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Things might be heating up in the desert
- By MTRamsFan
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 4 Replies
Current Arizona Cardinals football player Michael Floyd was arrested Monday morning on DUI charges.
(Photo: Matt Kartozian, USA TODAY Sports)
Per a report from ArizonaSports.com, Floyd was arrested after allegedly falling asleep at the wheel. His car was running around 2:48 am, as he was asleep near Scottsdale Road.
On the year, Floyd has 33 catches for 446 yards and 4 scores thorugh 13 games this season.
This isn't the first time Floyd has been arrested for a drunk driving. He was suspended indefinitely from Notre Dame in 2011 after being arrested while driving at nearly twice the legal limit.
http://notredame.247sports.com/Article/Former-Notre-Dame-WR-Michael-Floyd-arrested-49747081
(Photo: Matt Kartozian, USA TODAY Sports)
Per a report from ArizonaSports.com, Floyd was arrested after allegedly falling asleep at the wheel. His car was running around 2:48 am, as he was asleep near Scottsdale Road.
On the year, Floyd has 33 catches for 446 yards and 4 scores thorugh 13 games this season.
This isn't the first time Floyd has been arrested for a drunk driving. He was suspended indefinitely from Notre Dame in 2011 after being arrested while driving at nearly twice the legal limit.
http://notredame.247sports.com/Article/Former-Notre-Dame-WR-Michael-Floyd-arrested-49747081
Peter King: MMQB - 12/12/16
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 18 Replies
These are excerpts. To read the whole article click the link below.
*A story on Lawrence Phillips is included further down the page, and Mike Thomas gets a Goat of the Week award. Plus several snotty remarks by PK on Jared Goff and Jeff Fisher near the end of this article*
*****************************************************************
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/12/12/nfl-week-14-giants-cowboys-leveon-bell-peter-king
The NFL is a Wide-Open Race
Who is going to win Super Bowl 51? Who knows. Week 14 set the table for a frenetic finish. A look at the surging Giants, plus more notes on a quiet tailback mentorship, deflated footballs and an offer for Johnny Manziel
By Peter King
Week 14 proved there’s no mega-team in the NFL this year. Actually, Weeks 13 and 14 have proven that, particularly with America’s Teams—Dallas (Foes 25, Dallas 24 in the past eight quarters) and Oakland—struggling. And New England might be great, but the last time they played a good team (Seattle a month ago), they got beaten in Foxboro.
Some dangerous teams, Pittsburgh and Green Bay and Baltimore, might not even make the postseason. I want to join the party in Detroit, but four things stand in my way: The dislocated middle finger on Matt Stafford’s throwing hand and three remaining games—at the Giants, at the Cowboys, and Green Bay in Week 17. Yikes.
This is all you need to know about this season: It’s Dec. 12, and Tampa Bay and Tennessee are tied for first place in their divisions with three weeks to go.
So it’s just the way the NFL wants it. Mystery. Half the league has somewhere between a prayer (Tennessee, Baltimore), a shot (Seattle, Atlanta, Tampa Bay) and real hope (Kansas City, Dallas) of playing deep into January. With three-plus weeks left, look at the slate each week, and you’ll find intrigue.
• Tonight: Baltimore at New England.
• Week 15: Detroit at the Giants … New England at Denver … Tampa Bay at Dallas.
• Week 16: Minnesota at Green Bay (Christmas Eve) … and the Christmas Day double-header, Baltimore at Pittsburgh and Denver at Kansas City.
• Week 17: Green Bay at Detroit … the Giants at Washington … New England at Miami … Oakland at Denver.
Sit back, relax, enjoy the fight.
* * *
Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images
The Cowboys got vulnerable in the past two weeks because they played two very good defenses that pressured Dak Prescott and took away his best receiving weapons. The Giants likely gave Jerry Jones a sleepless night on the way home from Newark early this morning. In two games against New York this year, the 11-2 Cowboys had these problems:
• Dallas averaged 13 points and 294 yards in going 0-2.
• Dak Prescott recorded his two worst games of the season. Composite rating: 58.6.
• Prescott threw 14 passes to Dez Bryant in the two games. Bryant caught two.
• The Giants defense, particularly Sunday night in Jersey, was sound and physical and full of fury. “We played phenomenal,” said cornerback Janoris Jenkins. He’s absolutely right. The Giants never let Dak Prescott breathe Sunday night.
• The Cowboys defense got to Eli Manning and the offense, forcing four total turnovers. But Dallas turned those into just one touchdown.
And there’s this weapon that Dallas just doesn’t have. Well, no one does. Kansas City might—with Tyreek Hill—but it’s a little early to put him in Odell Beckham Jr.’s class. In three NFL seasons, Beckham has 34 touchdowns in 40 games.
It’s a play he’s run 500 times. Sixteen minutes left, Dallas up 7-3, Giants, so far unable to sustain a drive. Second-and-10, ball at the New York 39. Beckham split left, vet cornerback Brandon Carr ready to joust with him at the line, and Eli Manning calling for the snap.
“SET-HUT!!!”
Beckham dekes left-right-left and starts for the post, Carr a quarter-step behind. But this is the important thing: If Beckham gets inside Carr’s inside shoulder, his left shoulder, he knows he can win this—as long as middle ’backer Sean Lee, so instinctive, doesn’t come over to deflect the pass away. The pass has to be fast, and on him, NOW. The pass arrives at the 45, a little high, but easy to catch, and it’s happened so fast that Carr is a full step behind now. Running at full throttle, Beckham splits linebacker Anthony Hitchens and rookie corner Anthony Brown.
On the phone from the Meadowlands, Beckham picks it up.
“I used to catch that ball,” he said, “and I’d be a little timid. I’d want to be sure I had the ball and secured it. But the game is so fast. You’ve just got to hit it. Hit it! I took it around midfield, and I hit it, and I knew I had to just open it up.”
He did, as usual. That speed is rare, and Carr flailed at him and dove around the 7-yard line, but Beckham was gone. Beckham is David Ortiz; the Red Sox have gone down feebly for eight innings and trail by a run in the ninth, but Ortiz bombs a two-run homer to win. Beckham is Steph Curry; down by five with 50 seconds left, Curry hits a pair of threes to save the Warriors. Beckham is an odd dude, but he’s as dangerous a weapon as exists in football today.
And the Giants have him, and the Giants are 9-4 and will be playing in January in large part because of him. And that defense.
I asked Beckham if he thought the Giants might be in the Cowboys’ heads now, with the rest of the league being 0-11 against Dallas and the Giants being 2-0. Maybe in earlier days Beckham would have taken the bait. But not now.
“I don’t know,” Beckham said. “We beat ’em two times, and we’ve played pretty well, but our focus is on Detroit now. We’ve got work to do. We’ve got so much talent, and we know we can play better.”
The Giants joined the club Sunday night, the club of teams with a legitimate chance to play deep into January. The fortified defense will keep them in games like this one. The home-run hitter, Beckham, will win them.
* * *
Le’Veon Bell is Great. He’s Also a Mentor
Photo: AP :: Getty Images
Giants Sweep Cowboys is the headline of the week. But the story I like the most is the greatness of Le’Veon Bell, and his budding relationship with one of the future stars of the NFL.
First: There’s one back in football whose strange main characteristic is his calm. That’s right. A big part of Le’Veon Bell’s greatness is lying back and not attacking holes, but rather waiting ... waiting ... waiting until the right one opens.
Bell had the best game of his professional life Sunday in the Steelers’ 27-20 win over Buffalo. He’d never touched the ball more than 36 times in a game in his four-year career. On Sunday, he had the most productive day by a back against the Bills in their 57-season history, touching it 42 times for 298 yards; 236 yards came on the ground, on 38 carries.
His distinctive style—wait, wait and then hit the hole with speed and, if necessary, power—has earned Bell a fan in California. Last week, doing my podcast with Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey, who has declared for the 2017 NFL draft, the two-time collegiate national leader in all-purpose yards told me that Bell is the pro back he watches the most.
In fact, it’s more than watching. Though they haven’t met yet, McCaffrey and Bell have become video buddies. McCaffrey has sent Bell some of his tape, Bell has critiqued it, and McCaffrey has put that critique into play at Stanford.
“I love watching Le'Veon Bell,” McCaffrey said on campus last week. “I think he has a great mix of doing everything as a running back. He is a very good complete back. His patience, setting up his blocks so well, hitting the hole fast, breaking tackles, making people miss …
That’s the kind of stuff, when I look at his game and look at my game, what I really try to emulate is the aspect of patience, and not just running full-speed downhill. Let your blocks develop before you hit that hole, try to get in the best position of getting one on one with the safety in the open field, make him miss, and then turn on the jets from there.”
Bell got excited Sunday when I mentioned that McCaffrey was a fan.
“That’s my guy!” Bell said. “That means everything in the world to me. He’s a really special runner. I try to break some things down with him. He sent me a lot of his clips, to see what he could have done, what maybe I would have done on the same play—you know, to critique him a little bit. I think in this off-season I’ll meet up with him and work with him.
“He is a special player. You don’t see too many players who play the running back position who not only can run the ball and pass-protect, but who can catch the ball and who can run routes like a receiver. He’s very lean, very quick, great hands, can run any route … That caught me off guard when I first started watching him at the end of his sophomore year. He ran every route in the route tree.”
Back to the pennant race. Bell said the snow game in Buffalo didn’t bother him, nor did the workload, “because I grew up in that weather [in central Ohio]. Maybe you can’t cut as good as you normally would, but I embrace it. And coming to the Steelers was the perfect situation for me. I love the physical play.”
The patience, he says, is a byproduct of having an offensive line he trusts, knowing when it’s smart to burst through a hole and when to make the most of what he has in traffic. “He’ll sit back there in the backfield with the ball in his hands for four, five seconds before everybody makes their blocks,” said McCaffrey, exaggerating a bit. But you get his point. “As soon as he sees the hole, he hits it. That’s the kind of stuff I love to emulate.”
Now, Bell said, the Steelers have become one of those teams the league will fear in the playoffs. “I don’t think any team in the NFL wants to play us right now. Since week eight or nine, I’ve been saying this. Next week, we’ll play even better.” Scary thought for the rest of the AFC.
• McCaffrey on the prospect of any NFL coach allowing him to use his entire portfolio—rushing, receiving, punt-returning, kick-returning—in the pros: “My versatility has been my strong suit. I see how Stanford has used me, and that's how I would love to be used in the NFL too. I can do everything. I can run the ball between the tackles, I can pass-protect, I can go out in the slot and go outside and run routes against corners. I can do special teams, kick return, punt return. That is what I pride myself on, doing as many things as possible and doing them at a high level.”
* * *
Derek Carr would like to help Johnny Manziel
Photo: Joe Robbins/Getty Images
It seems comical that Johnny Manziel was picked 14 slots ahead of Derek Carr in the 2014 NFL draft. Last week, though, when I met with Carr for an NBC “Football Night” feature, he wasn’t gloating. He was sad for Manziel. Carr wants to help Manziel.
