2013 Offseason Update, Week 1

Gregg Williams has a new look that we can only hope corresponds to a
new motivational philosophy. Photo credit to titansonline.com.

We are now a full week into the offseason and I’m already having dreams of pre-season starting, a sure sign I’m going through withdrawal.

I’m not sure yet what I will write about for the rest of this week, but today I am just going to cover a few of the big stories from last week that some of you may not have seen.

Because I took the past few days off from writing, my flow may be a little off today.  Forgive me while I get back into the swing of things.

Anquan Boldin Done?

Joe Flacco’s upcoming contract has been over-covered and over-analyzed since winning MVP for Super Bowl XLVII. The problem with his raise is that either Jacoby Jones or Anquan Boldin may not get new contracts because of cap limitations. Boldin said last week that if he does not get a new contract, he will retire. He says he will never put on a uniform other than that of the Ravens.

Michael Vick Remains an Eagle

This one just came in today. Vick signed a 1-year contract that could be worth up to $10 million, though I would assume too many fumbles and interceptions would cost him on payday.

Gregg Williams Returns

Williams was banned from the NFL indefinitely after news of his involvement in a bounty system with the New Orleans Saints. The ban was lifted a few days ago and Williams joined the Tennessee Titans’ coaching staff as a senior assistant defensive coach.

Giant Changes

While the Yankees were fairly quiet during the offseason, being unusually frugal, the Giants are going about a similar quest with a different philosophy. The Giants have released a few big names, including running back Ahmad Bradshaw and defensive tackle Chris Canty as they look to free up cap space for the offseason.

If you would like to hear my thoughts on any other offseason news from the past week, feel free to contact me via my blog’s Facebook page or my Twitter account, @cpuffnfl.

Divisional Round Afterword: 49ers vs Packers

Colin Kaepernick threw for two touchdowns and ran for two more in his
NFL postseason debut, leading San Francisco to a 45-31 victory over
Green Bay. Photo credit to CBS News.

Colin Kaepernick had nearly identical passing numbers as Aaron Rodgers despite attempting and completing fewer passes. The difference was Kaepernick’s record-setting day on the ground. While Aaron Rodgers carried the ball three times for 28 yards, Kaepernick ran 16 times for an NFL record 181 yards. He broke Michael Vick’s record for rushing yards by a quarterback in a postseason game during the third quarter. By the final gun, he had broken Vick’s overall single-game record.

So Colin had a terrific game, but that wasn’t it for San Francisco’s offense. Frank Gore added 119 yards on the ground and a pair of receptions for 48 yards. In all, the 49ers gained 579 offensive yards, 323 of them on the ground.

The 49ers also possessed the ball for 16 more minutes than the Packers, so Green Bay’s defense was exhausted in the second half, explaining how a 24-21 halftime lead for San Francisco turned into a 45-24 lead until Green Bay scored a garbage-time touchdown with 67 seconds left.

Kaepernick showed terrific poise in the game. Two minutes in, he tried to hit Vernon Davis to the left but Sam Shields picked it off and took it 52 yards to the house. After that, Kaepernick led San Francisco on back-to-back nine-play drives, the first of which resulted in a touchdown.

For Green Bay, it was a painful reminder of their Week 1 loss to this very team. Alex Smith started that early-season matchup, but it apparently didn’t matter which quarterback started for the 49ers.

San Francisco will play in the NFC Championship for the second consecutive season. Last year they lost at home to the eventual Super Bowl Champion New York Giants. They will play in Atlanta this Sunday at 3:00 p.m. for a second chance to advance to the Super Bowl for the sixth time in franchise history.

10 Things You Need to Know: NFL Regular Season Week 9

The AFC is a little more even through
eight weeks than the NFC is.

Happy Halloween to all my readers! Be safe but have fun!

‘Like’ The All-Sports Crew on Facebook to keep up with updates! The All-Sports Crew will air on WMUC Sports, live, tonight from 7-8.

10.            Trade Deadline

Because of Hurricane Sandy, the trade deadline was pushed back from Tuesday (yesterday) to Thursday (tomorrow). The deadline had already been pushed back two weeks from where it was last year to encourage more deals.

So far, one trade of note has come in after the original deadline passed. Wide receiver Mike Thomas was traded from the Jaguars to the Lions in exchange for a mid-round draft pick. Nate Burleson broke his leg last week and Detroit hopes that between Thomas and Titus Young, who is coming off a big game, will help pull coverage off Calvin Johnson.

9.            DeAngelo Hall

Shanahan, it’s time. Hall was ejected after getting into it with an official during Sunday’s game in Pittsburgh. Tuesday he tried to deflect blame when he appeared on a radio show. As it is, his level of play is declining significantly each year and while he was a good play for the Redskins for a couple years, he isn’t there anymore. That, mixed with his attitude, should be enough to ship him out of Washington when the season ends.

