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Marvez: Jared Goff's absence becomes more embarrassing with each Rams loss
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 0 Replies
Sporting News
Alex Marvez
Not yet.
There’s still more miserable offensive football left for the 2016 Los Angeles Rams. Case Keenum isn’t gone as the starting quarterback, and rookie Jared Goff will remain mired on the bench.
So said Ramscoach Jeff Fisher in the aftermath of his team’s third straight loss,a 17-10 stinker against the New York Giants on Sunday at Twickenham Stadium.
NFL SCORES: Live Week 7 updates, stats
Fisher could always change his mind a la New York Jets head coach Todd Bowles, who initially backed Ryan Fitzpatrick before shelving him last week for Geno Smith. Fisher, though, didn’t sound like someone seriously considering a QB change during his postgame news conference.
Fisher proclaimed his support for Keenum despite a four-interception performance and the ongoing struggles in the Rams' passing game. Fisher placed the blame for Sunday’s problems more on self-inflicted mistakes elsewhere.
"We didn’t lose this game because of quarterback play today,"Fisher said. "We lost at some other positions."
That they did.
A Keenum pass that bounced off wide receiver Tavon Austin’s hands was intercepted by safety Landon Collins. Dusting off his skills as a high schoolrunning back to snake from the right side of the field all the way to the left,Collins’ wild return for a 44-yard touchdown tied the score at 10 and gave the Giants the momentum they were sorely lacking early.
The execution of the final offensive play was even more gross,with wide receiver Brian Quick not noticing Keenum’s audible signal at the line of scrimmage. Quick cut his route short as Keenum threw a lob, giving Giants cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie an easy interception in the end zone to seal the win with 42 seconds left.
Along the way, Rodgers-Cromartie notched another interception on a tipped Keenum pass. The Rams again failed to get running back Todd Gurley on track. The 2015 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year gained a modest 57 yards on 15 carries, none of which spanned more than eight yards.
MORE: All-time most painful draft regrets
The offensive line foundered, as well. Left tackle Greg Robinson was especially hideous. He committed four penalties, two of which were declined.
"We’re not doing enough,” said Keenum, who was sacked three times in a 32-for-53, 291-yard passing performance. “Whatever it is, we need to go back, look at film, correct it and keep going."
As the second overall pick in 2014, Robinson is teetering perilously close to bust status. But the main focus remains on the draft’s No. 1 choice from this year and whether the same disappointment awaits.
Other rookies drafted later like Philadelphia’s Carson Wentz, Dallas’ Dak Prescott and Cleveland’s Cody Kessler are already starting whether because of injuries to first-stringers or earning the nod. Goff sits behind a journeyman passer who’s best suited to serve as a competent backup.
Fisher refuses to detail why he won’t play Goff. Whether that’s because the Rams goofed by picking Goff or the coaches deserve blame for failing to quickly developing him —or a combination of both —are questions that become more pertinent each week Keenum starts.
"Jared is going to play when we feel Jared is ready,"Fisher said. "Had we won this game, you wouldn’t be asking about Jared."
Yet the Rams did lose —again —as the likelihood rises of a 12th consecutive season without a playoff appearance.
MORE: Should rookie QBs start or sit?
Los Angeles now has a bye before a Nov. 6 home game against reeling Carolina (1-5). This is theoretically the ideal time to make a quarterback switch in hopes of providing an offensive spark and getting Goff some valuable experience that would suit him well in the future.
The fact Fisher isn’t ready to make that move after Sunday is even worse news for the Rams than losing to an average squad like the Giants.
[www.msn.com]
Remaining Schedule
- By 12intheBox
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 23 Replies
Welcome to the Bye week. Perhaps now is a good time to look forward to the remaining games now that we know a little more about who is who in the league.
Nov. 6
Carolina Panthers
LA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA 4:05pm ET
The panthers don't look like themselves so far this year. Their pass defense has been atrocious. Still, they have Cam and like him or not, Cam is hard to stop for 4 quarters. The WRs look like an NBA team out there - lets hope Joyner doesn't get abused by a pitch and catch game.
Nov. 13
at New York Jets
MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ 1:00pm ET
This feels like it could possibly be a road win, but it depends on which Fitz shows up. Their defensive line is going to give our offensive line fits in both the run and the pass game. This'n could come down to turnovers.
Nov. 20
Miami Dolphins
LA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA 4:05pm ET
Miami has found something lately on offense. Jay Ajayi is all of a sudden a threat to rush for 200 a game. Tannehill is still prone to mistakes, but these guys are playing a lot better than their record right now.