“What’s crazy,” Carr said as we drove in the predawn toward Oakland, “is, you know, I spent a lot of time around him. He’s such a good dude. I obviously wish him the best, you know I hope that … hopefully one day he’ll reach out, [I’d] be able to talk to him and be a friend to him.”
“You'd love the chance to help him?” I said.
“Absolutely, man,” Carr said. “Because he’s so talented, so I understand why he was drafted where he was. He could throw, could run, a dynamic athlete, dynamic player. Obviously he just had a little trouble. He’s still young though, so hopefully he'll get another chance someday and he'll be alright.”
Manziel flamed out with the Browns, in part because of addiction issues. Most recently he has been in Texas and Florida, and his family is worried about him surviving without structure and sobriety. But if he reaches out, Carr would lend a hand.
* * *
Some Great Journalism on Lawrence Phillips
Lawrence Phillips spent parts of three seasons in the NFL, playing for the 49ers, Dolphins and Rams.
Photo: Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images
Showtime has a 90-minute documentary debuting Friday night (9 p.m. ET) on the troubled and violent life of former Nebraska/NFL/CFL/NFL Europe running back Lawrence Phillips, who died at 40 last January in a California prison. One of the most gifted running backs to enter the NFL, Phillips was a classic case of self-ruin, through a horrendous history of domestic violence, abetted by alcoholism.
The documentary, written ably by Armen Keteyian, Lars Anderson and Al Briganti, is as harrowing a piece of journalism as I’ve seen on a disturbed athlete wreaking havoc on the people around him. It is superb. Phillips, starting at Nebraska and ending after his far-too-short football career, had a pattern of violence with women.
The story is told so vividly—by the women he abused, by a prosecutor who worked to put him behind bars, and by the coaches who got stung by him—that it makes you wonder how this troubled human being kept getting chance after chance after chance in football.
“A wasted, gifted human being,” Dick Vermeil, his coach in St. Louis, says, his voice shaking. “It haunts me.”
Phillips’ last victim—that we know of—was a San Diego exotic dancer, Amaliya Weisler, who describes a torturous beating and strangulation in her apartment, and how she hid in a closet when Phillips returned.
The documentary is so thorough and well told that the next face you see in the piece is the San Diego County prosecutor, Nicole Rooney, describing the post-assault examination of Weisler. Rooney said she had “the worst strangulation marks that I ever saw where a victim lived.”
But it’s not just a thorough piece of reporting on the awful things that Phillips did. It’s an explanation of why he did them. The story begins at two Los Angeles-area youth homes after Phillips had been taken out of a loveless home. There’s no justification for doing what Phillips did, of course. But you get some idea why after the back story, told so well by Keteyian et al.
It’s a crowded landscape in the NFL media world. But I cannot recommend this 90-minute doc more highly. Subscribe to Showtime here.
* * *
The Award Section
OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Le’Veon Bell, running back, Pittsburgh. Playing in snow squalls in Buffalo (Bell’s going to want this video for his career time capsule), he rushed a career-high 38 times for a career-high 236 yards, added 62 receiving yards for a career-high 298 yards from scrimmage, in the 27-20 win. Bell had three touchdown runs, of three and five and seven yards, all in the first 40 minutes of the game. How about this for surprising? Bell told me afterward, “I’m not sore.” I’d like to ask him again this morning.
Mitchell Schwartz, tackle, Kansas City. Two games against the Raiders this year. Two times against that oppressive pass-rush. A total of zero sacks allowed, zero quarterback hits allowed, one quarterback pressure allowed, according to Pro Football Focus. Schwartz has been one of the best free-agent signings of 2016, another example of one who shouldn't gotten away from the line-needy Cleveland Browns.
DEFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
LeShaun Sims, cornerback, Tennessee. Pretty good year for mid- to late-round picks in the NFL. Malcolm Mitchell, No. 112; Blake Martinez, 131; Dak Prescott, 135; Tyreek Hill, 165. Sims, No. 157 out of Southern Utah, is trying to make a name for himself in Dick LeBeau’s secondary, and he was a strong part of the Titans’ 13-10 upset of the defending Super Bowl champion Broncos in Nashville on Sunday.
He had five tackles, one for loss, played a feisty corner for four quarters, and stripped Demaryius Thomas of the tying touchdown reception in the end zone with seven minutes left. Denver settled for a field goal, and those were the last points of the game. Kid’s a good player.
Vic Beasley, linebacker, Atlanta. Good players take advantage of bad foes. And the Los Angeles Rams have one awful offensive line. Beasley collected all three sacks of Jared Goff produced by the Falcons in the 42-14 rout of L.A., for a loss of 27 yards—and Beasley added a forced fumble and recovery, which he ran back for a touchdown. That gives him 13.5 sacks for the year, realizing the promise that he would be the pass-rush force the Falcons were expecting when he drafted in the first round in 2015.
Romeo Okwara, defensive end, New York Giants. Playing in place of the injured do-everything defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, Okwara, an undrafted free agent from Notre Dame, was terrific as JPP Jr. He led the Giants with eight tackles in the 10-7 win over the Cowboys on Sunday night, and he added his first career NFL sack and two more quarterback hits, plus a batted pass.
The storyline before this game was that Pierre-Paul’s absence would be a huge disadvantage for the Giants. It wasn’t much of a factor at all, because of Okwara. Afterward, Okwara was asked what advice Pierre-Paul had for him before the game. “He said to go out there and ball,’” Okwara said. The new kid’s good at following instructions.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Trey Burton, emergency long-snapper, Philadelphia. Being asked to make your first long-snap in the NFL is one thing, probably a scary thing. Being asked to make it with a division game on the line in the fourth quarter, on a field-goal attempt with your team down two points … that is one challenging play. Tight end Burton, subbing for injured tight end Brent Celek (who was subbing for injured regular long-snapper Jon Dorenbos) snapped from the Washington 24-yard line with five minutes left in the game.
Burton fired a spiral back slightly high that was corralled and put down for Caleb Sturgis to boot a 41-yard go-ahead field goal. The Eagles ended up losing, but Burton—who also caught an uncharacteristically high seven balls from Carson Wentz—had a day to remember. By the way, his last long snap in a game? In Pop Warner football, in Venice, Fla.
Tyreek Hill, wide receiver/returner, Kansas City. I have a feeling the 165th pick in the 2016 NFL draft will be in this award space for years to come. He just has a different gear. In the open field, if Hill gets going, his dekes and fakes are just too much for defenders—by the time they adjust, Hill is 10 yards past them.
On Thursday night Hill got one of those head starts in space and ran a punt back 78 yards, virtually uncontested, for a touchdown—on his way to 100 punt-return yards. He also had a 36-yard touchdown catch from Alex Smith. He’s just a very dangerous man right now. He’s also the ninth player since 1960 to have touchdowns via punt return, kick return, receiving and rushing in a single season.
COACH OF THE WEEK
Dick LeBeau, defensive coordinator, Tennessee. One point before I begin: DICK LEBEAU IS GOING TO BE 80 NEXT SEPTEMBER. Okay, let’s move on. It’s amazing to see the Titans over .500 on Dec. 12 … and just as amazing to see the LeBeau-coached D pitching a shutout over the defending Super Bowl champions through 47 minutes in Nashville on Sunday. With 13 minutes left in the game, Tennessee led 13-0, and the heroes on defense for Tennessee were many. The Titans are morphing into a respectable defense, with a big assist from the Hall-of-Famer.
GOATS OF THE WEEK
Mike Thomas, wide receiver/kick-returner, Los Angeles. Four yards deep in the end zone on the opening kickoff against Atlanta, Thomas bobbled the ball, and it took a forward hop that Atlanta linebacker Paul Worrilow recovered on the 3-yard line, leading to a Matt Ryan touchdown pass on the first scrimmage snap of the game. The Rams are putrid offensively, and every little mistake hurts them. Thomas handed the Falcons seven points seven seconds into the game.
Chandler Catanzaro, kicker, Arizona. I don’t know how many times I can excoriate the Cardinal specialists this year, but this unit is having one of the worst years of any special teams group in recent NFL history. Catanzaro doinked a 41-yard field goal off the upright in the second quarter, and then midway through the fourth quarter he had a PAT blocked—and the Dolphins ran it back for a two-point defensive conversion. So the four points Catanzaro didn’t score, and the two points the Dolphins did score because of his miss, were gigantic in a 26-23 loss that was decided on a Miami field goal as time expired.
* * *
This season, 37 passers in the NFL have thrown at least 75 passes.
Cam Newton, the 2015 MVP, is 37th of 37 in completion percentage: 53.5 percent.
That’s 4 percentage points lower than the worst season of his career.
* * *
Things I Think I Think
1. I think these are my quick notes of analysis from Week 14:
a. Can Jared Goff throw a spiral—I mean consistently?
b. If Kansas City makes it that far, and the field on whatever January day they play isn’t slippery and treacherous, Tyreek Hill could very much tilt the field in a Chiefs-Patriots AFC playoff game.
c. Good news and bad news for Luke Kuechly, one of the best defensive players in the land. Good: The concussion protocol continued to work as it should Sunday, keeping him out of his third straight Panthers game since he suffered a scary concussion against New Orleans. Bad—he missed his third straight game Sunday.
d. The indiscriminate and grotesque left leg/hip injury suffered by San Diego running back Melvin Gordon at Carolina is just one more illustration that the biggest item on the union’s negotiating list for 2020 should be fully guaranteed contracts.
e. The more I see of Shane Ray, the more I like what I see of the second-year Denver defensive end—the athleticism and physicality and instincts.
f. Diving at knees in the open field might be legal, Harry Douglas, but it’s still bush league.
g. Oakland quarterback Derek Carr picked the wrong night to have his worst game of the season.
h. Teams on the playoff bubble no one will want to play in January: Pittsburgh and Green Bay … coincidentally, my preseason Super Bowl picks.
i. Great illustration Sunday night by Cris Collinsworth—who sees things so many analysts do not—of the nightmare fundamentals by left tackle Ereck Flowers on his matador act against Dallas defensive end Benson Mayowa, allowing Eli Manning to get strip-sacked for his second turnover of the game.
j. You’re not making a good case to be in the Opening Day 2017 quarterback derby in Cleveland, Robert Griffin III.
2. I think it’s always dangerous to pick on a quarterback after four NFL starts, but you can’t tell me the Rams didn’t drive home from the Coliseum last night, after Jared Goff’s nightmarish game against the Falcons, wondering if Goff was really everything they thought he’d be when they picked him number one last April. Goff looks tentative, with a highly questionable arm, and his decision-making was terrible against Atlanta.
