Tag Archives: New England Patriots

Super Saints go Ballistic, Bengals are Atrocious

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

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

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

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

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

Can I stop now?

Good.

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

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

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

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

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

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The Battle of the Big Guns

07 Wednesday Nov 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back To My Old Self!

06 Tuesday Nov 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time…

@TWFDan

The Week of the Safety

24 Wednesday Oct 2018

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18-10-24 C Littleton

Image Credit: therams.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t Worry, No-One Knows Anything…

17 Wednesday Oct 2018

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18-10-17 M-Tomlin

Image Credit: behindthesteelcurtain.com

So with a heart filled with the familiar pain of a loss to our divisional rivals I have to pick up the jagged bloody pieces of my fandom and get on with the blog because the NFL schedule waits for no one.

The Bengals lost to the Steelers again, but it wasn’t exactly an implosion and Andy Dalton gave the boys in stripes a lead with 1:18 left on the clock in the fourth quarter, but Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brows sealed the game and whilst some are complaining about calls, this was a close game and the mounting injuries were as much the cause as anything. It doesn’t get any easier though as the Bengals are on the road against Kansas City this week and have been flexed into the Sunday night game, which bodes badly given the Bengals poor record in nationally televised games.

However, enough of my gloom! One of the reasons that covering the NFL is fun is that even with the most detailed preparation no one knows anything and there were plenty of surprises amongst the entertaining week six games.

I chose entertaining deliberately as we had one of the best games of the season this week with the Kansas City Chiefs going to New England taking them down to the final whistle as Stephen Gostkowski kicked a twenty-eight yard field goal to seal the win. For what felt like the first time this season it looked a little bit like Patrick Mahomes felt some nerves being on the road in front of the nation, but the Chiefs recovered from a half time score 0f 9-24 and forced a final second field goal out of the Patriots. I’m sure plenty of people are already hoping for a repeat game in the playoffs, whilst I’m just worried about what the Chiefs are going to do to the Bengals next week, but let’s not disappear down that rat hole!

Part of the excitement of this season has been the dominance of the offence this season where even a team that has the number one defence by DVOA can give up five hundred yards to a Miami Dolphins offence helmed by Brock Osweiler. Now a lot of this was done by Adam Gase utilising his young skill players ability to turn short passes into long gains, but is impressive none the less. I’m beginning to think the only reliable defence at the moment belongs to the Baltimore Ravens who shut out the Tennessee Titans this week and managed to rack up eleven sacks. This is too many for me not to take a look at their pass rush for my amateur adventures in film post and it will be nice to get back to some defensive tape. However, the story this season really is offence and not always from the usual suspects. I shared the frustrations I had heard repeatedly stated about the Dallas Cowboys offence having seen it for my own eyes against the Texans earlier this season, but thanks to modern technology it takes so much less time for plays to spread and the Cowboys came up with a doozy of a game plan in week six that enabled them to stick forty points on the Jacksonville Jaguars defence. Okay, so there were four field goals in that total but Cole Beasley racked up over a hundred receiving yards and a two touchdowns whilst Ezekiel Elliott also ran for a hundred yards. All this was with Dak Prescott throwing for a modest one hundred and eight-three yards but he also chipped in with eighty-two yards on the ground. I’m not saying everything is suddenly fixed, things are far too unpredictable but this game is definitely something that could be built upon.

There’s a reason that I said could. If this season has taught us nothing else, it is to be wary of the grand statement. Now this is a familiar feeling to me having been blogging about this league for four years now, which is really nothing, but it does feel like the development and changes within the league are accelerating. Every year we see teams who were bottom of their division suddenly leading, even if there are a handful of teams who always seem to do well or poorly, but it does feel like things are increasingly topsy-turvy and week to week. This is likely to be that apart from the structural things to do with the rosters, injury luck, and tactical complexity that makes predicting outcomes difficult, we have such a small sample size that every game takes on more importance and we draw bigger inferences than we should on the basis of one game. Across the entire season they sort themselves out a little, but it is so hard to remain competitive across a season never mind to build a dynasty like the Patriots currently have, or that the 49ers had when I was growing up.