Nov. 27
at New Orleans Saints
Mercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans, LA 1:00pm ET
Yeesh ... We can't let this turn into a shootout. New Orleans can still put up a 40 burger on you on the right day, but their D can be shredded. Not a great matchup for us if you ask me.
Dec. 4
at New England Patriots
Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, MA 1:00pm ET
Ouch. This one here may hurt, although its exactly the kind of game a Fisher team would win once they are all but out of a playoff run.
Dec. 11
Atlanta Falcons
LA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA 4:25pm ET
The Falcons are doing things on offense this year. Julio is Julio but they have a ground game going with their two headed monster over there.
Dec. 15
at Seattle Seahawks
CenturyLink Field, Seattle, WA 8:25pm ET
Dec. 24
San Francisco 49ers
LA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA 4:25pm ET
Jan. 1
Arizona Cardinals
LA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA
Three Divisional games to end the year - will they matter? Will anything be on the line for the Rams as they get ready for this stretch or will they be in familiar - playing for pride - territory? If we come into this stretch of games needing 3 wins to make the playoffs - then I don't necessarily hate our chances. I think we can beat these 3 teams - even with week 15 being in Seattle. Sadly though, I think we have a pretty rough ride ahead of us.
Nov. 6
Carolina PanthersLA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA 4:05pm ET
The panthers don't look like themselves so far this year. Their pass defense has been atrocious. Still, they have Cam and like him or not, Cam is hard to stop for 4 quarters. The WRs look like an NBA team out there - lets hope Joyner doesn't get abused by a pitch and catch game.
Nov. 13
at New York JetsMetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ 1:00pm ET
This feels like it could possibly be a road win, but it depends on which Fitz shows up. Their defensive line is going to give our offensive line fits in both the run and the pass game. This'n could come down to turnovers.
Nov. 20
Miami DolphinsLA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA 4:05pm ET
Miami has found something lately on offense. Jay Ajayi is all of a sudden a threat to rush for 200 a game. Tannehill is still prone to mistakes, but these guys are playing a lot better than their record right now.
Nov. 27
at New Orleans SaintsMercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans, LA 1:00pm ET
Yeesh ... We can't let this turn into a shootout. New Orleans can still put up a 40 burger on you on the right day, but their D can be shredded. Not a great matchup for us if you ask me.
Dec. 4
at New England PatriotsGillette Stadium, Foxborough, MA 1:00pm ET
Ouch. This one here may hurt, although its exactly the kind of game a Fisher team would win once they are all but out of a playoff run.
Dec. 11
Atlanta FalconsLA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA 4:25pm ET
The Falcons are doing things on offense this year. Julio is Julio but they have a ground game going with their two headed monster over there.
Dec. 15
at Seattle SeahawksCenturyLink Field, Seattle, WA 8:25pm ET
Dec. 24
San Francisco 49ersLA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA 4:25pm ET
Jan. 1
Arizona CardinalsLA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA
Three Divisional games to end the year - will they matter? Will anything be on the line for the Rams as they get ready for this stretch or will they be in familiar - playing for pride - territory? If we come into this stretch of games needing 3 wins to make the playoffs - then I don't necessarily hate our chances. I think we can beat these 3 teams - even with week 15 being in Seattle. Sadly though, I think we have a pretty rough ride ahead of us.
Peter King: MMQB - 10/24/16
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
- 5 Replies
These are only excerpts. To read the whole article click the link below. I'll list mention of the Rams first. Well there are a couple more insignificant ones scattered throughout the article but for the sake of cohesion...
Photo: Dan Istitene/Getty Images
The NFL, obviously, is trying to get Europe to not like American football, with the Giants-Rams monstrosity following Jags-Colts (awful game), and last season’s Chiefs-Lions (45-10 blowout), and Jets-Dolphins (Miami totally toothless).
That means the Cincinnati-Washington game this week, the third and final international contest of 2016, had better be good … or the NFL will foist four games on the fine people of London next year.
If Case Keenum is the quarterback when the Rams host the Panthers in 13 days, it will say an awful lot about Jared Goff, and not good things.
Login to view embedded media View: https://twitter.com/RossTuckerNFL/status/790229810798878720
It’s not a good idea for the NFL to have a Pacific Time team in the London game, if it’s going to start at 6:30 a.m. PT.
Landon Collins, safety, New York Giants. For being the majority of the offense on a feeble day for the Giants … and for making the defensive play of the year, a 44-yard touchdown return of a tipped pass against the Rams in the Giants’ 17-10 win Sunday in London. This was one of the best defensive touchdown returns I’ve ever seen.
