2020 Week Two Picks

20 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts, Picks Competition

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Aaron Rodgers, Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Brian Flores, Cam Newton, Carson Wentz, Chris Godwin, Dallas Cowboys, DeAndre Hopkins, Doug Pederson, Gardner Minshew, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Josh Allen, Kansas City Chiefs, LA Rams, Las Vegas Raiders, Le'Veon Bell, Michael Thomas, Mike McCarthy, Minnesota Vikings, Mitchell Trubisky, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, NFL, Philadelphia Eagles, Ron Rivera, Russell Wilson, Sam Darnold, Seattle Seahawks, Tom Brady, Tua Tagovailoa, Washington Football Team, Week 2 Picks

We are still early enough in the season that every game holds plenty questions as we don’t truly have a handle on how all the teams compare.

Early Games:

The games that leap out of the early slate first are the ones that see two 0-1 teams facing each other as one team will get over the early loss and another is going to be looking at a very tough if not impossible task to get to the play-offs.

The Cowboys host the Falcons is one such game and having talked about the use of analytics and indeed gone for it on a fourth down, this year’s Cowboys under Mike McCarthy don’t look that different to last season’s only the defence appears to be thinner and already weakened by injuries. The Flacons looked like their defence was still a problem and their offence generated plenty of stats but could not keep up with the Seahawks last week. I like the Cowboys to win this game, but I am not sure they are going to do it by six points, although I think this could be a very entertaining game with plenty of scoring..

The Vikings will be looking to get over last week’s heavy loss to the Packers, but they face a Colts team who moved the ball well enough and I am still concerned about the number of new players on the Vikings’ defence. I am making a numbers based play in this game, but this is definitely one to watch for me as I’m still trying to figure out these teams.

Finally, the Eagles lost to a surprisingly tough Washington Football Team in week one, with their offence struggling thanks to the injuries on the offensive line and never quite getting things together. People are already asking questions about Carson Wentz and Doug Pederson and this week they host a Rams team who started with a win against the Cowboys and who look to have some of their offensive mojo back. There are plenty of questions around both teams, but I have that bit more faith in the Rams right now and so I am going against the numbers in my spreadsheet and I am just hoping that I am not wrong.

Other things of interest:

Josh Allen threw the ball for three hundred yards last week, but this is a test of whether they can beat the teams that they should, whilst the Dolphins will be looking to bounce back in a second divisional game as Brian Flores tries to build on last season. It will not take many losses for the clamor for Tua to start in Miami.
The Giants are not a good football team, but the Bears had to rely on fourth quarter heroics from Mitchell Trubisky to get their win last week so which version of the Bears offence is the true one and can the Giants show signs of improvement?
The Broncos were more competitive than I was expecting last week, but they have to face a Steelers team who look like they have the capacity to make the Ravens work for the AFC North title.
The Lions looked back to their familiar losing ways last week, so can they truly compete on the road against the Packers, or will Aaron Rodgers continue to look sharp as the Packers try to establish themselves as the best team in the NFC North and I am already wondering if I was wrong about them and they may not regress as much as I thought.
The Titans won a close game on Monday, but the offence did not look as strong as it did late last season so given that the Jaguars won in week one with Gardner Minshew looking like he has build on his debut season, I wonder why the Jaguars are getting this many points
I’m not sure what the Jets are meant to be building on going forward, there are plenty of questions surrounding Sam Darnold’s development and Le’Veon Bell is injured and doing little to justify his contract. The 49ers have a cluster of injuries at receiver and lost to the Cardinals last week – I wonder how the 49ers will pull things together but I still would be surprised if the Jets can compete in this one
The Buccaneers have plenty of work to do on offence but receiver Chris Godwin being out of the game with a concussion won’t help Tom Brady look better than he did last week. I think the Bucs can bounce back against the Panthers, but I don’t think it is a sure thing given how close the Panthers pushed the Raiders last week so the points looks wonky to me.

Falcons @ Cowboys (-5.5)

Gee’s Pick: Falcons
Dan’s Pick: Cowboys

Bills @ Dolphins (+5.5)

Gee’s Pick: Bills
Dan’s Pick: Bills

Giants @ Bears (-5.5)

Gee’s Pick: Giants
Dan’s Pick: Giants

Broncos @ Steelers (-6.5)

Gee’s Pick: Steelers
Dan’s Pick: Steelers

Lions @ Packers (-6.5)

Gee’s Pick: Lions
Dan’s Pick: Packers

Jaguars @ Titans (-10.5)

Gee’s Pick: Jaguars
Dan’s Pick: Jaguars

Vikings @ Colts (-2.5)

Gee’s Pick: Colts
Dan’s Pick: Vikings

Rams @ Eagles (+1.5)

Gee’s Pick: Eagles
Dan’s Pick: Rams

49ers @ Jets (+6.5)

Gee’s Pick: 49ers
Dan’s Pick: 49ers

Panthers @ Buccaneers (-8.5)

Gee’s Pick: Panthers
Dan’s Pick: Panthers

Late Games:

Despite all the turmoil of the off-season, Ron Rivera got off to a winning start with Washington, but I don’t know how good they truly are given the problems the Eagles have. That said, I would expect Washington to be a tougher team to face under their new head coach. The Cardinals got off to a winning start with DeAndre Hopkins giving their offence a boost as quarterback Kyler Murray builds on his promising rookie season. I would not be surprised if the Cardinals win, but this line looks rich to me.

The other games look somewhat lopsided as they feature the two AFC teams who looked ominously good last week. The line might be too big for the Chiefs to cover but I couldn’t bring myself to pick the Chargers, particularly as they lost their starting center as they once again they are struggling with injuries whilst I don’t trust the Texans’ defense to be able to contain the Ravens potent offence.

Washington @ Cardinals (-6.5)

Gee’s Pick: Washington
Dan’s Pick: Washington

Chiefs @ Chargers (+8.5)

Gee’s Pick: Chiefs
Dan’s Pick: Chiefs

Ravens @ Texans (+6.5)

Gee’s Pick: Ravens
Dan’s Pick: Ravens

Sunday Night Football:

Patriots @ Seahawks (-4.5)

The re-run of Super Bowl XLIX features very different rosters but looks a hugely enticing game. The Patriots ran Cam Newton a lot last week, but some of them were read-option plays according to offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and with the Pat’s chameleon approach to game plans you don’t know if the Pats offence will change this week or if Newton will be heavily running again. However, the Seahawks looked like an offensive team last week with their defense only ranking twenty-first in the league by DVOA while Russell Wilson completed a preposterous thirty-one of thirty-five passes for three hundred and twenty-two yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions. I an really not sure who will run out winners in this one, but it promises to be a fascinating game featuring as it does half of the top four teams in DVOA after week one.

Gee’s Pick: Patriots
Dan’s Pick: Patriots

Monday Night Football

Saints @ Raiders (+5.5)

The Saints got the win in week one, but have ruled out Michael Thomas for several weeks with a high-ankle injury and he didn’t look right in week one. However, if the offence wasn’t exactly their high flying best, the defence looked good against the Bucs and the Saints look set for another strong season. The Raiders play their first game in their new home after their week one win on the road against the Panthers. The big question for me is whether the Raiders defense can improve on the last two seasons and this will be a stiffer test than the Panthers new offence last week. The Raiders are one of the teams I am not sure about so I am very interested to see how the Raiders shape up against one of the best teams in the NFC in recent seasons.

Gee’s Pick: Saints
Dan’s Pick: Raiders

DVOA is Football Outsiders statistic for measure a team’s success on every play versus the league average and you can read more about it and other football topics at https://footballoutsiders.com.

AFC and NFC West Preview

09 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts, Pre-Season

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Aaron Donald, AFC West, Allegiant Stadium, Andy Reid, Anthony Lynn, Arizona Cardinals, Bradley Chubb, Chris Carson, Chris Jones, DeAndre Hopkins, DeForest Buckner, Denver Broncos, Derek Carr, Derwin James, DK Metcalf, Drew Lock, Eric Bieniemy, Jalen Ramsey, Joey Bosa, John Elway, John Lynch, Johnathan Abram, Jon Gruden, Josh Jacobs, Kansas City Chiefs, Kliff Kingsbury, Kyle Shanahan, Kyler Murray, LA Chargers, LA Rams, Larry Fitzgerald, Las Vegas Raiders, Melvin Ingram, NFC West, NFL, Patrick Mahomes, Paul Guenther, Pete Carroll, Philip Rivers, Russell Wilson, San Francisco 49ers, Sean McVay, Seattle Seahawks, SoFi Stadium, Steve Spagnuolo, Todd Gurley, Tyler Lockett, Tyrod Taylor, Von Miller, Vontaze Burfict

AFC West

Kansas City Chiefs

How much is there to really say about the Chiefs? They won the Super Bowl last season, kept the core of their team intact including offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy and look set to have another strong season. They extended Patrick Mahomes so they have him for ten years, extended disrupted defensive tackle Chris Jones and drafted a new running back for the offence. Said offence should stay one of the most fearsome in the league and may even be stronger given that Mahomes missed two games with injury last season. The defence will be back under Steve Spagnuolo for a second year and having improved their ranking from twenty-seventh by DVOA in the 2018 season to fourteenth in 2019, all they need to do is maintain a ranking somewhere around there to keep the team winning. You can never guarantee anything in the NFL, particularly this season but the Chiefs feel like one of the safest bets to be making a noise in the play-offs. Given how fun it is to watch an Andy Reid schemed offence, yet alone one helmed by a quarterback of the talents of Mahomes, I am sure everyone is planning to watch the Chiefs a lot this season. I certainly am.

