Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Random NFL Thoughts on Week 6, Part 2

- Congratulations to Shonn Greene for justifying his position as a starting NFL running back for the first time since the 2009 postseason (when he was a backup).

- Matt Cassel may not be any good, but Sunday was confirmation that Brady Quinn still is never the answer if the question features the letters N, F, and L.

- So Buffalo manages to not fall apart at the seams against Arizona, which was a huge step in the right direction given their past two travesties of games. But the decision to have wildcat quarterback Brad Smith throw the ball with just over 3 minutes left, a 3-point lead, and the ball on the Arizona 36 yard line boggles the mind. It ended in an interception, which allowed the Cardinals to drive to the Buffalo 43 with about 90 seconds remaining, 3 timeouts and first down. John Skelton proceded to throw 3 incompletions, gaining no yards in 3 plays, leaving Jay Feely to attempt a 61 yard field goal to tie. Somehow it went in. Then the Bills go 3-and-out, and the Cardinals drive to set up a 38 yard field goal for Feely as time expires for the win. Sure thing, right? Not only is it under 40 yards, but Feely just hit a 61 yarder less than 2 minutes ago. Nope, Buffalo partially blocks it, and off we go to overtime. There, John Skelton remembers he's John Skelton and throws an INT that leads to a Buffalo field goal for the win.

- If the Giants could bottle the effort and focus they bring to games on the road where they feel disrespected, they could be an absolute juggernaut. Unfortunately for their fans, they seem to have zero interest in doing that.

- Six weeks in, Robert Griffin III looks like an even bigger force of nature than Cam Newton did last year. Keep in mind, though, that by the second half of the season, teams did a much better job of containing Newton last year. But, also keep in mind that Cam's coach is Ron Rivera, and RG3's coach is QB guru Mike Shanahan.

- A tremendous win for the Seahawks. The defense had by far its worst game of the season (they had set the bar pretty high to be fair), but they came up with 2 huge 3/4-and-out stops on back-to-back possessions to win/ice the game. Russell Wilson truly showed some delivery on the promise we saw in the preseason and have been hearing about during the first 5 weeks of the season. Most importantly, the coaching staff (namely head coach Pete Carroll) opened up the offense some for Wilson and let him attack down the field. This is a really tough week to play a Thursday Night game on the road (in San Francisco), but this also seems like a defining win that could propel Seattle to a really exciting season.

- Wow, someone finally woke up the Green Bay offensive monster. My main question is, what took so long?

- And finally, NORV!!!!! But seriously, what more has to go wrong in San Diego for Norv Turner to finally face some job insecurity? As important, why has Philip Rivers been regressing for the better part of 2 seasons?

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