Six Rams had either one or two arms on Collins in his weaving, instinctive return; at the Rams’ 37-yard line, Collins stuck his foot in the ground to pivot left, and Tavon Austin overshot him and knocked two other Rams off the chase at the same time, like they were bowling pins.
Collins played an impactful game as well; check out the highlight reel. If he plays 15 years, he’ll never have as athletic and highlight-filled a play as that 44-yard touchdown. NFL Network said he actually ran 84 yards on the play. With 11 minutes left in the game, Collins had his second tipped interception, giving the Giants a short field and the ability to drive for the winning touchdown. Giants 17, Rams 10, with 14 points directly attributable to Collins.
Login to view embedded media View: https://twitter.com/Giants/status/790198698584084480
Defensive Tackle Damon Harrison, New York Giants. Harrison was a disruptive interior force against the Rams and played a big part in holding running back Todd Gurley to 57 yards rushing. Harrison led all defensive linemen in Week 7 with seven run stops, which he did on only 18 run-defense snaps. Harrison also added a sack and two QB hurries on 25 pass rush snaps.
*************************************************************************
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/10/24/seattle-seahawks-arizona-cardinals-tie-nfl-week-7
Dramatic Incompetence and the True Story of an NFL Tie
‘The craziest game I’ve ever played’ was how one 13-year vet described Seattle 6, Arizona 6. Here are the bewildering details from the scene, plus the success of Matthew Stafford, Josh Brown fallout and more on Week 7
By Peter King
Ross D. Franklin/AP
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Scenes from a beautiful and dramatic and sometimes incompetent debacle, the best really bad game I have ever seen: Cardinals 6, Seahawks 6.
“I never drew before,” beaten-up running back David Johnson of the Cardinals said, standing on the field, truly dazed, a minute after it ended.
“Huh?” he was asked.
“It was a draw,” he said. “Never played in a draw before.”
Other side of the field.
“How many plays did we play?” Richard Sherman said, walking a little awkwardly, like he was staving off cramps.
“A lot,” he was told.
“However many,” he said, “felt like we were just out there all night. It was just …”
No words, really. Except the one, maybe, that I offered.
“Kickers,” I said.
“Kickers,” he said, with a little smile.
Ever see a kicker surrounded by a force field? The kind of force field no one will enter? Toward the end of a dramatic football game, the sidelines are packed with people. Club employees, security, NFL Films, network TV, interlopers who probably shouldn’t be there, players creeping down the sidelines for a better look at the action. So this was the situation when Arizona’s Chandler Catanzaro trotted onto the field with 3:26 left in overtime to kick a chip-shot field goal. Just 24 yards. Nine yards shorter than an extra point. Chippy.
To recap: Extraordinary game. Catanzaro made a field goal late in the first half for a 3-0 lead. The Seahawks, after a bonehead Arizona special teams play—a spare Seahawk wideout, Tanner McEvoy, bullrushed through the line and smothered a punt late in the fourth quarter—tied it with four minutes left on a Steven Hauschka field goal. Catanzaro and Hauschka opened overtime with field goals. Now it was 6-6. Arizona ball, 6:42 left.
On the sideline, before they went out on the field, a teammate asked Carson Palmer: “We still each get the ball?”
No, Donovan McNabb. Sudden death now.
Beautiful first call. All night David Johnson was getting the ball, but on first down, Palmer play-actioned to Johnson and lofted a strike to young and invisible tight end Ifeanyi Momah for 27 yards. Palmer to Jimmy Nelson for 40 with a flailing Sherman in coverage, to the five-yard line.
And then a run left for Johnson—remember this; we’ll discuss later—that was stopped three inches shy of the goal line. We think. Obviously Bruce Arians doesn’t trust his kicking game (he shouldn’t) so he tried to have Johnson stick it in once more. Nope. But here is the easy field goal.
Clank. Left upright.
A helmet slammed the ground on the Cardinals sideline. Disbelief was on every face. Palmer met Catanzaro just before he left the field and got in his face with five seconds of encouragement.
Catanzaro came to the sideline. He stared up, saying nothing. He pierced the crowd on the sideline, then stood by himself for 60, 90, 120 seconds, arms crossed. No one else approached him. The loneliness of the long-distance kicker. Or short-distance, in this case.
Then, of course, Seattle got in position, with a beautiful Russell Wilson-to-Jermaine Kearse lofted strike for 31 yards, and then a Doug Baldwin catch-and-run to the Arizona 9-yard line. Field goal unit comes on. Game over.
Hauschka, wide left by a mile from 28. From 28!
