Month: September 2019

The list of unbeaten teams was cut by one Thursday night when the Packer lost to the Eagles.

That leaves three AFC teams and three NFC teams at 3-0 plus Detroit is unbeaten at 2-0-1.

Barring ties, the list of unbeatens will shrink Sunday with the 3-0 Bills and 3-0 Pats and Lions and 3-0 Chiefs playing each other. The 3-0 49ers have a bye and the Rams figured to beat Tampa Bay to go to 4-0.

That leaves Dallas going for 4-0 at New Orleans, a tough place to play even with Teddy Bridgewater at quarterback for the Saints.

Flve teams are 0-3 in the AFC and two of them, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, will meet. Miami figures to fall to 0-4 against the Chargers and the 0-3 Broncos are favored against the 1-2 Jaguars and the 0-3 Jets have a bye.

Continue reading “Previewing NFL Week 4”

With three games in the books, the NFL season already is starting to take shape.

In the AFC, it looks like a two-team race for the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs. Along with Buffalo, they’re the only 3-0 teams in the conference, and the Bills meet the Patriots on Sunday.

Considering the Bills’ history against the Patriots, they figure to be vying for a wild-card spot, not the AFC East title. The Baltimore Ravens also don’t appear ready to challenge the top two after losing to the Chiefs.

Five AFC teams — the Miami Dolphins, New York Jets, Cincinnati Bengals, Pittsburgh Steelers and Denver Broncos — are 0-3.

In the NFC, it’s a more open race with four teams at 3-0 – the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers. And the Detroit Lions are unbeaten at 2-0-1, while the New Orleans Saints are 2-1 and showed they can win with Teddy Bridgewater at quarterback.

And while the Philadelphia Eagles may be the most disappointing team in the league at 1-2, you can’t rule them out. Washington is the only 0-3 team in the conference, while Arizona is 0-2-1.

Now a look at what happened last weekend:

Positives
–New York Giants GM David Gettleman got a lot of flak for making Daniel Jones the sixth pick in the draft when he may have been able to get him in the middle of the round, but Jones justified his faith in him in his first start. He led the team back from an 18-point deficit to beat the Tampa Bay Bucs 32-31. The Giants got a break when Matt Gay missed a 34-yard field goal attempt for the game-winner after coach Bruce Arians took a delay penalty to move the kick back five yards. That was a head-scratching move. But Arians said Gay was more effective five yards back. He also missed two extra points. Still, Jones passed for 336 yards, ran for two more and didn’t throw a pick. It’s too early to make snap judgments, but that’s what we do and the Giants may have found their QB of the future.

—Patrick Mahomes. What else is there to say about him? He threw for 374 yards and three touchdowns to beat the Ravens, 33-28. The Chiefs have now scored 26 or more points in a record 24 games in a row and done it every game Mahomes has started the last two years.

–Teddy Bridgewater wanted to stay with the Saints even though he knew he would be a backup. And the Saints were willing to pay him as an insurance policy in case Drew Brees got hurt. The Saints cashed in their policy when Brees was hurt a week ago. Bridgewater made his first start in Seattle and led the Saints to a 33-27 victory. He passed for 177 yards and two touchdowns without a pick. He can hold the fort until Brees gets back and shows once again how important a backup quarterback is.

–New England coach Bill Belichick, who likes to run up the score and often leaves Tom Brady in the game when the Pats are way ahead, actually did the prudent thing and pulled Brady with a 30-0 lead on the Jets so he didn’t risk Brady getting hurt. Rookie Jarrett Stidham came in and the Jets converted two takeaways, including a Stidham interception, into touchdowns. Better to lose the shutout than risk losing Brady.

—Kyle Allen got his second start of his career against the Cardinals and he threw for four touchdowns to lead Carolina to the victory in place of ailing Cam Newton. They don’t have to rush Newton back and already announced he is out for next week.

Negatives

–Rookie coaches aren’t making an impact. The seven of them are 4-16-1, and five of them – Vic Fangio, Adam Gase, Zac Taylor, Brian Flores and Kliff Kingsbury — don’t have a victory. Kingsbury is 0-2-1, and the other four are 0-3.