8.            Michael Vick

Andy Reid decided Wednesday that Michael Vick will remain the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. Most experts are agreeing with the move, and I am, too. The Eagles are still in the playoff hunt, and bringing in an inexperienced quarterback, good as it may be for the future of the franchise, is not the right move as long as the team still has a chance of extending their season.

7.            Fantasy Disappointments

There were plenty of fantasy disappointments this week, so I’ll just list a few that stood out to me.

• Victor Cruz scored all of three points in my fantasy league, one of which came off his two receptions because it’s a PPR league. Don’t worry too much, yet, because his eight targets still led the team, and it was somewhat reminiscent of the Week 1 matchup against the Cowboys, which he bounced off of nicely, but it was still a disappointing week.
• The Vikings defense was averaging 14.5 points per home game this season. But when Tampa Bay paid a visit, Minnesota’s unit scored -2 points. Yes, two points in the red. That’s a disappointing outing anyway, but especially at home where the Vikings defense has been rock solid in 2012.
• Jamaal Charles scored just 1.5 points in my league this week. He had three consecutive big weeks earlier this season, but that feels like a distant memory now. Romeo Crennel was at a loss for why Charles only carried the ball five times against Oakland, so figure that he’ll carry much more against a struggling San Diego defense.

6.            Fantasy Surprises

• Matthew Stafford scored more points than anyone else in the NFL this week with 36. It was more of a disappointment for me, though, because he was on my bench. After he had struggled early in the season, I benched my first round pick – I’m aSHAMEd of that (Dave Dameshek would be proud) – for Andy Dalton. Dalton was on bye this week. So what do I do? I pick up Ryan Tannehill and start him. He gets hurt, scores no points. Meanwhile, Stafford is having his first multi-touchdown game of the season, sitting on my bench. If I had started him, I would have won my matchup by 3 points. Okay, I’m good.
• Seattle shut down Calvin Johnson and Titus Young responded. 28.5 points was good for fifth most in my league for Week 8.

5.            Games to Watch

Like last week, I’ll be more specific on why these are the biggest games to watch in my predictions post tomorrow.

• Kansas City Chiefs at San Diego Chargers (Thursday, 8:20 p.m.)
• Denver Broncos at Cincinnati Bengals (Sunday, 1:00 p.m.)
• Carolina Panthers at Washington Redskins (Sunday, 1:00 p.m.)
• Miami Dolphins at Indianapolis Colts (Sunday, 1:00 p.m.)
• Pittsburgh Steelers at New York Giants (Sunday, 4:25 p.m.) 

4.            Power Rankings

For the sake of space, I will list just the top 6 and the bottom 6 here. You can see the rest on NFL.com.

1. Atlanta Falcons	27. Buffalo Bills
2. Houston Texans	28. Cleveland Browns
3. Chicago Bears	29. Carolina Panthers
4. New York Giants	30. New Orleans Saints
5. San Francisco 49ers	31. Jacksonville Jaguars
6. Green Bay Packers	32. Kansas City Chiefs

You figure that at this point of the season, there won’t be much change. In fact, the top six is identical to last week’s. But there were a few big changes. In particular, the Lions and Buccaneers both jumped 10 spots to 14^th and 16^th respectively. The Cardinals and Eagles dropped six spots to 19^th and 20^th and the Jets fell from 18^th to 25^th.

The Power Poll is a better representation of where the teams stack up, in my opinion. Check that out here.

3.            New York Giants

Despite nearly blowing a 23-0 lead in Dallas, the Giants maintained their standing as 4^th in the NFL.com Power Rankings. The Cowboys are reeling, and so some may think the Giants are doing the same. But this is a script many of us have seen before. The Giants struggle against the Cowboys. But after a tough loss in Week 1, I think all we needed to see was them win to keep our confidence in New York sky high.

2.            Atlanta Falcons

The Falcons were already #1, so they can’t go any higher, but in handing Andy Reid and his Eagles their first ever loss after a bye, the Falcons are flying higher than ever. The Falcons’ last three games have been near losses, but Atlanta is now 7-0 and faces a relatively easy schedule ahead. That spells trap, and I won’t hop on any undefeated bandwagons, but this is a team that could represent a stacked NFC in the Super Bowl, if they can put their postseason woes behind them.

1.            American Football Conference

Speaking of a stacked NFC, what about the AFC. The Houston Texans are the only team in the conference in the top 6 of the Power Rankings and of the Power Poll. But the first four out on both lists are the Ravens, Patriots, Broncos, and Steelers. A lot is being made of the NFC because there is usually a clearer line between those who will be in the playoffs and those who won’t be by this time in the season. The two conferences have seemingly switched places, with just about everyone within a few games of each other in the AFC.

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.