An hour after the game: “I’m still trying to process what I just saw,” said Larry Fitzgerald.
Photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP
This game was a bad tie for Arizona. The Cardinals needed to win. They are 3-3-1. Seattle, atop the NFC West, is 4-1-1. Arizona is two games behind, essentially, with nine to play, and with two home games and five on the road in the final seven weeks. Seattle still has to play at New England and Green Bay but finishes with three of five at home.
I was going to say something to Bruce Arians as he walked off the field post-game, but he had that “not now” look in his eye and just shook his head in a disappointed way. The crowd didn’t know how to react either. The whole thing was weird. But Seattle benefited, without a doubt. Still two up in the loss column.
The Cardinals, the No. 1 offense in football last year with most of the same characters active Sunday night, possessed the ball for 46:19 and scored six points. Arizona had 14 possessions and scored two field goals. This one will hurt for a while. When this season is put to bed in Arizona, whatever happens short of an NFC title, the special teams will be the unit that doomed the franchise.
Seattle blocked a field goal on the acrobatic rush of Bobby Wagner, who leaped over the snapper, Aaron Brewer, to smother the kick. McEvoy’s blocked punt highlighted the weakness of the Arizona punt-block unit; he bowled over Kerwin Williams. And then the Catanzaro clank.
“I thought,” said Arians to the press, “that our football team, other than the three plays in the kicking game, was outstanding. Our kicking game let us down a little bit today. We left three field goals out there.”
Someone asked Arians what he said to Catanzaro after the miss.
“Make it,” Arians responded. “This ain’t high school.”
Larry Fitzgerald, with time to digest it: “I’ve been in this league 13 years. I’ve played in more than 200 games, regular season and playoffs. And this is the craziest game I’ve ever played in.”
The reaction in the locker room, he said, was “somber. If you’d have walked in, you’d have thought we lost the game. It was just a really, really weird feeling. It feels like you lost. But you didn’t lose. You didn’t win, but you didn’t lose. A perplexing feeling.”
Fitzgerald said the range of emotions was so big, going from Nelson sprinting down to the Seattle 5-yard line late in the fourth quarter (“I was sure he was going to score”) to lining up for the easy field goal, to then Catanzaro clanking the field goal try, to Seattle moving downfield with ease for the win, and then Hauschka missing ridiculously.
“The swing of emotions in two minutes … incredible. I thought J.J. was gonna score, and I dropped to my knee, so happy. Then he’s not in, and we miss the kick, it’s an extra point, it’s a foregone conclusion, and they miss the kick. Crazy.”
Photo: Norm Hall/Getty Images
We’ll end with Johnson. So much of him is antidote to what we’re seeing in the NFL in this young season. In the past three weeks, in prime time, we’ve had the Giants lay down in Minnesota on Monday night, Arizona pancake the Niners and the Bears no-show in Green Bay on Thursday. And then, the last two Mondays, the Bucs slog through a 17-14 sleep-inducer at Carolina and the Jets imitate a team of Ralph Kramdens trying to beat the Cardinals. And Thursday of this week, it’s Jacksonville-Tennessee. Football Fever! Catch it!
Johnson was big and a gumby character and tough as they come Sunday night. Rushes: 33. (Runs called back by penalty: two.) Targets: 13. Catches: eight, for 58 yards. Yards against the formidable Seattle defense: 171.
“I’m not tired,” Johnson said when it was over. “I’ll be sore tomorrow for sure. But I’m not tired.”
Johnson will be on my podcast this week. If he’s not tired after getting whacked around in that game like he was, well, he’s a lot tougher than he looks.
* * *
Photo: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
For the third straight Sunday, the Lions trailed at home in the fourth quarter. For the third straight Sunday, the Lions rallied to win behind a quarterback who has been at his career best without one of the best receivers of recent history.
Why, I asked Matthew Stafford on Sunday, have you survived so well without Johnson?
“Hard work,” he said from Detroit an hour after his perfectly placed 18-yard dart to Anquan Boldin beat Washington, to the delight of Ford Field gone mad. “Not only by myself, but by my receivers, my teammates. One player doesn’t make a team. Football’s such a great team game. These new guys have come in and worked and proven they’re pretty good football players.”
We’ll get to how good Stafford’s been in the clutch, and overall. But there’s something to what he says. Let’s look at the way human nature works. You have a superstar. He’s humble, he’s always good, he’s a great force, and he’s consistently productive. That’s what Calvin Johnson was.
But there’s also part of a team with a superstar, regardless whether he stomps his feet when he doesn’t get the ball or not, that is a bit burdensome. (Johnson didn’t stomp his feet, by the way.) A quarterback starts to think, Gotta get the ball to Calvin, instead of thinking only what he should be thinking: Hit the open guy.