It also doesn’t help when trends spread across season. It feels like LA Chargers have been competitive but losing too many close games for a while, but if you look back at their results to include last season. They may have started 2017 with four losses, but since week five of last season the Chargers have only lost to the Patriots, Jaguars and Chiefs last in 2017 and the Chiefs and Rams this season. That gives them a record of 13-5 record over an admittedly arbitrarily selected series of games. However, they beat the Cleveland Browns convincingly this week and so perhaps I should be a little more trusting of them given that they had moved cities and hired a new head coach before the start of said 2017 season and that four loss streak. There is plenty of talent on their roster and having listed them as a real contender two weeks ago, I’m really beginning to think they will compete across this season. I hereby apologise for the jink I have just placed on the Chargers.

I can’t finish this blog without saying a quick word about the London game. It was a rainy Wembley that saw the host Oakland Raiders get thoroughly beaten by the Seattle Seahawks and we should not take for granted that we still get to see live regular NFL games in this country. There have been some great competitive games at Wembley, but we have also seen our fair share of one sided contests. This time both teams had to travel from the west coach of America so there’s no real disadvantage there but whilst the Seahawks may well be rebuilding, at least they have a settled head coach and general manager working together. It feels like Jon Gruden is rebuilding the Raiders by tearing everything down, which is interesting as the GM who built it, Reggie McKenzie, is still there. Not content with trading away Khalil Mack there’s now rumblings the Raiders would accept a number one pick for Amari Cooper and people are talking about how little a cap hit it would be to cut Derek Carr at the end of the season. This is all getting a bit speculative for me to want to cover, other than to say with a roster that has a number of older players, if they are going to tear everything down it could take a while to get good again and I don’t see how this is going to sell tickets in Las Vegas. Still, all we can do for now is watch and wonder, which is pretty much how I’ve felt all season, be it considering thoughtfully or gazing in awe.

Week 5 – the Week of the Kicker

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time…

@TWFDan

Quarterbacks and Injuries

03 Wednesday Oct 2018

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Image Credit: milehighsports.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plays, Penalties, and Injuries

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

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18-09-26 Josh Allen TD

Image Credit: wyosports.net

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High-fives All Round!

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

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So, we’re three weeks into the season now, and things are starting to spice up a bit!

Where to start this week? Suppose I’ll start with the Dolphins as is traditional. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re 3-0 – how on earth did that happen?! We’ve not looked overwhelmingly fantastic this year so far, but have been doing enough to win games, which I suppose is all that matters. With only one of our first three opponents going into Week 4 with a winning record (the Titans, if you’re asking), the Patriots this week are going to be a real test.

Performance-wise, it was a bit of a mixed bag. Tannehill and his receiving team seem to be on the same page and working well together, and a special mention this week has to go to Albert Wilson for not only taking the QB role in a trick play touchdown, but also managing to run in a 74 yard touchdown which won us the game – if he doesn’t get a Madden Team of the Week card in Ultimate Team this week, I’ll be very disappointed.

On the other side of the ball though, the Defence weren’t as good as they have been for the first two weeks. Some of that’s down to injury (and ejection!) meaning the line were taking a lot more reps than they would usually have in the Florida sun, but we’ll have to wait and see how they pick up next week.

Elsewhere, there were some comings and goings at the QB position – it was Carson Wentz’ first game since his mid-season injury last year, and he wasted very little time in getting back into the swing of things. That’s hardly surprising though given that the reports coming out of Philadelphia suggested he was keeping deeply ingrained in the foundations of the team during his absence, and was frequently seen as the Eagles biggest fan in their run up to the Super Bowl. Bit harsh on Nick Foles though, I must say. He’s not done too badly this year so far but it’s clear they feel that Wentz is their Franchise QB for years to come, so it makes sense to bring him back.