—Case Keenum threw three picks and lost two fumbles for the Redskins in a 31-15 loss to the Chicago Bears. On one of the fumbles he jumped up over the pile, extended the ball and got it knocked out of his hands. That only works on the goal line when it is a score once it is extended over the goal line. A veteran like Keenum should know better. It won’t be long before rookie Dwayne Haskins gets the call even though coach Jay Gruden said he is sticking with Keenum because the season isn’t lost.

–In case you doubted that holding calls are subjective, note that the officials averaged 5.7 per game in the first 33 games. After all the complaints about too many calls, director of officials Al Riveron held a conference calls with referees. They dropped to 2.9 per game in Week 3.

–Baltimore coach John Harbaugh went for two after three of the Ravens’ four touchdowns and didn’t make any, costing his team three points in a five-point loss. He even went for two when a touchdown cut the deficit to 11 points in the fourth quarter when an extra point would have cut it to 10, so the Ravens would have needed a touchdown and field goal to tie.

–Cleveland coach Freddie Kitchens didn’t have a good game making decisions in the loss to the Rams. He called a draw play on fourth-and-nine and with the Browns having a first-and-goal with all three timeouts, he didn’t call a running play or target Odell Beckham. He needs an offensive coordinator to call plays. The Browns are losing while he is learning the play calling. Why he was hired as the head coach in the first place is puzzling.

It’s very interesting that nine teams started off 2-0 and nine teams started off 0-2 this year.

Last year, seven started off 2-0 but only two of them made the playoffs. Six started off 0-2, then two of them made the playoffs. So we’ll see what the early records wind up meaning.

It’s noteworthy that four teams that started off 2-0 and ended up with losing records – the Cincinnati Bengals, Denver Broncos, Jacksonville Jaguars and Miami Dolphins — started off 0-2 this year.  The Los Angeles Rams and Kansas City Chiefs are only teams to start off 2-0 both years. Last year, both Buffalo Bills and Seattle Seahawks started off 0-2 and are 2-0 this year.

Game of the Week

Two young guns, Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson, will duel in Kansas City. Both have thrown seven touchdown passes and no picks in their first two games. The NFL apparently didn’t expect this to be a big early season game. It not only isn’t being played in primetime, but it isn’t even a late-afternoon game. It is being played at noon in Kansas City.

Game of the Weak

None of the 0-2 teams are playing this weekend, so Carolina’s trip to Arizona, which is 0-1-1, qualifies. Kyle Allen is expected to start for 0-2 Carolina because Cam Newton has a foot injury. It’s a chance for Kyler Murray to get his first NFL win for the Cardinals.

Five things to watch

–Can the NFL quarterbacks stay healthy this week? Five teams – the New Orleans Saints, Pittsburgh Steelers, Panthers, Jaguars and New York Jets – have their starters on the shelf because of injuries or illness. A sixth, Indianapolis, lost its starter when Andrew Luck retired and a seventh, the New York Giants, benched their starter, Eli Manning. Ben Roethlisberger is out for year with an elbow injury, Drew Brees is out for several weeks with a thumb injury and Nick Foles is out until November with a broken clavicle. Despite all the backups playing, Colin Kaepernick, remains unsigned.

—Luke Falk gets the start for the Jets because Sam Darnold has mono and Trevor Siemian was sidelined for the year by a Myles Garrett hit that got a roughing-the-passer penalty. The Jets go to New England and are underdogs by slightly more than 20 points.  Miami is also an underdog by more than 20 in Dallas. It is the first time since 1993 that two teams have been underdogs by more than 17 in the same week and the first time since the 1987 strike season that two have been underdogs by more than 20.

—Mason Rudolph steps into the starting lineup for Pittsburgh at San Francisco. The Steelers must believe in him because they traded their 2020 first round to Miami for cornerback Minkah Fitzpatrick. It is the first time they traded a first-round pick since 1967, two years before Chuck Noll was hired and turned the team into a dynasty. If Rudolph flops, the Steelers won’t have a first-round pick to try to get a young quarterback.