So for proof, look at the receivers: Marvin Jones, 33 catches; Anquan Boldin, 32 catches; Golden Tate, 31 catches; Theo Riddick (hurt the past two weeks), 26 catches. Stafford’s been an equal-opportunity thrower, and therefore, the 4-3 Lions are in the pennant race with the season nearing the halfway point.
Stafford, who is still just 28, is having the best season of his life: a 105.7 rating, 68 percent completions, with a 15-to-4 touchdown-to-interception differential. Sunday was the 100th game of his career, and he sounded part exhilarated, part drained when it was over.
“Getting to 100 games in this league is pretty special for any player, and certainly for me, and winning it the way we did was pretty awesome,” he said. “Happy to come out a victor in such a big game, such an important game for us.”
When you watch the Lions now, you just expect Stafford to do very big things at the end. Look what he’s done on the three-game home stand that ended Sunday:
• Week 5 versus Philadelphia: Down 23-21 with 2:34 left in the fourth quarter. Stafford leads a 34-yard field goal drive to win, 24-23.
• Week 6 versus Los Angeles: Down 28-21 with 14 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Stafford leads an 84-yard touchdown drive and a 44-yard field goal drive to win, 31-28.
• Week 7 versus Washington: Down 17-13 with 1:05 left in the fourth quarter. Stafford leads a 65-yard drive, finishing with an 18-yard strike to Boldin to win, 20-17.
“At a point of the game like this one,” Stafford said, referring to the play that won Sunday’s game, “no one’s going to be open, really. Somebody’s gotta make a great play. It’s been interesting playing with Anquan. My parents both went to Florida State, so when I was a kid, I was a huge Florida State fan. And he’s got a few years on me, so I rooted for Florida State and I rooted for Anquan. But here, he just got vertical and made a great play on the ball.”
Stafford made a superb throw, too, inches from the fingertips of Washington linebacker Will Compton. With cornerback Kendall Fuller hanging onto him, Boldin caught the ball for the winner. “Somebody’s gotta make a great play,” Stafford said, “and he did. “We just went crazy. What’s been great about playing with him is he trusts me, and I trust him.”
That left Stafford, in his past 13 games, with 32 touchdowns and five interceptions. He’s efficient, not forcing the ball, and not relying on any single player. At 28, he’s never played better. “There’s a little left in the tank,” he said wearily. “I feel I’m doing all the the little things I need to do to get better, and I still have a ways to go to get better.”
Back-to-back road contests—at Houston, at Minnesota—the next two weeks will provide more chances for Stafford and the Lions to continue to improve.
My thoughts on Josh Brown
In the case of the NFL versus Josh Brown, there is one thing that stands above all after the hue and cry of the last four days: The NFL needs to make an absolutely uniform policy about domestic violence.
I believe the NFL needs to make the six-game suspension plateau in issues of domestic violence boilerplate. After the Ray Rice scandal two years ago, the league said cases of domestic violence would be subject to six-game suspensions for the abuser, unless there were extenuating or aggravating circumstances. This qualifying part has to go away.
When a player is found to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs, he is suspended for four games. Players are told that there is no excuse; they are responsible for what goes into their bodies. It is sometimes a very difficult policy, but it is the law of the land and prevents elicit PED use as a matter of course. Similarly, a six-game suspension for anything involving domestic violence will be clear and, hopefully, a deterrent for those who would ever lift a hand to harm a partner or a family member.
Some would say that the inflexibility of this blanket policy would punish those who are not the worst abusers. Too bad. And obviously the players would have the ability to file grievances and appeal their suspensions. That's fine. Let the justice system take its course. The NFL’s job should be to present the best case to be sure the player is suspended.
* * *
“The NFL wants their players to be dynamic individuals from the start of the whistle to the end of the whistle, stop exactly what they’re doing on a dime, go back to their huddle and then do it again. After being in the league office and now being on the outside looking in after being in the league office for 13 seasons, there is a real line of demarcation that the NFL product inherently harms itself when it devalues its characters, when it doesn’t live up to the entertainment entity that it itself claims it is . . .
Sportsmanship is a worthy goal. I’m not minimizing that. That’s the line the NFL is taking. But they are throwing out the baby with the bath water. They are stripping away what makes the league a must-watch event.’’
—Merton Hanks, who was the NFL’s vice president of football operations until last spring, to Tom Curran of Comcast Sports Net-New England. Hanks is now associate commissioner of Conference USA.
