Andy Richardson

A quick whirl around the league at the highlights and lowlights of the games I paid the most attention to on Sunday…

General Observation: Tackling is a dying art. How many big plays and touchdowns could have been stopped Sunday simply by somebody making a tackle? My favorite was 5-11, 199-pound cornerback Carlos Rogers of Washington apparently trying to bump 6-4, 248-pound tight end Donald Lee of Green Bay to the ground about 15 yards into a 60-yard reception that set up the Packers’ only offensive touchdown. But Rogers wasn’t alone: the Jets flopped helplessly about Kevin Curtis on his 75-yard score, the Cowboys did the same on a long Donte Stallworth touchdown, and the Bears looked silly trying to tackle Adrian Peterson. Sometimes you’ve got to credit the offensive players, but c’mon. Tackling, people! My father-in-law was a standout cornerback in high school and college and next to inaccurate weather reports, nothing bothers him more than defenders missing tackles. When the phone rings, it will be him. "Did you see that game? And can you believe how warm it is?"

Washington-Green Bay: Two weeks in a row application (or non-application) of the force-out rule – in which a player who doesn’t get both feet down in bounds is judged by an official to have been forced out – has had a major impact for the Packers. It gave Bears tight end Greg Olsen a touchdown last week, and then should have given Bubba Franks one Sunday, but wasn’t called. There’s a problem with the rule, and not just that it’s called inconsistently. In the Dallas-New England game, Terrell Owens caught a ball on the sidelines, and was clearly forced out. The sideline official apparently thought he’d got both feet down in bounds, so he ruled it a catch. Instant replay (it occurred in the last two minutes of the first half) ruled he didn’t get both feet down, and since the official hadn’t called it a force out, the catch was overturned. Owens caught a touchdown moments later anyway, but regardless. Something the league should look at in the offseason.

In any case, Favre lost 2 TD passes in the game, that one to Franks, and another one to wideout James Jones after a phantom holding penalty. Of course, Jason Campbell had it even worse: Santana Moss and Brandon Lloyd both dropped touchdowns, and Antwaan Randle El and Mike Sellers dropped easy first downs. Bad game for Washington receivers. Particularly Moss, who actually benched HIMSELF for his struggles, which can partially be chalked up to injury. His fumble on a reverse resulted in the game-winning Packers touchdown. Begging the question: Why do teams run reverses? Has anyone ever seen those plays work more often than they result in catastrophic occurrences: game-losing fumbles, huge yardage losses, and the memorable one from a few years back where both Jerry Rice and Steve Young were injured? Yes, sometimes they work. Far more often, it seems, they don’t.

Houston-Jacksonville: The highlight here, obviously, was the Jaguars’ mascot catching a touchdown out of bounds, which had it counted would make him even through five games with Jacksonville’s starting wide receiver tandem of Ernest Wilford and Dennis Northcutt. Imagine how good the Jaguars would be if they’d actually drafted a good wide receiver or quarterback in the past few seasons. Anyway, Maurice Jones-Drew continued his fine comeback from oblivion, although he celebrated a bit too much: All well and good, MJD, but it’s not like you were apologizing while going nowhere and leaving my fantasy teams with narrow defeats over the season’s first three weeks. Maybe Matt Jones and Reggie Williams will have fantasy relevance after all, as Williams scored and the team desperately tried to get Jones to score by throwing him pass after pass in the end zone, to no avail. (He’s big, he’s tall, he has no feel for how to play wide receiver.) Then there’s Houston, which maybe got a little too pleased with itself after its nice start. I could happily have accepted Andre Davis’ lousy yardage day had I not seen him fumble a should-have-been touchdown through the end zone, a play changed by instant replay. Yes, I was starting Davis in two leagues.

New England-Dallas: This game probably slipped under the radar for a lot of NFL fans, but both teams were undefeated coming in. Not surprisingly, the Patriots turned a fairly close game into a laugher by doing what they’re doing this year: scoring easily, regularly, dynamically. The crazy thing (and I won’t dwell on this because most NFL fans probably watched the game) is that “Tom Brady to Randy Moss, TOUCHDOWN,” happened only once – and could easily have happened two, three, even four times more. One was (correctly, but it was close) overturned by instant replay. Another was wiped out by an offensive pass interference penalty that a lot of refs don’t call. On two other occasions Moss got past the secondary and Brady missed him. (Just another example of Moss being held back by poor quarterback play.) What else needs to be said? It’s incredible the year those two are having so far. It’s mind-boggling that it could even be better.

(By the way, if you didn’t see Marion Barber’s escape to avoid a safety, track down that highlight. Barber should be the featured guy there for that play alone. Julius Jones is a nice running back. Barber is special.)

Cincinnati-Kansas City: I know I wasn’t the only one who thought Kansas City might be the worst team in the league after their 20-3 pasting at Houston in week 1. Instead they’re 3-3 and – courtesy of a win at San Diego – leading the AFC West. Very good defense, the league’s 2nd-best tight end in Tony Gonzalez, and a young wideout in Dwayne Bowe who looks like a superstar. Bowe, by the way, nearly came up with his fourth touchdown in five starts, nearly making a spectacular one-handed grab. The question I had watching it (echoed by the announcers) is: Why didn’t he use both hands? As for the Bengals, can we move T.J. Houshmandzadeh ahead of Chad Johnson now, in rankings, on draft day, period? Great receiver. Takes hellacious hits and comes back for more. Having his best year. I’m sad to only have him on one team.

Minnesota-Chicago: Ever wonder why some fantasy owners love to use high picks on unproven rookie running backs who aren’t even certain to start or have a featured role for the team that drafted them? Are you STILL wondering, after Adrian Peterson’s 224-yard, 3-TD day? Didn’t think so. Not only is Peterson leading the league in rushing, but he’s the only player in the top-10 who has fewer than 100 rushing attempts on the season. At least the Bears found a way to get Devin Hester involved on offense. At this point, though, they appear to need him more on defense.

New Orleans-Seattle: If I were a Saints fan, I don’t think that win would have made me happy. More likely it would have made me angry. Where did that come from? Where has it been? An aggressive defense! An accurate quarterback! A dangerous Reggie Bush! Luckily for the Saints, they’ve still got a shot at the playoffs, albeit a remote one; 9-7 might just win the NFC South or at least get a team a wild card in the NFC. But again, where was that in the season’s first month? As for the Seahawks, all you need to know about the NFC West is that in the last two weeks Seattle has been totally shut out at Pittsburgh and then blown out at home by a winless team, and yet they’re still tied for first in the division.

Carolina-Arizona: Every once in a while a team adds a player, and you hear a lot about how long it will take that player to learn the playbook or get into game shape. And then there’s 43-year-old Vinny Testaverde, who the Panthers signed on WEDNESDAY, and yet picked up the playbook quickly enough and was in good enough shape to start, win, and put up a better quarterback rating than David Carr did in any of his four games this season. “Learn the playbook” – feh.

Andy watches as many games as he can each Sunday. If you do the same, feel free to add your own observations from the previous day’s games below.

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