VITO'S VIEWS

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”

As the NFL celebrates its 100th anniversary season, one significant part of its history will largely go ignored.

The league will not point out that its first century includes the fact that it banned black players from 1934 to 1945, even though it never announced a ban and it got virtually no notice because the NFL wasn’t a big deal at the time.

According to Pro Football Chronicle, the league had 13 black players from 1920 to 1933 before it stopped hiring them.

Of course, baseball had been segregated from its early days, but it is curious that the NFL had black players, including some great ones like Fritz Pollard, before they banned them.

No reason was given for the change, but the fingerprints of Washington owner George Preston Marshall are all over the decision. He marketed his team to a southern audience and didn’t integrate until 1962, when the federal government insisted on it when the new stadium was built on federal land.

Continue reading “NFL’s shadow ban of Kaepernick is a racist disgrace”

The decision by new Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores to start the season with Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback is — surprise — good news for second-year quarterback Josh Rosen.

But it makes no sense for the Dolphins

Job No. 1 for Flores in his rookie season as a head coach is finding out whether Allen is his quarterback of the future or whether he needs to target one in the draft next year.

He is not to going to learn anything about Rosen while Rosen is sitting on the bench.

For Rosen, though, it may be to his benefit not to open the season as the starter. The Dolphins open the season hosting Baltimore and New England, and then go to Dallas and host the Los Angele Chargers before the bye.

Continue reading “Flores’ QB decision looks like a dumb move for Fins”

Andrew Luck’s premature retirement shows the NFL needs to give quarterbacks even more protection.

Granted, the Indianapolis Colts bear a lot of responsibility for not putting enough emphasis on getting offensive linemen to protect Luck. That is the legacy of former GM Ryan Grigson.

But a simple rule change would give them more protection.

Make it a foul to touch the quarterback once the ball leaves his hands.

Defensive players would be irate, but the punters can’t be touched once they punt the ball so why shouldn’t quarterbacks get the same protection?

Continue reading “Some will gripe, but NFL should go all out to protect QBs”