Denver Broncos

The Broncos have not made the play-offs since they won the Super Bowl and have had a losing record in each of the last three seasons, but there is some hope for the 2020 Broncos as there’s a possibility that John Elway has found a franchise quarterback. It was always going to challenge to follow Peyton Manning, even if he was limited in his passing ability during the final Super Bowl winning year. However, after a number of false starts the Broncos made second round draft pick Drew Lock the starter for the last five games of the 2019 season where he went 4-1. Now judging a quarterback solely on wins is a massive oversimplification so we should be wary of drawing too much from such a small sample of games, but it has at least given the Broncos a plan for the season. In his second year as head coach, Vic Fangio will be looking to get the defence to improve after it was ranked thirteenth by DVOA last season and losing a corner of the ability of Chris Harris will hurt but as defence tends to be more volatile from season to season than offence, a lot could rest on the Broncos being able to maintain a similar standard of defence and the offence improving. This is particularly the case with Bradley Chubb still making his way back from injury and All-Pro pass rusher Von Miller dislocating an ankle tendon and facing the real possibility of being out for the season. These previews have been giving me a series of things that I want to follow this season, and I think I need to take a look at Lock to see how he plays pretty soon. I’m not sure that the Broncos can compete for the playoffs, although with the expanded format it is possible, but it might not take too much to catapult the Broncos up there so definitely a team to keep an eye on.

Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders get to open the Death Star, or Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas as it’s properly called behind closed doors, and there is still much to uncover about this team. Last season’s 7-9 record was an improvement for Jon Gruden but he has yet to have a winning season since re-joining the Raiders in 2018 and will be looking to get back to winning ways this year. There are still questions about Gruden’s commitment to his starting quarterback Derek Carr, but the offence really wasn’t the problem last season. A ranking inside the top ten by DVOA on offence will not satisfy Gruden, but it was a defence that was ranked thirty-first and special teams that ranked twenty-fifth that sank last season’s team. Ex-Bengals defensive coordinator Paul Guenther had good success in Cincinnati when he took over their Defence from Mike Zimmer, but last season the Raiders’ signing of Vontaze Burfict backfired, and the loss of big hitting rookie safety Johnathan Abram didn’t help. I don’t know if Guenther will be able to improve a defence that has ranked thirty-first by DVOA for two seasons in a row, but if he can’t that will only increase the pressure for Gruden to improve the offence. There seems to be a rotating cast of receivers, although last year’s rookie running back Josh Jacobs impressed until his shoulder injury hampered his ability to get on the field late in the season. This is another team where there is a lot up in the air and with the shortened off-season I don’t know what to expect, but I think the season likely rests on getting the defence to at least be respectable.

LA Chargers

The Chargers are something of an enigma. They have a talented roster but have struggled on the offensive line and have been bitten by the injury bug often. They may have an advantage compared to the rest of the league when playing in empty stadiums as unlike last season where their home games often had more away fans than their own, at least they can control the environment in the shiny new SoFi Stadium. I like Anthony Lynn as a coach and there is a lot of intriguing talent on the roster, but they paired a twelfth ranked offence by DVOA with the twenty-fifth ranked defence and were dead last special teams. Even with Philip Rivers moving to Indianapolis there is hope for the offence and the Chargers have just extended the contracts of pass rushing duo Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram, but the injury bug has already bit with last season’s rookie sensation First-Team All-Pro safety Derwin James on IR with a torn meniscus. The Chargers won or were within a touchdown in fourteen of their sixteen games last season, so they were close to a much better record, but in a tough division where they have to face the Chiefs twice and travel to face Denver in high-altitude I don’t know if they can expect a huge turn around. I think it is possible, but they would need to be healthy for once and have some bounces go their way. It feels like the Chargers are due a run of luck, but with Tyrod Taylor as starting quarterback it is hard to predict that they will do much more that be competitive this season unless Taylor improves on his previous record.

NFC West

San Francisco 49ers

Last season the 49ers finally delivered on the promise they have flashed through the rebuild masterminded by head coach Kyle Shanahan and GM John Lynch. A fearsome defence ranked second only to the Patriots by DVOA was paired with a top ten offence that Shanahan schemed to enough success for them all the way to the Super Bowl and they should be in contention again this year. However, they did trade defensive linemen DeForest Buckner away to allow them the cap flexibility to retain other players and they are already having problems at receiver with multiple players injured before the team have taken a competitive snap against another team. Shanahan is such a good coach that unless the number of injuries gets too big they 49ers should be able to compete, but the NFC West looks like a fearsome division so there could be a surprise or two in store.

Seattle Seahawks

The Seahawks come into the 2020 season on the back of eight consecutive winning seasons, despite having to overhaul the vaunted Leigion of Boom defence in the last couple of seasons. In Russell Wilson they have one of the best quarterbacks in the league and last year’s rookie receiver DK Metcalf flashed alongside Tyler Lockett whilst Chris Carson was again the running back required to fit the run focussed offensive game plan that Pete Carroll wants to run. I do wonder how much home advantage the Seahawks will lose by not being able to play in front of their famously loud home crowd, but it is hard to see them do anything other than compete as that is Carroll’s mantra and even at the start of his time in Seattle, Carroll’s two losing seasons were still 7-9. That said, the usually strong defence was only ranked twenty-first by DVOA and whilst you have to go back to 2016 to find them ranked inside the top ten, their offence has not been that explosive so we shall have to see how this team does without the help of the home crowd.

LA Rams

The Rams failed to make the play-offs for the first time in Sean McVay’s three years with the franchise, and there was plenty of talk that teams had worked out the McVay’s offence. That said, the Rams still went 9-7, and later in the season the Rams started to use more 12 personnel as McVay adjusted to the adjustments opposing defences had made to his scheme. The Rams were also not helped by the dip in play from Todd Gurley that led to him being cut in the off-season and this was one of a number of adjustments the Rams had to make to the roster to get themselves under the salary cap. They also fired defensive coordinator Wade Philips, which is one of bigger decisions McVay has made in his tenure and could be an interesting one to monitor as the defence was ranked top ten by DVOA last season and Philips is very experienced coach, but the only big names left on the defence are Aaron Donald and Jalen Ramsey. Now Donald is arguably the most important non-quarterback in the league and a bona fide pass rush nightmare, but Donald plus a lockdown corner in Ramsey does not a defence make and with a number of defensive starters gone from last season it is not hard to see a slip on that side of the ball this year. I wouldn’t count the Rams out, but there are enough questions that you can’t simply put them in the play-offs. With the expanded wildcard slots I wouldn’t rule out them being there or there abouts, but this could be a big season for McVay’s long term prospects in LA.

Arizona Cardinals

The Cardinals knew they were in for a long rebuild going into last season, but their 5-11 record was not actually that bad considering the 3-13 disaster it followed and there were some promising things to take away. Although Kyler Murray (their second first round quarterback selection in two years) didn’t set the league alight, he showed promise and proved that he could get through a season despite the size that many were worried about. Murray looked to have the Russell Wilson knack of not taking the big hit and although his college now NFL head coach Kliff Kingsbury had to adjust his scheme when it didn’t work when facing NFL defences, he did just that and so they come into the season hoping to build on last year. The addition of DeAndre Hopkins is upgrade to the Cardinals’ receiver group, although the continuing presence of Larry Fitzgerald also reassures but he must retire soon and so Hopkins is a valuable addition for the next couple of years at least. The defence still needs work but I am curious about how this team does so I look forward to monitoring how they progress this season.

2019 Wildcard Saturday

04 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts, Playoffs

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AJ Brown, Baltimore Ravens, Bill Belichick, Buffalo Bills, Dallas Cowboys, Derrick Henry, Deshaun Watson, Houston Texans, JJ Watt, Josh Allen, Kansas City Chiefs, LA Rams, New England Patriots, NFL, Playoffs, Robert Gronkowski, Ryan Tannehill, Tennessee Titans, Tom Brady, Will Fuller

The playoffs start today, and unusually both AFC teams are playing today with the NFC taking over the Sunday schedule so let’s take a look at the two AFC matchups.

Buffalo Bills (5^th) @ Houston Texans (6^th)

The Texans won out in the AFC South and are rewarded by getting to host the Buffalo Bills. The headline news about the Texans is the return of JJ Watt from a pectoral injury and he has been cleared to play but this is much earlier than is typical for such an injury so I don’t know how effective Watt will be. Of more importance to the Texans in recent weeks is whether Will Fuller will play as the often injured this season receiver seems to have a dramatic effect on the offence through his ability to stretch the field. He was rested last week but it is looking doubtful that can play, and even if the answer at the start of the game is yes the question is whether he can give the Texans what they need and he has already aggravated an injury and had to come out the game once this season as well as missing five others. Interestingly, the Texans are ranked six places lower overall by DVOA than the Bills and not only are the worst ranked of the playoff teams by DVOA, but are ranked below seven teams who failed to make the playoffs. Now two of those teams are special cases as only this year’s iteration of the Cowboys could manage to rank top ten statistically (6^th overall by DVOA) and still manage to miss the playoffs with their 8-8 record, whilst the Rams in a down year still won nine games despite having to play the 49ers and Seahawks twice thanks to being in the fearsomely competitive NFC West. The Bills also ranked below the Rams and Cowboys but unlike the Texans, they did not rank behind any other team who failed to make the playoffs.

