of Andrew Luck, a quarterback who early in career talked of liking to get hit but who after playing though injury was not even throwing NFL footballs at the start of training camp and hadn’t taken a competitive snap in over a year.

It may have taken a few weeks to get going, and there was a lot of noise about Luck being pulled out of the game for a Hail Mary attempts as his backup Jacoby Brissett had the stronger arm, but it certainly seems to be flowing now. So how does it look?

The Colts played predominantly with 11 personnel but with good mix 12 and 13 personnel mixed in and one of my favourite was a grouping of 21 personnel with rookie running back Nyheim Hines lining up at receiver and Marlon Mack staying as the running back.

The Colts would usually stick with a single back in the backfield but would motion other players back there as well as mixing in some motion, in particular with the tight ends. Speaking of which, one of my favourite performances in this game was from Jack Doyle. I’m sure the focus of most discussions about the Colt’s offence would centre of Andrew Luck or TY Hilton and the big name in the tight end room would perhaps be Eric Ebron, but I loved the versatility of Doyle who was the every down tight end who moved round the formation, both blocking and as running routes whilst Ebron came in as the move receiving tight end.

However, focussing on Andrew Luck it seems the offence is really suiting him and part of that is that he’s getting the ball out quickly. Gone are the days of him holding onto the ball and trying to tough things out to make a play, the ball is coming out quickly with a good balance of run and play action keeping the defence honest. This is not a run first teams but a modern balanced offence, and in the second quarter the Colts scored almost a perfect play action touchdown where the fake handoff drew in the Titans’ single high safety and TY Hilton flew past his corner to score a sixty-eight yard touchdown. This is something that is possible when you have sprinkled enough run plays into the mix from the same formations that you are passing from and although the Colts only just made one hundred yards on twenty-eight carries in the run game, they established it enough to make the play fakes work. There were also some really good timing throws throughout this game to a number of different receivers although star of the show in terms of receiving was undoubtedly TY Hilton who caught all nine of the balls thrown his way and finished with one hundred and fifty-five yards and a pair of touchdowns.

Finally, whilst I was not focussing on the offensive line, the athleticism of Ryan Kelly caught my eye as it is not often that you see a centre pull as frequently in the run game as Kelly did and the whole line had a good day as they did not give up a sack and Luck only had to move a couple of times to avoid the rush even if a couple of throws were affected by pressure.

This was obviously a good game to see the Colts offence running smoothly, they managed a total of three hundred and ninety-seven yards, five touchdowns and gave up no sacks. They ran the ball well enough for the play action fake to be legitimate in the defence’s mind and structurally they were clever enough to elicit comment as I watched the game. It’s not that uncommon for me to talk aloud to the tape (I’m sure my partner loves this habit…) but it is kind of a test on offence and between their motion, route combinations and fakes they got enough separation for Andrew luck to complete twenty-three of his twenty-nine passes. The Colts have won their last four games and after a tough start to the season seem to be heading in the right direction with a large part of that being the position they are putting Andrew Luck in to succeed. It took me by surprise that Luck is already twenty-nine but as he heads into his prime it looks like the Colts are finally giving him the team to win consistently and they will have a large amount of cap room in the offseason. Don’t look now, but with the focus this season seemingly on the young quarterbacks coming up under Tom Brady and Drew Brees, Andrew Luck is reminding us all that he’s still there and should not be overlooked.

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.

Super Saints go Ballistic, Bengals are Atrocious

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

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Nothing much really happened in week ten of the NFL so maybe we should all just prepare ourselves for the upcoming Monday night matchup between the LA Rams and the Kansas City Chiefs? Not buying that… okay I guess there’s only one place to start for me so let’s do this.

The Cincinnati Bengals didn’t just get beat, they had a fifty burger put up on them by a rampant New Orleans Saints team. I told you I was scared about this game! There wasn’t just one thing but there never is in a game like this, it was a combination of factors that produced an absolute thumping. However, for about sixteen game minutes things were okay and looked vaguely competitive. Yes the Saints marched down the field and scored on their opening drive but the Bengals were able to start with a touchdown drive of their own and even pulled a Saints move with their backup quarterback Jeff Dreskel taking a snap with Andy Dalton lining up as a receiver. However, whilst the Saints continued the pattern that would dominate the game, i.e. moving the ball without any trouble and scoring on every drive bar the last on, the Bengals were unable to keep their offence moving consistently. There were flashes from Joe Mixon and Tyler Boyd but the offence sputtered and were not able to match the Saints’ machine like efficiency. The Bengals having to punt on their second and third drives was one thing, but then when they did move the ball Andy Dalton threw an interception on a play that snapped with twenty-four seconds left in the half that was returned seventy-eight yards and just like that the Saints had time to squeeze in another touchdown to go into the half 35-7 up.