Jimmy G though has gone the other way. He came off mid-game on Sunday with an injury which has turned out to be an ACL tear officially ruling him out for the rest of the season. I’m really disappointed about this – he was such an energising force for the 49ers at the end of last season (who remembers how badly they were doing before he joined?!) and while it hadn’t completely carried over into this season, he won’t be playing any further part this year.

Oh hang on, how have I got this far into this week’s post without mentioning the BROWNS?! The fans in Cleveland woke up on Friday feeling like it was Christmas morning… not least because the last time they woke up after a win it WAS Christmas Day… in 2016! (Note – I cant take credit for this. Neil Reynolds pointed this out on twitter the other day!). I’m really pleased for Browns fans. I don’t think they’ll get too many wins this year, but they seem to be in a much better place than they have been.

Betting update:

At what point should it get tempting to cash out?! The Rams are now showing themselves as the actual favourites for the Super Bowl this year (according to bet365 anyway!) but it is of course still early days!

Oh, and less said about picks and fantasy the better – stupidly, after sending my picks to Gee, I think I forgot to actually submit them, and as a result, it didn’t register, so this week I’m very thankful to Gee for being the organised member of the team who keeps spreadsheets of this kind of thing! I take back everything I said last week when I was rubbing in the fact I was beating him (although… I think I still am!). [We are in fact level after three weeks -Ed.]

How are your team doing so far this year? Is anyone particularly surprising you so far? Drop me a line on twitter and lets have a chat!

This time next week, I’ll be in Dubai with Mrs. B celebrating our anniversary, so my Dad will be filling my shoes and making his picks for the week against Gee. Be gentle on him – he’s a Vikings fan so hasn’t finished scratching his head over how they managed to lose to the Bills!

Speak to you in a couple of weeks…

@TWFDan

AAF: Patriots Offence vs Jaguars Defence

23 Sunday Sep 2018

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So for week two the matchup that cried out to be looked at in my continuing amateur adventures in film was the New England Patriots offence as they took on the Jaguars defence.

The Jaguars defence looked much how they did last season in that they really rely on their defensive line to get pass rush (although I thought they blitzed a bit more in this game than I was used to) and good coverage to stifle offences. It was also very obvious, particularly in the second half although I could have missed it that they were working really hard to disguise their coverages as their safeties move back and forwards trying to not give anything away.

The Patriots offence is always interesting to study and this game was no different. They use a lot more 21 personnel (two running backs and a tight end) than most teams but that didn’t necessarily mean that would line-up with two backs in the back field. If fact they would even go as far as to line-up with an empty backfield and both James White and fullback James Develin would run routes with White in particular being a genuine target for Brady and finished the game with seventy-three passing yards on seven receptions from eight targets. In fact I think the Patriots do a greater variety of things with the same personnel groupings than any other team in the league (waits for someone to prove me wrong).

However, there is a reason that they just traded with the Browns for Josh Gordon and that is that James White actually led the team in receiving yards in this game. They ran plenty of nice route combinations where the outside receiver run an in behind the slot receiver, which created a lot of space for the receiver against the Jaguars scheme. The problem is that they were not able to stress the defence long, which is why they will be hoping that if nothing else Gordon will be able to make opposing defences stop doubling Rob Gronkowski and run deep routes.

However, if that helps solve the problems in the passing game the other side of the offence still struggled with a faintly anaemic run game that only managed eighty-two yards on twenty-four rushes for an average of 3.4 yards per carry, which would look even worse if you removed the twelve and fifteen yard runs from Rex Burkhead and Sony Michel as well as the ten yard scramble from Tom Brady. That’s cherry picking a little but there were not a lot of holes opened by the Patriots offensive line, and whilst the Jaguars defensive line is very good, it’s something to keep an eye on. Particularly as whilst the Jaguars only sacked Brady twice, they affected a number of throws with their rush and a lesser quarterback than Brady would not have got rid of the ball as quickly or as safely as Brady does.

Still, I wouldn’t be hitting the panic button yet and I will be interested to see if Gordon can be assimilated successfully. The Patriots are a team whose scheme changes from week to week, and so how things develop is definitely something to keep an eye on as the season progresses. Maybe that could be an offseason project!