Andy Richardson
Maybe your favorite fantasy team lost yesterday, and you're in a lousy mood about it. Otherwise, there's no reason not to sit back and revel in what was just an awesome day of football. Fantastic finishes, stunning blowouts, short passes going for long touchdowns, breakout performances by rookies and slumping stars....yesterday had it all. Let's get right to it:
1:05: Vikings move easily down the field for a touchdown by Adrian Peterson. Not much later, Rams fumble and Jared Allen takes it back for a touchdown of his own. Ballgame essentially over. No letdown, unless you count Rams' defenders making a few half-hearted efforts at tackling here and there.
1:10: Giants drive for a touchdown. Brandon Jacobs is stopped near the goal line. Ahmad Bradshaw comes in and scores. He is the better player. (His second touchdown, later in the half, is even better.)
1:15: Bengals miss a field goal. Watching their winning kick live last week, I too thought the thing missed. Turns out the Browns did too, of course. NFL says it was good, and that's what counts. I'm assuming I had a bad angle.
1:20: Donovan McNabb gets blasted by a tackler. Dude, cover up! You've got some injured ribs there.
1:25: Rashard Mendenhall TD run, which was way too easy. Later, he scores another one, but it's erased by a totally unnecessary holding penalty. Tough to complain, but his day could have been even bigger.
1:30: Interception in the end zone by Joe Flacco. Tried to force it. Maybe he saw how much we praised his game in New England last week and got cocky. Bad decision.
1:30: Touchdown pass, Eli Manning to Mario Manningham. Pretty throw and catch. Eli's fine. Raiders not.
1:35: Miles Austin drops a touchdown at Kansas City; prior to it Tony Romo was 8 for 8. As the Cowboys line up a field goal, Troy Aikman says "You have to give Kansas City's defense some credit." What? Nick Folk misses the field goal. I'm not giving K.C. credit for that, either.
1:50: Rams convert a 4th and 1. Moments later, Rams fumble it away.
1:55. JaMarcus Russell sacked, fumbles. (I'm skipping ahead to tell you that this would happen three times during the game. On one, well, he kind of scrambled, and dropped the ball while presumably attempting a pass. I don't want to pile on JaMarcus, it's too easy. Plus the whole team is just hopeless right now. I imagine wondering if your coach is going to be arrested at any time is a distraction during the week.
1:55: Panthers using the Wildcat with DeAngelo Williams. It's official: I hate the Wildcat. And I haven't even had to watch tonight's Dolphins-Jets game yet.
2:00: Rams try a designed quarterback draw on 1st down from the 10-yard line. Nobody is fooled, plus the quarterback gets hit an extra time. Interesting choice. The next two plays are pass plays with zero chance of being completed.
2:05: Eagles have a defensive touchdown wiped out on reversal, so they quickly score an offensive touchdown. Nice little play to Leonard Weaver. I stick with this game for a while and see Jeremy Maclin haul in his second touchdown of the day. The first was a fairly easy catch after getting behind the defense, but the second is a nice diving grab in the end zone. I really liked this guy coming out of college and put Donald Brown into a trade to get him in my dynasty league, so I'm glad to see him do well. I'll be a little surprised if Kevin Curtis gets his job back.
2:10: Mark Clayton fumble after a reception. Rough week for him.
2:15: Ben Roethlisberger floats a ball toward the sideline that gets run back a touchdown by the Lions. If memory serves the Lions had a total of around 3 interceptions all season last year, so I guess they're getting better. Still a horrible defense, though. As I watch, the Steelers quickly go down the field and score. Order is restored.
2:20: St. Louis' second tight end Daniel Fells catches a ball around the 10-yard line. He wraps it up tight, take a step, gets drilled, and fumbles. Definitely the kind of play that will lead to being a third tight end. On most teams, anyway.
2:20: On consecutive plays, Miles Austin drops a touchdown and Sam Hurd lets one go through his hands. At this point I'm ready to throw in the towel on Dallas receivers. You know the rest: Austin goes on to produce about the most unlikely breakout day in recent memory: a 250-yard, 2 TD explosion that includes what should have been a winning TD in regulation and then an actual winner in overtime. On both plays he could have been tackled after short receptions, but fortunately for those of us in suicide pools who took Dallas, Kansas City's secondary is really bad. He'll be a popular waiver claim this week.
2:30: I watch a little of Browns-Bills. Apparently the Browns are honoring Braylon Edwards by dropping passes all over the place. Derek Anderson does his part by missing receivers. The Browns don't complete any passes in the first half. And win the game. I'm guessing Edwards is a happy man today.
2:30: Patrick Crayton muffs a punt, something he does twice on the day. In overtime, he calls for a fair catch with no defender within 15 yards of him. I can't fathom this guy starting for the Cowboys much longer, given Austin's breakout performance.
