Tag Archives: Pittsburgh Steelers

What Happens Next?

28 Wednesday Nov 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, so here we go. Final warning.

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

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

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

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The NFL Spectacle

21 Wednesday Nov 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Super Saints go Ballistic, Bengals are Atrocious

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

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

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

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

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

Can I stop now?

Good.

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

It must be love… love, love!

17 Wednesday Oct 2018

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Week 6 is now in the books, and it was a bit of a strange one for me. This was the first week of the season where I couldn’t watch any of the games Live on Sunday because of prior arrangements, and it reminded me just how much I like my Sunday night routines during the season. I couldn’t completely concentrate on what I was doing because I knew that Football was happening at the same time, and I suppose that’s how you know you love something… even if it is a sport!

So, what was I missing? Well, the Dolphins managed to overcome a bit of an injury crisis to get back to winning ways. Gee and I exchanged texts on Sunday evening when it became clear that Ryan Tannehill was going to be spending the game on the sidelines while Brock Osweiler was under centre, and we both came to the conclusion that Miami had no chance… (Quote at 1 hour before Kickoff: “I’m sorry for your loss”). And while they made hard work of it, and it took an overtime Field Goal to settle it, they managed to grind it out.

Image – Yahoo Sports

Brock was clearly the surprise of the team, but it was fantastic to see Albert Wilson pick up another impressive 43 yard touchdown which saw him make almost every one of those yards after the catch – believe it or not, he’s actually the league leader for Yards after Catch this year so far. He’s been really impressive this year. What the Dolphins badly needed was someone to step up to the plate and replace Jarvis Landry, and it really feels like he’s done that.

Speaking of Mr Landry, his team struggled a bit. The Browns have done quite well at keeping themselves in games and even picking up a couple of wins along the way, but they didn’t look good this week. I thought they’d do ok, but the Chargers proved far too much for them and came away with the win.

Elsewhere in that division, I felt for Gee and his Bengals. I can absolutely sympathise with him and his exasperation at the thought of another loss to their divisional rivals having experienced it almost every time we’ve played the Patriots in the last 10 years! There is an up side though. It was close, and the Bengals are still join top of the AFC North with over a third of the season gone. Admit it Gee, it’s a better position than you thought you’d be in at the beginning of the season! [I wasn’t brave enough for a full on prediction before the season, but I’d have definitely taken a share of the division lead if was offered. – Ed.]

Image: @NFLUK on Twitter

It was the first of this year’s Wembley games this week too, and I don’t half feel for the Oakland fans in attendance. I was there last year when the Saints gave the Dolphins a pasting (it finished 20-0, but I had to look that up, as the memory of most of that day has been repressed!) and I can tell you — it don’t feel good! Another record crowd was in attendance, and there will be no empty seats in North London for the next two Sundays either. The growth in popularity of our great sport doesn’t only show in the stadium attendances and the multiple ‘My first NFL Game’ posts I see on Facebook and Instagram each year (because I’m down with the kids), but also in people talking about it at work. I’ve genuinely had 3 people this week already come up to me at work who all know of my passion for American football and tell me that they watched the game on Sunday. I think having 3 games in consecutive weeks is brilliant too, because people who watched and enjoyed this game will give it a go again this weekend, and get to see another couple of teams, and who knows, they may even pick themselves a team to follow (although I’d save that until the following week if you’re going to do that)!

The Rams are still unbeaten, which as you’ll imagine, was good for my season’s bet, as you’ll see below:

And I managed 9 points in pick’em too, which was the best I’ve done since week one – happy days!

And that’s about it for this week. Week 7 to come and there’s some good games too. The Chargers and Titans will be on their way to London as I type, but will you be making your way to Wembley too? And I’d be really interested to hear about your game day routines too with me missing mine last week! Lets have a chat on Twitter.

Until next week…

@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.

Competition Thursday: 2018 Week 3

20 Thursday Sep 2018

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So I had a disastrous time picking last week, clearly over compensating based on the week one results as I mentioned yesterday so I’ll have to refocus and see if I can catch Dan and his dad given that I’m currently bottom of the league.

Dan and I also failed to get the trivia answer again, and it was one of those where I’m really kicking myself now I’ve seen the answer. Remember, the full results are revealed in the weekly newsletter sent out Wednesday evening (UK time) and you can sign up here.

Gee: Week 2 4-12 Overall 15-17
Dan: Week 2 8-8 Overall 17-15

Jets @ Browns (-3.5)

So this is an actual competitive game between the Jets and Brown on Thursday night that I’m looking forward to seeing. The problem is that this makes picking the game more difficult as the Browns should have arguably won both the games they played this season whereas the Jets fell back to Earth last week after their dismantling of a poor Bills team in week one. So which way do I go on this one? I’m going to stick with my Thursday night rule of picking the home team unless there is a compelling reason not to and with Sam Darnold (who looked like a rookie last week) on the road in a short week against a Browns’ defence that is top ten by DVOA despite facing the Steelers and the Saints that doesn’t give me a reason to not to. The points worry me given that the Browns haven’t won since December 2016 but now is not the time for faint hearts and I have to get the points back somehow.

