Sorry I missed the last week of the season, but I was
extremely busy and was very depressed over my Jets falling apart at the end of
the season. Let’s just say Matt Flynn was great, the Raiders blew a huge
opportunity to win the AFC West, and the Jets took the ugly cake.
Moving on to the Wild Card round of the playoffs. I always
think this is the most exciting round of the playoffs because you never know
who is going to play up to their potential or fall on their faces. Despite all
of the wild card teams being knocked out of the playoffs already, there were
still a couple of upsets/surprising performances. Check out the highlights.
The Good: Tim Tebow
throws for a career best 316 yards and an NFL record 31.6 yards per completions
against the top ranked Steelers defense.
Drew Brees was amazing yet again against the Lions, but so
was Matt Flynn the week earlier so I just had to go with Tebow’s performance.
The Steelers made the mistake of trying to defend against what they had seen
Tebow do this season instead of what he is capable of doing and it cost them
the game. They kept all their defenders close to the line of scrimmage in order
to stop the run and Tebow beat them with the deep ball over and over again. Not
having free safety Ryan Clark really hurt this defense and Tebow exploited that
early and often. This was by far Tebow’s best game as a pro and it shows his
immense potential when he can throw the ball accurately. It also didn’t hurt
that Demaryius Thomas averaged over 50 yards a catch and his offensive line was
spectacular, but still a great day for Tebow.
The Bad: Andy Dalton
threw a career high three interceptions to zero touchdowns against the Texans
after throwing just 13 interceptions all year long.
Dalton had a better rookie year than he has gotten credit
for, mostly because he plays in Ohio, and if it wasn’t for Cam Newton’s record
breaking year, he would be hands down the rookie of the year. I know he had a
pretty easy schedule, but he took a four win team to the playoffs in his first
year which is no easy feat. This is also an offense that had no established
receiver, yet he was extremely efficient and led his team to nine wins. He
showed off an arm that was significantly better than he got credit for in the
draft, which I am personally guilty of, and was the clear leader of this
extremely young offense. It is unfortunate that his season had to end this way,
but he has really struggled against the top defenses in the league so it will
be interesting to see how he progresses over the next few years. The Texans
defense confused him all day and since they could not get anything going on the
ground, Dalton was forced to try to carry the team. It did not work out for the
Bengals this week, but the future is still bright for this team.
The Ugly: The
Falcons’ offense scores zero points against the Giants.
Wow were the Falcons bad all over the field in this game,
but as bad as the defense was, the offense was way worse. Michael Turner
averaged 2.7 yards a carry against a very mediocre Giants’ run defense and the
Giants forced the offense to run through the passing game. Matt Ryan again had
an awful performance in the playoffs despite all the talent around him and the
Falcons as an organization have to start thinking about whether or not they
actually have a franchise quarterback. The Falcons gave up basically two draft
classes in order to get their hands on Julio Jones to help Ryan progress.
Despite having his best statistical season, he was pretty inconsistent,
especially early in the year, and might have had the worst game of his career
last week. This team was not one player away from being a Super Bowl team,
obviously, and their move to get Jones really hurts their chances of rebuilding
an aging and ineffective defense. The future is not so bright for this franchise, who will also have to
replace the soon to be retired Tony Gonzalez on offense.
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