3. I think though the Rams have him signed to a guaranteed deal through the end of the 2018 season, Jeff Fisher is going to have do something significant in the last three weeks of the season to prove he deserves to return. There’s the Albert Breer report of the friction between Fisher and the Rams’ player personnel side, which one team insider told Breer made the internal workings of the team feel like “Rams Junior High.”
Then there’s the fact that Sunday’s embarrassing 28-point home loss to the Falcons ensured the Rams’ fifth straight losing season under Fisher. Fisher’s records in his five years with the team: 7-8-1, 7-9, 6-10, 7-9, 4-9. It was logical that the Rams’ emphasis this season be on the transfer of the franchise from St. Louis to L.A., and progress would be judged by a different standard than playoffs-or-bust. But no one inside the Rams expected the worst of Fisher’s five seasons, and that’s exactly what this is becoming.
So what does Fisher need to do? No one knows, but a 1-2 finish, say, with another bad loss Thursday at Seattle is not what would show owner Stan Kroenke that Fisher’s got a hold of his floundering team. The Rams’ effort didn’t exactly get a ringing endorsement from Todd Gurley post-game Sunday. “Just going through the motions,” Gurley told the Los Angeles Times. “I feel like everyone is just playing to get through.” Not a good sign. Barring a significant-unseen improvement by New Year’s Day, it just doesn’t make any sense to alienate a fan base you’re trying to get to fall in love with you by bringing Fisher back.
4. I think the penalty on Washington safety Deshazor Everett for interfering with Philadelphia punt returner Darren Sproles was the kind of foul that might merit a special category in the rules. Situation: Punt coming down to Sproles, Everett sprinting toward Sproles and trying to time his hit just as the ball reaches Sproles … and BOOM—before the ball arrives, Everett destroys Sproles.
It’s as vicious a hit as you’ll see on an exposed punt returner. I don’t know if Sproles was concussed on the play—he wasn’t available after the game—but that’s the kind of hit that simply doesn’t belong in football. Rather than a fine, I think that hit ought to be strongly considered for a one-game suspension for Everett.
5. I think I hope Victor Cruz is not the only NFL player to come out strong against New York fullback Nikita Whitlock having his home broken into and defaced with a swastika and KKK sign. That’s got to be decried, from every corner of this game. To me, too few players and NFL people have spoken out about this.
6. I think, for all those interested in divining the thoughts of the future of Tom Brady, there is this from Sean McDonough: The ESPN play-by-play man for the Monday night package asked Brady about his future on Saturday during the TV production meeting, and wondered if Brady might play until he’s 45. “That sounds like a good age,” the 39-year-old Brady said. Brady is nothing if not cryptic, but it doesn’t surprise me a bit that he might—might—be thinking about playing at least six more years.
7. I think there’s nothing more stunning than the fact that the Lions—who have trailed in the fourth quarter in 12 of their 13 games—are the second seed in the NFC as of this morning, a half-game ahead of Seattle. Detroit is 9-4, Seattle 8-4-1. As our Andy Benoit writes today, Matthew Stafford might be in the driver’s seat for his first NFL MVP.
8. I think this is not foremost on everyone’s mind, even Giants fans, but I found myself thinking after their second win over the 11-2 Cowboys this year, GM Jerry Reese is safe. Reese went on that jillion-dollar defensive spending spree, and it looks like it’s worked out. It has elevated the Giants into contention to be a significant factor in January.
9. I think the most underrated skill player of his day moved into 10th place on the all-time receptions list Sunday in Detroit. Lions wideout Anquan Boldin is 36 going on 28, and he’s not thinking of stopping now, at 1,064 catches.
*A story on Lawrence Phillips is included further down the page, and Mike Thomas gets a Goat of the Week award. Plus several snotty remarks by PK on Jared Goff and Jeff Fisher near the end of this article*
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/12/12/nfl-week-14-giants-cowboys-leveon-bell-peter-king
The NFL is a Wide-Open Race
Who is going to win Super Bowl 51? Who knows. Week 14 set the table for a frenetic finish. A look at the surging Giants, plus more notes on a quiet tailback mentorship, deflated footballs and an offer for Johnny Manziel
By Peter King
Week 14 proved there’s no mega-team in the NFL this year. Actually, Weeks 13 and 14 have proven that, particularly with America’s Teams—Dallas (Foes 25, Dallas 24 in the past eight quarters) and Oakland—struggling. And New England might be great, but the last time they played a good team (Seattle a month ago), they got beaten in Foxboro.
Some dangerous teams, Pittsburgh and Green Bay and Baltimore, might not even make the postseason. I want to join the party in Detroit, but four things stand in my way: The dislocated middle finger on Matt Stafford’s throwing hand and three remaining games—at the Giants, at the Cowboys, and Green Bay in Week 17. Yikes.
This is all you need to know about this season: It’s Dec. 12, and Tampa Bay and Tennessee are tied for first place in their divisions with three weeks to go.
So it’s just the way the NFL wants it. Mystery. Half the league has somewhere between a prayer (Tennessee, Baltimore), a shot (Seattle, Atlanta, Tampa Bay) and real hope (Kansas City, Dallas) of playing deep into January. With three-plus weeks left, look at the slate each week, and you’ll find intrigue.
• Tonight: Baltimore at New England.
• Week 15: Detroit at the Giants … New England at Denver … Tampa Bay at Dallas.
• Week 16: Minnesota at Green Bay (Christmas Eve) … and the Christmas Day double-header, Baltimore at Pittsburgh and Denver at Kansas City.
• Week 17: Green Bay at Detroit … the Giants at Washington … New England at Miami … Oakland at Denver.
Sit back, relax, enjoy the fight.
* * *
Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images
The Cowboys got vulnerable in the past two weeks because they played two very good defenses that pressured Dak Prescott and took away his best receiving weapons. The Giants likely gave Jerry Jones a sleepless night on the way home from Newark early this morning. In two games against New York this year, the 11-2 Cowboys had these problems:
• Dallas averaged 13 points and 294 yards in going 0-2.
• Dak Prescott recorded his two worst games of the season. Composite rating: 58.6.
• Prescott threw 14 passes to Dez Bryant in the two games. Bryant caught two.
• The Giants defense, particularly Sunday night in Jersey, was sound and physical and full of fury. “We played phenomenal,” said cornerback Janoris Jenkins. He’s absolutely right. The Giants never let Dak Prescott breathe Sunday night.
• The Cowboys defense got to Eli Manning and the offense, forcing four total turnovers. But Dallas turned those into just one touchdown.
And there’s this weapon that Dallas just doesn’t have. Well, no one does. Kansas City might—with Tyreek Hill—but it’s a little early to put him in Odell Beckham Jr.’s class. In three NFL seasons, Beckham has 34 touchdowns in 40 games.
It’s a play he’s run 500 times. Sixteen minutes left, Dallas up 7-3, Giants, so far unable to sustain a drive. Second-and-10, ball at the New York 39. Beckham split left, vet cornerback Brandon Carr ready to joust with him at the line, and Eli Manning calling for the snap.
“SET-HUT!!!”
Beckham dekes left-right-left and starts for the post, Carr a quarter-step behind. But this is the important thing: If Beckham gets inside Carr’s inside shoulder, his left shoulder, he knows he can win this—as long as middle ’backer Sean Lee, so instinctive, doesn’t come over to deflect the pass away. The pass has to be fast, and on him, NOW. The pass arrives at the 45, a little high, but easy to catch, and it’s happened so fast that Carr is a full step behind now. Running at full throttle, Beckham splits linebacker Anthony Hitchens and rookie corner Anthony Brown.
On the phone from the Meadowlands, Beckham picks it up.
“I used to catch that ball,” he said, “and I’d be a little timid. I’d want to be sure I had the ball and secured it. But the game is so fast. You’ve just got to hit it. Hit it! I took it around midfield, and I hit it, and I knew I had to just open it up.”
He did, as usual. That speed is rare, and Carr flailed at him and dove around the 7-yard line, but Beckham was gone. Beckham is David Ortiz; the Red Sox have gone down feebly for eight innings and trail by a run in the ninth, but Ortiz bombs a two-run homer to win. Beckham is Steph Curry; down by five with 50 seconds left, Curry hits a pair of threes to save the Warriors. Beckham is an odd dude, but he’s as dangerous a weapon as exists in football today.
And the Giants have him, and the Giants are 9-4 and will be playing in January in large part because of him. And that defense.
I asked Beckham if he thought the Giants might be in the Cowboys’ heads now, with the rest of the league being 0-11 against Dallas and the Giants being 2-0. Maybe in earlier days Beckham would have taken the bait. But not now.
“I don’t know,” Beckham said. “We beat ’em two times, and we’ve played pretty well, but our focus is on Detroit now. We’ve got work to do. We’ve got so much talent, and we know we can play better.”
The Giants joined the club Sunday night, the club of teams with a legitimate chance to play deep into January. The fortified defense will keep them in games like this one. The home-run hitter, Beckham, will win them.
* * *
Le’Veon Bell is Great. He’s Also a Mentor
Photo: AP :: Getty Images
Giants Sweep Cowboys is the headline of the week. But the story I like the most is the greatness of Le’Veon Bell, and his budding relationship with one of the future stars of the NFL.
First: There’s one back in football whose strange main characteristic is his calm. That’s right. A big part of Le’Veon Bell’s greatness is lying back and not attacking holes, but rather waiting ... waiting ... waiting until the right one opens.
Bell had the best game of his professional life Sunday in the Steelers’ 27-20 win over Buffalo. He’d never touched the ball more than 36 times in a game in his four-year career. On Sunday, he had the most productive day by a back against the Bills in their 57-season history, touching it 42 times for 298 yards; 236 yards came on the ground, on 38 carries.
His distinctive style—wait, wait and then hit the hole with speed and, if necessary, power—has earned Bell a fan in California. Last week, doing my podcast with Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey, who has declared for the 2017 NFL draft, the two-time collegiate national leader in all-purpose yards told me that Bell is the pro back he watches the most.
In fact, it’s more than watching. Though they haven’t met yet, McCaffrey and Bell have become video buddies. McCaffrey has sent Bell some of his tape, Bell has critiqued it, and McCaffrey has put that critique into play at Stanford.
“I love watching Le'Veon Bell,” McCaffrey said on campus last week. “I think he has a great mix of doing everything as a running back. He is a very good complete back. His patience, setting up his blocks so well, hitting the hole fast, breaking tackles, making people miss …
That’s the kind of stuff, when I look at his game and look at my game, what I really try to emulate is the aspect of patience, and not just running full-speed downhill. Let your blocks develop before you hit that hole, try to get in the best position of getting one on one with the safety in the open field, make him miss, and then turn on the jets from there.”
Bell got excited Sunday when I mentioned that McCaffrey was a fan.
“That’s my guy!” Bell said. “That means everything in the world to me. He’s a really special runner. I try to break some things down with him. He sent me a lot of his clips, to see what he could have done, what maybe I would have done on the same play—you know, to critique him a little bit. I think in this off-season I’ll meet up with him and work with him.