You could argue the second half was better as the Bengals only gave up sixteen further points and scored another touchdown with Jeff Driskel in the game after Dalton had been pulled, but clearly not. The Bengals have a lot of injuries in the back seven of the defence, but there has also been a lot of talk about grey areas in the new defence scheme and clearly there is something to it as defensive coordinator Teryl Austin has been fired and Marvin Lewis is doing something he has always been reluctant to do, and that’s call the defence himself. How this is going to work I don’t know, but just to throw extra murk into the waters, or possibly improve the juggling of game day, Hue Jackson has been rehired – this time as special assistant to the head coach. The players have been saying it’s not time to panic as their destiny is still in their own hands, but if ten is the magic number of wins that nearly always gets you into the playoffs, then they would have to go 5-2 the rest of the way including two games against the Browns and visits to the Chargers, Steelers and next week the Ravens. I keep hearing that you know how good your team is by how they travel and the Bengals are 2-2 on the road but have had two bad losses already and three divisional road games coming up. I’m not calling them done just yet but I think it’s more likely than not that things don’t get much better.

Oh yeah, and the Saints right now are the best team in the league.

Can I stop now?

Good.

So, the fluid nature of teams and the small sample size continue to confuse those of us picking game but it does entertain us. The New England Patriots lost to a Tennessee Titans team who have had two solid wins after the bye and whilst it is too early to hit the panic button if you are a Patriots fan, they are outside of the top ten in DVOA in the second half of the season for the first time since 2005 with Tom Brady as the quarterback and since 2008 when Matt Cassel led the team (this has been taken from Aaron Schatz’s weekly update that you can read here). In the absence of time to watch coaching tape this week (life just keeps getting in the way) I may well try to just watch this game to get a better idea of how it happened.

Other notable results were the Buffalo Bills scoring forty-one points after Matt Barkley made his first start in two years and his first for the Bills, which has led to the release of poor Nathan Peterman and who knows if he will get another shot with a team. The Pittsburgh Steelers put up fifty points against the Carolina Panthers on Thursday night whilst both the Chiefs and Rams won their games ahead of the matchup. Interestingly both teams has asked to play the Broncos in Denver before their Mexico city game but the league was smart enough to deny both teams and in a twist of fate with fears about the safety of the pitch in the Azteca stadium the game has been shifted back to LA. The Chicago Bears ran out easy winners against the Detroit Lions but the real test comes next week when they face the Minnesota Vikings coming off their bye.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers managed to put up five hundred yards of offence and only come away with three points, which just should not be possible and is the kind of thing I deserve for picking them. Washington continues their improbable run atop the NFC East but their coaching staff should get credit for finding a way to win despite the raft of offensive line injuries. Things got even better for them when the Dallas Cowboys went into Philadelphia and beat the Eagles meaning that Washington are now two games ahead at the top of the division. However, not only did the Cowboys defence continue to look pretty good and have moved away from their reliance on Sean Lee, but there were signs of their offence evolving. It’s not as if they are suddenly the Saints, Rams, or Chiefs, but with more motion before the snap, the addition of Amari Cooper, and Ezekiel Elliott catching some balls out of the backfield to complement his one hundred and fifty yards on the ground there is a chance the Cowboys could make a nuisance of themselves.

The other contender for game I would still like to see is the Jacksonville Jaguars continuing their losing streak, this week to an Indianapolis Colts team who have dragged themselves to 4-5 record with Andrew Luck continuing to shake off the worries about his return to the game. We are a long way from him being subbed out for a Hail Mary play.

Finally, the Cleveland Browns separated themselves from the 49ers and the Giants with their third win of the season that also likely scuppered the Falcons unlikely recent playoff surge and the Oakland Raiders are officially the worst team in the league thanks to the Giants win over the 49ers on Monday night that leaves the Raiders as the only single win team. I’m sure the schedulers were thrilled about how these two once mighty franchises were faring going into this week’s prime time game, but at least it was competitive. Right now I’d take that from the Bengals…

AAF: Darius Leonard

28 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by in Amateur Adventures in Film

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So getting back to watching a full game of coaching tape I wanted to take a look at something else on defence and a quick check of the NFL league leaders brought me back to a player I was hearing buzz about earlier in the season, namely Darius Leonard of the Indianapolis Colts who currently leads the league in tackles. So for this week’s amateur adventures in film I watched the Colts number fifty-three as they hosted the Buffalo Bills.

