The Good: The Raiders down the Texans 25-20.
Al Davis may have spent the last ten years seemingly trying to destroy this franchise, but he clearly was still very important to his team. The Raiders were playing extra hard this week for their recently deceased owner/general manager and it paid off. For the first time in as long as I can remember, the Raiders won this game by the strength of their defense. Yes, they allowed Matt Schaub to throw for over 400 yards, but they held Arian Foster to 3 yards a carry and held the Texans explosive offense to just 6 second half points, helped by intercepting Schaub in the red zone with only seconds left on the clock. The Raiders offense had one of their worst games so far this year, but as a team they found a way to win. This was a great win for this franchise and I have a feeling that the Raiders are going to be knocking my Jets out of the playoffs when the end of the season rolls around.
The Bad: The Buccaneers’ offense continues to struggle.
What in God’s name has happened to the Bucs? Last season Josh Freeman and Mike Williams looked like the best young quarterback-wide receiver combo in the NFL. This season they look like what everyone expected out of them last season. Freeman has already throw as many interceptions through 5 games as he did all of last season and Williams is on pace for less than 600 yards and 3 touchdowns (he had 964 yards and 11 touchdowns in his rookie season last year). I have heard of a sophomore slump, but this is ridiculous. The Bucs were down fast to the 49ers thanks to a porous defense and a pick six by Freeman, and they simply were never able to recover. Usually when a team goes down early, their quarterback throws for a ton of garbage yards, but the 49ers still only gave up under 200 yards passing. The 49ers are much improved from last season, but they are barely a playoff caliber team and they blew out the Bucs 48-3. The lockout has clearly hurt this young Bucs team, but there is no excuse for how poorly this team has played through the first 5 games. It is amazing to me that they are 3-2, but they have to improve fast if they plan on staying above .500.
The Ugly: The Eagles fall to 1-4.
I said last week that the Eagles barely missed out on making the ugly list, but this week they were not so lucky. I knew this game would be a tough matchup for the Eagles, but it was a must win game to try to establish themselves as a playoff contender. They instead went out and proved that they deserve to be 1-4. The Eagles continue to play like they are only interested in putting up fantasy numbers for their fans and don’t care about winning games. This team continues to gain enormous amounts of offense yards, but fails to put up points on the board when it counts. They turned the ball over 5 times against an average Bills defense and that alone will lose you any game. As bad as the offense was, the defense still is the weakness of this team. They allowed Fred Jackson to have almost 200 total yards and Ryan Fitzpatrick only threw 6 incompletions all game (that’s almost as many interceptions as Vick threw). This is about as ugly as it gets. Despite all the hype surrounding this team before the season started, the Eagles are off to its worst start since Andy Reid’s first season with the team in 1999. If they don’t improve soon, it could be Reid’s last.
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