THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY WEEK 8

This week was the sloppiest week of football I have seen in a long time. Tons of missed field goals, loads of turnovers, and some big upsets, with even more almost upsets. And don’t even get me started on Tim Tebow’s performance. Yikes. For the sake of the readers, I will leave Tebow off the list this week because him playing horribly is now officially the norm for him and it is no longer worth talking about.

The Good: The Steelers hold the Patriots to 17 points and Tom Brady to under 200 yards passing.

Despite struggling in a lot of their early games, the Steelers are now 6-2 and look to be the cream of the crop in the AFC. The Steelers came out firing on all cylinders on both offense and defense. Ben Roethlisberger was extremely efficient throwing the ball 50 times in this game and really exploited the Pats’ lowly pass defense. Despite getting sacked five times, he threw for 365 yards and two touchdowns with only one turn over. This allowed the Steelers to maintain possession of the ball for almost twice as long as the Patriots did (39:22 to 20:38) and gave Tom Brady very little opportunities to succeed. Most impressively, they almost completely shut down Wes Welker, who was on pace to have well over 2000 yards this season. Coming into this game, I thought Welker would tear up this aging defense, but they held him to under 40 yards. The Steelers dominated every aspect of this game and left the Patriots with a lot of questions to answer.

The Bad: The Saints get blown out by the winless Rams, who were without Sam Bradford.

It is never a great day when your team gets out physicaled by the St. Louis Rams. However, that’s exactly what happened to the Saints. After putting up 62 points on the Colts last week, the Saints did not score a point against the Rams until the third quarter. The Rams ran the ball all over the Saints defense, allowing them to control the game and giving Steven Jackson his first 100 yard rushing game in three seasons. The more surprising storyline is how the Saints offensive line, which is filled to the brim with Pro Bowlers, got absolutely bullied by the Rams’ front seven. The Rams sacked Drew Brees six times, with Chris Long getting to Bress three times himself. This forced Brees into making costly mistakes, throwing two interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown late in the forth quarter that sealed the win for the Rams. This was an awful game for the Saints and it would have been the ugly performance of the week if not for the Chargers epic fail in their Monday night mathcup with the Chiefs. Despite how poorly the Saints played, you have to give credit to the Rams who played their first solid game in a long time. If Steven Jackson stays healthy and the defense keeps playing like this, they are going to win a lot more games this season.

The Ugly: Phillip Rivers fumbles the snap and gives the Chiefs a chance to win the game in OT.

With a week that saw the Giants and Ravens overcome big deficits to stave off an upset, everyone watching the Chargers game just assumed that they would do so as well after falling down 10-0 to the Chiefs. The Chargers fought so hard to get back into this game, having to tie the game with a two-point conversion. However, with the ball on the 15 yard line and only one minute left, the Chargers were attempting to run as much time off the clock as possible before attempting what would have been a game winning chip shot field goal when the Chargers did the only thing that could cost them the game. They fumbled the snap and allowed the Chiefs to recover the ball. This gave the Chiefs another chance before overtime to win the game, but luckily for the Chargers, Matt Cassel threw another interception and the game went into overtime. Unfortunately, the Chargers continued to do nothing in extended time and allowed the Chiefs to march down the field and kick the game winning field goal. This is just an atrocious way to end a game for a team that is looking to make a strong playoff push. After blowing a big lead to the Jets last week, they had a chance to make up for the loss by knocking off the defending division champs in their house and take a two game lead in their division. Yet in typical Chargers fashion, they blew what could have been a big emotional win for them and instead are in a three way tie atop the division. With two games still left on the schedule against the ever improving Raiders, this team has a lot of work to do if they think they have a shot at even making the playoffs.