Sunday Football Afterword: Week 5 Early Games

The Colts earned an emotional win just a week after learning
head coach Chuck Pagano is fighting leukemia.

There were plenty of headlines to make Sunday’s games exciting, even when the games themselves weren’t so much.

Baltimore played to a 9-6 win in Kansas City, hardly a must-watch game. Baltimore gave up 140 rushing yards to Jamaal Charles, but Kansas City turned the ball over four times. It was possibly the most boring game of the day, despite several blowouts during the later games. Matt Cassel went down with a head injury, and the crowd began cheering. It is still not apparent if the cheering was for Cassel getting injured, for Brady Quinn entering the game, or for Cassell when he got up and was leaving the field, but it was enough to send one Chiefs player on a tirade about football players not being gladiators.

I fully expected Cincinnati to beat Miami, but not only did Andy Dalton continue his streak of consecutive games to start a season with at least one interception (don’t worry Redskins fans, he’s nowhere near your record), he threw two picks on the game, the second one on Cincinnati’s last drive of the game. Miami won 17-13.

Cleveland forced an early Ahmad Bradshaw fumble and turned it into seven points on a powerful Trent Richardson run. A few minutes later a big touchdown pass gave Cleveland a 14-0 lead and suddenly everyone in America was put on upset alert. It was all for naught as Eli Manning kept his cool and led his team to a 41-27 rout of the still-winless Browns.

Michael Vick’s turnover issues seemed gone after Philadelphia’s best game of the young season, a legitimate victory over the Giants in Week 4. They came back in full force yesterday as he fumbled twice and Pittsburgh won on a game-winning field goal by Shaun Suisham.

Atlanta and Washington played one of the more exciting games of the day. Washington had their best defensive game of the season, and it came against one of the best offenses in the NFC. For once it was their offense that struggled at times, especially on third down. Robert Griffin III went down in the third quarter with a concussion (the Redskins could be in trouble about how they reported it, though) and Kirk Cousins came in and threw a 77-yard touchdown pass for his first career touchdown. He struggled afterwards, mostly due to a worn-out offensive line not giving him time to set, and threw two interceptions that kept a possible comeback from forming. Atlanta is now 5-0 for the first time in franchise history and the Redskins have lost 8 consecutive home games. They play Minnesota at home next week.

The biggest story line from the early games came out of Indianapolis. In a storybook ending, the Colts overcame several lead changes to beat the Packers and secure a game ball for hospitalized head coach Chuck Pagano, who was diagnosed with a treatable form of Leukemia last weekend. Reggie Wayne, who had ties to Pagano from his college days and accepted a smaller contract than he deserved in order to stay in Indianapolis and play for Pagano, has a career-high 212 receiving yards, including several key plays in the fourth quarter while battling cramps.

Keep Coach Pagano in your prayers. The form of leukemia he is battling is one that many adults have been known to recover from, but there is no telling how late he may have been in getting it diagnosed. To show your support, include the hashtag #CHUCKSTRONG on tweets.

Check back a few hours for my recap of the later games. Tomorrow I will publish my recap of tonight’s Monday Night Football matchup between the unbeaten Houston Texans and the reeling New York Jets, who have said they plan to make more use of Tim Tebow in the game.