Sticking on the game the first thing that leapt out to me about Leonard was his fast feet that were twitching on the snap of the ball and allowed him a quick response to what was going on in front of him. A true three down backer he plays weakside or will linebacker in the Colts base 4-3 defence but the Colts spent a lot of this game reacting to the Bills’ 11 personnel package with nickel and dime defences but Leonard didn’t leave the game until the Bill’s final drive in the fourth quarter. This is not surprising as the rookie second round pick is a long athlete who very much moves well in space. He tends move round blocks although I did see him take on the Bills’ fullback Patrick DiMarco, shed the bloc and make the tackle, but I did also saw lineman and tight ends get their hands on Leonard and take him out the play. However, mostly he made the tackle, which is hardly surprisingly given he leads the league in tackles despite missing a game through an ankle injury. He is always around the ball and even if he is not the first there he will be helping with the tackle. It’s strong trait and whether he’s quickly diagnosing the play and rushing forward, reacting having dropped into a zone, spying on the running back, or following someone on a route he reacts and gets there quickly. A couple of times he couldn’t quite make the initial tackle and on one play Chris Ivory got round him to the edge and made a big pickup although Leonard did make the tackle in the end.

Leonard is not a big hitter and doesn’t look to set the edge which is why he play on the weak side, but he very much looks like a modern linebacker, athletic and able to play in space, which is increasingly necessary in the current NFL. The tackle statistic is one that is a slightly dubious one to put too much faith in as a bad team will give a player more opportunities to make a tackle as the opposing offence will be on the field longer but in a game where the Bills kept giving the Colts the ball with short fields, the defence was on the field without much rest and Leonard kept coming. It is early but he looks very promising and already the Colts defence ranks over ten places higher than last season by DVOA and I would say Darius Leonard had a big part in that.

The Week of the Safety

24 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in Gee's Thoughts

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18-10-24 C Littleton

Image Credit: therams.com

It may not be the headline most people would go for, but it will do for me as we had three safeties over the weekend, taking the season total to five on an increase of 250% in one day and that has to be more interesting than the Bengals and Dolphins getting beat this weekend.

Okay fine, I’ll start with the Bengals running into the buzz saw that is the Kansas City Chiefs at home. The fact that the Chiefs offence was good is of no surprise to anyone, although it would have been nice if the talented Bengals pass rush was more effective and the tackling was better. No one seemed to be able to stop Kareem Hunt and I knew the Bengals were in trouble when Al Michaels announced that the Chiefs’ defence hadn’t forced a punt in seventeen drives and the Bengals opened with a three and out then punt. In fact they punted on the second drive as well and it wasn’t until the second quarter that they scored any points when CJ Uzomah caught the Bengals only touchdown. It’s easy enough to write of this game as a fan of the Bengals but the prime time stats are worrying and the game against the Buccaneers takes on huge significance if the Bengals are going to turn things around.

So the Chiefs are really good, as are the LA Rams who remain unbeaten with a comfortable 39-10 win over the San Francisco 49ers and to no one’s surprise it is late October and the Patriots have rounded into form and have a sole lead atop the AFC East after a win over the Chicago Bears.

We had a really competitive London game where the LA Chargers ran out 20-19 winners over the Tennessee Titans who couldn’t make a two point conversion after two attempts. I can understand the decision Mike Vrabel made to go for it and try to get the win, particularly with all the travel to London and it’s clear that at least a section of the new head coaches obviously believe in this aggressive approach as Frank Reich tried it earlier in the season and also lost. However, I’m not sure with Marcus Mariota’s movement skills why you wouldn’t have him move on one of those attempts. Another coach who might want to think about his late game tactics is Hue Jackson as the Cleveland Browns lost their fourth overtime game this season to a Tampa Bay field goal, which means they have already racked up half an extra game for their players despite the shortened overtime period introduced this season.

