Monday Night Football Afterword: Bears vs Lions

Monday's matchup was the 110th MNF game
televised by ESPN.

In a rehashing of the oldest rivalry in the National Football League, the Lions got crushed by the Bears. Okay, so they didn’t exactly get crushed, but anyone who watched any of the game knows that the 13-7 victory for the Bears was no escape either.

The Lions scored a late touchdown to avoid being shut out, but they played a terrible game. The Lions failed multiple times to get Calvin Johnson open, and the one time he did break wide open, early in the game, he dropped a well-placed pass by Stafford.

There were seven possessions inside the red zone between the two teams. Only two resulted in points. The Bears had enough scoring to make up for their two failed red zone attempts, but the Lions started 0/3 inside the red zone before their meaningless late touchdown. They fumbled just inside the 20 late in the second quarter, then fumbled again one yard out of the end zone in the third quarter. The third red zone turnover for the Lions was an interception three yards out.

So while the game certainly was not a blow out, I would still say that ‘crushed’ is a fair description of the Lions after last night. They had a few solid drives that should have resulted in some sort of points, but they repeatedly got crushed near the goal line.

Unfortunately, due to an outside obligation, I was unable to see the entire game. I watched the early portion of the game and a fair amount of the fourth quarter. From replays and recaps I have seen and read, I have gathered that it was a statement game for the Bears. However, I have to ask what explanation there is for the Lions driving so effectively leading up to those turnovers. The Lions could have easily won this game with just one or two of those turnovers not happening.

Once again, I still hesitate to put my trust in the Bears. I have no doubt they will win the NFC North, but once they get to the postseason I have a very difficult time believing this is the team to represent the NFC in New Orleans. Don’t get me wrong; this is a good team with some terrific players. But they haven’t played against a really good team yet. Even their loss came to a Packers team that had not gelled yet.

Chicago’s second half is a little more difficult. After two more games that should be easy wins – against Carolina and Tennessee – the Bears host Houston and then visit Candlestick. A win in San Francisco would give me a big confidence boost in them. But they also have two games against a competitive Minnesota team, matchups with defensive juggernauts Seattle and Arizona, and a home game against a Green Bay team that looks much better than they had during the first few weeks of the season.

Detroit, meanwhile, I think can be fairly dropped from serious postseason discussion. The Lions have lost Nate Burleson, possibly for the rest of the season, to a broken leg. Considering they have failed to come up with a solid game plan that gets the ball in Calvin Johnson’s hands, Stafford is about out of options. There is also talk that Jahvid Best may have played his last game because no doctor wants to sign off on him playing again after his recent concussion. Lions fans should be very worried about the very real possibility of their team returning to the cellar of the NFL. As long as Stafford is around, don’t expect another 0-16 season, but I could see some seasons with only three to six wins in the near future without some major offseason changes.

Sunday Football Afterword: Week 7 Late Games

I’ll start with the early evening game I didn’t get to watch – Jacksonville at Oakland. I expected the Raiders to win, and they did. I didn’t expect Jacksonville to make a game of it, and I certainly did not expect so after MJD went down early in the first quarter with an injury. Jones-Drew may miss extended time, and despite a close loss to Oakland, they should be worried. Oakland did not play very well. They should have blown Jacksonville out of California. They let the Jaguars stay close and it took a QB sneak by Carson Palmer late in the game to even force overtime.

The game I got to watch was, thankfully, the good one. As always, the Jets proved that Rex Ryan builds his team specifically for this matchup. It hasn’t worked consistently against anyone but New England. The Patriots escaped. Giants’ players said that’s how they felt against RGIII and the Redskins, and the Patriots should feel the same way about the Jets. Mark Sanchez played a really good game, but a couple key drops killed drives and kept New York from putting the game out of reach. Predictably, the Jets held a lead late in the fourth quarter and Tom Brady let his team on a drive to a game-tying field goal. As in Oakland, an overtime field goal gave the home team the victory.