Gee’s Pick: Browns
Dan’s Pick: Jets

‘I’m struggling to see anything other than a Jets win tonight. They may have looked a bit shaky against the Dolphins on Sunday but I think they have enough to see themselves to a W against the Browns’

Week 3 Trivia

‘Last week I want I asked what it is which connects the following teams:

Chiefs, Packers, Raiders, Bengals and Bears.

Well there were some imaginative, if desperate, guesses which resulted in another score of Zero for both. It’s their choice to not use search engines which may make life harder but arguably this may not need Google to solve

Moving swiftly on and hopeful of getting airborne with a simpler one for this week.

Tell me, which is the newest of the NFL Stadiums (in the Lower-48) and when did it open?

Happy Hunting!’

Reacting to the Reaction

19 Wednesday Sep 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take a Breath Before You Panic

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

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18-09-12 Lions

Image Credit: eu.freep.com

The week one games are in the book and so after this first flurry of games the natural next step is to react and thanks to a combination of modern media and the small number of games ever result is either a triumph or a disaster. So before we continue, remember to take a breath and not to read too much into the result for you team in their first game, unless you need to panic and given that all seven new head coaches lost this week perhaps you might.

Having seen both teams in the pre-season I wasn’t convinced by either the Bills or the Lions but both were on the wrong side of score lines over forty points. I can see how the Bills got themselves into the mess they are in, and they think they have their quarterback of the future so Josh Allen but given the moves they made to get him the young quarterback needs to work out. Poor Nathan Peterman didn’t stand much chance behind the Bills’ reworked offensive line . I’m not going to pretend that I’m a good enough judge of talent to say whether he does or doesn’t belong in the NFL, but he’s had two disastrous starts for the Bills now, and it throws the decision to trade away AJ McCarron into sharp relief as Allen is now starting next week despite not being ready four days ago. The Lions meanwhile managed to lose at home to a rookie quarterback in his first start on the road and this only furthers reinforces the poor impression I got from them in pre-season. It is going to take a number of wins to wipe the memory of that start from the fans who were in attendance.

The reason that they and the other teams who lost in week one might need to panic is that while roughly half of the teams that go 2-0 make the playoffs, only around ten percent of teams who start 0-2 make the playoffs. Now for some being competitive and winning some games (I’m looking at you Browns) would be an improvement in line with expectations as there are plenty of teams who see a return to competitiveness as a marked improvement. The Saints were not expected to lose to the Buccaneers, but if Ryan Fitzpatrick keeps playing like he did in the first game perhaps Jameis Winston won’t walk straight back into the starting role. The defence for the Saints no showed in the home opener against a divisional opponent, which is a real worry for a team that plays decidedly better in their dome so they will be looking to bounce back against the Browns on Sunday.

Now the Cleveland Browns reached peak Browns by avoiding losing their opening game in a tie and failing to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers despite generating six turnovers – plus Myles Garrett looked like a monster. It feels like there’s a lot more talent on this year’s roster but I think everyone is doubting whether the coaching staff can pull it together in Cleveland and stuff like this really doesn’t help.

Another team that will be ruing a missed opportunity is the Chicago Bears who had the Packers on the ropes in the first in Green Bay before Aaron Rodgers pulled off another miracle, firstly by getting back on the field having been carted off and then by leading a comeback from 20-0 down in the third quarter. The Bears will draw a little comfort from the fact that we all know Rodgers is, to quote Robert May, ‘…a f#*@ing dragon!’ but they got conservative in the second half on offence whilst the defence failed to cope when the Packers adjusted and got the ball out of Rodgers’ hands quickly. This was not helped by the lack of pre-season showing up for Khalil Mack who looked unstoppable early in the game but was on a rep count and couldn’t help late. The question for fans of the Bears is does the promise displayed develop as new head coach Matt Nagy gets used to calling plays for the entire game and how to maximise the offence, but that is a question we will only find out the answer to in the coming weeks.

It’s too early to draw too much from the Kansas City Chiefs win over the LA Chargers but they looked very promising on offence. Patrick Mahomes has a ridiculous arm and didn’t throw an interception although the play calling and skills players had a lot to do with the points scored and the LA Chargers would have been a lot closer if players would stop dropping passes from Philip Rivers. The Chargers are still finding ways to lose games and the number of fans at their ‘home’ games is still a worry, the new stadium that the Rams are building and that the Chargers will be sharing once its open could be very empty and dominated by away fans if the situation remains the same.

The Oakland Raiders failed to win and I will be keeping an eye on them, but the signs are not good for this season and the questions about the Mack trade will only get louder if he builds on the promise he showed in the Bears’ opener. Meanwhile Jerry Jones avoided the media after the Dallas Cowboys opening loss to the Carolina Panthers and without a quick improvement on offence.

Now a lot of teams are in a position to turn around their single loss and I certainly wouldn’t panic if I was a fan of say the Steelers (although the display by Ben Roethlisberger was concerning), but there will be fans all over the league who will be that extra bit nervous during the upcoming games and to them I say this, there is a long season up ahead and 0-2 doesn’t necessarily mean your team won’t make the playoff but if your team loses a second game, well at that point you can definitely panic!