“He is a special player. You don’t see too many players who play the running back position who not only can run the ball and pass-protect, but who can catch the ball and who can run routes like a receiver. He’s very lean, very quick, great hands, can run any route … That caught me off guard when I first started watching him at the end of his sophomore year. He ran every route in the route tree.”
Back to the pennant race. Bell said the snow game in Buffalo didn’t bother him, nor did the workload, “because I grew up in that weather [in central Ohio]. Maybe you can’t cut as good as you normally would, but I embrace it. And coming to the Steelers was the perfect situation for me. I love the physical play.”
The patience, he says, is a byproduct of having an offensive line he trusts, knowing when it’s smart to burst through a hole and when to make the most of what he has in traffic. “He’ll sit back there in the backfield with the ball in his hands for four, five seconds before everybody makes their blocks,” said McCaffrey, exaggerating a bit. But you get his point. “As soon as he sees the hole, he hits it. That’s the kind of stuff I love to emulate.”
Now, Bell said, the Steelers have become one of those teams the league will fear in the playoffs. “I don’t think any team in the NFL wants to play us right now. Since week eight or nine, I’ve been saying this. Next week, we’ll play even better.” Scary thought for the rest of the AFC.
• McCaffrey on the prospect of any NFL coach allowing him to use his entire portfolio—rushing, receiving, punt-returning, kick-returning—in the pros: “My versatility has been my strong suit. I see how Stanford has used me, and that's how I would love to be used in the NFL too. I can do everything. I can run the ball between the tackles, I can pass-protect, I can go out in the slot and go outside and run routes against corners. I can do special teams, kick return, punt return. That is what I pride myself on, doing as many things as possible and doing them at a high level.”
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Derek Carr would like to help Johnny Manziel
Photo: Joe Robbins/Getty Images
It seems comical that Johnny Manziel was picked 14 slots ahead of Derek Carr in the 2014 NFL draft. Last week, though, when I met with Carr for an NBC “Football Night” feature, he wasn’t gloating. He was sad for Manziel. Carr wants to help Manziel.
“What’s crazy,” Carr said as we drove in the predawn toward Oakland, “is, you know, I spent a lot of time around him. He’s such a good dude. I obviously wish him the best, you know I hope that … hopefully one day he’ll reach out, [I’d] be able to talk to him and be a friend to him.”
“You'd love the chance to help him?” I said.
“Absolutely, man,” Carr said. “Because he’s so talented, so I understand why he was drafted where he was. He could throw, could run, a dynamic athlete, dynamic player. Obviously he just had a little trouble. He’s still young though, so hopefully he'll get another chance someday and he'll be alright.”
Manziel flamed out with the Browns, in part because of addiction issues. Most recently he has been in Texas and Florida, and his family is worried about him surviving without structure and sobriety. But if he reaches out, Carr would lend a hand.
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Some Great Journalism on Lawrence Phillips
Lawrence Phillips spent parts of three seasons in the NFL, playing for the 49ers, Dolphins and Rams.
Photo: Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images
Showtime has a 90-minute documentary debuting Friday night (9 p.m. ET) on the troubled and violent life of former Nebraska/NFL/CFL/NFL Europe running back Lawrence Phillips, who died at 40 last January in a California prison. One of the most gifted running backs to enter the NFL, Phillips was a classic case of self-ruin, through a horrendous history of domestic violence, abetted by alcoholism.
The documentary, written ably by Armen Keteyian, Lars Anderson and Al Briganti, is as harrowing a piece of journalism as I’ve seen on a disturbed athlete wreaking havoc on the people around him. It is superb. Phillips, starting at Nebraska and ending after his far-too-short football career, had a pattern of violence with women.
The story is told so vividly—by the women he abused, by a prosecutor who worked to put him behind bars, and by the coaches who got stung by him—that it makes you wonder how this troubled human being kept getting chance after chance after chance in football.
“A wasted, gifted human being,” Dick Vermeil, his coach in St. Louis, says, his voice shaking. “It haunts me.”
Phillips’ last victim—that we know of—was a San Diego exotic dancer, Amaliya Weisler, who describes a torturous beating and strangulation in her apartment, and how she hid in a closet when Phillips returned.
The documentary is so thorough and well told that the next face you see in the piece is the San Diego County prosecutor, Nicole Rooney, describing the post-assault examination of Weisler. Rooney said she had “the worst strangulation marks that I ever saw where a victim lived.”
But it’s not just a thorough piece of reporting on the awful things that Phillips did. It’s an explanation of why he did them. The story begins at two Los Angeles-area youth homes after Phillips had been taken out of a loveless home. There’s no justification for doing what Phillips did, of course. But you get some idea why after the back story, told so well by Keteyian et al.
It’s a crowded landscape in the NFL media world. But I cannot recommend this 90-minute doc more highly. Subscribe to Showtime here.
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The Award Section
OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Le’Veon Bell, running back, Pittsburgh. Playing in snow squalls in Buffalo (Bell’s going to want this video for his career time capsule), he rushed a career-high 38 times for a career-high 236 yards, added 62 receiving yards for a career-high 298 yards from scrimmage, in the 27-20 win. Bell had three touchdown runs, of three and five and seven yards, all in the first 40 minutes of the game. How about this for surprising? Bell told me afterward, “I’m not sore.” I’d like to ask him again this morning.
Mitchell Schwartz, tackle, Kansas City. Two games against the Raiders this year. Two times against that oppressive pass-rush. A total of zero sacks allowed, zero quarterback hits allowed, one quarterback pressure allowed, according to Pro Football Focus. Schwartz has been one of the best free-agent signings of 2016, another example of one who shouldn't gotten away from the line-needy Cleveland Browns.
DEFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
LeShaun Sims, cornerback, Tennessee. Pretty good year for mid- to late-round picks in the NFL. Malcolm Mitchell, No. 112; Blake Martinez, 131; Dak Prescott, 135; Tyreek Hill, 165. Sims, No. 157 out of Southern Utah, is trying to make a name for himself in Dick LeBeau’s secondary, and he was a strong part of the Titans’ 13-10 upset of the defending Super Bowl champion Broncos in Nashville on Sunday.
He had five tackles, one for loss, played a feisty corner for four quarters, and stripped Demaryius Thomas of the tying touchdown reception in the end zone with seven minutes left. Denver settled for a field goal, and those were the last points of the game. Kid’s a good player.
Vic Beasley, linebacker, Atlanta. Good players take advantage of bad foes. And the Los Angeles Rams have one awful offensive line. Beasley collected all three sacks of Jared Goff produced by the Falcons in the 42-14 rout of L.A., for a loss of 27 yards—and Beasley added a forced fumble and recovery, which he ran back for a touchdown. That gives him 13.5 sacks for the year, realizing the promise that he would be the pass-rush force the Falcons were expecting when he drafted in the first round in 2015.
Romeo Okwara, defensive end, New York Giants. Playing in place of the injured do-everything defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, Okwara, an undrafted free agent from Notre Dame, was terrific as JPP Jr. He led the Giants with eight tackles in the 10-7 win over the Cowboys on Sunday night, and he added his first career NFL sack and two more quarterback hits, plus a batted pass.
The storyline before this game was that Pierre-Paul’s absence would be a huge disadvantage for the Giants. It wasn’t much of a factor at all, because of Okwara. Afterward, Okwara was asked what advice Pierre-Paul had for him before the game. “He said to go out there and ball,’” Okwara said. The new kid’s good at following instructions.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Trey Burton, emergency long-snapper, Philadelphia. Being asked to make your first long-snap in the NFL is one thing, probably a scary thing. Being asked to make it with a division game on the line in the fourth quarter, on a field-goal attempt with your team down two points … that is one challenging play. Tight end Burton, subbing for injured tight end Brent Celek (who was subbing for injured regular long-snapper Jon Dorenbos) snapped from the Washington 24-yard line with five minutes left in the game.
Burton fired a spiral back slightly high that was corralled and put down for Caleb Sturgis to boot a 41-yard go-ahead field goal. The Eagles ended up losing, but Burton—who also caught an uncharacteristically high seven balls from Carson Wentz—had a day to remember. By the way, his last long snap in a game? In Pop Warner football, in Venice, Fla.
Tyreek Hill, wide receiver/returner, Kansas City. I have a feeling the 165th pick in the 2016 NFL draft will be in this award space for years to come. He just has a different gear. In the open field, if Hill gets going, his dekes and fakes are just too much for defenders—by the time they adjust, Hill is 10 yards past them.
On Thursday night Hill got one of those head starts in space and ran a punt back 78 yards, virtually uncontested, for a touchdown—on his way to 100 punt-return yards. He also had a 36-yard touchdown catch from Alex Smith. He’s just a very dangerous man right now. He’s also the ninth player since 1960 to have touchdowns via punt return, kick return, receiving and rushing in a single season.
COACH OF THE WEEK
Dick LeBeau, defensive coordinator, Tennessee. One point before I begin: DICK LEBEAU IS GOING TO BE 80 NEXT SEPTEMBER. Okay, let’s move on. It’s amazing to see the Titans over .500 on Dec. 12 … and just as amazing to see the LeBeau-coached D pitching a shutout over the defending Super Bowl champions through 47 minutes in Nashville on Sunday. With 13 minutes left in the game, Tennessee led 13-0, and the heroes on defense for Tennessee were many. The Titans are morphing into a respectable defense, with a big assist from the Hall-of-Famer.
GOATS OF THE WEEK
Mike Thomas, wide receiver/kick-returner, Los Angeles. Four yards deep in the end zone on the opening kickoff against Atlanta, Thomas bobbled the ball, and it took a forward hop that Atlanta linebacker Paul Worrilow recovered on the 3-yard line, leading to a Matt Ryan touchdown pass on the first scrimmage snap of the game. The Rams are putrid offensively, and every little mistake hurts them. Thomas handed the Falcons seven points seven seconds into the game.
Chandler Catanzaro, kicker, Arizona. I don’t know how many times I can excoriate the Cardinal specialists this year, but this unit is having one of the worst years of any special teams group in recent NFL history. Catanzaro doinked a 41-yard field goal off the upright in the second quarter, and then midway through the fourth quarter he had a PAT blocked—and the Dolphins ran it back for a two-point defensive conversion. So the four points Catanzaro didn’t score, and the two points the Dolphins did score because of his miss, were gigantic in a 26-23 loss that was decided on a Miami field goal as time expired.
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This season, 37 passers in the NFL have thrown at least 75 passes.
Cam Newton, the 2015 MVP, is 37th of 37 in completion percentage: 53.5 percent.
That’s 4 percentage points lower than the worst season of his career.