The late game was pretty exciting during the first half. Cincinnati showed up in the first half after being the Browns’ first victim of the 2012 season. Pittsburgh also seemed spurred on by their embarrassing Thursday loss against Tennessee. But the second half was all Pittsburgh. They stuck with Jonathan Dwyer, who broke several big runs to keep dives going. Roethlisberger didn’t play great, but he made enough plays and took enough downfield shots to keep the running game open. After a decent first half, Andy Dalton did nothing in the second half as he continues to be inconsistent.

Wow, only having three games certainly does keep posts short. Check back tomorrow for my Afterword on tonight’s Monday Night Football matchup between the Lions and Bears in Chicago. Thanks for reading!

Sunday Football Afterword: Week 7 Early Games

There were eight 1:00 games on Sunday, eight!! That’s a lot, especially when there were only 2 in the early evening slot. But let’s get too all the early action.

Some games just plain were not exciting. Baltimore played a lousy game, continued to ignore their all-pro running back by only giving Ray Rice nine carries in the game, and got blown out by Houston 43-13. On the new Total Quarterback Rating system, which rates everything a quarterback does on a scale of 0-100, Flacco scored 0.3, the lowest for any quarterback since 2008. The bright side was that Terrell Suggs was not only back but also phenomenal, but it did little to slow down the Texans attack.

Dallas and Carolina played a close game, but it was also boring. Cam Newton continues to show that he struggles with adversity, and the Panthers ought to just be called the Steve Smiths, because he seems to be the only one out there who knows what he’s doing. The Panthers should have won the game.

New Orleans and Tampa Bay played a very strange game. Drew Brees was rolling in the first half with over 300 passing yards, 4 touchdown passes and one interception on a tipped ball. He had 32 fantasy points in my league at halftime! He totaled 3 more fantasy points in the second half as the Saints went insanely conservative and the Buccaneers led a furious comeback that almost sent the game into overtime if it hadn’t been for illegal touching being called on a Tampa Bay touchdown pass on the last play of the game. I know it’s typically frowned upon to run up the score, but that’s when you’re winning by three scored in the last 5 minutes of the game. When it’s halftime, no lead is safe; we saw that last Monday Night.

I didn’t get a chance to see much footage from the Packers win over the Rams or Minnesota’s 21-14 win over Arizona. Generally I can watch a bit from everything, but eight games at once was a bit much.

The Bills played much better than I anticipated, which seems to be a common trend. They are very streaky. There are teams that do really well one week and then very poorly the next and I learn quickly not to jump on the bandwagon after a good week. Then there is Buffalo. They’ll play very well for a few weeks and I’ll start thinking they’ve gotten things figured out, then they back into irrelevance for a while and we overlook them. They showed up against Tennessee, but, just their luck, Chris Johnson decided to have his second good game of the season and Matt Hasselbeck showed that he isn’t as washed up as many people seem to think.

The Colts played a pretty good game, but so too did the Browns. I can’t sit here and say that Cleveland will be an AFC North title contender in a few years time, because the Browns have an uncanny knack for screwing up their team in the offseason and starting right where they did the year before every year. But Brandon Weeden is playing very well, maybe even better than Andrew Luck the past two weeks. But the Colts have a couple more pieces than Cleveland and were able to pull out an important win.

I don’t think anybody would argue about the most exciting game of the day. The Giants and Redskins squared off in East Rutherford and it was quite a battle. The first half saw the Redskins score on all three possessions (a touchdown and two field goals). The Giants scored three times on four possessions and it was tied at 13 at halftime. The second half was entirely different, but both teams still scored plenty.

Eli Manning threw two uncharacteristic interceptions in the second half, but the Redskins turned the ball over four times in the last 30 minutes, three of them on fumbles. Griffin III’s only interception was on a double clutch that he normally would not have released. The turnovers were enough to doom Washington. RGIII led a drive late in the fourth quarter to give the Redskins the lead, but it was too soon as Manning quickly found Victor Cruz for a long touchdown play. There was still plenty of time for Washington, and they were driving nicely, but Santana Moss fumbled near midfield with about 45 seconds left to play and that was it.