The Bills has a somewhat quiet season in terms of press coverage despite never coming close to a losing record and finishing the regular season 10-6. They are not a flashy team and have their limitations on offence. In his second year Josh Allen has improved, but he is still far from an elite quarterback but the Bills have done enough to win thanks to their defence, which ranks sixth in the league by DVOA and hasn’t allowed the opposition to score more than seventeen points in the last four weeks. This looks like it should be a really competitive game and I don’t have a clear winner in this one, but I just get the feeling that between the Texans being at home and Deshuan Watson’s ability to conjure something out nothing, that the Texans will edge this one out. That said I love the direction the Bills are heading in, with a front office and coach working in lock step over the last three years, and even if they don’t manage to get their first playoff win since 1995 today, it feels like it is coming.

Tennessee Titans (6^th) @ New England Patriots (3^rd)

The Patriots won the AFC East for the eleventh year straight, but have not looked quite the same team on offence, with people whispering with a little more evidence this time that Tom Brady is too old and a week seventeen loss to the Dolphins set alarm bells ringing amongst their faithful fans. The Patriots have the number one defence in the league, but have neither been able to get the passing game going whenever they want nor had the power running game they were able to utilise to such effect last season. Between the retirement of Robert Gronkowski and the play of Tom Brady dipping just enough, people are wondering if the end of an era is finally coming.

Part of the reason for this worry is their opponent, the Tennessee Titans who after a rough start to the season switched to Ryan Tannehill as their starting quarterback and from then went on a 7-3 run that took them to the playoffs. They also enter this game with the rushing champion of the league in Derrick Henry who managed to average over five yards a carry, whilst rookie receiver AJ Brown had a breakout season and seems to have forged a real bond with Tannehill.

This game should be fascinating, although the often-bad January weather looks to be heading into New England. The Titans have a real chance in this game, but it feels like Patriots probably have enough to win this at home, particularly as I am sure that Belichick and his staff with be throwing every trick they have at this game. It is a testament to their history that no one is comfortable writing them off, but this could very well be an end of era, and if the Patriots do win they are going to really struggle against either the Ravens or the Chiefs.

DVOA is Football Outsiders statistic for measure a team’s success on every play versus the league average and you can read more about it and other football topics at https://footballoutsiders.com.

Competition Thursday & The Disappointed Twenty: NFC Edition

02 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts, Picks Competition

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Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Bruce Allen, Bruce Arians, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears, Christian McCaffrey, Dallas Cowboys, Dan Snyder, Daniel Jones, Dave Gettleman, David Tepper, Detroit Lions, Disappointed Twenty, Jameis Winston, Jared Goff, Jason Garrett, Jay Gruden, Jim Caldwell, Kliff Kingsbury, Kyle Allen, Kyler Murray, LA Rams, Matt Patricia, Matt Stafford, Mitchell Trubisky, New York Giants, NFL, Pat Shurmur, Picks Competition, Ron Rivera, Sean McVay, Steve Keim, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Todd Gurley, Washington

Well the picks competition is over and for a second consecutive year since he started competing, Dan’s Dad is pick champion whilst I slipped back to third.

Dan’s Dad:	Week 17: 6-10	Overall: 143-113
Dan:	Week 17: 6-10	Overall: 136-120
Gee:	Week 17: 7-9	Overall: 130-126

Looking back at last year I am three points worse whilst Dan has increased his score by eleven (I suspect through not blindly picking the Dolphins) whilst Dan’s Dad added a modest six to beat Dan by seven, which is a three point increase on his lead over me last season.

The moral of all this is that Dan and I will need to really step are games up next season if we’re stop the blog permanently being purple and gold. I’ll let 3D fill in the rest in his trivia write up, whilst I take a run through the teams from the NFC who left us this week.

The Disappointed Twenty: NFC Edition

The Dallas Cowboys have plenty of talent on the roster, but couldn’t convert good statistics into wins with clear issues in coaching. However, there is still no word out of Dallas about Jason Garrett losing his job despite everybody thinking it would happen. His contract doesn’t run out until later this month, but with a series of solid drafts the big question for next season is what is going to happen with the coach and until we know that, you can’t say too much about the Cowboys’ plans for next year, although they do have to make big decisions on who to re-sign.

The New York Giants had a tough season with a few scattered bright spots from rookie quarterback Daniel Jones, but clearly had a disappointing season finishing 4-12. After two consecutive losing season this has cost Pat Shurmur his job, but interestingly not Dave Gettleman. I mention Gettleman not because I have any wish to campaign for someone to be fired, but the Giants have not won for two season and Gettleman was responsible for picking Saquon Barkley with the second pick two years ago rather than taking a quarterback or even listening to offers. Even in last year’s draft he took Daniel Jones at a position much higher than he was predicted to go when he had a second pick in the first round to use on him. It’s hard to know what is going to happen in the off-season, but I don’t have a lot of faith in this franchise to make enough of the right decisions to improve drastically next season.

The seasons of failure continued in Washington, but Dan Snyder has certainly wasted no time in making changes having fired Jay Gruden earlier in the season. Gone from the front office is Bruce Allen whilst the news of new head coach Ron Rivera’s hiring was broken Monday and made official on Wednesday. There is a lot of work to turn around the culture in Washington and a lot will depend on who the new GM is and who has final say in drafting players and roster moves, but they do at least have an experienced coach who has always had a great relationship with his locker room.

The Chicago Bears finished 8-8 with third year quarterback Mitchell Trubisky failing to develop from last season. There are some big decisions coming with regards to their signal caller, and certainly the move to get him is not justifying itself yet so all eyes will be on him until he either proves himself or another player is given a go. It will be worth watching the Bears in the off-season to see if they make any moves at quarterback.

The Detroit Lions hired Matt Patricia to put them over the top having missed out on the playoffs with a 9-7 record under Jim Caldwell. Unfortunately, Patricia decided an overhaul was needed and the Lions have been rewarded with first a 6-10 season and now 3-12-1 so next season is a big one for Patricia who has kept his job. It may be that the saving grace for him was quarterback Matt Stafford being out for the latter half of the year, but the defence hasn’t been good (it’s never good for a head coach if their side of the ball is not great) and I imagine there will need to be a dramatic turnaround next season for there not to be big changes.

The Atlanta Falcons started the season 1-7 but managed to finish 7-9 and come second in the NFC South as the players seemed to rally round their head coach Dan Quinn and were successful in keeping him his job. However, I don’t know if they can turn things round in the off-season given that things haven’t really been right since they were in the Super Bowl and at some point there may need to be a change to get back to winning ways.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers also finished 7-9, although they started 2-6 but their season can be summed up in the performance of Jameis Winston who threw for over five thousand yards and thirty touchdowns, but he also threw thirty interceptions. It feels like the positive statistics means that you have to re-sign Winston, but unless Bruce Arians can find a way to limit the turnovers it is hard to see the Bucs consistently win.

The Carolina Panthers had a rough season, starting with two losses before Cam Newton was sat with injuries that ultimately didn’t see him return to the field. The Panthers turned to backup quarterback Kyle Allen who was able to get the team back to a 5-3 record before things truly fell apart and they could not win another game this season. This led to Ron Rivera being fired before the end of the season, and has overshadowed the remarkable feat of running back Christian McCaffrey who managed to amass over a thousand yards rushing and receiving. New owner David Tepper says he wants to meld old school football toughness with modern analytics and is also overhauling the front office so we shall just have to see what this results in next year.

The LA Rams finished with a winning record, but could never quite compete with the Seahawks and 49ers in their division. They never fell below .500 but Todd Gurley does not look the same running back and as a result for much of the season Sean McVay couldn’t find the right balance on offence. He is still a really good coach, but there are now structural problems with the roster as they have a lot of money tied up Todd Gurley and Jared Goff. Neither player have really lived up to them, and there are other players who also need signing and not many draft picks to refresh the roster. The front office think they have a different formula to compete, but next season will be key to see if the franchise can bounce back or if things are going to go badly.

Finally, we have the Arizona Cardinals who got five wins in Kliff Kingsbury’s first season as an NFL head coach with rookie quarterback Kyler Murray showing promise. Given how much work was needed to improve the roster, it was no mean feat to improve their season record by two wins and a draw from last year given the quality of the other teams in the NFC West. However, they will need Steve Keim to have a good off-season if the Cardinals are to get enough talent for them to challenge for the playoffs and if they fail to make it for a fifth season then perhaps the position of Keim is the one that will need examining.

Wildcard Trivia

‘Greetings Friends

Week 17 has come and gone and the end of the Regular Season has delivered what we hope will be a juicy playoff series.

I will be keen to see if the Vikings can reverse their recent collapse of momentum against the Saints, but with the 49ers lying in wait this will be a big ask. Equally attractive is the Seahawks and Eagles vying for a match up at Green Bay. Yet again the NFC seems to deliver some meaty games.

In the AFC I am less excited by the Wildcard games, although never rule out the Pats is one lesson I’ve learned. The excitement though will be in the next games when the oft-unfancied Ravens and the Chiefs re-enter the battle.