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think these are my quick notes of analysis from Week 14:
a. Can Jared Goff throw a spiral—I mean consistently?
b. If Kansas City makes it that far, and the field on whatever January day they play isn’t slippery and treacherous, Tyreek Hill could very much tilt the field in a Chiefs-Patriots AFC playoff game.
c. Good news and bad news for Luke Kuechly, one of the best defensive players in the land. Good: The concussion protocol continued to work as it should Sunday, keeping him out of his third straight Panthers game since he suffered a scary concussion against New Orleans. Bad—he missed his third straight game Sunday.
d. The indiscriminate and grotesque left leg/hip injury suffered by San Diego running back Melvin Gordon at Carolina is just one more illustration that the biggest item on the union’s negotiating list for 2020 should be fully guaranteed contracts.
e. The more I see of Shane Ray, the more I like what I see of the second-year Denver defensive end—the athleticism and physicality and instincts.
f. Diving at knees in the open field might be legal, Harry Douglas, but it’s still bush league.
g. Oakland quarterback Derek Carr picked the wrong night to have his worst game of the season.
h. Teams on the playoff bubble no one will want to play in January: Pittsburgh and Green Bay … coincidentally, my preseason Super Bowl picks.
i. Great illustration Sunday night by Cris Collinsworth—who sees things so many analysts do not—of the nightmare fundamentals by left tackle Ereck Flowers on his matador act against Dallas defensive end Benson Mayowa, allowing Eli Manning to get strip-sacked for his second turnover of the game.
j. You’re not making a good case to be in the Opening Day 2017 quarterback derby in Cleveland, Robert Griffin III.
2. I think it’s always dangerous to pick on a quarterback after four NFL starts, but you can’t tell me the Rams didn’t drive home from the Coliseum last night, after Jared Goff’s nightmarish game against the Falcons, wondering if Goff was really everything they thought he’d be when they picked him number one last April. Goff looks tentative, with a highly questionable arm, and his decision-making was terrible against Atlanta.
3. I think though the Rams have him signed to a guaranteed deal through the end of the 2018 season, Jeff Fisher is going to have do something significant in the last three weeks of the season to prove he deserves to return. There’s the Albert Breer report of the friction between Fisher and the Rams’ player personnel side, which one team insider told Breer made the internal workings of the team feel like “Rams Junior High.”
Then there’s the fact that Sunday’s embarrassing 28-point home loss to the Falcons ensured the Rams’ fifth straight losing season under Fisher. Fisher’s records in his five years with the team: 7-8-1, 7-9, 6-10, 7-9, 4-9. It was logical that the Rams’ emphasis this season be on the transfer of the franchise from St. Louis to L.A., and progress would be judged by a different standard than playoffs-or-bust. But no one inside the Rams expected the worst of Fisher’s five seasons, and that’s exactly what this is becoming.
So what does Fisher need to do? No one knows, but a 1-2 finish, say, with another bad loss Thursday at Seattle is not what would show owner Stan Kroenke that Fisher’s got a hold of his floundering team. The Rams’ effort didn’t exactly get a ringing endorsement from Todd Gurley post-game Sunday. “Just going through the motions,” Gurley told the Los Angeles Times. “I feel like everyone is just playing to get through.” Not a good sign. Barring a significant-unseen improvement by New Year’s Day, it just doesn’t make any sense to alienate a fan base you’re trying to get to fall in love with you by bringing Fisher back.
4. I think the penalty on Washington safety Deshazor Everett for interfering with Philadelphia punt returner Darren Sproles was the kind of foul that might merit a special category in the rules. Situation: Punt coming down to Sproles, Everett sprinting toward Sproles and trying to time his hit just as the ball reaches Sproles … and BOOM—before the ball arrives, Everett destroys Sproles.
It’s as vicious a hit as you’ll see on an exposed punt returner. I don’t know if Sproles was concussed on the play—he wasn’t available after the game—but that’s the kind of hit that simply doesn’t belong in football. Rather than a fine, I think that hit ought to be strongly considered for a one-game suspension for Everett.
5. I think I hope Victor Cruz is not the only NFL player to come out strong against New York fullback Nikita Whitlock having his home broken into and defaced with a swastika and KKK sign. That’s got to be decried, from every corner of this game. To me, too few players and NFL people have spoken out about this.
6. I think, for all those interested in divining the thoughts of the future of Tom Brady, there is this from Sean McDonough: The ESPN play-by-play man for the Monday night package asked Brady about his future on Saturday during the TV production meeting, and wondered if Brady might play until he’s 45. “That sounds like a good age,” the 39-year-old Brady said. Brady is nothing if not cryptic, but it doesn’t surprise me a bit that he might—might—be thinking about playing at least six more years.
7. I think there’s nothing more stunning than the fact that the Lions—who have trailed in the fourth quarter in 12 of their 13 games—are the second seed in the NFC as of this morning, a half-game ahead of Seattle. Detroit is 9-4, Seattle 8-4-1. As our Andy Benoit writes today, Matthew Stafford might be in the driver’s seat for his first NFL MVP.
8. I think this is not foremost on everyone’s mind, even Giants fans, but I found myself thinking after their second win over the 11-2 Cowboys this year, GM Jerry Reese is safe. Reese went on that jillion-dollar defensive spending spree, and it looks like it’s worked out. It has elevated the Giants into contention to be a significant factor in January.
9. I think the most underrated skill player of his day moved into 10th place on the all-time receptions list Sunday in Detroit. Lions wideout Anquan Boldin is 36 going on 28, and he’s not thinking of stopping now, at 1,064 catches.
Bruce Arians: Kind of odd it poured whenever we had the ball
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 28 Replies
What are you saying, Bruce, that the Dolphins or the NFL manipulated the weather so your team would lose? 
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...s-kind-of-odd-it-poured-whenever-we-had-ball/
Bruce Arians: “Kind of odd” it poured whenever we had ball
Posted by Josh Alper on December 12, 2016
The Cardinals play their home games in a stadium with a roof that’s located in Arizona, so they don’t get many chances to play in the rain over the course of a season.
They had to deal with wet conditions in Miami on Sunday and it didn’t go well. The Cardinals turned the ball over four times and recovered the ball after two more of their fumbles in a 26-23 loss that all but slammed the door on their playoff chances.
Wide receiver J.J. Nelson compared it to playing in a “monsoon” and quarterback Carson Palmer said “it just started turning on and staying on” when they got the ball before stopping when Miami would take possession. Coach Bruce Arians noted the same thing.
“We practiced with a wet ball on Wednesday and didn’t have any problems,” Arians said, via the Associated Press. “But when it continually pours when you have the ball, which was kind of odd, it’s tough.”
Unless the Dolphins have managed to keep their control of weather patterns in South Florida a well-guarded secret, any disparity in the amount of rain has to be chalked up to bad luck. The Dolphins had their share of it on Sunday as well, although their playoff hopes remain alive despite quarterback Ryan Tannehill’s knee injury.
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...s-kind-of-odd-it-poured-whenever-we-had-ball/
Bruce Arians: “Kind of odd” it poured whenever we had ball
Posted by Josh Alper on December 12, 2016
The Cardinals play their home games in a stadium with a roof that’s located in Arizona, so they don’t get many chances to play in the rain over the course of a season.
They had to deal with wet conditions in Miami on Sunday and it didn’t go well. The Cardinals turned the ball over four times and recovered the ball after two more of their fumbles in a 26-23 loss that all but slammed the door on their playoff chances.
Wide receiver J.J. Nelson compared it to playing in a “monsoon” and quarterback Carson Palmer said “it just started turning on and staying on” when they got the ball before stopping when Miami would take possession. Coach Bruce Arians noted the same thing.
“We practiced with a wet ball on Wednesday and didn’t have any problems,” Arians said, via the Associated Press. “But when it continually pours when you have the ball, which was kind of odd, it’s tough.”
Unless the Dolphins have managed to keep their control of weather patterns in South Florida a well-guarded secret, any disparity in the amount of rain has to be chalked up to bad luck. The Dolphins had their share of it on Sunday as well, although their playoff hopes remain alive despite quarterback Ryan Tannehill’s knee injury.
The Winners and Losers From Week 14
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
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The Winners and Losers From NFL Week 14
The playoff race heats up, but one contender looks nothing like its former self
The Ringer
(Getty Images)
Winner: The Playoff Race
Rodger Sherman: Guys, there’s an actual exciting football thing happening this year. I know, I know, we’ve heard so many times how the NFL is self-destructing with bad ratings and bad games and 30,000 other things. But with three weeks left in the regular season, it looks like we’re headed for a weird and wonderful finale.
In the NFC, we have five teams within one game of the final wild-card spot, and all five of them won Sunday. These are interesting teams! The Falcons score and allow thousands of points per game. (Though Sunday, they only gave up points to the lifeless Rams in garbage time.)
The Bucs haven’t been good in a few eons, but now Jameis Winston really seems like he was worth that no. 1 pick. Washington’s an adventure, since Kirk Cousins can throw a touchdown or pick-six on pretty much every play.
The Packers are dangerous if Aaron Rodgers plays well — and he played pretty damn well Sunday against the Seahawks. I, um, well, I guess I don’t have anything nice to say about the Vikings right now, but I like purple uniforms. And if the Giants lose Sunday night, they’ll be 8–5, and we’ll have six teams in this mix.
In the AFC, things are just as tight. Wins by the Texans, Dolphins, Titans, and Steelers coupled with a loss by the Broncos mean we have six teams between 8–5 and 7–6, with two division titles and two Wild Card spots at stake. We’re going to see Antonio Brown and Von Miller balling out and shaking their pelvises with playoff berths up for grabs. We get to find out if Joe Flacco is elite.
We get to see Marcus Mariota arguing that no, he was worth that no. 1 pick. We get to make fun of Brock Osweiler’s contract while he tries to get his team into the playoffs. And, I, um, well, I guess I don’t have anything nice to say about the Dolphins right now, and I don’t really like their uniforms either.
After a season defined by mediocrity, it looks like we might be able to avoid a .500 team in the playoffs. There’s potential drama, and the contestants are playing their best football of the year. (Vikings excepted.) This is good. Football is good, even if we’ve been told 30,000 reasons why it isn’t.
Loser: The Art of Quarterbacking
Danny Kelly: The NFL is a quarterback’s league. Quarterbacks have established themselves as the most important and most handsomely paid position group, and they’re passing for more yards and more touchdowns than ever before. But while inclement weather was a factor, quarterbacks had a bad early-game Sunday slate. Very bad.
Ben Roethlisberger threw a pair of picks in the first half in snowy Buffalo, then added another in the second half. Tyrod Taylor got in on the action, tossing a pass directly to Pittsburgh corner Artie Burns. Carson Wentz threw a bad pick in the end zone.
(Getty Images)
Both Brock Osweiler and Andrew Luck threw first-half interceptions in Indy. On the Colts’ first second-half possession, Luck added another on a throw back toward the middle of the field he made while running to his left. Philip Rivers threw up a prayer in Carolina and was deservedly picked off. Robert Griffin III, making his first start since Week 1, also coughed the ball up … on a flea-flicker … from the end zone.