2:35: Delhomme throws a pick on an off-target throw to Muhammad. I'm guessing he just underestimated how slow the guy is. Steve Smith sighting (the other one, the guy who used to be a star for Carolina); he catches a pass and hangs on after being sandwiched by two defenders. Nobody questions his toughness -- and certainly not to his face.
2:45: Cowboys jump offsides, one of a slew of penalties on the day. Shocker: Wade Phillips isn't a great head coach. Two other teams learned this and fired him, but Jerry Jones thought he was smarter than those guys. Nope.
3:00: Trent Edwards INT. Ugly throw. He's regressed.
3:05: Beautiful TD run by Tashard Choice, who clearly should have been playing more than the banged-up Marion Barber. Choice is an underrated reason why Dallas won yesterday.
3:10: Jaw-droppingly bad interception by Daunte Culpepper. Just kind of rainbowed it across the field. Wow. This is why he's not a starter.
3:30: Ray Rice takes a short pass, gets tackled, keeps his balance and dashes into the end zone for a pretty amazing touchdown. Rice finishes with 143 yards and a TD. Willis McGahee finishes with 2 yards. Not so many complaints from those who drafted Rice these days.
3:45: Amazing grab by Austin to set up tying field goal. Just took it away from a defender. Nice to see.
3:50: Slowest scramble on 3rd and 8 that you've ever seen, by Jake Delhomme, who somehow manages to pick up the first and enable the Panthers to close out Washington and probably Jim Zorn's head coaching career. Delhomme, who's received a lot of criticism lately, almost puts Dante Rosario's eye out while celebrating his first down.
3:55: Yet another comeback by Carson Palmer, aided greatly by a couple of penalty flags -- that's what the Ravens get for criticizing the officials last week, I guess. (Not that these flags weren't legit.) Two other notes about this game: Cedric Benson goes over 100 yards and scores while on the benches of most knowledgeable (and in this case, wrong) fantasy owners. And then one of the really tear-jerking locker room moments, when defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer, whose wife passed away a few days ago, gets the game ball. Not a dry eye in the house.
Late games: Couple of great late games, which I'm going to recap quickly: Patriots-Broncos: Broncos wore throwback uniforms to celebrate the old AFL, and I guarantee those brown and yellow (seriously!) striped eyesores would have won the poll question we had up a few weeks back. (By the way, I've been wearing my Jets throwback Favre jersey since week 1, and I have to keep wearing it until the Vikings lose.) I honestly had no idea I was watching a Broncos game for about five minutes. ... Brady overthrows a wide-open Randy Moss for what would have been a 35-yard TD. ... Steal of the Draft: Brandon Marshall? After about the worst preseason you coudl have, the guy has become a fantasy (and NFL) monster. One on one, he's basically uncoverable. ... I'm not completely sold on Knowshon Moreno being a star just yet. Lost a fumble, just didn't look overly impressive running the ball. Good young back and good situation, but that's about all I can say so far. ... Broncos win again; Patriots don't touch the ball in overtime, so this week you'll hear a lot of talk about how overtime needs to be changed.
Falcons-49ers: Wow, didn't see this one coming. Breakout game from Roddy White, yeah, that seemed reasonable. But Michael Turner scoring 3 TDs, and the Falcons scoring 45, in San Francisco? Shocker. White joins Austin and Rice in taking short passes for long TDs thanks to blown tackles. It's kind of a dying art these days. (Maybe Jets-Dolphins will revive it tonight.) By the way, compared to Glen Coffee, Moreno does look like a superstar. Coffee had about the least remarkable TD run you'll ever see. Should have scored easily and barely got in. And oh yeah, Matt Ryan's really good. One more note: Dre Bly picked off a pass, started showboating during the run back, and got caught from behind by Roddy White and fumbled. Classic. There aren't many players who think they're better than they are as much as Bly. I smell a "C'mon, Man!" coming up tonight.
Texans-Cardinals: Nice game for the Cardinals. Another heartbreaker at the end for the Texans, who seem to play a lot of those kind of games. Amazing TD late by Andre Johnson, who's hit at the 5 after a catch and basically just bounces off and through 3 defenders for a touchdown. Bad throw by Matt Schaub who has a receiver open in the back of the end zone in the final seconds and overthrows him. And the plays everyone will be talking about, Chris Brown getting stuffed on 2nd and 4th down. If your goal-line back either fumbles or gets stuffed at the goal line in the final minute, as has happened to Brown twice so far this season, should he really be the goal-line back? Gotta think a change is coming there. Big games for Larry Fitzgerald and Andre Johnson, arguably the two top wideouts in the league.
Monday, Monday: Should be more defense than offense in this one. Looks like Jerricho Cotchery will try and play, but I wouldn't use him. I would use Braylon Edwards; Jets should struggle to run and will have to pass, and he and Dustin Keller may have to do all the catching. And maybe Rex Ryan's defense, which with Baltimore shut down Miami in last year's playoffs, takes the next step toward mothballing (hairballing?) the Wildcat once and for all. I can hope, anyway.
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