What a great week of football! It is hard not to love
watching football on Thanksgiving, even if none of the games were really all
that exciting. However, almost every game this week seemed to come down to just
a few plays being the difference in a win or a loss. There was plenty of good
and bad to pass around, and way more ugly than most coaches would have liked,
but it sure was fun to watch. Let’s dive right in.
The Good: Drew Brees
plays like a god on Monday Night Football against the Giants.
I literally cannot remember a better quarterback performance
than Brees’ on Monday night. He threw for four touchdowns, had an amazing run
for another touchdown, and was deadly accurate all night long. Most impressive
was Brees’ ability to avoid the Giants’ rush and still get the ball downfield.
One play, Brees’ broke a tackle in the pocket from 270 lbs defensive end Justin
Tuck (the Giants best pass rusher), then made it look like he was going to run
with the ball before stopping perfectly on the line of scrimmage, stiff armed
320 lbs defensive tackle Linval Joseph to the ground, and then threw a perfect
pass for the first down. While this type of tackling on the Giants’ part is
inexcusable, this was one of the most impressive plays I have ever seen out of
a quarterback, especially for one who is known for being undersized. You almost
never see any quarterback take on
defensive lineman so fearlessly, but for a 32 year old 6’0 210 lbs quarterback
to do it shows just how badly Brees wants to win every single week. If you
watch Brees’ eyes on the play, he was never looking for the rushers coming at
him, but he was looking downfield the entire play waiting for someone to get
open. That might not sound that impressive, but with a lot of enormous dudes
flying all around you, you would think he might be just slightly concerned about them. This game is the perfect
example of how Brees is one of the best the NFL has ever seen, and not to be
too cliché, but Saints, pay the man!
Runner Up: The Broncos, not just Tim Tebow, gets a huge road
victory over the rival Chargers in overtime.
The Bad: The Texans
lose Matt Leinart for the season after already losing Matt Schaub.
Every week, I feel like the Texans have some devastating
injury to their team. They started the season without the NFL’s leading rusher
Arian Foster, then they lost one of the best pass rushers in the entire league
in Mario Williams, and then they lost their offensive leader in quarterback
Matt Schaub. However, despite these injuries, they are still tied in the lead
of the AFC with an 8-3 record. Leinart had his first start since 2009 and
looked very impressive against a surprisingly tough Jaguars’ defense. Before
leaving with his injury, Leinart was completing almost 77% of his passes and
had a quarterback rating of over 110. While I understand that the Texans were
not asking a lot of him, he was playing about as well as anyone could have
asked out of him and it looked like he could give them a chance to possibly
keep their momentum going into the postseason and possibly make a playoff run.
However, he is now out for the season and the Texans’ are hoping for the best
out of their third string rookie quarterback T.J. Yates. At UNC, Yates did not
really play against top competition so it will be interesting to see how he
holds up and how quickly the Texans turn to the 36 year old Jake Delhomme, who
they just brought out of retirement. Either way, this is yet another huge loss
for this franchise that should still make the playoffs for the first time ever,
but now has little hope of making a deep playoff run.
Runner Up: Bill’s Stevie Johnson has several crucial drops
against the Jets as they come just short of knocking off the Jets and keeping
their postseason hopes alive.
The Ugly: The Eagles
blow an early 10 point lead over the Patriots to fall to 4-7 and out of the
playoff race.
So much for the “Dream Team” eh? I mean no one really
thought they would beat the Patriots without Michael Vick and Jeremy Maclin,
but they were at home and they should have been able to put together a better
performance than this. And it was really just cruel to their fans to start off
so hot and then falter so quickly afterwards. They were up 10-0 in the first
quarterback, before allowing the Patriots to score three unanswered touchdowns
and then going into the half with an 11 point deficit. It also didn’t help that
they then allowed that to become a 25 point deficit before scoring a late and
meaningless touchdown. I understand that the passing game was working against
the Patriots’ league worst defense, but it obviously did not work out well
enough. Andy Reid continually forgets that his best weapon by far is running
back LeSean McCoy. Reid, for the last freaking time, run the damn ball! His
obsession with passing is killing his team and making it difficult for a very
talented team to win any games. McCoy
should be handed the ball at least 15-20 times, no matter what the situation
is, but when you have a backup quarterback starting, your top receiver out, and
your most explosive receiver seems to have given up on the season, he should be
getting the ball more like 25-30. McCoy ran the ball only 10 times the entire
game. Also, when playing Tom Brady, you would think you would want him off the
field as much as possible so that he wouldn’t throw for over 360 yards and
three touchdowns against you, which is what he did against the Eagles. I wonder
how you could do that… oh yea, run the ball! Clearly I have a theme here and I
am not sure how long it will take Reid to figure this simple fact out, but it
might already be too late to save his job.
Runner Up: Ndamukong Suh’s stomp heard round the world may
have cost the Lions their first playoff performance since the 90s.
No comments:
Post a Comment