I feel that the week’s gap for 4 teams can go either way. Momentum or recovery time can be important and this is one area where a coach earns their corn.

I’ll stick my neck out now and predict that Superbowl LIV will be contested between the Saints and the Chiefs with Kansas running out narrow winners. There, I’ve given you a stick to beat me with. Ho Hum never mind.

Talking of predictions the Picks competition also ended on Sunday and I agree with Gee’s comments in Thursdays post that week 17 is very difficult to call as some teams have nothing to play for while others would be desperate to position themselves well for either the Play-offs or, don’t forget, who will be on the roster for next year. Already we have seen the coaching merry-go-round starting up and I see this being a very busy closed season.

I think the mixed agendas contributed to one of the lowest scoring weeks we have had. What is pleasing though is that as a group we have increased the total of wins by 9 over last season. Dan and I managed a disappointing 6 each but the week was won by Gee on 7. But how I achieved a rank of 2253 in the whole competition I will never know. Maybe it proves I have a smarter pin than I thought.

One thing that is still running through the post season is the trivia quiz and in week 17 I set 2 questions both around LA Quarterbacks. They were:

I was the quarterback that led the Rams to a victory in the 2000 Super Bowl against the Tennessee Titans. I lost my starting job after I fumbled six times in the first game of the 2003 season. Who am I?

This was correctly identified by both Dan and Gee as Kurt Warner

Which Charger quarterback bounced back from a dismal 2003-04 season, winning the Comeback Player of the Year Award, throwing 27 touchdowns to seven interceptions, and landing himself a spot in the 2005 NFL Pro Bowl?

Here too they both named Drew Brees.

So 4 points each being Gee up to 19 and Dan 22.

This week I will drop in at 3 teams and again there is 2 points for each.

First we are at the Miami Dolphins, so no pressure here Dan.

After the Dolphins made it to Super Bowl VIII after the 1973 season, what was the next season they saw Super Bowl action?

Next we relocate to the Twin Cities to ask this about the Vikes.

Who did the Vikings play in their first Super Bowl, which was Super Bowl IV, played on January 11, 1970?

Finally this week it is the New England Patriots,

The Patriots moved and changed their name in 1971. What was the home city and their name prior to that?

Right then, that’s 2019 done and we look for a vision for 2020. Catch you next week’

AAF: Cooper Kupp

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by gee4213 in Amateur Adventures in Film

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Amateur Adventures in Film, BW Webb, Cincinnati Bengals, Coaching Tape, Cooper Kupp, Jared Goff, LA Rams, LeSean McCoy, NFL, Robert Woods, Shawn Williams, Tony McRae, William Jackson III

Thanks to having a gig on Halloween I knew that I was going to be short on time to look at coaching tape this week, but I knew I wanted to find a way to keep looking at some tape on these weeks when that was the case so I’m trying something a little different this week for my Amateur Adventures in Film. I was at the Bengals at Rams London game last Sunday and so I decided to look at Cooper Kupp’s seven catches for two hundred and twenty yards to find out what went wrong as the dirty secret is that when you are at a game, it’s still not possible to tell exactly what is happening on the field and all I knew was that Kupp kept turning up in the middle of the field wide open.

Having gone through those catches and several of his drops the quick answer is what happened a lot of the time was the Bengals’ defence. Now, I don’t mean to diminish Kupp who is a shifty receiver who leads the team in receiving yards and touchdowns and clearly played well, but whilst there were a couple of plays where he beat coverage and another when Jared Goff made a hell of a throw deep, most of the time he was open because a combination of offensive scheme and defensive play.

Now, the communication in the Bengals’ secondary that seemed to be a problem early in the game looked to smooth out a bit later in the game, or at least there wasn’t the obvious communication between the Bengals’ secondary players, but Tony McRae who seemed to be following Kupp all game had problems all the way through. Now in fairness, a lot of the time McRae was struggling because of natural picks set up in the Rams offensive plays. You are not allowed to block a defender down field as a receiver, but one the things that makes the Rams offence tick is the bunches of receivers running routes that takes one defensive player into the other or forces the player to go round the first receiver to get to the second. In the plays that I watched from this game, Kupp was moved around the formation a lot and was also motioned pre-snap. This allowed Kupp to get away from McRae and find lots of space in the Bengals secondary. Despite McRae seeming to follow Kupp around the field, the Bengals looked to be often using zone concepts and Kupp kept finding gaps between the second level defenders and the deep safety.

The two exceptions to this in terms of big plays by Kupp were very different in execution. The first one that obviously leaped out of this game was a vicious double fake play towards the end of the second quarter that was a league wide highlight. It sill feels a little like overkill for me as the Rams were moving the ball well enough already, but to be fair the teams were level at this point and it was this game that got them the lead. It was a beautiful play as the Rams lined up with 11 personnel (one running back and one tight-end) in a singleback formation. Cooper Kupp ran a jet sweep motion across the formation from the left before the snap and took a hand-off from Goff before tossing the ball to Robert Woods running a reverse behind the formation so taking the ball back behind the line. The clever bit was that Kupp kept running and turned up the right side line so when Woods tossed the ball back to Goff, Kupp was wide open as the Bengals’ defence had reacted to the reverse with BW Webb dropping into a second high safety. Kupp catches the pass to him in space, helped by Webb turning the long way round to get back to Kupp and slipping over as tries to get back enabling Kupp to fly up the sideline and score the touchdown. Now William Jackson III came across the field from the opposite corner position and if he’d committed to the tackle straight away he might have saved the touchdown, but high speed tackles when a receiver in space is not easy and the damage had already been done before his hesitation allowed the score. In fairness, this is the second week in a row where I have seen a player involved in play-action fake end up catching the ball, and it is devastating as whilst the defence can react to the play, it is very hard to do so and keep account of the player involved in the first fake action. It was this beautiful play design that manufactures the opportunity to score, made all the more so when you can watch the all twenty-two and see how it worked out.

The other big play that I wanted to mention was a forty yard in the Rams’ final touchdown scoring drive on third and ten where the Rams had 11 personnel on the field but this time in a shotgun formation. Once again Kupp motioned across the formation to line up as the inside slot of three receivers on the left of the formation, only this time he ran a simple post that saw him followed buy McRae (although he was behind for most of the coverage) but also doubled by safety Shawn Williams and yet Goff was able to drop the ball over the pair of Bengals’ defensive backs for Kupp to make the deep catch and keep the drive alive. For all the talk of Goff’s pay this season, this was a really nice throw.

As I said, the main thing I took away from this game was the way Sean McVay used route combinations to get his receivers open, which Cooper Kupp really benefited from as well as taking advantage of the problems the Bengals had in coverage, which is not surprising given they are ranked thirtieth in the league in pass defence DVOA. It is still frustrating to see your team lose, but at least I now know what happened and the fake reverse flea flicker as I’m calling that spectacular play that yielded a sixty-five yard touchdown for Kupp was a thing of beauty.

Adjusting to the Adjustment

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts

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Andy Dalton, Auden Tate, Baker Mayfield, Baltimore Ravens, Bill Callahan, Bruce Arians, BW Webb, Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Cooper Kupp, Dalvin Cook, Emmanuel Sanders, Freddie Kitchens, Jameis Winston, Kyle Allen, LA Rams, Lamar Jackson, Minnesota Vikings, NFL, Nick Bosa, Raheem Mostert, Robert Mays, Ryan Finley, Ryan Tannehill, San Francisco 49ers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Titans, Tevin Coleman, The Ringer, Trent Williams, Washington, Zac Taylor

There seemed to be more running around than usual to get there, but I definitely don’t take for granted the opportunity to get to see my team play a game at the weekend, even if they have fallen to 0-8 but more of that later as I go through the results in week eight of the NFL and some of the results.

What I Saw

Week eight started with a professional looking if unspectacular win by the Minnesota Vikings over the visiting Washington team. The things that really struck me were that Dalvin Cook might be one of my favourite running backs in the league, and he is so deadly with just a little space thanks to his spread. The Vikings were efficient all game between the twenties but if there is a concern it is that they only scored one touchdown, although the margin of victory could have been bigger if the Vikings had not run clock out in the fourth quarter in a drive that took eight minutes but yielded no score as there was no attempt to pass the ball. I think one of the easy things to forget is that the margins between teams are not that great and whilst Washington are not suddenly a good team under Bill Callahan, they do at least look more competitive and the defence played its part in limiting the Vikings. Even the return of holdout left tackle Trent Williams is unlikely to help turn the team’s fortunes round and the important decisions will be made in the off-season, but until there is an overhaul of the front office I’m not sure when the team might look competent on the fired. Meanwhile the Vikings are improved to 6-2 and look a very dangerous proposition for any team to face.