—Teddy Bridgewater decided to stay in New Orleans rather than sign with another team and battle for a starting job. He wasn’t going to play in New Orleans as long as Brees was healthy. Well, now that Brees is out indefinitely with his thumb injury, Bridgewater gets to start at Seattle. This is his chance to show he can be an NFL starter. His future will be determined the next few weeks.

–The Patriots have outscored their foes by 73 points in their first two wins. With the next game up against the Jets, they should become the first modern team to outscore their foes by more than 99 points in the first three since the 1968 Dallas Cowboys outscored their foes 132-33. Kind of fitting in the NFL’s 100 season that the all-time record was set in the league’s first year, when the Rock Island Independents outscored their foes 119-0.

The NFL puts a lot of emphasis on protecting the quarterbacks, but they still keep going down.

Two quarterbacks who’ve won Super Bowls, Ben Roethlisberger and Drew Brees, went down Sunday and will undergo surgery.

Big Ben is out for the year, while the New Orleans Saints hope Brees will be back in six weeks from his thumb injury — but that may be optimistic.

They join Andrew Luck, who retired, Nick Foles, who broke his clavicle, and Sam Darnold, who has mono, on the sidelines.

Monday night, Darnold’s backup, Trevor Siemian, went down on a late hit by Myles Garrett and was lost for the season. So the New York Jets are down to third-team QB Nick Falk. And then on Tuesday, the Panthers announced that Cam Newton’s status is up in the air for Sunday because he aggravated a foot injury.

Continue reading “Looking back at NFL Week 2”

The key this weekend is how many teams can avoid an 0-2 start, which is a big hole to climb out of.

Carolina became the first 0-2 team Thursday night, and the other teams that lost their openers – the Detroit Lions and Arizona Cardinals played to a tie – will be trying to avoid that fate. Miami is almost certainly destined to fall to 0-2. They appear to be tanking and/or rebuilding and are hosting the New England Patriots.

Three of the games — Jacksonville at Houston, Chicago at Denver and Cleveland at the New York Jets on Monday night — feature a pair of 0-1 teams, so that will result in at least three more 0-2 teams unless they end in ties.

The Jaguars and Jets are without their starting quarterbacks, so they are prime 0-2 candidates. Of course, an 0-2 start doesn’t doom a team. The Texans started out 0-3 and won nine in a row last year. But they were the first team to start off 0-3 and win a division title since the 1992 San Diego Chargers.

Only three teams – Houston and Seattle last year and New Orleans in 2017 — started off 0-2 and made the playoffs the last two years.

Continue reading “Previewing NFL Week 2”

The first week of the season showed that you shouldn’t make plans for Dec. 8 — the day of what is likely to be the best game of the regular season, Kansas City at New England.

There is a long way to go, but their convincing victories over the Jacksonville Jaguars and Pittsburgh Steelers indicate they should be the two best teams in the AFC this year.

On the other hand, Miami is already the frontrunner for the first pick in the draft. The question I asked last week is whether the Dolphins would be competitive, since they appear to be tanking or rebuilding. The answer is most definitely not. They appear to be worse than an expansion team.

Now the rest of the weekend:

Highlights

—Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens showed he can do more than run as he threw for five touchdowns, but the effort should probably get an asterisk because he did it the Dolphins. A lot of quarterbacks may do that against the Dolphins this year.

–Jacksonville was the only team to stop Patrick Mahomes from throwing a touchdown pass last year. He made up for it by throwing three against the Jaguars last Sunday. He should have had four but tried to show off and threw a no-look pass to an open receiver in the end zone and it sailed on him.

—T. J. Hockenenson was the first tight end drafted last April and he showed he could be the next Gronk by catching six passes for 131 yards, the most receiving yards by a tight end in the first game of his rookie season. But the Detroit Lions, being the Lions, couldn’t hold a lead and wound up in a tie with the Arizona Cardinals as Kyler Murray brought the Cards back to a tie even though he made several usual rookie mistakes.