Kirk Cousins threw an ill-advised pass from deep in his own end that was picked and returned for a touchdown. Matt Stafford must have felt left out: He threw two second-half picks against the Bears, including this terrible throw — nearly identical to Cousins’s — that Cre’Von LeBlanc returned for six.
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And, in rainy Miami, Carson Palmer threw two ugly interceptions in the first half and Ryan Tannehill added one of his own.
Loser: The Seattle Seahawks
Sherman: The Seahawks have been good for a while. Sunday, they were excessively bad. Russell Wilson threw a career-high five picks, though some were the fault of his receivers. A week after Earl Thomas broke his leg against the Panthers, the vaunted Seahawks defense watched Aaron Rodgers pass all over them, letting him go 18-for-23 with three touchdowns, good for the highest passer rating any QB has ever had against Pete Carroll’s Seahawks.
The 38–10 beatdown was the Seahawks’ first loss by more than 10 points since October 30, 2011, when Tarvaris Jackson was Seattle’s starter and Leon Washington led the team in rushing.
We’re supposed to consider the Seahawks a title contender because they’re the Seahawks, but this season hasn’t been the same. Wilson has looked iffy at times, the offensive line is a sieve, and the defense lacks some of the boom it used to have. Sunday, all of those things showed up on the same afternoon.
The Seahawks have won enough games to basically ensure them a playoff spot at this point, especially since their competition in the NFC West is made up of the surprisingly sucky Cardinals, an offensively inept Rams team that’s awful even by Jeff Fisher’s standards, and the 49ers’ death rattle echoing through an empty billion-dollar stadium. But seeing the team fire on zero cylinders Sunday makes it seem as if these Seahawks aren’t as potent as the title contenders of years past.
Winner: Le’Veon Bell Fantasy Owners
Donnie Kwak: The Bills hadn’t allowed more than 82 yards to a rusher in six weeks. Then came Bell. The Steelers RB ran 38 times for 236 yards and three touchdowns in Pittsburgh’s 27–20 win, and added four catches for 62 yards — nearly 50 points in non-PPR leagues, the highest single-game fantasy performance thus far this season. It was Bell’s first career three-rushing-TD game.
(Getty Images)
Afterwards, he said he loved playing in the Buffalo snow, which reminded him of playing as a kid on Christmas Day. The forecast doesn’t look great for Pittsburgh’s next game, in Cincinnati. Bengals beware.
Loser: Josh Huff
Michael Baumann: In a test case for the Law of “If RedZone Shows You a Special Teams Play, You Know It’s Going to Be Good,” Tampa Bay kick returner Josh Huff shuffled in front of a rolling football near his own goal line, intending to pick it up and run with it rather than take a certain touchback.
But because footballs are shaped weirdly, this one bounced up at the last second, hit Huff in the face, and rolled in a straight line about 25 feet before going out of bounds inches from the goal line. The Bucs had to start their next drive on the half-yard line and Doug Martin immediately got swarmed in the end zone for a safety.
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World-class, professional athletes failing to complete simple tasks is funny. People getting hit in the face is funny. But the bounces that ball took — first to hit Huff in the face, then to roll out of bounds short of the end zone — represent a truly incredible confluence of events. I bet if you lined up two world-class soccer players — one to kick the ball, one to head it out of bounds at the 1-yard line — they wouldn’t be able to replicate that play in 1,000 tries.
And then consider that this was Huff’s first play in a Buccaneers uniform. The Bucs just promoted Huff — whom the Eagles cut last month after he racked up a litany of legal issues related to a DUI stop on the Walt Whitman Bridge — from the practice squad. That kickoff was the first time he touched the ball, and he couldn’t even get his hands on it. The Bucs would win, 16–11. But between the safety and the ensuing Saints field goal drive, Huff cost Tampa bay five points before he even got his hands on a football.
Winner: Matt Barkley’s NFL Career
Kevin Clark: Teams are judged on a sliding scale. If the Patriots can’t put away a bad team until the fourth quarter, they’ll get ripped. For the Bears, anything above “absolute trash performance” is a rousing success, and we saw that on Sunday. The “star” (remember, sliding scale) was Barkley, who was downright decent despite the Bears’ 20–17 loss to the Detroit Lions.
Barkley came very close to actually winning or tying the game, but was ultimately undone by a comically inept offensive line which canceled out two Barkley darts with holding penalties. On the day, Barkley was 20-of-32 for 212 yards and a touchdown. And he made some pretty good throws:
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Barkley was considered a last resort for the Bears, but he’s making the case that he should at least be in the conversation for a competition, in Chicago or otherwise. He is a restricted free agent after this season. After flaming out in Philadelphia and Arizona, it seemed like Barkley was working his way out of the league. Now? He’s not a total disaster — and in Chicago that’s good enough.
Loser: Robert Griffin III
Sherman: RG3 hurt his shoulder in Week 1, and some thought he could miss the entire season. But he worked and rehabbed and worked and rehabbed and eventually fought his way back to join the team in December …
… Only to find the Browns were 0–12, the fans were gone, Ohio was frozen, and nobody cared whether the team won or lost. In fact, I’d bet some people would be fine with the Browns losing out to ensure they get the no. 1 pick.
There are so many reasons not to run a flea-flicker from your own 1-yard line. It’s such a boom-or-bust play — it could end in a touchdown, but it is more likely to result in an enormous sack or an interception. And if one of those second two things happen, you’re giving up a safety or extremely short field.
But when you’re 0–12 — as the Browns were entering Sunday’s 23–10 loss to the Bengals — nobody cares. Run the world’s dumbest play. Throw the ball into triple coverage. Man, just do whatever you feel like. Take a nap on the field. Get drunk in the instant-replay booth.
There is no point, which is why if I was RG3, I would have just told everybody I was hurt. There’s no use working hard and risking reinjury if the football is as pointless as this.
Winner: Bryce Petty
Baumann: The Jets have found their quarterback of the fut — [falls out of chair laughing with tears streaming down cheeks] — oh, I was so close to getting that whole sentence out with a straight face.
But think of it this way: Petty showed a lot of perseverance. His first pass of the game was picked off, the Jets fell behind 14–0 in the first four minutes of the game, and Carlos Hyde ran for 141 first-half yards against a defense that not only looked like it didn’t want to be there, but moved like it was wading through a vat of corn syrup. Which is understandable — being stuck in a vat of corn syrup sounds unpleasant.
And what a vat of corn syrup it was. Shots of all the empty seats at Levi’s Stadium circulated not in service of attendance-shaming, but in awe of the survival instincts of 49ers fans, who knew they would be better off just not showing up.
Because if they had, they would have been force-fed the bland, viscous, lukewarm mush that only two bad NFL teams can provide. Then, when the clock finally reached zero, their tormentors would’ve shoved the funnel back in, cackled, “Overtime, suckers!” and started pouring again.
But full credit to Petty, who managed to throw 34 passes after the interception without turning the ball over (which is harder than it looks — just ask Russell Wilson), a couple of which rookie Robby Anderson snagged for big gains.
Petty also ably handed the ball off to Bilal Powell 29 times, including on the game-winning touchdown. It was a perfectly mediocre quarterbacking performance, which will come as a pleasant surprise to however many Jets fans haven’t suffered some sort of apoplexy over the team wrecking its draft position with the 23–17 victory.
Loser: Harry Douglas
Clark: Almost every football hit leaves room for debate. Every face mask and helmet-to-helmet knock can usually be, if you want to be generous, explained away as being the product of an ultrafast game and the heat of the moment. Then, rarely, there are hits like this, when everyone agrees you are acting like an asshole:
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Winner: Pierre Garçon
Kwak: Both of Washington’s starting wideouts are pending free agents this offseason, and it is DeSean Jackson who is getting most of the sports-talk angst, especially with a rumor this week that he may return to Philly. Sunday, as is his wont against his former team, Jackson had a flashy day — three catches for 102 yards, including an 80-yard bomb from Kirk Cousins in the third quarter of Washington’s 27–22 win.
However, it is Garçon who the Redskins may miss more. Garçon had a typically workmanlike stat line — five catches for 59 yards and a score — but it was his 6-yard grab on fourth-and-1 with 2:59 left that kept the Redskins alive, both in this must-win game and in the NFC playoff race. Garçon may not have the breakneck speed or the highlight-reel plays, but his clutchness makes him Washington’s real no. 1 receiver.
Loser: The Denver Broncos, Playoff Team
Clark: The Broncos should not have lost footing in the AFC playoff race on Sunday. They played a Tennessee team barely interested in scoring. Marcus Mariota had 88 yards through the air. Trevor Siemian had 334. A 13–10 slugfest is the type of game the Broncos dream of. And yet, they screwed it up. Two fumbles, a lack of a coherent run game, and overall inept execution led to a bizarre loss that was made worse by what happened in Miami.
The Dolphins lost Ryan Tannehill for the game (at the very least) against Arizona and looked cooked — but backup Matt Moore led the game-winning drive to give the Dolphins a crucial win in the AFC playoff picture. The Broncos now have an uphill battle to make the playoffs. And this is not because the AFC is particularly good.
Heavens, no. It’s because the Broncos haven’t been executing the formula that got them into the playoff hunt to begin with: a defense that will keep scores low, and an offense that needs to make some scoring plays. The latter hasn’t happened enough lately. The Broncos have the Patriots next. Good luck.
Winner: The Titans’ Balance
Kelly: Marcus Mariota has put together an excellent season for Tennessee — his efficiency in the red zone, his versatility as a runner, and his ability to run the Titans’ pro-style, play-action heavy offense under Mike Mularkey has been a big reason they’re contending for the playoffs in the AFC South — but on a day when he didn’t look his best, Tennessee’s physical run game and suffocating defense picked up the slack.
Mariota completed just six passes for 88 yards against a swarming, aggressive Broncos pass defense, so the Titans leaned heavily on DeMarco Murray and Derrick Henry to move the football.
Tennessee ran the ball 42 times for 180 yards and a touchdown — Murray contributed 92 yards and a touchdown on 21 totes, and Henry added 42 yards on 12 carries — and the Titans bend-but-don’t-break defensive strategy worked against Trevor Siemian, who passed for 334 yards but found the end zone just once. Meanwhile, Denver’s run game was nonexistent; the Broncos carried the ball nine times for just 18 yards.
For the Titans, it was the definition of a team win, and they proved that they have a multitude of ways to beat you, whether it’s Mariota’s arm, their exotic smashmouth run game, or their stout defense. Tennessee moves to 7–6 to keep pace with the Texans in the AFC South, who beat the Colts on Sunday.
Winner: Long Snapper Awareness
Sherman: Long snappers have a job that’s very different from anybody else’s, and they get injured so rarely that no other players really practice the position. When one does get hurt, it can be disastrous. Emergency long snappers have cost teams games in recent years.