The game I watched on Sunday was obviously the game I was at, as the Cincinnati Bengals lost 10-24 to the LA Rams hosted at Wembley. The start of the game saw both teams match scoring drives up un to 10-10 but then the quality differences really began to show in the second quarter. It was not that the Bengals couldn’t move the ball, they gained over four hundred yards of offence, but it was often a struggle and couldn’t be accurate enough in the red zone when it really matters. There were a couple of great plays, Auden Tate made a spectacular catch but too often plays were left on the field, including some open ones that Dalton admitted to after the game. The sign that things are different -this year under Zac Taylor, apart from the losing is that Andy Dalton has been benched and so Ryan Finley, the rookie who looked so good in pre-season will get the start against the Baltimore Ravens in week ten. More of that nearer the time, but back to this game, if the offence was a frustrating nearly performance, the defence was bad again. You don’t give up over two hundred yards to one receiver if you are a good team. One of the dirty secrets of watching a game live is that you don’t always get the best view and so I don’t know how Cooper Kupp kept popping up open in the middle of the field, but it kept happening. This week I have limited time for coaching tape and so because I’m a glutton for punishment I’m going to look at Cupp’s catches along with the incredible double-reverse flea-flicker that netted the Rams an impressive touchdown, helped by BW Webb falling down. The only thing I will say is that it seems a bit odd to be using such a cool play against a team that you were pretty obviously better than. The Rams record has stabilised a bit over the last couple of weeks, but there are going to be much tougher tests to come.

Whilst waiting for the morning rush hour to go so I could head home, I watched the Tennessee Titans hosting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which I had seen on the stadium screen had been competitive and the Titans are one of those teams that I don’t have a feel for yet. It has to be said, I’m not wholly sure about them now as their offensive stats were not that impressive and they benefited in the opening quarter by starting with two short fields thanks to turnovers. It’s not a surprise that Jameis Winston turned the ball over for the Bucs, but a day that saw him throw two interceptions and lose two of his three fumbles wasn’t even his worst in the last two weeks. I can see how the talent that allows him to make the spectacular plays is intriguing, but by now we know what kind of player he is and whilst he may well get another chance somewhere else, it is hard to see him staying with Tampa. For the Titans, whilst Ryan Tannehill is not exactly a future solution, he at least looked to be getting the ball out on time and executing the offence. The Titans looked competitive but given the turnovers and the problems the Bucs have I wonder how they will fare against tougher opposition. They are 4-4 so should be respected, but again I wonder what might happen for them at the quarterback position over the off-season.

The final game I saw this week looked like one of the best matchups of the week, but turned out to be a demonstration that yes the San Francisco 49ers are for real as they hosted the Carolina Panthers with a fifty burger – winning 51-13. There were a couple of performances that leapt off the screen for the 49ers. A strong candidate for rookie defensive MVP, if not league wide is Nick Bosa who finished the game with three sacks and interception he got leaping into the air having been cut by an offensive lineman. If that wasn’t impressive enough, the 49ers offence looked deadly with their chunk plays coming in the running game thanks to impressive speed of Tevin Coleman and Raheem Mostert. You don’t expect a team to run for over two hundred yards in any game, yet alone a Carolina Panthers team who have looked good all year. This kind of thing can happen when you are on the road, and Kyle Allen was not going to go all season without throwing an interception but the Panthers will need to rebound quickly, and we shall have to see if they can do that next week against the Titans. Meanwhile as one of the two remaining unbeaten teams, the 49ers will be hoping that Emmanuel Sanders affect will increase his production as he gets used to the offence but they already have established themselves as the team to beat in the NFC.

What I Heard

One of the interesting bits of commentary I heard was actually from the back end of last week when Robert Mays talking on The Ringer NFL Show was discussing a conversation he had had with a coach regarding young quarterbacks and the important thing to consider was not their strengths but their weaknesses. If a quarterback cannot adjust to counter their weakness they are not going to last in the NFL and you can see some of this already floating around this season’s performances and I’m going to take a quick look at three players to explore this.

There are a number of problems affecting the Cleveland Browns, but part of the problem is that over the off-season enough coaches put in time studying Baker Mayfield whose completion percentage has dropped by 6.2 percent so far this season. Additionally, having played half the number of games that he did last year, Mayfield is twenty-one touchdowns behind his season total of twenty-seven but only two interceptions behind his 2016 total of fourteen, effectively reversing his 2:1 touchdown to interception. Now, it is far too early to say that Mayfield can’t turn it around, particularly with a first time head coach in Freddie Kitchens who seems to be calling a different style of game than what was successful for this pair last season, but if Mayfield can’t adjust to what he’s seeing then he could well be another NFL quarterback who was able to flash but not maintain success.

Meanwhile, an almost classic example of somebody who has never been able to adjust to his weakness is a quarterback I mentioned earlier. Jameis Winston has never learnt to look after the ball, and is this failure more than any other that hampers him. It feels like this could be his final season in Tampa Bay as he is an unrestricted free-agent and I don’t know if the Bucs will franchise him or if they feel that he’s just not going to change as a player and there are plenty of people who will argue that if Bruce Arians can’t turn him around then who will.

Finally, we have Lamar Jackson who turned the Baltimore Ravens season around last year and who has continued that into this year with the Ravens currently standing 5-2 at the top of the AFC North. No one is saying that Jackson is suddenly picking apart teams with surgical passes, but his completion percentage is currently up by 5.1% and he’s has thrown five more touchdowns in his seven starts this season than he did in his seven starts last season. More importantly, there appears to be no sophomore slump so whilst we can’t pretend that he won’t be found out or that he will definitely adjust when he’s astonishing athletic ability begins to fade, he passed the tests asked of him so far and it looks like the Ravens are set at quarterback for a while yet.

What I Think

As I mention earlier, the Bengals have announced that for the first time in his nine year career Andy Dalton is missing a game that is not due to injury as he has been benched for rookie Ryan Finley. This does make sense given that the Bengals find themselves at 0-8 and need to find out what they have ahead of next season. Interestingly, despite many commentators suggesting otherwise, the Bengals were not sellers ahead of the trade deadline and they will be hoping that with a good off-season they can turn things round if Finley doesn’t give them a start. He certainly looked good in pre-season but you can’t trust that so it makes total sense to give him half a season to see what he can do. The timing for Dalton makes less sense as the announcement being so close to the trade deadline precluded any trade options for him and he will have to spend the rest of the season in limbo with a year left on his contract but no guaranteed money next year.

What I Know

To my eyes, the game between the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens looks to be the marque game of week ten and for a week I don’t have to worry about the Bengals losing another one.

What I Hope

The I’m always hoping for is success for teams and players and the difference between them being one reaching a higher peak so I’m hoping the Browns turn it round, that someone else in the AFC joins the six teams with a winning record, and that we get exciting games, starting with tomorrow’s contest between the 49ers and the Cardinals – stranger things have happened!

NFL Tankapalooza 2019: Who Wants the Prize?

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts

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Aaron Donald, AJ Green, Amari Cooper, Baltimore Ravens, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Cordy Glenn, Dallas Cowboys, Daniel Jones, Dontari Poe, Ezekiel Elliott, Fran Duffy, Gerald McCoy, Jalen Ramsey, Jameis Winston, Jared Goff, Jason Garrett, Kwann Short, Kyle Allen, LA Rams, Lamar Jackson, London Games, Marcus Mariota, Mason Rudolph, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Giants, New York Jets, NFL, Philadelphia Eagles, Sam Darnold, San Francisco 49ers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Titans, Toddy Gurley, Tom Brady, Wembley

We are already a third of the way through the regular season and each conference has only one unbeaten team left, but the league’s two winless teams reside in the AFC as the Bengals join the Miami Dolphins in NFL Tankapalooza 2019. The difference is that the Dolphins were built with this in mind whilst the Bengals were planning to compete before the roster fell apart, but more of that later. For now, let’s make a start on rounding up NFL week six.

What I Saw

The Thursday night game was a bit of an odd one in week six as the unbeaten New England Patriots neat the New York Giants 34-14 but their offence still does not look in sync. In fact the opening score of the game was caused by the Giants’ punter hitting his own player and the Pats recovering and scoring a touchdown, but that said the Patriots’ offence ranks top ten by DVOA through week six and have we not learnt by now not to question Tom Brady? Even if there is no way he should be performing as well as he is this far past thirty-five, yet alone forty. When you pair this institutional success with the number one ranked defence you can see why people are already talking up another Super Bowl appearance for the Pats. There is still a long way to go though. This can also be said for the Giants who on top of starting a rookie quarterback, had a number of skills players injured and were never really going to compete in this one. It will take time to improve the roster and you can still make an argument that Daniel Jones would have been there at pick seventeen, but the Giants would argue that if Jones is a franchise quarterback there is no price too high to pay. It is too early to tell and somehow they are only one game back in the NFC East and whilst I’m really not expecting them to make a playoff push, they will be looking to play spoiler in the division and develop their young talent.

The first game I watched from Sunday was the second London game that saw the Tampa Bay Buccaneers become the second team to host at the new Tottenham Stadium as they lost 37-26 to the Carolina Panthers. The big takeaway from this game was that bad Jameis Winston turned up and gave away the ball seven times. He threw five interceptions, lost two fumbles and had a further two recovered by the team. You know it is going to be a bad day when your first pass is intercepted, and Winston managed to begin a second quarter drive with an interception as well as fumbling two plays in a row in another to make sure the opposition got the ball. It doesn’t matter if you throw for four hundred yards if your touchdown to interception ratios is 1:5 and it feels like we have the answer about one of the can’t miss quarterbacks of the 2015 NFL Draft (spoiler alert, the other features later). The steady play saw the Panthers win out eventually as Kyle Allan continues to keep the team in the race as Cam Newton focuses on getting truly healthy. There is already some talk of there being a controversy when Newton is healthy given the Panthers have done nothing but win since Allen got the start. The other things that struck me about the Panthers in this game was the depth of their defensive line as having put Kawann Short on the injury list they still had Gerald McCoy and Dontari Poe to play in the middle. It might be lazy to suggest that McCoy might have had a point to prove against his old team, but two and half sacks with four quarterback hits is a good day and the team finished with seven sacks.