* * *
“[Jack] Lambert couldn’t get on the field as a backup linebacker. The kid in front of him was really their leader, kind of the heart-and-soul of the Kent State defense. Through a series of circumstances—that’s a long story, but we'll skip through all that—the kid dropped out of school and went to work for Mick Jagger; he was his security guy on tour with the Rolling Stones, and Lambert became the starting middle linebacker.
He probably would have never played had that not happened. And you have a Hall of Fame player. Sometimes things take a turn, and once some players get that opportunity and they get in there—the Tom Bradys of the world, or whoever—you can’t get them out of there. Lou Gehrig.”
—Bill Belichick, in the most pensive storytelling moment of his season, talking at his press conference the other day about the good fortune you sometimes need to excel in sports.
* * *
OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Jay Ajayi, running back, Miami. He became the fourth back in the 97-year history of the NFL to rush for 200 yards in successive games. Ajayi followed his 204-yard game at home in an upset of Pittsburgh with a 28-carry, 214-yard domination of Buffalo’s resurgent defense in a 28-25, fourth-quarter comeback win over the Bills. Now he’s in the same league—at least in the record book—as O.J. Simpson, Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams. If you called that nine days ago, you need to move to Vegas. Today.
Jeremy Hill, running back, Cincinnati. Pretty impressive when you average more in the running game than in the receiving game—particularly when you’re gaining 12 yards a clip in the air. But the Bengals finally got what they’d been waiting for from Hill in a rout of the Browns with a nine-carry, 168-yard rushing day (18.7 per touch), including a game-changing 74-yard touchdown gallop in the third quarter.
Melvin Gordon, running back, San Diego. After some idiot (me) questioned Gordon’s running ability recently, clearly Gordon was supremely motivated to dominate. He was crucial in the big San Diego upset at Atlanta on Sunday, rushing and receiving for 121 total yards. Gordon had two-yard and three-yard touchdown runs in the first half as the Chargers struggled to stay in the game. With six minutes left he caught a five-yard flip from Philip Rivers for a touchdown. This was a game the Chargers had no business winning, and Rivers and Gordon willed it.
DEFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Leonard Floyd, defensive end, Chicago. The great rookie hope of the Chicago front seven finally had a breakout game at Lambeau Field, with three tackles, two sacks, a forced fumble and a touchdown—the Bears’ only TD of the night. Floyd, late in the first half, stripped Aaron Rodgers for a 10-yard sack, recovered it in the end zone and helped the toothless Bears stay in the game. With Chicago down to Mike Tomczak at quarterback, Floyd and his mates will have to dominate for Chicago to salvage much of this season.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Bobby Wagner, linebacker, Seattle. Made the special teams play of the year, leaping over Arizona long-snapper Aaron Brewer like a high-hurdler. Wagner’s foot scraped the back of Brewer, which Arizona coach Bruce Arians screamed should have negated the play because of safety concerns with snappers, but he lost the argument. “Incidental contact is not necessarily a penalty,” Al Michaels said on TV.
Anyway, Wagner steamed ahead and blocked the 39-yard field-goal try, fair and square. As NFL VP of Officiating Dean Blandino tweeted a couple of minutes after the play: “In #SEAvsAZ you have to land on the player for it to be a foul. The block was legal.” Not only legal, but epic.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Sunday Night Football Kickers. How fitting, another tie. Chandler Catanzaro and Stephen Hauschka, two relatively reliable NFL kickers, traded yak jobs on game-winning gimmes and America went to bed without a victor.
COACH OF THE WEEK
Andy Reid, head coach, Kansas City. In his 300th career game (176-123-1), Reid’s Chiefs beat the Saints, and Reid moved two wins behind Jeff Fisher for second on the wins list among active coaches.
* * *
Things I Think I Think
1. I think these are my one-liners of analysis from Week 7:
Ten weeks shy of his 44th birthday, and perhaps 19 years shy of being fitted for his gold jacket in Canton, Adam Vinatieri set the NFL record with his 43rd consecutive field goal at Jacksonville.
Malcolm Butler’s a big-time cornerback, as evidenced by his athletic pick over Antonio Brown.
It feels like the beginning of the end for Gus Bradley—1-3 at home, two players ejected in ugly loss to Oakland, 14-40 career record—in Jacksonville.
The three-week stats for Tom Brady (75 percent accuracy, 9.94 yards per attempt, 8-0 TD-pick ratio, 132.6 rating) are video-game numbers and just prove one thing: The clock of regular age does not apply to this 39-year-old singular athlete.