—Dak Prescott helped his bargaining position in his negotiations with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones by having his first perfect passer rating while throwing for 405 yards against the New York Giants’ porous pass defense.

–The Philadelphia Eagles, attempting to win their second Super Bowl in three years, fell behind the Washington Redskins by 17 points, but then rallied to win 32-27. This is the kind of game that good teams find a way to win. They got off to a slow start but still pulled it out on a day they weren’t at their best.

Lowlights

—Adam Vinatieri had never missed two field goal attempts and an extra point in the same game in his 24-year career. Until he did it Sunday in the Indianapolis Colts’ loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. Is he showing his age or just had a bad day? We’ll see.

–All that offseason hype about the Cleveland Browns may have been premature. They looked like the old Browns with their loss to the Tennessee Titans in the opener. The Browns need to do less talking and more playing.

–Houston coach Bill O’Brien is not noted for being a savvy coach, and he and defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel fell into the prevent defense trap after taking the lead in New Orleans with 37 seconds left. By not putting heat on Drew Brees, they invited him to march the Saints into position for a game-winning field goal as time expired.

—Jameis Winston threw three picks, including two returned for touchdowns, in the Tampa Bay loss to the San Francisco 49ers. New coach Bruce Arians says it is too early to judge a quarterback in a new system. That is no excuse for two Pick Sixes

–The questions about Todd Gurley persist. He disappeared in the playoffs last year, and the league’s second-highest paid running back got just 15 carries as the Rams beat the Carolina anthers. Are they too concerned about Gurley’s knee to make him a workhorse running back?

A look ahead to Week One of the NFL’s 100th season:

A century ago seemed to be a good time to start a sports league.

The 1920s were a golden age of sports. Baseball barely survived World War I, when attendance dropped and players were unhappy with their meager salaries.

The 1919 World Series was fixed, and there have been unproven allegations the 1918 Series was fixed, too.

But Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees gave the sport new life. College football became popular with Knute Rockne coaching the Four Horsemen at Notre Dame. Boxing was big with Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, and horse racing was a major sport.

Continue reading “Previewing NFL Week 1”

Sean McVay joined a six-man Hall of Shame coaching club last February.

He became the sixth coach to lose a Super Bowl to Bill Belichick.

All six were guilty of coaching gaffes that help hand the Lombardi trophies to Belichick.

McVay, though, at least admitted the mistakes he made when his high-flying offense was held to three points and wasted a good effort by Wade Phillips’ defense.

McVay told Peter King his mistake in the Super Bowl was being too conservative against the Patriots’ “quarters” defense, which featured four defensive backs across the field in coverage from eight to 19 yards off the ball at the snap.

Continue reading “Will McVay join list of coaches haunted by Super Bowl losses to Belichick?”

The Jacksonville Jaguars’ signing of Myles Jack to a four-year contract extension last weekend was obscured because teams were making their last cuts.

But the fact they signed Jack – their second-round pick in 2016 — and haven’t signed Yannick Ngakoue – their third-round pick in the same draft – gives an interesting insight into the Jaguars’ philosophy of signing players.

They don’t seem to like giving premium money to players at a premium position.

Jack got a four-year deal for $57 million with $33 million guaranteed that made him the third-highest paid linebacker.

Linebackers don’t get paid like defensive ends, so the Jaguars were willing to sign Jack and not Ngakoue, who is worth more than Jack got.

Continue reading “Ramsey will test Jaguars’ penny-pinching ways with premium players”

The fate of Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores may have been sealed before he ever coaches a regular-season game.

That’s because the Dolphins are all into the strategy of dumping veterans to stockpile draft picks for the future.

Or as it is commonly called, tanking.

That means a lot of short-term pain with no promise of long-term gain.

And even if it does work, there is no guarantee that he and general manager Chris Grier will survive long enough to enjoy the fruits of the strategy.

Continue reading “Dolphins’ Flores already looks like dead coach walking”