Having seen that the New York Jets had won the first game of the season and with them being one of the few teams I haven’t seen yet I made a point of watching them heap further problems onto the Dallas Cowboys. It was an impressive turn around for Gang Green with Sam Darnold having his first three hundred yard passing day that included several beautifully placed balls and a ninety-two yard touchdown pass. The Jets are not suddenly a playoff team but it just highlights what a difference a starting quarterback can make and we now have eleven games to more fairly judge where they are as a team. The Cowboys however, will be very worried by a result that doesn’t doom their push for the playoffs but certainly doesn’t help. There seems to be less motion pre-snap to my eyes and Ezekiel Elliott is struggling to get going in the run game. This won’t be helped by injuries to both starting tackles, nor receiver Amari Cooper leaving the game early in the first quarter so you can perhaps expect some regression from the offence, but the defence is relatively healthy and currently ranked twenty-fifth by DVOA. I can’t pretend to have a huge amount of faith in Jason Garrett to turn things around but to do so the Cowboys need to get back to the formula that was working in the first three games,. Whether they can depends on health and coaching, but one to watch in the coming weeks.

The final game I watched this week is the latest loss for the Cincinnati Bengals who started the game with a kick-off return touchdown that sadly represented 41% of the Bengals total points as they lost 23-17 on the road to the Baltimore Ravens. I’m not sure how much this tells us about the Ravens given how the Bengals’ offensive spluttered and how Lamar Jackson is the perfect running quarterback to exploit the issues the Bengals have at the edge of their defence. This season is a lost cause for the Bengals and there are some worrying injuries to the Ravens secondary, which could be a problem for a defence that uncharacteristically languishes in the twenties by DVOA but the Ravens have a two game lead in the AFC North so remain the team to beat in the division.

I have a little addition for this week courtesy of Fran Duffy, an Eagles media employee who does several really good podcasts and watches a lot of film – there was really good breakdown of quarters coverage during this week’s Eagle Eye in the Sky Podcast and a breakdown of the play on this video.

What I Heard

I’ve already mentioned the big news of the weekend in terms of the Jets, but at the other end of the quarterback performance spectrum Jared Goff threw for only seventy-eight yards in the Rams loss to the 49ers. The Rams have reacted to the problems they are having on defence by trading away two first round picks to the Jaguars for Jalen Ramsey, who should certainly help their secondary. However, the problem with that is the combination of offensive line play and the injury restriction of Todd Gurley is hampering their offensive. This is compounded by the contracts they have given both Gurley and Goff when neither of them are carrying the offence right now. I understand going for it when you have a quarterback on a rookie deal but with the likes of Aarond Donald, Gurley and Goff all having big contracts this could become a real problem, particularly as Gurley’s knee is not going to improve massively given that he is suffering from an arthritic condition. The Rams could really miss those draft picks in the coming seasons.

The other quarterback I should mention is the other 2015 quarterback that will always be paired with Jameis Winston, namely Marcus Mariota who was pulled for Ryan Tannehill on Sunday and who has lost his starting position for this week’s games. This is a timely reminder that high drafted quarterbacks don’t always work out and a quarterback needs a lot of infrastructure around them to succeed. I think you can rebuild a team through a roster reset, but I don’t know it is a sure thing and whilst I like accumulating draft talent through getting more picks – if I was a Dolphins fan I would be worried about the talent that has left and whether one of those high draft picks is definitely going to be a franchise quarterback.

The other big topic of conversation has been the standard of officiating with the end of the Monday night game coming in for particular condemnation, but there was also a flurry of flags towards the end of the Jets and Cowboys. It’s too easy to rip the refs, particularly as football is very complex game to referee and the speed of the game has only got faster but there have been some pretty bad non-calls or ticky-tacky pass interference decisions. That said, it’s not the small calls that really annoy but the egregious ones and it seems pretty clear from the success rate of coach challenges that only those kind of pass interference calls are going to get overturned so can we get a memo to all head coaches to stop throwing the challenge flag unless someone actually got mugged and it was missed.

What I Think

I was glad that Mason Rudolph was able to go straight back to practice and the Bengals have announced today Cordy Glenn has been cleared to practice. These are grown men who are making their own decisions, but as someone who’s had his own issues with head injuries, I really hope they are listening to their doctors and are being duly careful. It seems to be the repeated sub-concussive blows rather than the big hits that cause a lot of the problems, but Glenn has been out for a couple of months now and as a linemen he is exposed to a lot of those sub-concussive blows. The Bengals could really do with a healthy Glenn, but the world could do with a healthy Glenn a lot more.

What I Know

I have really struggled to get to coaching tape this year, and even my re-arranged plan didn’t survive my work week and I have another series of interruptions coming this week. I’m not giving up on getting something done, but hopefully things will calm down in a couple of weeks, but that said I will be down in London to watch the Bengals in week eighth and suddenly we’ll be halfway through the season. Man is it slipping by quickly this year.

What I Hope

There is talk that AJ Green could be coming back soon and it would be really great to see him play live again and for the Bengals to be at least competitive against the Rams. In the meantime I hope that I can stay competitive in the picks competition as it looks like the only football based season win I’m going to get this year.

DVOA is Football Outsiders statistic for measure a team’s success on every play versus the league average and you can read more about it and other football topics at https://footballoutsiders.com.

Still Looking For a Win

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts

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Adam Gase, Bruce Arians, Chicago Bears, Drew Brees, Gerald Everett, Greg Zuerlein, Jameis Winston, Jared Goff, Jay Gruden, Khalil Mack, LA Rams, Luke Falk, Mason Rudolph, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, New York Giants, New York Jets, NFL, Oakland Raiders, Pittsburgh Steelers, Russell Wilson, Sam Darnold, San Francisco 49ers, Sean Payton, Seattle Seahawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Teddy Bridgewater, Todd Gurley, Vontaze Burfict, Washington

Welcome to a look back at week five in the NFL that featured upsets, a horrible concussion and our first coach firing of the year so let’s get started.

What I Saw

The week five slate of games started with a second excellent Thursday night game that saw the LA Ram lose by one point to the Seattle Seahawks costing all three of us a point in the picks competition. This was a back and forth game that saw five lead changes and the Rams could have very easily won it as Jared Goff drove the team into position for a last second field goal but Greg (the Leg) Zuerlein was unable to convert the forty-four yard field goal to get the win. The Rams offence looked pretty good in spurts, with Goff finding his tight-ends and in particular Gerald Everett who led the team in receiving yards but Goff is still prone to throwing dangerous passes and whilst he was only intercepted once in this game, it definitely could have been more. The other problem is that even with more carries this week, Todd Gurley was unable to recreate his form from last season and this is a real problem for an offence built around his skill set and play-action off the run game. That said, if you want strange things, how about the Seahawk’s defence currently being ranked twenty-second in the league by DVOA? I knew that they were not looking as strong as they have historically but I hadn’t expected them to rank quite this low. That said, their offence is ranked third in the league by DVOA and is beginning to look good doing it. This may still be one of the remaining run heavy offences (forty-three carries in this game) but the Russell Wilson is playing really well and is being incredibly efficient in the passing game as well as doing his usual heroics in avoiding the oppostion’s pass rush. In fact both his path and Tyler Lockett’s catch in the first quarter demonstrate at what level of precision this Seahawks offence is capable of. The Rams defence actually has the exact same overall ranking by DVOA right now as it did at the end of the 2018 season so whilst some of the personnel changed, it’s the problems on the offence that are holding the Rams back, but a close loss against the Seahawks is a step in the right direction but they could really regret their loss to the Buccaneers in week four and they’ll want to turn things around soon.

I only managed to watch one other game this week thanks to things going on at work. On Sunday I did get my first Amateur Adventures in Film post of the season up, where I took a look at Khalil Mack’s play against the Minnesota Vikings ahead of the Bears taking on the Raiders on Sunday. You can read AAF: Khalil Mack here, and I will only add that the Raiders got a really good win and the Bears on Sunday but I did check in on the game Sunday and it is a little odd to see a game that so looks like a normal NFL game but played in the UK. The stadium definitely looks like it works, but I’ll have to let others be the proper judge of that.

The only upside of being so far behind on the games watched is that I’ve not had to put myself through the Bengals loss to the Cardinals, which I followed Sunday night whilst at my in-laws. All I will say now is that it seems there’s a very good chance the Bengals will be 0-7 when I see them in London. That could be a very strange day indeed.