Moving on to one of the more surprising results of week seven, the Houston Texans went to Jacksonville and won 20-7 meaning the Jaguars have two divisional home losses already and Blake Bortles has very much not take a step this season. In assessments that should have the Giants worried, plenty of commentators are suggesting that perhaps investing the pick the Jaguars used on Leonard Fournette was not wise given that they could have had Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson with their fourth selection. In fact, of the quartet of high pick running backs we’ve had in recent years – Leonard Fournette, Ezekiel Elliott, Saquon Barkley, and Todd Gurley, it is only Gurley who is in the conversation for MVP and he also happens to have a head coach who’s quickly establishing himself as one of the best in the league as well as a very good young quarterback in Jared Goff. Just to heap it on a little more, apart from the hamstring problems that have side-lined Fournette for most of this season, you could argue that Fournette wasn’t even the most effective running back in his draft class given that Alvin Kamara was offensive rookie of the league last year. Now it is early and we could be saying different things in a couple of years and certainly Sqauon Barkley is some talent, but effective running backs are found at all kinds of rounds in the draft and sometimes undrafted too where as it much rarer to find quarterbacks outside of the early rounds. There’s a reason everyone makes a fuss about Tom Brady going in the fourth round or Tony Romo having the career he did having been un-drafted. It is not that plenty of quarterbacks picked early don’t flame out, but the low picked ones that make it are much rarer than effective running backs taken outside of the first round.

Moving away from draft strategy, but sticking to team building we have several teams who clearly are in win now mode and one that is very evidently tearing things down. Not content with trading away Khalil Mack, Jon Gruden has sent Amari Cooper to the Dallas Cowboys for a first round pick. There’s been plenty of criticism of the price the Cowboys paid given Cooper’s performance the last couple of seasons but they are belatedly trying to address the issues they have at receiver and the talk of the Raiders trading away Derek Carr is only increasing. Perhaps more intriguing is the New Orleans Saints move to acquire Eli Apple for a 2019 fourth round pick and a 2020 seventh round pick from the New York Giants. The Saints know they have a limited window given the age of Drew Brees but given that they have the second best record in the NFC already, you can see what they are doing in trading for a first round draft pick although given the recent moves to get up the draft (for defensive end Marcus Davenport) and in acquiring Teddy Bridgewater in pre-season. There are some thinner drafts coming, but with an ageing hall of fame quarterback you can see why they are trying to get him another ring now. I will assume that Dan, with his love of kicking, will cover the Saints winning thank to an unprecedented event or I will add it in myself if it is missed.

So finally, as I mentioned at the start of this post the #TWFSafties watch continues with the three we saw this week. Going through them in sort order from pro-football-reference.com we had a blocked punt that went through the back of the end-zone for a safety for the Ram against the 49ers. The fun stat about this play is that this is Cory Littleton’s fourth blocked punt since the start of last year, which is kind of incredible. I may have to dig into this a little more if I can find the stats to see how that compares historically. The second was pretty standard as Peyton Barber of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was tackled before he could get out the end-zone as the Buccaneers were on their own one yard line. It was Trevon Coley’s only tackle in the game but he scored the Browns two points and a field goal and it’s just a shame that they couldn’t put them to better use. Finally, the Buffalo Bills lost 37-5 against the Indianapolis Colts and two of those points they had very little to do with as a high snap bounced off Andrew Luck’s hands and into the end-zone before squirting out the back as players pursued the ball. I usually like to see a quarterback safety but my favourite for this week has to be the Littleton’s fourth punt block.

I now I need to start worrying about next week’s picks (not going well) and the Bengals which aren’t faring much better!

AFC Preview

04 Tuesday Sep 2018

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18-09-04 AFC

With the new season only days away I thought I would take you through a whistle-stop tour of the league starting with an AFC preview and I’ll give the NFC teams their own post before the Philadelphia Eagle and Atlanta Falcons get things under way on Thursday.

I don’t particularly like making predictions as there are too many variables and injury luck is can be such a huge part of team success so I’ll be breaking the divisions up into favourites, competitive, and likely to struggle as I work my way round the division compass so without further ado let’s make a start on the .

AFC North

Much as it is painful for a Bengals fan to say it, the favourite to take the AFC North division is still the Pittsburgh Steelers. They may have questions at linebacker thanks to Ryan Shazier’s injury, but the defence still finished top ten last year by DVOA in and the options in their offence are still terrifying. Time is ticking for Ben Roethlisberger but as long as he doesn’t suffer a dramatic fall off then this is going to be one of the teams of the conference who should have their eyes on the Super Bowl.

The AFC North is always a tough division, and even when the Browns are struggling they are often a tough out, but not so much under Hue Jackson. However, with a defence that has looked good in pre-season and the additions of Jarvis Landy and Tyrod Taylor as well as new offensive co-ordinator Toddy Haley it at least feels like the infrastructure for success is more solid. In a position to let rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield develop and not rush him I think the Browns will be more competitive than last season, but whether their ill-discipline (they got penalised a lot in pre-season) will allow them to win games I don’t know. I think we’ll know a lot more about this team by the end of the first four games.