We’re seven weeks in, and there’s a lot to love about the Vikings, but you’ve got to wonder if they’re going to score enough to win in January—and February.
2. I think the rise of Jay Ajayi in Miami is one of the best stories of this season. What you need to know about this truly international guy:
• He was born in England 23 years ago to Nigerian parents and lived in London until he was 10.
• He lived in Maryland for his middle-school years, and then the Ajayi family moved to Frisco, Texas, where he starred at running back and rushed for 2,240 yards as a high school senior.
• He got a full ride to Boise State and scored 50 touchdowns in three seasons as a 6-foot, 225-pound back.
• He skipped his senior year to enter the 2015 draft but was disappointed to go in the fifth round, 149th overall, the 13th running back chosen.
• Miami coach Adam Gase left Ajayi behind on the team’s first road trip of the year, the opener at Seattle, because Ajayi had a lousy attitude when he didn’t win the starting job after Lamar Miller left for Houston in free agency.
• No one, not even his parents, could have seen this coming. It is ridiculously fortuitous. His first four games: 14, 28, 33 and 42 rushing yards … 31 carries, with a long of 11. That’s before the Steelers came to Miami last week.
• Home against Pittsburgh last week: 25 carries, 204 yards. Home against Buffalo on Sunday: 28 carries, 214 yards. “We were trying to do the same thing, make it a shorter game for our defense,” said coach Adam Gase. “Anytime it happens early, it gets everybody’s confidence up knowing that, ‘Alright, we have a good rhythm,’ really before you anticipate it. He did a good job of running through arm tackles, and our line did a good job as far as sticking on guys and finishing blocks.”
• Can he make it three straight 200-yard games? After a bye in Week 8, the Dolphins return to host the Jets, who rank second in the NFL in rushing yards allowed, at just 74.1 per game.
3. I think some of the coaches we thought would never, ever make their living on the ground—Bruce Arians (in part), Adam Gase, Bill O’Brien (because of Brock Osweiler’s struggles)—are winning on the ground. Nothing’s forever in the NFL.
4. I think it’s hard to count how many offensive lines in the NFL stink, but a lot do. It’s the position group that’s the most subpar in the league right now. Did you see Sunday night, when four Seahawks (and I know the Seattle defense front is very good) met at Carson Palmer midway through the first quarter and combo-sacked him? Palmer never had a chance. So many quarterbacks feel that way right now.
5. I think I simply cannot believe the league fined Odell Beckham Jr. $24,309 for taking his helmet off as he was leaving the field at the end of a play. This is an inexcusable sanction. The average personal income for an American male with a bachelor’s degree in the United States today (according to Wikipedia) is $49,804. Odell Beckham Jr. was fined six months’ salary of the average American man with a college education for taking his helmet off in celebration as he left the field after scoring a touchdown. Give the man a 15-yard penalty and leave it there.
The NFL has the right to fine players for unsportsmanlike conduct fouls, but they don’t have to. Jon Runyan, the league’s first-year discipline czar, chose to fine Beckham that egregious amount. No wonder so many fans and media people flail away at the league endlessly. And don’t get me started on the Vernon Davis free throw fine ($12,154).
6. I think this is the way not to make a positive first impression, Knile Davis, with your new team in Green Bay: returning your first Packer kickoff from three yards deep in the end zone. Don’t do it. And not just because you only returned it to the 15-yard line, giving away 10 free yards. But simply because the average kickoff return in the NFL this year is about 22 yards, and you’d have had to return the kick 28 yards to get what the NFL gives you for free. Unless you’re Devin Hester or Gale Sayers in their prime, take a knee.
7. I think this happened last Monday: Big Jets fan Larry David attended the Jets-Cards game in Glendale. Carson Palmer loves Larry David; loves “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” (By golly, who doesn’t love that show?) Carson’s wife, Shaelynn, saw David at the game. She said her husband sometimes would come home from practice or a game all wound up and unable to go to sleep on schedule, and would sometimes use David’s show to relax him. So Shaelynn Palmer asked Larry David if she could record a greeting on her smart phone from David to her husband. David obliged. He said: “Hey Carson! Go to sleep, would ya!”
8. I think you’ll read a good story on the late Dennis Byrd from our Jenny Vrentas at The MMQB this week, but one postscript on Byrd that I don’t think got enough attention after his death in a two-vehicle crash in Oklahoma nine days ago: The guy was a really good player. As teammate Marvin Washington said, Byrd was comparable to standout three-technique tackles like Trevor Pryce and Bryant Young.