The final game I did see this week was the New Orleans Saints hosting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a contest that finished 31-24 to the Saints. Perhaps the score line flatters to deceive a little as the Saints led for all of the second half and the Buccaneers didn’t get closer than seven points after the Saints took the lead. It was a better game for the Teddy Bridgewater who finished the game with over three hundred passing yards and four touchdown although he did throw an interception. However, more importantly it appears that Sean Payton is increasingly adapting to his new starting quarterback who threw the ball down field more successfully in this game. There’s not going to be a controversy once Drew Brees is fit again, but it bodes well for the future of both Bridgewater and the Saints that that they have managed to maintain such a strong start to the season without their starting quarterback for three games. The other part of the formula that drove this is that the Saints’ defence looks much better than their ranking of twentieth by DVOA would suggest. They limited the Buccaneers to under one hundred yards rushing and just over two hundred yards whilst sacking Jameis Winston six times and harassing him for most of the game. This was a difficult contest for the Buccaneers who struggled to move the ball and were unable to keep up with the Saints in the second half. In fairness to Winston he didn’t turn the ball over but the Saints outgained them by over two hundred yards. A special mention also ought to go to Bruce Arians’s bad challenges, which is partly do the referees as a whole seeming not to want to overturn calls but five weeks in perhaps you have to adapt when you throw the challenge flag. However, between Arians and his coordinators the Buccaneers already look a very different team to last season and only the loss the New York Giants looks like a bad one. The Bucs have wins against the Rams and Panthers already as well as three road games played so far and whilst I’m not saying they will compete for the playoffs, I feel confident that barring injury they will do better than the five games they won last season.

What I Heard

There have been various discussions going on this week, but I’ve not had the chance to consume as much NFL media as usual. There were two big talking points this week. The first was the firing of Jay Gruden that even in only week five seemed a question of when not if. That said, it is pretty vindictive to call a coach in at five am to fire him, but there were more problems in that building than just the coaching, and it is strange to see how far a franchise that was once the centre of the city’s sportiing life has fallen. They are playing in front of crowds that regularly have almost as many if not more road fans present and given the dysfunction of the franchise I am not sure it will change any time soon.

The second of the headlines coming out of Sunday was the horrible looking concussion suffered by Steelers’ quarterback Mason Rudolph. Having been in denial for a number of years, the league are trying to make the game safer, but it is still a dangerous sport and whuilst it looked like a football play, it is never good when a player is unconscious before they hit the ground. It was the kind of hit that make people tell their sons they are never playing the game. I’m just glad that Rudolph was back at work on Monday but we know the effects of concussions are cumulative and recovery is important so I hope he is given as much time as possible before he plays again.

Speaking of which, the other things I wanted to mention is something I hinted at when picking against the Jets on Sunday, which was just how badly Adam Gase handled his quarterback decision last week. After a scan early in the week showed that Sam Darnold’s spleen was still enlarged, Gase still had him taking reps during the week, but Darnold was not cleared to play and so Luke Falk got the start. I’m not sure if it would have made a difference, but given the nature of Darnold’s injury it seems madness not to get Falk every first team rep possible and wait until Darnold was definitely cleared to play before getting him to practice normally.

What I Think

There are now only four winless teams, and I would say that the Bengals look the most competitive of them but that is not a mycg consolation. The Patriots look pretty ominous at 4-0 despite not playing that great and the San Francisco should definitely be respected given their 4-0 start and a record that has them top the league in DVOA, although we’ll see how that lasts through the next few weeks. I am obviously impressed with all the four win teams, but the Raiders have a winning record despite all the off-season noise and I may well have been wrong about them.

What I Know

That thanks again to work I don’t have time to watch an entire game of coaching tape this week, but I’m working on an idea for an alternative format for a coaching tape feature. I don’t know if it will work, but plans are afoot and I have already been looking at play design applications. I’ll see if it gets past the TWF testing team but watch this space.

What I Hope

I hope that the league’s concussion numbers continues to fall as they did last season and I am interested to see just how long Vontaze Burfict ban stays after his appeal as it is clear that the fines have not stopped his behavior.

If the Bengals could get a win on the road this week that would also be nice.

The Other Quarterbacks

26 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts

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Aaron Donald, Baker Mayfield, Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Clay Matthews, Cleveland Browns, Daniel Jones, Dante Fowler, Demarcus Robinson, Frank Gore, Gardiner Minshew, Jacksonville Jaguars, Jaen Ramsey, Jared Goff, Josh Allen, Kansas City Chiefs, Kyle Allen, LA Rams, Lamar Jackson, Marcus Mariota, Mecole Hardman, New Orleans Saints, New York Giants, NFL, Nick Chubb, Patrick Mahomes, Pittsburgh Steelers, Ryan Tannehill, Seattle Seahawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Teddy Bridgewater, Tennessee Titans, TJ Yeldon

It would appear that a quicker process was what was needed to improve my picks in week three, but sadly there was no respite for Dan or I in terms of our teams doing anything other than losing. Still, here we go with my trip through the NFL this week.

What I Saw

Week three started with a one-sided Thursday night game that never quite took off as the Jacksonville Jaguars made a mockery of my pick by grinding out a 20-7 win over the Tennessee Titans. This was a game dominated by penalties and the Jaguars pass rush that sacked Marcus Mariota a massive nine times. The Titans have a real problem as they are good enough to compete across the roster bar quarterback with Mariota holding onto the ball and reluctant to throw the ball deep. This competitiveness will make it difficult for the team to replace Mariota if the team do decide to move on and I wonder at what point we might see Ryan Tannehill get a start if things don’t improve for the Titans offence. Meanwhile, the confident Gardiner Minshew II (I do enjoy that his father’s name is not Gardiner Minshew – he was just creative when registering his son’s name) did enough in his first start to get the Jaguars their first win of the season. The strange thing was the Jaguars defence finally looked really good this week yet it seems as if they are still likely to lose arguably their best player in Jalen Ramsey. In a division that is wide open it would be a curious move indeed to trade him, as was playing him in this game if you intend to trade him and having reported sick on Monday he is on the injury list for his lower back. I still do not trust this team but if their defence can play like this a little more often and Minshew can keep the offence ticking over when the opponent’s defence has time and film to game plan for him fully then the Jaguars could climb back into contention in the division.

The next game I watched was the Baltimore Ravens traveling to Arrowhead stadium to take on the Kansas City Chiefs, but whilst the Ravens were able to generate over four hundred and fifty yards of offence they were not able to move the ball consistently enough to beat the Chiefs in their home opener falling to a 28-33 loss. The score is actually closer than it was for a lot of game even if the Ravens did get the first touchdown of the contest but Patrick Mahomes had another spectacular second quarter as the Chiefs scored twenty-three points that included two spectacular catches from the young Cheifs’ receivers. First Demarcus Robinson pulled in a lovely one-handed catch and then Mecole Hardman took advantage of a broken coverage to score on an eighty-three yard play that put the Chiefs 20-6 up. There was plenty of production from the Ravens offence, which managed over two hundred rushing yards as part of their day and several splash plays of their own including a several moments of rushing brilliance from Lamar Jackson. However, too many drives stalled and they cost themselves three points from failed two-point conversions, which is an interesting tactical choice when you have one of the most reliable kickers in the league. It was clearly a deliberate tactic and I don’t know the relative percentage of two-point tries versus extra points to do the maths, but if the Ravens had made all of them that would turn a five point deficit into a one point win so I can see what they were trying to do.

I’m not sure I want to write about the Cincinnati Bengals, but I’ll try as they travelled to Buffalo and suffered their third loss of the season falling 21-17 having taken a three point lead with under five minutes to go. However, whilst the record is lousy, the Bengals aren’t all that bad but maddeningly inconsistent. If they could put more consistent good play across four quarters I can see how they could be good – particularly as the pass rush is really good but the run game has been inconsistent ad I wonder where the team will be when they visit London at the end of October. Meanwhile, the Bills continue to be a tough team to face thanks to a stingy defence and an offence that seems to be doing enough. In his second year quarterback Josh Allen is finding a way to compete and the combination of him, TJ Yeldon and the ever reliable Frank Gore dominated a running game that generated one hundred and seventy-five yard. I don’t know if they can beat the visiting Patriots next week, but I suspect it will be a competitive game.

The final game of the week that I watched was the LA Rams travelling to Cleveland to beat the now 1-2 Browns: 20–13. For all the talk of offensive prowess about both teams in the off-season, this was a grind it out defensive contest that seemed to pit the Rams pass rush against the Browns generating three interceptions. The Browns got pressure of their own but it seemed that Jared Goff was the quarterback more prepared to take risks and paid the price in interceptions. However, he did enough to put twenty points on the board even with a missed field-goal, whilst the Browns offensive line seemed to scupper the Brown’s ability to move the ball consistently. The Browns looked good both running the ball with Nick Chubb and passing the ball when Baker Mayfield had time, but were not able to sustain drives regularly enough thanks to multiple Rams’ defenders getting into the backfield and harassing Mayfield. It’s no surprise that Aaron Donald played really well in this game, but the combination of him with Dante Fowler and Clay Mathews really worked for the Rams when rushing the passer with Mathews in particularly looking as good as he has done for several seasons. The saving grace for the Browns is that they have yet to play a divisional opponent but next week they travel to face the Ravens who are the early favourites to win the division. Even starting 1-3 wouldn’t necessarily scupper the Browns chances of making the playoffs given the state of the AFC North so far this season but this first AFC North game against the Raven is now massively important and the Browns have not convinced so far.

What I Heard & What I Think

I’m combining two section this week thanks to the scope of quarterback stories this week, but I’ll try to get back to my normal subjects next week.

There has been a lot of discussion about quarterback this week, which is understandable given that even discounting the Colts’ enforced change in quarterback we now have seven teams starting a different player than was planned at the start of the season. What’s more several teams got wins off the back of their new starter at quarterback. I have already mentioned Gardiner Minshew II who has been getting lots of headlines thanks to the various urban legends that are doing the rounds but one of the other performances that leapt out was by Kyle Allen who led the Panthers to their first win of the season. I don’t think this will necessarily create a quarterback controversy unless Cam Newton cannot get back to the level of performance he has in previous years, but what it does do if Allen can maintain this level of performance then the Panthers can afford to wait unit Newton is fully healthy before returning to the game. This is why whilst no team can afford to have two quality starters on the roster, a good veteran or a promising young player can turn around or rescue a season if they only need to do it for a short stretch.

