Andy Richardson
A quick whirl around the league at the highlights and lowlights of the games I paid the most attention to on Sunday…
Random Thought: The theme of the day has to be coaches who are apparently too smart for their own good. How else to explain New Orleans’ decision to run a reverse in its own end of the field with a 3-point lead in the final minutes against the Bucs? The resulting fumble was instrumental in a loss that ended New Orleans’ NFC South title hopes. Then there’s Joe Gibbs, who’s had a pretty rough week, but there’s simply no excuse for not knowing the rule against calling back-to-back timeouts. And considering he got burned for that last-second “icing the field goal kicker” nonsense that Mike Shanahan stuck us all with back in week 2, it’s definitely a case of a guy getting burned for doing something he simply didn’t have to do. Twice.
Lions-Vikings: Early in the week, I wasn’t too high on Adrian Peterson. The Lions have actually had a pretty good run defense, and more importantly, I figured he’d probably get only 10-12 carries. Late in the week, I decided to start him anyway. Needless to say, I won’t even consider benching the guy the rest of the way. Special talent. Maybe the top pick in fantasy drafts next year. Didn’t look too rusty out there. And evidently Brad Childress has decided to improve his own coaching by taking tips from Bill Belichick – i.e., running up the score. Childress called for a fake field goal while leading 42-10 in the third quarter, and when that worked, he followed it up by attempting a halfback option TD pass. (That one is marginally defensible seeing as his quarterback is Tarvaris Jackson, who in fact proceeded to throw an interception on the next play.)
For the Lions, we know the Vikings have the league’s best run defense, but let’s talk about Kevin Jones’ last three games against them. Ten carries for 8 yards. Five carries for minus-3 yards. And then Sunday, 3 carries for 1 yard. (That’s one yard more than he had in the first meeting, when he was inactive with a foot injury.) So, 18 carries for 6 yards. That history makes it almost understandable that the Lions elected to pass the ball on 26 of their 28 first-half plays Sunday. In any event, Detroit has gone from 6-2 to 6-6 so quickly that they appear far more likely to finish 6-10 then end up in the playoffs. Not to mention Roy Williams suffered a knee injury which appeared pretty serious.
Jaguars-Colts: Looks like the Colts have got past their New England hangover – they looked fine in this big game and appear certain to lock up the AFC’s No. 2 seed. The interesting thing was that after coming out running the ball in the earlier meeting, with Joseph Addai and Kenton Keith doing most of the damage early on, the Colts were able to switch things up by throwing a lot this time: Jacksonville held Addai to a quiet day, but Peyton Manning threw 4 TDs. The game was close, but it really never seemed like Indianapolis was going to lose. Random notes: Anthony Gonzalez had a nice catch and run down to the 1-yard line, then cost himself a touchdown by being flagged for an offensive interference penalty (the score ended up going to Dallas Clark). … Addai was playing at one point with a rip on the back of his pants. I was just waiting for Justin Timberlake to show up and get everyone in trouble with the FCC.
As for the Jaguars, who will likely be going to the playoffs as a wild card, they had a chance to tie the game up late but for a bizarre personal foul penalty on Reggie Williams. Williams has had, to be kind, an up-and-down career since being drafted at No. 9 overall, up in terms of typically being a projected starter in the preseason, down in terms of being a healthy inactive as recently as week 1 and not catching a pass in the week 7 meeting. In this game he failed to come up with a catchable ball in the end zone on one series, then committed a stupid penalty forcing them to settle for a field goal. It’s a shame, particularly since he’s been very productive this season (6 TDs). If he’s inactive next week, it won’t be a huge shock. Positive news: Jacksonville has two productive running backs again, with Fred Taylor going for 100 yards in back-to-back games and Maurice Jones-Drew with 8 rushing touchdowns in his last nine games. MJD might have had another one, but for a great tackle (one of many) by Bob Sanders. As for Taylor, it will be nice seeing him in the playoffs this year; the guy’s had a pretty nice career after getting plenty of criticism (particularly from us fantasy geeks) for being unable to stay healthy in his first few seasons.
Bills-Washington: You’ve probably heard that Washington opened with only 10 players on defense, leaving free safety Sean Taylor’s spot empty to acknowledge his tragic death last week. That was pretty cool, and obviously the team was both emotional – and perhaps emotionally drained – in its last-second loss to Buffalo. What’s less cool for Washington fans is that this is a pretty good team, but one that’s just 5-7 after a bunch of narrow defeats that could have been (and probably should have been) wins. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I do know that based on the games I’ve seen (including narrow losses to the Giants, Packers, Bucs, and now Bills) this team appears to have major problems scoring touchdowns when they get around the goal line. Jason Campbell has made leaps and bounds at quarterback this year, but either he, or the coaching staff, or both, need to dedicate themselves to coming up with plays that don’t end up with their running backs getting dropped in the back field or Campbell holding the ball for an eternity, hoping to find an open receiver, before being driven into the turf. Washington should be 7-5 – at least.