The Steelers lost after James Harrison snapped a safety in 2008, and the Raiders lost in 2012 when a second-year linebacker messed up two punt snaps, causing the jittery punter to foul up a third.
So the Eagles were in bad shape Sunday when snapper — AND MAGICIAN!!! — Jon Dorenbos got hurt. Tight end Brent Celek tried snapping, and, well:
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His snap wasn’t accurate and it knuckled, preventing holder Donnie Jones from getting it down for Caleb Sturgis’s kick. Instead of scoring three points, Philadelphia gave Washington a short field, which the Redskins used to score a touchdown.
And then Celek got hurt! The Eagles did not have a backup backup plan. LB Mychal Kendricks and TE Trey Burton quickly auditioned for the job of third-string long snapper, with Burton eventually winning. His attempt at snapping wasn’t great, but it was good enough to let Jones get a hold down.
The Eagles eventually found themselves trailing 27–22 in the game’s closing minutes, and got all the way down to the Washington 14. If it hadn’t been for Celek’s bad snap, the game might have been 27–25, and the Eagles might have been able to attempt a game-winning field goal. Instead, they needed to try for a touchdown, and Carson Wentz got strip-sacked.
You might not know your team’s long snapper’s name. But just hope he doesn’t get hurt.
The Winners and Losers From NFL Week 14
The playoff race heats up, but one contender looks nothing like its former self
The Ringer
(Getty Images)
Winner: The Playoff Race
Rodger Sherman: Guys, there’s an actual exciting football thing happening this year. I know, I know, we’ve heard so many times how the NFL is self-destructing with bad ratings and bad games and 30,000 other things. But with three weeks left in the regular season, it looks like we’re headed for a weird and wonderful finale.
In the NFC, we have five teams within one game of the final wild-card spot, and all five of them won Sunday. These are interesting teams! The Falcons score and allow thousands of points per game. (Though Sunday, they only gave up points to the lifeless Rams in garbage time.)
The Bucs haven’t been good in a few eons, but now Jameis Winston really seems like he was worth that no. 1 pick. Washington’s an adventure, since Kirk Cousins can throw a touchdown or pick-six on pretty much every play.
The Packers are dangerous if Aaron Rodgers plays well — and he played pretty damn well Sunday against the Seahawks. I, um, well, I guess I don’t have anything nice to say about the Vikings right now, but I like purple uniforms. And if the Giants lose Sunday night, they’ll be 8–5, and we’ll have six teams in this mix.
In the AFC, things are just as tight. Wins by the Texans, Dolphins, Titans, and Steelers coupled with a loss by the Broncos mean we have six teams between 8–5 and 7–6, with two division titles and two Wild Card spots at stake. We’re going to see Antonio Brown and Von Miller balling out and shaking their pelvises with playoff berths up for grabs. We get to find out if Joe Flacco is elite.
We get to see Marcus Mariota arguing that no, he was worth that no. 1 pick. We get to make fun of Brock Osweiler’s contract while he tries to get his team into the playoffs. And, I, um, well, I guess I don’t have anything nice to say about the Dolphins right now, and I don’t really like their uniforms either.
After a season defined by mediocrity, it looks like we might be able to avoid a .500 team in the playoffs. There’s potential drama, and the contestants are playing their best football of the year. (Vikings excepted.) This is good. Football is good, even if we’ve been told 30,000 reasons why it isn’t.
Loser: The Art of Quarterbacking
Danny Kelly: The NFL is a quarterback’s league. Quarterbacks have established themselves as the most important and most handsomely paid position group, and they’re passing for more yards and more touchdowns than ever before. But while inclement weather was a factor, quarterbacks had a bad early-game Sunday slate. Very bad.
Ben Roethlisberger threw a pair of picks in the first half in snowy Buffalo, then added another in the second half. Tyrod Taylor got in on the action, tossing a pass directly to Pittsburgh corner Artie Burns. Carson Wentz threw a bad pick in the end zone.
(Getty Images)
Both Brock Osweiler and Andrew Luck threw first-half interceptions in Indy. On the Colts’ first second-half possession, Luck added another on a throw back toward the middle of the field he made while running to his left. Philip Rivers threw up a prayer in Carolina and was deservedly picked off. Robert Griffin III, making his first start since Week 1, also coughed the ball up … on a flea-flicker … from the end zone.
Kirk Cousins threw an ill-advised pass from deep in his own end that was picked and returned for a touchdown. Matt Stafford must have felt left out: He threw two second-half picks against the Bears, including this terrible throw — nearly identical to Cousins’s — that Cre’Von LeBlanc returned for six.
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And, in rainy Miami, Carson Palmer threw two ugly interceptions in the first half and Ryan Tannehill added one of his own.
Loser: The Seattle Seahawks
Sherman: The Seahawks have been good for a while. Sunday, they were excessively bad. Russell Wilson threw a career-high five picks, though some were the fault of his receivers. A week after Earl Thomas broke his leg against the Panthers, the vaunted Seahawks defense watched Aaron Rodgers pass all over them, letting him go 18-for-23 with three touchdowns, good for the highest passer rating any QB has ever had against Pete Carroll’s Seahawks.
The 38–10 beatdown was the Seahawks’ first loss by more than 10 points since October 30, 2011, when Tarvaris Jackson was Seattle’s starter and Leon Washington led the team in rushing.
We’re supposed to consider the Seahawks a title contender because they’re the Seahawks, but this season hasn’t been the same. Wilson has looked iffy at times, the offensive line is a sieve, and the defense lacks some of the boom it used to have. Sunday, all of those things showed up on the same afternoon.
The Seahawks have won enough games to basically ensure them a playoff spot at this point, especially since their competition in the NFC West is made up of the surprisingly sucky Cardinals, an offensively inept Rams team that’s awful even by Jeff Fisher’s standards, and the 49ers’ death rattle echoing through an empty billion-dollar stadium. But seeing the team fire on zero cylinders Sunday makes it seem as if these Seahawks aren’t as potent as the title contenders of years past.
Winner: Le’Veon Bell Fantasy Owners
Donnie Kwak: The Bills hadn’t allowed more than 82 yards to a rusher in six weeks. Then came Bell. The Steelers RB ran 38 times for 236 yards and three touchdowns in Pittsburgh’s 27–20 win, and added four catches for 62 yards — nearly 50 points in non-PPR leagues, the highest single-game fantasy performance thus far this season. It was Bell’s first career three-rushing-TD game.
(Getty Images)
Afterwards, he said he loved playing in the Buffalo snow, which reminded him of playing as a kid on Christmas Day. The forecast doesn’t look great for Pittsburgh’s next game, in Cincinnati. Bengals beware.
Loser: Josh Huff
Michael Baumann: In a test case for the Law of “If RedZone Shows You a Special Teams Play, You Know It’s Going to Be Good,” Tampa Bay kick returner Josh Huff shuffled in front of a rolling football near his own goal line, intending to pick it up and run with it rather than take a certain touchback.
But because footballs are shaped weirdly, this one bounced up at the last second, hit Huff in the face, and rolled in a straight line about 25 feet before going out of bounds inches from the goal line. The Bucs had to start their next drive on the half-yard line and Doug Martin immediately got swarmed in the end zone for a safety.
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World-class, professional athletes failing to complete simple tasks is funny. People getting hit in the face is funny. But the bounces that ball took — first to hit Huff in the face, then to roll out of bounds short of the end zone — represent a truly incredible confluence of events. I bet if you lined up two world-class soccer players — one to kick the ball, one to head it out of bounds at the 1-yard line — they wouldn’t be able to replicate that play in 1,000 tries.
And then consider that this was Huff’s first play in a Buccaneers uniform. The Bucs just promoted Huff — whom the Eagles cut last month after he racked up a litany of legal issues related to a DUI stop on the Walt Whitman Bridge — from the practice squad. That kickoff was the first time he touched the ball, and he couldn’t even get his hands on it. The Bucs would win, 16–11. But between the safety and the ensuing Saints field goal drive, Huff cost Tampa bay five points before he even got his hands on a football.
Winner: Matt Barkley’s NFL Career
Kevin Clark: Teams are judged on a sliding scale. If the Patriots can’t put away a bad team until the fourth quarter, they’ll get ripped. For the Bears, anything above “absolute trash performance” is a rousing success, and we saw that on Sunday. The “star” (remember, sliding scale) was Barkley, who was downright decent despite the Bears’ 20–17 loss to the Detroit Lions.
Barkley came very close to actually winning or tying the game, but was ultimately undone by a comically inept offensive line which canceled out two Barkley darts with holding penalties. On the day, Barkley was 20-of-32 for 212 yards and a touchdown. And he made some pretty good throws:
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Barkley was considered a last resort for the Bears, but he’s making the case that he should at least be in the conversation for a competition, in Chicago or otherwise. He is a restricted free agent after this season. After flaming out in Philadelphia and Arizona, it seemed like Barkley was working his way out of the league. Now? He’s not a total disaster — and in Chicago that’s good enough.
Loser: Robert Griffin III
Sherman: RG3 hurt his shoulder in Week 1, and some thought he could miss the entire season. But he worked and rehabbed and worked and rehabbed and eventually fought his way back to join the team in December …
… Only to find the Browns were 0–12, the fans were gone, Ohio was frozen, and nobody cared whether the team won or lost. In fact, I’d bet some people would be fine with the Browns losing out to ensure they get the no. 1 pick.
There are so many reasons not to run a flea-flicker from your own 1-yard line. It’s such a boom-or-bust play — it could end in a touchdown, but it is more likely to result in an enormous sack or an interception. And if one of those second two things happen, you’re giving up a safety or extremely short field.
But when you’re 0–12 — as the Browns were entering Sunday’s 23–10 loss to the Bengals — nobody cares. Run the world’s dumbest play. Throw the ball into triple coverage. Man, just do whatever you feel like. Take a nap on the field. Get drunk in the instant-replay booth.
There is no point, which is why if I was RG3, I would have just told everybody I was hurt. There’s no use working hard and risking reinjury if the football is as pointless as this.
Winner: Bryce Petty
Baumann: The Jets have found their quarterback of the fut — [falls out of chair laughing with tears streaming down cheeks] — oh, I was so close to getting that whole sentence out with a straight face.
But think of it this way: Petty showed a lot of perseverance. His first pass of the game was picked off, the Jets fell behind 14–0 in the first four minutes of the game, and Carlos Hyde ran for 141 first-half yards against a defense that not only looked like it didn’t want to be there, but moved like it was wading through a vat of corn syrup. Which is understandable — being stuck in a vat of corn syrup sounds unpleasant.
And what a vat of corn syrup it was. Shots of all the empty seats at Levi’s Stadium circulated not in service of attendance-shaming, but in awe of the survival instincts of 49ers fans, who knew they would be better off just not showing up.