The Baltimore Ravens are another team who are perennially competitive but had to do it with defence and special teams last year. With a kicker like Justin Tucker you can mask a lot of deficiencies in offence but the thing the Ravens coaches might be most happy about having drafted Lamar Jackson this year is the fire it seems to have lit under long time quarterback Joe Flacco. He may also have been helped by better receiving options and being healthy in the offseason for the first time in two years but if the Ravens’ Super Bowl winning play caller can lead the offensive to a better ranking than twenty-first by DVOA the Ravens will be right in contention for the playoffs again.

I’ve written a fair amount about the Cincinnati Bengals this pre-season and it is telling that neither of the offensive tackles two years that they drafted to prepare for a transition of talent have worked out whilst Andrew Whitworth looked great for the LA Rams last year. With new playbooks on both sides of the ball there have been a lot of changes to coaching and the roster. Whilst the Bengals have another young team there seemed to be a lot to like and if the O-line gels, then Andy Dalton should have a much easier time finding his myriad of skill players. I’m not pencilling them into the playoffs, but I’m not ruling it out and I wasn’t sure that would be the case when it was announced the Marvin Lewis was coming back.

AFC East

Is this the year that the New England Patriots falter? For the first time Tom Brady was not ever present through the off-season, their first round offensive lineman Isaiah Wynn ruptured his Achillies after they let starting left tackle Nate Solder leave in free-agency, and this was a team that went to the Super Bowl with a defence ranked thirty-first in the league by DVOA so they can ill afford an offensive wobble. I think we’re all at the point where we’ll believe Tom Brady is done when he has signed his retirement papers, but what will help them is that none of the rest of the division are exactly standing up as challengers at the moment and so the Patriots look to be favourites still. This could finally change though.

The Buffalo Bills made the playoffs for the first time in eighteen attempts last seasons, but they responded to this by cutting the quarterback that got them there, not signing the linebacker that led the league in tackles and trading their left tackle to the Bengals in the draft manoeuvres required to get their quarterback of the future. Have traded away AJ McCarron they have opted to go with rookie Josh Allen and Nathan Peterman as their QBs, but whilst Peterman has looked good in pre-season and Allen has flashed, the Bengals defensive line had a field day against Buffalo’s o-line and it could be a very long season for whoever starts. I was impressed with everything Sean McDermott did last season bar benching Tyrod Taylor but I don’t think this season’s roster is better than last years and I have a nasty feeling they will struggle for a lot of the season.

If you trade away your best offensive and defensive players for chemistry reasons, you had better have an awful lot of talent coming in and I’m not sure that Miami Dolphins do. I thought they had a good draft and I would say Adam Gase is a good coach but I’m not at all sure of the roster construction and this feels like the latest in a long series of make or break seasons for Ryan Tannehill. I believe that Gase can keep the locker room together and make them competitive but it would not surprise me if they fall into a difficult season. Nothing would make me happier than to be proved wrong, if only to cheer Dan through the season.

Finally we have the New York Jets, and I though Todd Bowles did an excellent job of coaching with a lack of talent on the roster last season and not sure many other coaches would have got as many wins. The most ready of the rookie quarterbacks fell into their laps in the draft and Sam Darnold looked good enough in pre-season that the Jets traded Teddy Bridgewater to the New Orleans Saints. I think it will take another or season or two to turn things round and I don’t know if Bowles will get the chance to complete the job, but I can see the Jets equalling their record of last season. There will be ups and downs with a rookie quarterback but the real question for this season is have the Jets finally got a franchise QB. Everything else after that can wait.

AFC South

The Jacksonville Jaguars continued to build their defence, stuck with Blake Bortles and their big free agent signing was a offensive guard. I thought that Bortles might have learnt a thing or two in last season’s playoff run but with the exodus at receiver and the injury to Marqise Lee this team will be as reliant as ever on their defence and the run game. The good news is that the defence will be no less scary and they should rightly be considered the favourites for this division.

The Houston Texans may have only won four games last season, but they revealed they could have a bright future as long as the young quarterback Deshaun Watson can recover his blistering form from last season before his knee injury. With the defence hoping a number of players stay healthy, including JJ Watt this could be really good team even if the offensive line looks to be a big problem. There are a lot of ifs there so whilst the Texans will start out competitively, how long they will remain so is the big question.

