VITO'S VIEWS

It’s a well-documented fact that the Bill Belichick coaching tree is more like a twig.

Former Belichick assistants tend to struggle as NFL head coaches.

To start with, they don’t have the advantage of having Tom Brady, and they also are too steeped in the self-proclaimed “Patriot Way,” which doesn’t work too well without Brady.

The latest example is Matt Patricia, the guy who was noted in New England for his beard and red pullover.

Patricia was hired by the Detroit Lions to take the team to the next step after they went 9-7 the past two years under Jim Caldwell, who was fired at the end of last season.

Continue reading “Patricia is yet another Belichick NFL coaching-tree debacle”

Five quick takes on Week 10 in the NFL:

1. Drew Brees continued his climb up the standings in the record books and kept New Orleans in the driver’s seat for homefield advantage in the NFC playoffs by leading the Saints to a 51-14 rout of the Cincinnati Bengals. Brees threw three touchdown passes to move ahead of Brett Favre with 509 for his career. Favre had 508. Tom Brady, who didn’t throw a touchdown pass in a loss to the Tennessee Titans, is at 505. Peyton Manning is on top at 539.

Continue reading “A quick look back at NFL Week 10”

Five quick takes on Week 10 in the NFL:

1. The New Orleans Saints have to avoid a letdown against Cincinnati after their big victory over the Los Angeles Rams last week and avoid looking ahead to next week’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles. This is a sandwich game for the Saints, who are now in pole position in the battle for NFC homefield advantage in the playoffs. They don’t figure to get careless enough to lose to the 5-3 Bengals.

Continue reading “A quick look ahead at NFL Week 10”

The return of Leonard Fournette from his ailing hamstring is the big storyline for the Jacksonville Jaguars in Sunday’s game at Indianapolis.

The Jaguars are hoping that they will be able to return to their power running game with him in the lineup.

One factor, though, has been overlooked.

Is Fournette really a key to the game?

Last year, he didn’t play in the first game and Blake Bortles threw for 330 yards and a touchdown while T.J. Yeldon ran for 122 yards on nine carries. The Jaguars scored 14 points in the first quarter and won 27-0.

Continue reading “Jaguars’ season is clearly on the line in Indianapolis”

Five quick takes on Week 9 in the NFL:

1. The Los Angeles Rams became the last unbeaten team to fall when they lost to the New Orleans Saints, 45-35, and now the Saints have the tiebreaker edge on them if they tie for the best record in the NFL. The game also featured the second puzzling call by Rams coach Sean McVay in as many weeks. A week ago, he got away with taking the field goal for a two-point lead and giving Aaron Rodgers the ball with two minutes left to drive for the game-winning field goal. McVay got away with that when Ty Montgomery took the ensuing kickoff out of the end zone and fumbled. Against the Saints, McVay went for a fake field goal with the game tied 14-14 and didn’t make it, although the officials appeared to have blown the call. Still, it will be interesting to watch McVay’s decisions in the playoffs.

Continue reading “A quick look back at NFL Week 9”

Five quick takes on Week 9 in the NFL:

1. The first week in November is usually one of the highlights of the season. The World Series is over and the holidays are still a few weeks away. The season is half over and the NFL tries to stage some of its best games to kickoff the second half of the season. And Sunday night, it has its best attraction of the season– the New England Patriots vs. the Green Bay Packers. Tom Brady vs. Aaron Rodgers. For star power, it doesn’t get better than that. And they’ve only met once in their careers (at Lambeau Field, when Rodgers won), and unless they play in a Super Bowl, they won’t meet again for four years if they are both still playing then. Since neither quarterback has a great supporting cast, this could come down to which one plays better and which one has the ball last.

Continue reading “A quick look ahead to NFL Week 9”

Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay is the flavor of the year in the NFL.

The second-year coach has the Rams unbeaten at the midway point of his second season after they went 4-12 in 2016 and Jeff Fisher was fired with three games left.

McVay revitalized the offense in his 2017 debut, turned the team around and they went 11-5 before losing a first-round playoff game to Atlanta.

This year they are the league’s only unbeaten team at the halfway point at 8-0 with two big games coming up against the New Orleans Saints and Kansas City Chiefs sandwiched around a division game against Seattle.

McVay is the prototype of the bright young innovative offensive coach that teams are looking for in this era. And he has a knack of remembering every play in every game.

Continue reading “Despite the plaudits, McVay’s end-of-game strategy needs work”

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers starting playing in 1976 and have been in a futile search for a franchise quarterback ever since.

They made Doug Williams and Vinny Testaverde the first pick in their respective drafts, and neither won a Super Bowl for them. Williams left in a contract dispute and won a Super Bowl in Washington.

They got rid of Steve Young to make room for Testaverde, and Young won a Super Bowl in San Francisco.

They drafted Trent Dilfer in the first round and got rid of him, and he won a Super Bowl in Baltimore although the defense carried him and he was dumped at the end of the year.

So the Bucs have had three quarterbacks who won Super Bowls after they’ve left.

Continue reading “Will the Buccaneers ever find a franchise quarterback?”

Washington Redskins running back Adrian Peterson is now one degree of separation from Jim Thorpe and two from Pop Warner and Dwight Eisenhower.

When Peterson ran 64 yards for a touchdown Sunday against the New York Giants at age 33, he became the second-oldest player to run for a touchdown of 60 or more yards.

The last time a player at that age did that was in 1921, when Thorpe – yes, that Jim Thorpe – ran for an 80-yard touchdown at age 34 for the Cleveland Indians against the Columbus Panhandles.

He played for Warner – yes that Pop Warner – at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pa., and is in the College Football Hall of Fame.

Carlisle beat an Army team 27-6 in 1912 that had a cadet named Dwight Eisenhower, who said in 1961 when he was president of Thorpe, “He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw.’’

Continue reading “Peterson’s long TD run put him in select company”

Looking back on Week 8 in the NFL:

The Los Angeles Rams played what amounted to a road game at home as the Green BaY Packers fans at the Los Angeles Coliseum made it seem like a Packers home game. But the Rams showed they don’t need a home field edge as they edged the Packers, 29-27, to finish the first half of the season with a perfect 8-0 mark. The Rams find out in the next three weeks if they have a serious shot at 16-0 when they go to New Orleans and play the Kansas City Chiefs in Mexico City sandwiched around a game against Seattle. The Rams needed the help of a bonehead decision by Ty Montgomery to ice the game. He took the kickoff out of the end zone after the Rams took a two-point lead. He fumbled, the Rams recovered and Aaron Rodgers didn’t get a chance to drive the team for a game-winning field goal. The Packers then traded Montgomery to the Baltimore Ravens on Tuesday.

Continue reading “A quick look back at NFL Week 8”