As for Buffalo, lost in the final-second field goal drama was the perfect throw by rookie Trent Edwards to set it up. Not that there was much doubt, but it’s safe to drop J.P. Losman: He’s not going to start again this season. Edwards and the Bills also need to work on their plays in the red zone – they kicked five field goals in this one, and Edwards has still thrown just a single touchdown in five games – but they’re 6-6, and were down to their third- or fourth-string running back to boot. For them to be 6-6 (especially considering heartbreaking losses to Denver and Dallas that involved a fire drill field goal and an onside kick) is pretty amazing.
Bucs-Saints: This was one of a trio of fantastic late games, all of which were meaningful – granted, in today’s NFL, almost every team remains in contention for a playoff spot – and all of which came down to the final seconds. I’ve already mentioned Payton’s playcall (To his credit, he took full blame for the miscue, and called the game “the worst job I’ve done as a head coach”), so let’s talk about Jon Gruden’s gutsy call on the other sideline: passing up a 45-yard game-tying field goal in order to convert a fourth-and-short that led to the game-winning touchdown. Not many coaches in today’s NFL, I think, make that decision. Gruden was saved on the play by a nice bit of running by Earnest Graham, who has absolutely played well enough that there’s a controversy for the starting running back job in Tampa next year (and Cadillac Williams will be trying to come back from a severe knee injury, so maybe it will be moot). It looked like Graham would be dropped in the backfield, making for a long week for Gruden and Co., but he picked up the necessary yardage. They say preseason games are meaningless, but Luke McCown proved he deserved to be ahead of Bruce Gradkowski back in August; on Sunday, he did it again.
The Saints, in contrast, have pretty much seen their season come to an end, although a wild card spot is a possibility. Tough to see them bouncing back from this latest defeat, however. It sure looks like with everything having come so easily to them on offense last year, they didn’t realize it might be a lot tougher this year – or maybe they got a lot of mileage out of emotion a year ago, and in fact aren’t particularly good. They’ve got a whole lot of backup receivers posing as starters (though I still like Marques Colston as at worst a legit No. 2), Reggie Bush clearly needs to be in a committee situation, and oh yeah, their defense is awful.
And the rest…. The two other great, late games were Browns-Cardinals and Giants-Bears. Actually, Giants-Bears was just kind of ugly, but Eli Manning and particularly Derrick Ward mixed enough good plays in with the bad that they stole a win in a game that last year, the Bears would have won. (Chicago, in contrast, acted like they could just win the game by letting Manning self-destruct, which was working pretty well until the last seven minutes or so.) Ankle injury for Ward, so maybe be ready to pick up Reuben Droughns ready for next week at Philadelphia.
The major thing to mention about Browns-Cardinals was the end, a final-second heave to Kellen Winslow who made a spectacular catch between two defenders in the end zone, but was ruled out of bounds – the Browns wanted a force-out call that they didn’t get. Later, watching the NBC talking heads, I was very surprised to see that most felt the Browns got rooked, and that Winslow had been clearly forced out. Personally, I thought there was no chance of him coming down in bounds on a ball that was a little too close to the sideline. Am I in the minority, or are they? In any case, the Cardinals and Browns have both been on opposite sides of the Wheel of Luck in recent weeks, so I’m kind of glad the Cards got this one. Cleveland should be going to the playoffs – it’d be nice if the Cardinals get there too. Nice game for Edgerrin James, although his goal-line running late in the game (despite a nice second effort on one play) could mean that Marcel Shipp will get another chance in that area the rest of the way.
As for the lousy games, 49ers-Panthers was about how you’d expect, the highlight being Carolina’s desperate effort to get Steve Smith involved, with him both running an end-around and taking a direct snap during the game. Clearly there’s little chance of him actually catching a touchdown these days, so they may as well do whatever they can to get the ball in his hands. The other cool thing from this game was Jake Delhomme, out for the season, rushing onto the field to congratulate his teammates after a touchdown. Besides thinking Delhomme’s enthusiasm was pretty awesome, I found myself wondering, had that touchdown been thrown by David Carr (with whom there was a brief preseason quarterback controversy, laughable in retrospect given Carr’s inept play this year), would Delhomme have been quite as exuberant? Maybe so. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, anyway. ... Then there’s Jets-Dolphins; the less said the better. I will mention the Jets’ throwback uniforms, which I’d be OK with – normally, I do like throwback unis – if I didn’t always think I was watching the Rams.
Another Day of Football complete, and the second straight Sunday afternoon of games that was missing some of its best teams: New England, Dallas and Green Bay. Maybe the conference championships won’t feature those three teams and Indianapolis, but outside of Pittsburgh on its best day – maybe the Vikings if Adrian Peterson carries them to a playoff upset – nothing I saw yesterday suggests any other team is going to spoil that party. Nothing.
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