NFL Week 6 Afterword

This about sums up Monday night's game.

A paper has kept me busy for the better part of the weekend and meant I couldn’t write yesterday and I have to combine everything important into one post, so I’ll stick to the essentials.

Week 6 was a week of surprises, upsets, and failed expectations. Atlanta barely stayed undefeated against Oakland, the Cowboys’ poor time management may have cost them a win in Baltimore, Cleveland kicked the winless bucket and the Jets made it difficult to call their rout of Indianapolis a fluke.

In Philadelphia, the Eagles held a 10-point lead in the 4^th quarter. Then their defense imploded, allowing Detroit to come back and ultimately win the game in overtime. Juan Castillo, the Eagles’ defensive coordinator, was fired Tuesday morning and replaced by secondary coach Todd Bowles.

Tampa Bay had a blocked-punt-interception returned for a touchdown, but still crushed the Chiefs 38-10. Yes, you read that right. The Tampa Bay punter had a punt blocked into the end zone. He retrieved it, took two steps out of the end zone, ‘threw’ it (I use that term loosely here), and had it intercepted and returned for a touchdown. That’s a lot for one play; my head was spinning.

Arizona led a late 4^th quarter drive to try and win at home against Buffalo, but the field goal missed and the Bills won in overtime to stay alive in a division that has a 4-way tie at 3-3.

For that tie to be, New England had to lose in Seattle, and lose they did. Up 23-10 in the final quarter, there was no way New England should have expected to lose. Seattle started with a 5-play, 83-yard drive that capped with a 10-yard touchdown strike from Russell Wilson to Braylon Edwards. Still, New England felt like they had control of the game. Seattle got the ball back, but went 3-and-out. Then they stopped New England again and Seattle went on a 4-play touchdown drive ending with a 46-yard pass from Wilson to Sidney Rice.

In another game that didn’t go nearly as expected, not only did the Giants beat San Francisco in Candlestick for the third time in two seasons, they did convincingly. After the 49ers outscored their opponents 79-3 over the last two weeks, they lost 26-3 against the Giants on Sunday.

Minnesota had a 9-0 lead in Washington after the first quarter. It should have been 17-0 or even 21-0 with the way Washington’s defense looked, but they buckled down every time the Vikings got into the red zone. Then the Redskins took off, kick started by newly-acquired Kai Forbath’s first NFL field goal attempt, a successful 50-yarder for his teams first points of the day. Washington, and more specifically Robert Griffen III, outran Minnesota in a 38-26 victory that marked their first home win in over a year.

I picked Green Bay to beat Houston, so I wasn’t surprised that Houston’s unbeaten run came to an end Sunday night. I was surprised by the way it happened. Aaron Rodgers tied Matt Flynn’s team record for touchdown passes in a game with 6. The final score of 42-24 doesn’t even come close to telling the story of that night. The whooping Green Bay gave Houston was even worse than the score suggests. Be wary of picking the Packers going forward. They’ve been inconsistent this year, and one breakout performance does not fix everything.

Courtesy of NFL Memes

The final game of the weekend was Monday night’s shocker in San Diego. Again, I picked the Broncos to win, but I could never have expected how it was. “A tale of two halves” is incredibly cliché, but it is the best description for the story of Monday’s game. The Broncos offense stumbled, quite literally I might add. Down 10-0, a long, perfect pass to a wide-open Eric Decker was caught, but the 46-yard line wanted in on the action and took Decker’s feet right out from under him. A few plays later, bad route communication led to an 80-yard pick six thrown by Manning. Suddenly it was 17-0 when it could have been 10-7, and by the time halftime came around and it was 24-0 San Diego, we all had a feeling it just wasn’t Denver’s night.

But Denver came out firing in the second half. Multiple times, the Broncos have dug themselves a hole and Peyton Manning has nearly brought them out of it, but until last night they hadn’t been able to pull one out completely. Denver scored on their first three offensive possessions of the second half, and got some help from their defense in the way of two additional scores. San Diego had the ball six times in the second half. The first resulted in a fumble by Rivers, the second lost four yards and the Chargers punted. The next three all ended in interceptions and the final possessions resulted in a fumble by Rivers. That’s five turnovers in the second half by the Chargers, six total for the game. Phillip Rivers had a hand in every single turnovers. All six!! The final score? 35-24. Yes, that’s 24-0 San Diego in the first half, 35-0 Denver in the second.

It was an unexpectedly exciting Week 6, and though it leaves a lot of confusion going forward (making my picks this weekend is going drive me halfway to insanity), it certainly makes football exciting. It almost made us forget about the replacement officials and how they scored the league up for three weeks. Almost.