Pre-Season Week 2 Look-back

We have reached the halfway point of the 2012 Pre-Season, but the Regular Season could not feel further away. Everybody loves the first couple games of the Pre-Season. But by this time we’ve seen all our teams’ players and are ready for the games to start counting. Maybe if the season ever expands to 18 games that will happen, but for now we have two more weeks to hunker down for before the chase for Super Bowl XLVII begins.

We had plenty of action this week, and the AFC North did well, winning three of their four games. It started on Thursday when both the Bengals and Browns won against teams that I have winning their respective divisions in the NFC. Cincinnati beat Atlanta by less than a touchdown, but the surprise was Cleveland’s 35-10 blowout win over Green Bay. Brandon Weeden did well, though he was fortunate to leave with no picks thrown after making a couple very poor decisions. The Packers’ biggest concern should probably be that their two leading rushers in the game were Aaron Rodgers (2 carries, 24 yards) and backup Quarterback Graham Harrell (3 carries, 23 yards).

All six games on Friday featured an NFC team taking on an AFC team, five of those games with the NFC team hosting. The NFC won four of the games, and three of their home games. Tennessee blew out the Buccaneers in Tampa and the Jaguars squeaked by the Saints in the Superdome for the only two AFC wins of the day.

Detroit played a great game in Baltimore, scoring 17 points in the second quarter behind a pair of touchdown passes by Matthew Stafford who went 12-17 for 184 yards. Five of those completions went to Calvin Johnson, who turned them into 111 yards and a score. The final in that game was 27-12 as Baltimore fell in the AFC’s only home game of the evening.

Carolina beat Miami at home and Minnesota got a home win against the Bills, but it was the late game that drew most of my attention on Friday. The Raiders didn’t have a very memorable game, though undrafted Wide Receiver Rod Streater did have a pretty good game. He only had 43 receiving yards, but they were on seven receptions. With Oakland’s other receivers struggling massively, he could be a fantasy dark horse. On the Cardinals’ side, Kevin Kolb looked terrible. John Skelton looked good, but he only threw three passes. He completed all three of them, one of them going for a touchdown, but Ken Whisenhunt pulled him out immediately after his third completion like he was scared something would happen that would ruin it, so it’s a bit early to jump on his fantasy bandwagon.

The Jets couldn’t wait to play the Giants, and they got that chance, and wasted it, on Saturday as the defending Super Bowl Champions got a 26-3 win as the Jets played as the home team. The Jets had been trying to make a case for being New York’s team over the past few seasons, and though this is only the Pre-Season, last year’s regular season win by the Giants, and of course the Giants Super Bowl XLVI win have pretty much skewered that notion.

The Redskins came back with a very impressive fourth quarter by Kirk Cousins, who you have to think has proven that he should move past Rex Grossman to #2 on Washington’s depth chart. It wasn’t quite enough as the Bears still got a 33-31 win at home, but it was something positive after RGIII struggled for most of the first half.

Houston won at home against San Francisco, but the 49ers shouldn’t be too worried yet. Only playing in one half, we can’t expect too much out of Alex Smith in the Pre-Season. The 49ers will be fine once their first team is playing entire games. Sam Bradford looked good in St. Louis’ win over Kansas City. He only threw nine passes but completed six of them for over 100 yards and two touchdowns.

Denver backed up their 31-3 week 1 win in Chicago with a 30-10 loss at home against the Seahawks, showing severe inconsistency. Manning looked good in his second outing, but did throw a pair of picks. His accuracy is mostly there, but he is still not 100% when trying to stretch the defense with downfield throws. Dallas’ first team offense still didn’t look very good this week. They scored 10 points in the first half, which isn’t terrible, but you hope for more. Their first team defense, however, looked great. After the team shut out the Raiders last week, the Cowboys’ first team defense blanked San Diego’s first team offense. The Chargers won the game thanks to 21 fourth quarter points.

Andrew Luck didn’t do great, but he didn’t do badly either. It is all a learning experience for the rookie quarterback. He threw his first interception and was sacked for the first time in his team’s visit to Pittsburgh, but there was plenty to like, too. He completed 16 of 25 passes for 175 yards. He also scored a touchdown on a triple option run.

Last night was the final game of the week as the Patriots hosted the Eagles. Tom Brady didn’t play at all – Belichick rested him and a few other players as last night’s game marked the start of a 3-game-in-10-day stretch. Michael Vick sustained a hit on his ribs that knocked him out of the game. It was the second week in a row he left with an injury, though the X-rays came back negative for the second straight time. The good news for the Eagles is that Nick Foles did well in backing up Vick, going 18-28 for 217 yards and a pair of scoring throws against the Patriots’ first team defense. The Eagles went on to win 27-17.

This week action begins on Thursday again, but the last games will be played on Sunday, so my next look-back will be next Monday. Tomorrow I will post this week’s Things You Need to Know, so keep a lookout for that. Thanks for reading everyone!