The Tennessee Titans ground their way into the playoffs with a run first offence and a defence that ranked twenty-first in the league by DVOA. This was not enough to save Mike Mularkey his job and there rookie head coach Mike Vraebel is hoping that Matt LaFleur can revitalise the offence and fourth year quarterback Marcus Mariota. The coaches with links to Bill Belichick have not necessary flourished as head coaches and Vraebel has limited experience as the man with ultimate responsibility so I am very curious to see how he goes. The honest answer is I’m not sure so this is one of the teams we’ll need to follow closely through the start of the season.

The Indianapolis Colts have struggled mightily with Andrew Luck being out injured but this also laid bare the problems with the rest of the roster and whilst there are signs that things are improving in the second year of Chris Ballard’s rebuild, a lot will depend on Andrew Lucks surgically repaired and extensively rehabbed shoulder. The good news is that he’s back to starting but new head coach Frank Reich will be hoping that he can get enough from his franchise quarterback that the season can be a success, but I have a feeling that being competitive would qualify as just that and would be a good place to start.

AFC South

The Kansas City Chiefs won the division last year and I have too much faith in Andy Reid to see this team as anything other than competitive and I would place them as favourites to win the division. That is despite trading Alex Smith to Washington to promote Patrick Mahomes as the starter after a season where the young quarterback sat on the bench. Mahomes has the arms to make use of the myriad of skills players the Chiefs can use in their offence that has borrowed liberally from college, whilst their defence was only ranked thirtieth by DVOA last year when they won the division. It wouldn’t take much to improve that ranking and with the potential of their offence the Chiefs could be one of the most fun teams to watch this season.

The other potential favourite in this division could be the LA Chargers but it would require them to get out of their own way and they couldn’t quite manage that last season. The abiding image of Philip Rivers for me these days is a player somehow functioning as an effective quarterback despite minimal protection from his line. The defence was just outside of the top ten with a fearsome pass rush led by Melvin Ingram and Joey Bosa and they should be competitive again this season. The problem is that they have a nasty habit of losing close games and their ‘home’ games in LA were frequently more like home games for the opposition thanks to fan turnout. I’d like to think they can improve but I’m not willing to just outright declare it, although I’d be very willing to be proved wrong again.

I’m not entirely sure where to begin with the currently Oakland soon to be Las Vegas Raiders. The big move of the off-season would have been luring Jon Gruden out of the commentary booth nine years after he last coached except they have just traded Khalil Mack, one of the best young defensive players in the league, to the Chicago Bears. The reasoning is that the Mack’s contract demands were just too big, and the Bears wasted no time in signing Mack to a six year deal with $90 million guaranteed days after Aaron Donald signed a contract with $87 million guaranteed. The difference between the three franchises is that the Rams still have a young quarterback on their rookie contract as does the Bears, whilst the Raiders have already signed Derek Carr to a five year extension. The issue is that Gruden has been out of the league for a while, even if he was staying plugged into the NFL through his media gig, and the defence his brother Jay Gruden [I appear to have gone made, too many ex-Bengal coordinators involved as it is in fact Paul Guenther who is the new defensive coordinator – Ed.] takes over was ranked twenty-ninth by DVOA with Khalil Mack. I’m really not sure what to expect out of the Raiders this year, and whilst I can see the salary cap argument to an extent (I don’t study it hard, maybe that’s a task for next off-season) the Mack trade amongst others does nothing to help the Raiders now and I think this club will be in for a very interesting time this year.

Last year’s AFC West strugglers the Denver Broncos will be hoping that the addition of Case Keenum at quarterback will be enough of an upgrade to the offence to give the still competitive if retooled defence a chance of winning games. In the one game I saw them this preseason the offensive line still looked to be a problem but after a good pre-season from Chad Kelly, the Paxton Lynch development plan has finally been shelved. It is way too soon to question a GM who has won a Super Bowl and given his history as franchise quarterback you would think that the job is John Elway’s as long as he wants it. However, whilst he’s made a number of sharp moves in free-agency, his record in the draft is a bit patchier and his choice of Vance Joseph as head coach didn’t exactly yield the early returns that Elway would have hoped for. Still, if either Keenum or Kelly can make the offence competitive then the Broncos will be a team no one will want to face, especially at home and that could be enough for them to be in the playoff race come December.

As the Season of Hope Turns

08 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in Off-Season

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kigoa football on green grass during daytime

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

It will not be very long before the players start practising in pads and before you know it we’ll be though the summer and into the weekly grind of the full NFL season.