Because if they had, they would have been force-fed the bland, viscous, lukewarm mush that only two bad NFL teams can provide. Then, when the clock finally reached zero, their tormentors would’ve shoved the funnel back in, cackled, “Overtime, suckers!” and started pouring again.
But full credit to Petty, who managed to throw 34 passes after the interception without turning the ball over (which is harder than it looks — just ask Russell Wilson), a couple of which rookie Robby Anderson snagged for big gains.
Petty also ably handed the ball off to Bilal Powell 29 times, including on the game-winning touchdown. It was a perfectly mediocre quarterbacking performance, which will come as a pleasant surprise to however many Jets fans haven’t suffered some sort of apoplexy over the team wrecking its draft position with the 23–17 victory.
Loser: Harry Douglas
Clark: Almost every football hit leaves room for debate. Every face mask and helmet-to-helmet knock can usually be, if you want to be generous, explained away as being the product of an ultrafast game and the heat of the moment. Then, rarely, there are hits like this, when everyone agrees you are acting like an asshole:
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Winner: Pierre Garçon
Kwak: Both of Washington’s starting wideouts are pending free agents this offseason, and it is DeSean Jackson who is getting most of the sports-talk angst, especially with a rumor this week that he may return to Philly. Sunday, as is his wont against his former team, Jackson had a flashy day — three catches for 102 yards, including an 80-yard bomb from Kirk Cousins in the third quarter of Washington’s 27–22 win.
However, it is Garçon who the Redskins may miss more. Garçon had a typically workmanlike stat line — five catches for 59 yards and a score — but it was his 6-yard grab on fourth-and-1 with 2:59 left that kept the Redskins alive, both in this must-win game and in the NFC playoff race. Garçon may not have the breakneck speed or the highlight-reel plays, but his clutchness makes him Washington’s real no. 1 receiver.
Loser: The Denver Broncos, Playoff Team
Clark: The Broncos should not have lost footing in the AFC playoff race on Sunday. They played a Tennessee team barely interested in scoring. Marcus Mariota had 88 yards through the air. Trevor Siemian had 334. A 13–10 slugfest is the type of game the Broncos dream of. And yet, they screwed it up. Two fumbles, a lack of a coherent run game, and overall inept execution led to a bizarre loss that was made worse by what happened in Miami.
The Dolphins lost Ryan Tannehill for the game (at the very least) against Arizona and looked cooked — but backup Matt Moore led the game-winning drive to give the Dolphins a crucial win in the AFC playoff picture. The Broncos now have an uphill battle to make the playoffs. And this is not because the AFC is particularly good.
Heavens, no. It’s because the Broncos haven’t been executing the formula that got them into the playoff hunt to begin with: a defense that will keep scores low, and an offense that needs to make some scoring plays. The latter hasn’t happened enough lately. The Broncos have the Patriots next. Good luck.
Winner: The Titans’ Balance
Kelly: Marcus Mariota has put together an excellent season for Tennessee — his efficiency in the red zone, his versatility as a runner, and his ability to run the Titans’ pro-style, play-action heavy offense under Mike Mularkey has been a big reason they’re contending for the playoffs in the AFC South — but on a day when he didn’t look his best, Tennessee’s physical run game and suffocating defense picked up the slack.
Mariota completed just six passes for 88 yards against a swarming, aggressive Broncos pass defense, so the Titans leaned heavily on DeMarco Murray and Derrick Henry to move the football.
Tennessee ran the ball 42 times for 180 yards and a touchdown — Murray contributed 92 yards and a touchdown on 21 totes, and Henry added 42 yards on 12 carries — and the Titans bend-but-don’t-break defensive strategy worked against Trevor Siemian, who passed for 334 yards but found the end zone just once. Meanwhile, Denver’s run game was nonexistent; the Broncos carried the ball nine times for just 18 yards.
For the Titans, it was the definition of a team win, and they proved that they have a multitude of ways to beat you, whether it’s Mariota’s arm, their exotic smashmouth run game, or their stout defense. Tennessee moves to 7–6 to keep pace with the Texans in the AFC South, who beat the Colts on Sunday.
Winner: Long Snapper Awareness
Sherman: Long snappers have a job that’s very different from anybody else’s, and they get injured so rarely that no other players really practice the position. When one does get hurt, it can be disastrous. Emergency long snappers have cost teams games in recent years.
The Steelers lost after James Harrison snapped a safety in 2008, and the Raiders lost in 2012 when a second-year linebacker messed up two punt snaps, causing the jittery punter to foul up a third.
So the Eagles were in bad shape Sunday when snapper — AND MAGICIAN!!! — Jon Dorenbos got hurt. Tight end Brent Celek tried snapping, and, well:
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His snap wasn’t accurate and it knuckled, preventing holder Donnie Jones from getting it down for Caleb Sturgis’s kick. Instead of scoring three points, Philadelphia gave Washington a short field, which the Redskins used to score a touchdown.
And then Celek got hurt! The Eagles did not have a backup backup plan. LB Mychal Kendricks and TE Trey Burton quickly auditioned for the job of third-string long snapper, with Burton eventually winning. His attempt at snapping wasn’t great, but it was good enough to let Jones get a hold down.
The Eagles eventually found themselves trailing 27–22 in the game’s closing minutes, and got all the way down to the Washington 14. If it hadn’t been for Celek’s bad snap, the game might have been 27–25, and the Eagles might have been able to attempt a game-winning field goal. Instead, they needed to try for a touchdown, and Carson Wentz got strip-sacked.
You might not know your team’s long snapper’s name. But just hope he doesn’t get hurt.
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Locked
Falcons@Rams Vent Thread
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 199 Replies
The earliest vent thread I've ever posted, sigh. 
Bonsignore: In a refreshing twist, Rams GM Les Snead opens up about team's woes
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 46 Replies
ams tackle Greg Robinson (73) has "been a little slower to develop than we all would have liked. He's got some skills that we can make successful," Rams general manager Les Snead said. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Bonsignore: In a refreshing twist, Rams GM Les Snead opens up about team's woes
By VINCENT BONSIGNORE / STAFF COLUMNIST
Near the end of a 45-minute interview with reporters to end one of the toughest 14-day stretches in the new history of the Los Angles Rams, Les Snead, the club’s general manager, glanced toward Rams public relations man Artis Twyman.
Normally in these circumstances, the gesture would serve a very specific purpose.
As in: Hey man, get this wrapped up and get me the heck out of here.
Instead, Snead told Twyman to cool his heels and chill out.
Then he looked back at the reporters and urged them to keep asking away.
After going nearly a full season without officially talking to reporters while suffering through another season gone sideways and his head coach maybe, or maybe not, taking a shot at him while they both clung to whatever remains of the rope on their Rams career, Snead had plenty to say Friday.
And apparently all the time to say it while touching on everything from his relationship with Coach Jeff Fisher, who a source in the Rams front office described to reporter Albert Breer this week as “toxic,” the Rams inability to spring Todd Gurley free, the inevitable process of growing a team with a rookie quarterback to how his kids have taken to Google lately to figure out who else the the Rams could have drafted with the second overall in the 2014 draft .
Instead of the guy they did take: Left tackle Greg Robinson who, to date, has performed anything like anything a second overall pick.
(My) 15-year-old actually wants to get in my business. I (tell him), it doesn’t happen that way,” Snead said laughing. “With that said, we took Greg for a reason, and he’s been a little slower to develop than we all would have liked. He’s got some skills that we can make successful. We now have to go back to the drawing board and go, in our plan for success, where have we gone wrong? Where have we gone right? And keep getting him better. Greg, on the other hand, has got to meet us halfway, too.”
In between all of that, Snead gave his take on his long-term future in Los Angeles, which could hinge on how the Rams finish up over the last four games regardless of the two-year contract extension he signed. In the meantime, he’ll keep plugging away trying to get things right.
“Here’s what … We’re in that microscopic phase,” Snead said. “So, what I’m confident about is, I’m preparing to – We’re in draft meetings. And I’m doing that this week. That was on the schedule. I’m confident we’re playing Atlanta. And I think all of those decisions should and always be put off to the end of the season. So, I always say, that’s my confidence. And my passion is – hey, not where we want to be. And I’ve got a job to do, a role to do, lead a staff to do, to get us where we want to be. And that’s how you have to work in this league. That’s your focus.”
It was, to say the least, a no-holds-barred and frank, 45-minute conversation in which Snead took on all comers.
What it lacked in hard answers – Snead’s future with the Rams is essentially out of his hands, although he obviously hopes to be back – it certainly made up for in candidness.
As in Snead refuting reports that his relationship with Fisher is toxic. But did concede it’s troubling that someone else in the organization interprets it as such, and it’s on Snead and Fisher to fix that.
“I think what we need to work on is what’s been said. What are those frustrations? Why are those frustrations occurring?” he said. “Because what’s been said hasn’t been Jeff and I. It’s been other people within the building. And we have to accept responsibility. But I think the biggest thing is let’s fix those frustrations. And really fix what’s causing those frustrations. So I’m not going to sugarcoat any of that, but I can tell you the relationship is really, really good.”
Or that the Rams absolutely misfired on some personnel decisions and need to dig into why that happened and what they can do moving forward to make sure they minimize those mistakes in order to finally get going offensively.
“What bothers me is we’ve had some good decisions in personnel; we’ve had some not good decisions in personnel. My staff will tell you that is where I lose sleep at night, is on those ones we haven’t done so well on and what can we learn going forward,” he said “That’s how we learn, that’s how we evolve. We’ve got to look at that subset and how do we get better. How do we not repeat, if that’s a mistake, and also look this, because I think we all have to work together when you bring in players, be on the same page. You have a plan for success for each one, so those are the things that bother me is we haven’t got the results we wanted and the decisions that hadn’t gone well for us. How do we improve those?”
The frankness was refreshing, especially after spending the past 12 weeks listening to thinly veiled excuses for the Rams 4-8 record and empty promises to fix problems that linger week after week after week.
Snead, unlike Fisher, is owning his mistakes and laying out ideas and changes to limit them moving forward.
It might not be enough to save his job. Snead, like Fisher, has been on the scene for five years and while they lifted the product from morbid to competitive they haven’t been able to turn the corner from competitive to consistent winner.
He understands that. And no matter what the Rams do down the stretch, it won’t change the fact this has been an unacceptable season.
“You are who you are. Right? We’re 4-8 right now. Now we still have four games left but again however it ends, trust me, we want to go play good every single game and win every one, but no how matter good it is you’ll look at it and go, ‘That’s not where we want to be.’ And what do you gotta do to contend?” Snead said. “And we’ve been competitive, I think, that’s the first thing, probably, been competitive too long a stretch of competitive and that’s probably taking the last two games out. We weren’t competitive there, that’s obvious; the scoreboard said it. But I think we have been competitive, so we just have to go from there.”
It doesn’t make anything about this season all right.
But at least there is some accountability.
[www.ocregister.com]