For instance, the investment the Saints put into making Teddy Bridgewater one of the highest paid backups paid off when he stepped up and won on the road in Seattle. He didn’t look great, but he kept the Saints moving and got them a good win.

However, the other type of quarterback we saw step up was the high pick rookie. A lot of the headlines have gone to Daniel Jones because he plays for the New York Giants but Jones also got a win in his first start against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a game I’ll be looking at for this week’s Amateur Adventures in Film. It seems the days of a high round rookie quarterback sitting for an entire year are pretty much gone as even Patrick Mahomes got to start week seventeen of his rookie year. Sooner or later a highly drafted player is going to start. I suspect the next one will be in Washington but at what point I don’t know.

What I Know

That someone at the bottom of the AFC North should get their first win of the season next Monday, although it would be just my luck if the teams managed a second tie of the season.

What I Hope

That the Bengals don’t forget themselves against the Steelers and give a good account of themselves in front of the nation on Monday night.

It’s going to be a long wait…

Overreaction Week

11 Wednesday Sep 2019

Posted by gee4213 in Gee's Thoughts

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Antonio Brown, Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Chicago Bears, Chris Grier, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions, Ezekiel Elliott, FishTank, Green Bay Packers, Kansas City Chiefs, Kirk Cousins, Kyler Murray, LA Rams, Miami Dolphins, Mike Mayock, Minnesota Vikings, Mitch Trubisky, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints, NFL, Oakland Raiders, Pittsburgh Steelers, Russell Wilson, Seattle Seahawks, Tennessee Titans, TJ Hockenson, Tom Brady, Warren Sharp, Zac Taylor

It’s that time of the season where we have one game of data and we overreact, so let’s see if we can find a nuanced view that sits somewhere between sixteen teams winning the Super Bowl and sixteen looking at the number one pick in next year’s draft.

What I Saw

The season opener that saw the Chicago Bears host the Green Bay Packers was not exactly the explosive opener I’m sure the NFL would have wanted, but it does look as if the Packers are going to have a more balanced team this season. The Packers and their improved looking defence were able to hold the Bears to three points in a 10-3 win. The Packers needed this performance from their defence as the Bears defence looked as fearsome as year but I did also wonder if the lack of game time for their starters might be playing a factor in the Packers offensive output. This did make me wonder about the rest of the weekend’s games given the increased prevalence of teams resting their starters but it turns out there were plenty of teams whose offence hit the ground running. The Bears were not one of them though and there is still a worry about what the ceiling is for Mitch Trubisky. We should be wary of reading too much into one game but we’ll have an idea of just how representative this game was once we have some more to put things into context.

I only managed to watch a little of the last episode of Hard Knocks thanks to various things, so all I saw was the footage of Antonio Brown catching balls in practice before discovering that he was arguing with GM Mike Mayock having posted a fine letter on social media, and then getting cut having had his contract voided. He signed for the Patriots over the weekend and this morning’s headline is that Brown has been accused of rape by a former trainer. I really don’t know what to say other than that this is a deeply troubling accusation, that the courts need to carry out their due process, and at this point does Brown not have to go on the commissioner’s exempt list?

Moving awkwardly back to football I watched three further games this week.

The Cincinnati Bengals did much better than I feared as they ran out 20-21 losers in their trip to face the Seahawks in Seattle. However, the defence played well limiting the Seahawks to two-hundred and sixty-eight yards whilst containing Russell Wilson and sacking him four times. Meanwhile, for all the talk of establishing the run, Zac Taylor ran his offence according to what the Seahawks sent out, and Andy Dalton threw for a career high four-hundred and forty-one yards. The Seahawks showed their experience in winning ugly, but it was a promising start for the Bengals who now need to learn how to win games like this.

The Detroit Lions must still be kicking themselves over the road trip to Arizona as having established a 24-6 lead early in the fourth quarter they froze up as the Cardinals managed to stage a comeback and hold on for a tie in overtime. For most of this game the Lions were in control, but they got too conservative in the fourth quarter on offence and managed to call a time-out on a play that looked to have converted a third down, then ran an awful long shot play that didn’t work, before having the resulting punt blocked. The positive for the Lions is that rookie tight end TJ Hockenson set a rookie record of one hundred and thirty-one receiving yards as well as scoring a touchdown but they’ll need to clean up their game management and have a tough looking slate of games coming up. The Cardinals looked like they could have a long season but even though Kyler Murray looks like a small quarterback, his movement skills are impressive and he managed to avoid taking any big hits. Murray needs to learn to throw the ball away earlier in certain situations, but if he can find and maintain the kind of rhythm he found in the fourth quarter then he could justify the faith the Cardinals showed by taking him first overall.

The final game I saw this week as they New England Patriots sending out a warning to the rest of the league with a 33-3 demolition of the supposed fellow AFC challengers the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Patriots coaching staff seem to absolutely have the number of the Steelers and worryingly for the league, looked sharp on both sides of the ball in their opening game. For a team that have often started slowly in recent years they played well and Tom Brady looked to have the deep ball in his armoury. As for the Steelers, they looked like they weren’t quite there on offence and the coaching staff need to find some way of stopping Brady shredding them, which to be fair is easier said than done. This was a tough way for any team to start the season so it’s not time to hit the panic button yet but the Steelers host the Seahawks in their first home game this week and they’ll want to get their season back on track quickly.

What I Heard

I head an interesting discussion with Warren Sharp on the Pro Football Doc podcast this week, where they discussed how teams seemed to be listening to the people who having looked at the numbers suggest throwing the ball on first down is a more efficient play call. Essentially the suggestion was that a team should call a throw on first down, but switch to a run play if the defence they faced or matchup favoured it, but otherwise passing on first down was more gave better results by trying to get a first down quicker than limiting the distance on third down. This increased uptake of passing first downs might be even more impressive if you remove the outliers like the Minnesota Vikings who only asked Kirk Cousins to throw ten times during the entire game this week.

I would need to see the maths on this to analyse this, but it feels logical to me. Particularly, when advocating that you still run if the situation is advantageous. For all the talk of balance and establishing the run, the Bengals threw a lot of passes against the Seahawks and it could well be that amongst the enlarged staff the Bengal’s new head coach asked for and got, are some more analytics people being listened to. I have thought for a while that it’s not so much that you have to establish the run, as maintain a credible threat so a defence can’t concentrate on stopping one thing. One to keep an eye on.

What I Think

It’s early in the season, so the crucial this is not to overreact. That said, I’m not sure that you can overreact as a Dolphins fan. I was chatting with Dan as the Ravens’ touchdowns kept coming up on Red Zone. The Cleveland Browns proved that an NBA style tank can work, and the coaches and players are absolutely trying to win but this is going to be a long difficult season for the Dolphins.

My suggestion was for Dan to adopt a fun NFC team to watch as he’s not going to stop supporting the Dolphins but for the sake of his sanity he needs something fun to watch on gameday. Here’s how bad it is, after five seasons of always picking the Dolphins to win in the pick’em competition he has announced he’s not doing it this year.

See what you’ve done Chris Grier!

What I Know

The top teams look pretty familiar and expected with the Patriots, Chiefs, Saints, and Rams all running out winners, although no one took that as literally as the Vikings did in week one.

There were plenty of surprises, although I wasn’t that shocked that the Browns struggled, but even I was not expecting them to give away that many penalties. The Titans were competitive last year and with Andrew Luck’s retirement they feel they should be in the mix for the AFC South. I may well have got the Falcons completely wrong, but I think I understand most of where I dropped points in the picks competition, although I clearly didn’t account for the Raiders maintaining their pre-season competitiveness into week one, but let I am not going to make any grand pronouncements until we have four games played.

I took a tenuous point lead in the pick’em competition despite my lack of preparation, but the regular season is marathon not a sprint. I am going to take a look at the Cowboys offence for my first coaching tape of the week as the discussion surrounding how it thrived despite Ezekiel Elliott’s rust interested me. I look forward to seeing how Dak Prescott played.

What I Hope

I am hoping to get through the coaching tape and picks despite being at a music festival this weekend (Hmmmh, I might need to find some extra hours from somewhere) and I hope all those teams who lost this week get a win on the board next week. However, it won’t happen as the season of hope is over – football is here and it is very much a results orientated business.

Still, good luck for the week two teams, I can see a number of teams (and fanbases) who will need it.

Buffalo Bills (5th) @ Houston Texans (6th)

Tennessee Titans (6th) @ New England Patriots (3rd)

The Disappointed Twenty: NFC Edition

Wildcard Trivia

What I Saw

What I Heard

What I Think

What I Know

What I Hope

What I Saw

What I Heard

What I Think

What I Know

What I Hope

What I Saw

What I Heard

What I Think

What I Know

What I Hope

What I Saw

What I Heard & What I Think

What I Know

What I Hope

What I Saw

What I Heard

What I Think

What I Know

What I Hope

Buffalo Bills (5^th) @ Houston Texans (6^th)

Tennessee Titans (6^th) @ New England Patriots (3^rd)