Quiet as I may have been during these off-season milestones, I was following along as ever and so whilst we wait for training camp and the start of something we can actually dig our teeth into, I thought I would write a series of deliberately partial articles about what has been going on. The NFL media and coverage continues to expand and my aim has never been to bring you breaking news, but there’s been some interesting developments over the last few months along with the usual flurry of coaching and player changes so I’ll be digging into these and maybe straying into such things as the new rule changes as well, although I might side step the anthem protest developments until we are closer to some games actually being played, but let’s say I’m not exactly impressed with the NFL’s new policy or Trump’s reaction.

Rest assured that deliberately partial is not code for a long series of articles on the Bengals, although I’m sure they will feature, but I’ll pick out some key points I want to write about and I’d welcome input from any of you if there is a topic you’d like me to take a look at. However, as much as I like to say they get overly praised when a team wins, and overly blamed for each loss, not only are quarterbacks a very important part of any team but they are the focus of an awful lot of fans’ hopes in the off-season.

It has been an interesting off-season for quarterbacks. The Minnesota Vikings started the off-season with three quarterbacks going out of contract and kicked off a larger than usual move round of signal callers when they opted not to renew the contracts of any of them but instead signed Washington player Kirk Cousins to a three year guaranteed contract after Washington allowed his to expire. It is rare for a starting quality quarterback to hit the market, yet alone one who has accrued three straight four thousand yard seasons and is still in his twenties. It is an interesting contract that Cousins signed as all three years are guaranteed, but whilst I could very much see this becoming a thing for quarterbacks given their importance to the team (which does grant them additional leverage) it is hard to see the rest of the NFL players getting such deals.

With this first free agency domino falling the Vikings’ old quarterbacks were soon signed to new teams. It appears that the Denver Broncos were unable to get seriously into the competition to sign Cousins and quickly switched to signing Case Keenum after his impressive run to the Conference Finals. He had an excellent season last year but the Minnesota offensive line was unable to protect him against the Eagles pass rush in the NFC Championship game and so the Broncos will be hoping he is able to recapture the form of the regular season for them. The Broncos have named Keenum their start and are looking to continue the development of Paxton Lynch behind him despite Lynch not being able to make use of his impressive arm talent since he was drafted back in 2016. Still, this signing did allow the Broncos to draft Bradley Chubb in round one who is reckoned to be the most rounded pass rusher in this draft class and with the players already available to the Broncos, he will likely be an excellent addition to the front seven of their defence.

While Keenum headed to the Broncos, the Vikings’ opening day starter, the oft injured Sam Bradford, signed yet another big contract, this time with the Arizona Cardinals. With the retirement of Carson Palmer the Cardinals went into the off-season with no real option for a starting quarterback yet as well as the signing of Bradford, the Cardinals traded up to the tenth pick to select Josh Rosen. We won’t know how this turns out until a few years down the road but the criticism of Rosen’s off field interests seemed overblown and given the position in which the Cardinals started the off-season, they have given themselves a shot this year with their two new quarterbacks and could be set for the future if their young QB can back up his claim that the teams who passed on him made a mistake.

The final Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater signed with the New York Jets, but given that the Jets resigned last year’s starter in Josh McCown and moved up to take a quarterback it still looks like a long road back to starting for Bridgewater having suffered a horrendous injury in preseason two years ago. The Philadelphia Eagles have demonstrated the benefit of having two quarterbacks on the roster with their Super Bowl win and with the dearth at the position if Bridgewater can demonstrate he’s on the way back to something like his previous form he should get a legit shot as a starter somewhere. The early buzz coming out of the Jets OTAs (organised team activities) were that Bridgewater looked like the best quarterback of the team, but I’m always wary of the buzz surrounding players until we start seeing them in pre-season games and for quarterbacks, even good play in pre-season doesn’t necessarily translate into the regular season. The Jets could be taking a leaf out of the Eagles recent roster moves and be driving interest for a trade, but I think a lot of the league and most neutrals will be hoping Bridgewater makes a full comeback.