Check back later for my Sunday Football Afterword for the three late games. Thanks for reading everyone!

Thursday Night Football Afterword: 49ers vs Seahawks

Home teams are now 5-1 on TNF in 2012

The 13-6 final score of last night’s game suggests a game we would expect from two NFC West teams specializing in defense. But I didn’t feel defensive prowess had all that big a part in the low-scoring game. Rather, it felt more like a game featuring two teams struggling with offensive impotence.

Seattle controlled the game early on, but dropped passes and stalled drives doomed them to two early field goals to carry a 6-3 lead into halftime.

More dropped passes would follow, even as San Francisco’s offense picked up. Alex Smith had thrown just one interception this season until his 3-pick outing last week against New York. He threw another pick last night but the Seahawks offensive struggles kept them from taking advantage of the takeaway.

Frank Gore had a fantastic game. He didn’t score a touchdown but fantasy owners will be pleased with his performance anyway, gaining 131 rushing yards and another 51 through the air.

After a couple really nice runs by Kendall Hunter, the Seattle defense held him to just 31 yards on 9 carries, but he still only has one carry for negative yards all season.

A big problem for Seattle was dropped passes, but it didn’t help that Russell Wilson only managed three completions during the second half when the 49ers defense did start playing well. Golden Tate also did not help Seattle’s cause. He had no receptions in the game, though he did drop an open pass on one ‘what if’ third down play.

At the end of the game, a chop block penalty in against Seattle in the end zone gave San Francisco a safety and the ball, but as it was on 4^th down and the defense stopped Seattle one yard shy of the marker, Jim Harbaugh chose to decline the penalty, take the ball right away, and sit on the ball twice rather than taking the 9-point lead and the ball with about a minute left.

I felt that it was not the best decision, but there are certainly arguments for both positions.

The victory gives San Francisco the NFC West lead with 10 weeks left in their season. They have won 11 consecutive home division games (almost four full seasons worth).

It was the second consecutive week that San Francisco’s offense looked lethargic after a strong start to the season, but their running game is still very much there and defense is the staple of this team, anyway. They may have lost their standing as the top team in the NFC, but they certainly cannot be overlooked.

Find me on Facebook to stay updated on new blog posts as I publish them and also show some love for my WMUC Sports talk show, The All-Sports Crew. You can also follow me on Twitter – I recently changed my tag to @cpuffnfl.

Thanks for reading everyone and enjoy the rest of Week 7. I’ll be back Monday with my Sunday Afterwords (no paper anymore, so I won’t miss it again)!

2012 NFL Predictions: Regular Season Week 7

Week 6 was a little bit of a step backwards, but I think that was pretty universal. It will be interesting if the turbulence we experienced will level out in Week 7 or just get crazier.

Week 7 Byes: Atlanta Falcons, Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, Philadelphia Eagles, San Diego Chargers

	Game	Puff’s Pick
Thurs., 8:20 pm	Seattle @ San Francisco	San Francisco 49ers
Sun., 1:00 pm	Arizona @ Minnesota	Minnesota Vikings
	Dallas @ Carolina	Dallas Cowboys
	New Orleans @ Tampa Bay	New Orleans Saints
	Green Bay @ St. Louis	St. Louis Rams
	Washington @ NY Giants	Washington Redskins
	Baltimore @ Houston	Baltimore Ravens
	Tennessee @ Buffalo	Tennessee Titans
	Cleveland @ Indianapolis	Cleveland Browns
Sun., 4:05 pm	NY Jets @ New England	New England Patriots
	Jacksonville @ Oakland	Oakland Raiders
Sun., 8:20 pm	Pittsburgh @ Cincinnati	Pittsburgh Steelers
Mon., 8:30 pm	Detroit @ Chicago	Chicago Bears

	Puff on the NFL
Week 7 Record	9-4
Current Season Record	59-45

Games to Watch (Predicted winners in Bold)

Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012, 8:20pm – Seattle Seahawks @ San Francisco 49ers

The Seahawks are coming off a big win at home against New England. The 49ers did exactly what they said all season that they wouldn’t, they got complacent and it showed at home against the Giants. The 49ers should win this game, but will the Seahawks prepare as underdogs like they should, or will they overestimate themselves after besting Tom Brady?

Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012, 1:00pm – Arizona Cardinals @ Minnesota Vikings

The Cardinals very well may have been exposed. The Vikings lost in Washington, but it’s hard to tell who is more at fault for that outcome. Regardless, this is a toss-up, and those are always fun games to watch.

Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012, 1:00pm – Washington Redskins @ New York Giants

The Giants rarely perform well as favorites coming off a resounding victory. The Redskins beat New York twice last year and are coming off an exciting win. With a target painted squarely on the Giants’ backs, will the Redskins hit a bull’s-eye?

Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012, 1:00pm – Baltimore Ravens @ Houston Texans

The Ravens defense is all but crippled. Arian Foster was about the only thing positive about Houston’s performance on Sunday, and he had arguable his least productive game of the season. Baltimore needs this win badly, but even at 5-1, Houston needs it just as much so.

Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012, 4:25pm – New York Jets @ New England Patriots

I mentioned yesterday that I’m tired of all the talk leading up these games. But I hope nobody took that as me dissing the game. It’s no secret that Rex Ryan builds his team specifically for this twice-a-year matchup. He’s done a fantastic team getting his team to compete with Belichick’s men, but he’s come up short more often than not, especially during the regular season. That said, this will be an important matchup when we’re preparing for the teams’ second meeting.

Stay tuned for recaps of this week’s games. Thanks for reading and enjoy the seventh week of the season!

10 Things You Need to Know: NFL Regular Season Week 7

By holding off the Raiders, the Falcons are the
last team in 2012 who can challenge the '72 Dolphins.

‘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.            Monday Night Miracle 2.0

For the second time in his career, Peyton Manning led his team on a miracle comeback on ESPN’s Monday Night Football. The first was with Indianapolis against Jon Gruden-led Tampa Bay, where he came back from a three score deficit with about five minutes left in the fourth quarter to win the game.

This time, Peyton began the charge, but it was ultimately a team effort. Trailing 24-0 at halftime, Manning led the Broncos on touchdown drives on each of their first three 2^nd half possessions. The defense helped, though, forcing five turnovers on six 2^nd half possessions for the Chargers, two of which were taken back for touchdowns. Denver won the second half, 35-0.

9.            Trouble in Baltimore

Haloti Ngata will recover fairly soon, his injury doesn’t appear to be too significant. Terrell Suggs is practicing this week. But that good news comes with bad news even further to the other end of the spectrum. Lardarius Webb and Ray Lewis are both out, likely for the season. Lewis is going to work hard and is holding out hope that his torn triceps will recover in time for a playoff push to the Super Bowl, but I think losing Webb hurts even more. The Ravens are not yet in any danger of missing the playoffs, but once there, they may not be able to do much.

8.            Sick of Jets/Patriots

Are you? I am! Rex Ryan needs to sleep with Bill Belichick already and get that love affair out of the way. I’m sure once Bill calls him ‘Fatty’ a few times he’ll stop praising him so much.

Speaking of Belichick, I’m also tired of him praising a player on every team he goes up against. ‘Tim Tebow is a great asset to that team.’ I’m as big a Tebow lover as the next guy, but seriously? Could Tebow be a valuable asset to the Jets? Sure, I think he could, if they used him. But they don’t. So focus on stopping Mark Sanchez, and if you praise him, well then good luck coaching an NFL team from a psychiatric ward.

7.            Playoff Picture

The Browns are only two games out of a playoff spot. Okay, I’ll stop there. If that is currently possible, then it most certainly is too early to continue this if the season ended today talk. Until a team is mathematically out and we have fewer teams fighting for those twelve spots, let’s focus on trying to figure out who is actually good!