Before I dig properly into the first round quarterbacks who were drafted I just want to cover the saga of Washington and Kirk Cousins briefly, As I said earlier, it is not often that a quarterback still in his twenties with three consecutive four thousand yard seasons hits the free agent market. Washington seemed to be unwilling to make the kind of deal that Cousins and most quarterbacks of his ability would expect and whilst there was some defending the first franchise tag given to him two seasons ago as he was a fourth round draft pick and had really broken through late, there is no real defence for Washington not committing to Cousins long term when he threw for four thousand yards a second time. It is pretty remarkable that he completed the feat for a third straight season given that Washington let both of their top two receivers leave before last season. What they did do this year as Cousins second one year franchise tag was nearly expired was trade for thirty-four year old veteran Alex Smith from the Kansas City Chiefs, sending them a corner back as part of the trade, and signing Smith to a four year deal with fifty-five million dollars guaranteed at signing. If he makes it to the end of his contract he is guaranteed seventy-one million dollars, but whether he can make it to thirty-eight is a big question even with modern sports medicine and particularly as Smith is an underrated runner who doesn’t sit in the pocket and distribute the ball without getting hit like a Tom Brady or Drew Brees. I can’t pretend to know what lay behind these decisions, but I don’t like the process and it does not instill faith in the franchise.

So with the major quarterback moves wrapped up the NFL headed into the draft and I have already mentioned two teams that double dipped signing Vikings’ free agents and drafted quarterbacks in the first round but the first pick of the draft belonged to the Cleveland Browns and this time they did take a quarterback, but not the one everybody was expecting when they drafted Baker Mayfield. Now I’m interested in the draft and I do enjoy the analysis of players and even look up draft grades but I don’t take them seriously. We won’t know what players are going to work out or not, and so much is to do with scheme fit, changes in coaching staff, injury luck that whilst there are players you would feel more confident than others, no one can know. Hell, we’re still waiting for Andrew Luck to play again for the Indianapolis Colts having played through a shoulder injury and missed all of last season. You have to wonder at the medical advice the Colts young franchise quarterback received and why he was allowed to play for so long with what is clearly a serious issue during the 2016 season.

Getting back to the Browns, if this pick works out then great and what I do like is that they picked their player rather than the outside experts but we can’t know whether this was the right decision for a number of season. In fact we might never know as bad luck could scupper the pick or something else unforeseen. What I can question is what the New York Giants did with the second pick as whilst no one would question the talent or ability of running back Saquon Barkley, it is hard to argue that even as good as he can be that the Giants will get equivalent value out of a position that you are lucky to get through two contracts compared to having an entire career of a franchise quarterback. The Giants may well have not liked the quarterbacks in this year’s draft, but they refused to move down and even if Eli Manning regains some of the form that he has failed to display over the last two seasons, at thirty-seven he can’t have that long left in the league and when will the Giants be picking this high again?. Even if they have complete faith in the quarterback Davis Webb who didn’t see the field during a turbulent 2017 season that saw Geno Smith get a start, they could have likely traded the pick to one of the quarterback needy teams, got a big haul and still got a very good player.

What this did mean was the New York Jets who moved early to get up to the third pick took Sam Darnold who most people thought was the most ready quarterback of the draft. The Jets invested in three quarterbacks this off-season, but if Darnold can finally be the franchise quarterback the Jets have been missing for years if not decades then the cost would have been worth it. You can see the importance of the quarterback to teams who don’t have them in the moves of the Buffalo Bills, who having already traded up to the twelfth pick with the Bengals (only my second mention of them in this post) traded again with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to get to seven so they could take Josh Allen. I have already mentioned the Cardinals trading up to take Josh Rosen at ten, but at the end of the first round with the Ravens having already picked and the Eagles coming off a Super Bowl win but short on draft picks haven given up a lot to draft Carson Wentz in 2016, the Eagles traded out the first round as the Raven’s Ozzie Newsome in his final draft as GM picked the fifth quarterback to go on day one in Lamar Jackson.

I still find it somewhat strange that the 2016 Heisman trophy winner had four quarterbacks selected ahead of him and that he slipped past the Saints and Patriots who both have ageing quarterbacks that could have taught Jackson a lot. As could the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger although he was not exactly enthusiastic about the selection of Mason Rudolph in the third round and claims to be planning to play for a number of years yet despite several years of off-season where Roethlisberger talked of retirement.

This leads me to where I’m going to finish off, with this thought:

With the hope given to franchises in recent years by quarterbacks like Carson Wentz, the LA Rams’ Jared Gough, or the flashes from Deshaun Watson in Houston, it has reinforced the theory that there is no price too high to pay for getting a franchise quarterback. However, you had better be certain about that player as if you get that call wrong, even if it isn’t entirely your fault, as the person who put your faith in the player you are going to get fired if things don’t work out.

It’s not exactly fair, but that is life in the NFL.