Dave Dameshek said it better, and faster, than I possible could. So click here. The part that applies to this part of my post starts at 2:07.

6.            Fantasy Disappointments

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

• Dwayne Bowe, Antonio Brown and Jeremy Kerley. One week after you posted a respectable, though underwhelming 32 points for me, you all combined for just 11 points. Brandon Myers, starting in Jimmy Graham’s place, almost outscored all three of you! Shame!
• Not sure if this should be here or in the Fantasy Surprises list, but Philip Rivers scored 7 points. Not just 7 points. 7 points! How? How do you throw four picks and fumble the ball twice and still score 7 points?
• The five-game streak is over in Minnesota. Their defense hasn’t scored less than 10 fantasy points all season in my league. This week? A big fat goose egg.
• Likewise, Miles Austin didn’t seem to benefit from the bye week. After scoring double digits in all of the Cowboys’ first four games, he scored only 4 on Sunday.

5.            Fantasy Surprises

• Last year, this would have been par for the course – well, not actually, but it happened enough that I wouldn’t have been shocked. Aaron Rodgers scored 48 points in my league on Sunday night. Looking back at his other recent performances, he’s actually racked up a nice three-game stretch that covered up a terrible first three games. Somehow, we forgot he had turned it around.
• Robert Griffin III scored 37 in my fantasy league. It always helps when you break out a big run for a touchdown. If RGIII can avoid the sophomore slump Cam Newton is having, he’ll be go down in the Fantasy Football Hall of Fame! There isn’t one? There should be.
• Nelson has been shaken from his slumber. After a couple decent weeks to start the season and then some very disheartening performances to follow it up, Nelson scored three times against the Texans, reminding us all of the season he had last year. We’ll see if he can keep it up.
• Shonn Greene, why?! I picked you for my NFL.com league and you did nothing. Nothing!! I dropped you and you do this? After not scoring a touchdown, not scoring more than five points since Week 1, he rushed for three touchdowns and scored 34 fantasy points for the waiver wire.

4.            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.

• Seattle Seahawks at San Francisco 49ers (Thursday, 8:20 p.m.)
• Arizona Cardinals at Minnesota Vikings (Sunday, 1:00 p.m.)
• Washington Redskins at New York Giants (Sunday, 1:00 p.m.)
• Baltimore Ravens at Houston Texans (Sunday, 1:00 p.m.)
• New York Jets at New England Patriots (Sunday, 4:25 p.m.)

3.            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. Tennessee Titans
2. Houston Texans	28. New Orleans Saints
3. New York Giants	29. Cleveland Browns
4. Baltimore Ravens	30. Jacksonville Jaguars
5. Chicago Bears	31. Oakland Raiders
6. San Francisco 49ers	32. Kansas City Chiefs

It’s clear, at least to me, that the power rankings are not the best piece to use for picking games. Just that fact that the Texans only dropped one place after they got demolished at home by the Packers makes no sense to me. But that’s why I don’t make the rankings, I guess.

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

2.            New York Giants

The Giants didn’t shock me, but they did surprise me, as they did a lot of people with their huge win in San Francisco on Sunday. It was the third time in two seasons that they Giants have beaten a good 49ers team in that venue. If the Giants can have a good day as a favorite on Sunday against Washington, they’ll get my vote of confidence as the best team in the NFL.

1.            Atlanta Falcons

In the mean time, the Giants are not yet the best team in the NFC. The Falcons have won three straight games that could have as easily dropped them to 3-3. Instead they sit at 6-0. I would like this team a lot more if it was 3-3, though. Like the Giants, the Falcons play better as underdogs. Atlanta always shows up and has great regular season results. Then they play as favorites in the playoffs and have their heads handed them on a platter. The Giants haven’t performed as well and have snuck into the playoffs for both of their Super Bowl runs. I see a pattern here, and it seems to be much more widespread in this league than just with these two teams. How has this society become so complacent?

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.