In the last games of the 1990 season, the Jets, 4-10, had nothing to play for as they finished up against the Patriots at home and Bucs on the road. Byrd had three sacks against the feeble Patriots, then sacked Vinny Testaverde twice in the finale in Tampa—one of them for a 23-yard loss. “I really want people to know what a good player he was,” said Washington, his roommate the night before games. “I don’t want that to be lost. When he was hurt, that was a huge football loss as well as huge personal loss.”
9. I think, from out here in the Valley of the Sun, I would like to provide this as a public service to every broadcaster or talk-show host or just real football fans who care about pronunciation, regarding Tyrann Mathieu, courtesy of Cardinals media man Mark Dalton: “It’s TY-run (rhymes with Byron) Matthew.”
Photo: Dan Istitene/Getty Images
The NFL, obviously, is trying to get Europe to not like American football, with the Giants-Rams monstrosity following Jags-Colts (awful game), and last season’s Chiefs-Lions (45-10 blowout), and Jets-Dolphins (Miami totally toothless).
That means the Cincinnati-Washington game this week, the third and final international contest of 2016, had better be good … or the NFL will foist four games on the fine people of London next year.
If Case Keenum is the quarterback when the Rams host the Panthers in 13 days, it will say an awful lot about Jared Goff, and not good things.
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It’s not a good idea for the NFL to have a Pacific Time team in the London game, if it’s going to start at 6:30 a.m. PT.
Landon Collins, safety, New York Giants. For being the majority of the offense on a feeble day for the Giants … and for making the defensive play of the year, a 44-yard touchdown return of a tipped pass against the Rams in the Giants’ 17-10 win Sunday in London. This was one of the best defensive touchdown returns I’ve ever seen.
Six Rams had either one or two arms on Collins in his weaving, instinctive return; at the Rams’ 37-yard line, Collins stuck his foot in the ground to pivot left, and Tavon Austin overshot him and knocked two other Rams off the chase at the same time, like they were bowling pins.
Collins played an impactful game as well; check out the highlight reel. If he plays 15 years, he’ll never have as athletic and highlight-filled a play as that 44-yard touchdown. NFL Network said he actually ran 84 yards on the play. With 11 minutes left in the game, Collins had his second tipped interception, giving the Giants a short field and the ability to drive for the winning touchdown. Giants 17, Rams 10, with 14 points directly attributable to Collins.
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Defensive Tackle Damon Harrison, New York Giants. Harrison was a disruptive interior force against the Rams and played a big part in holding running back Todd Gurley to 57 yards rushing. Harrison led all defensive linemen in Week 7 with seven run stops, which he did on only 18 run-defense snaps. Harrison also added a sack and two QB hurries on 25 pass rush snaps.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/10/24/seattle-seahawks-arizona-cardinals-tie-nfl-week-7
Dramatic Incompetence and the True Story of an NFL Tie
‘The craziest game I’ve ever played’ was how one 13-year vet described Seattle 6, Arizona 6. Here are the bewildering details from the scene, plus the success of Matthew Stafford, Josh Brown fallout and more on Week 7
By Peter King
Ross D. Franklin/AP
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Scenes from a beautiful and dramatic and sometimes incompetent debacle, the best really bad game I have ever seen: Cardinals 6, Seahawks 6.
“I never drew before,” beaten-up running back David Johnson of the Cardinals said, standing on the field, truly dazed, a minute after it ended.
“Huh?” he was asked.
“It was a draw,” he said. “Never played in a draw before.”
Other side of the field.
“How many plays did we play?” Richard Sherman said, walking a little awkwardly, like he was staving off cramps.
“A lot,” he was told.
“However many,” he said, “felt like we were just out there all night. It was just …”
No words, really. Except the one, maybe, that I offered.
“Kickers,” I said.
“Kickers,” he said, with a little smile.
Ever see a kicker surrounded by a force field? The kind of force field no one will enter? Toward the end of a dramatic football game, the sidelines are packed with people. Club employees, security, NFL Films, network TV, interlopers who probably shouldn’t be there, players creeping down the sidelines for a better look at the action. So this was the situation when Arizona’s Chandler Catanzaro trotted onto the field with 3:26 left in overtime to kick a chip-shot field goal. Just 24 yards. Nine yards shorter than an extra point. Chippy.
To recap: Extraordinary game. Catanzaro made a field goal late in the first half for a 3-0 lead. The Seahawks, after a bonehead Arizona special teams play—a spare Seahawk wideout, Tanner McEvoy, bullrushed through the line and smothered a punt late in the fourth quarter—tied it with four minutes left on a Steven Hauschka field goal. Catanzaro and Hauschka opened overtime with field goals. Now it was 6-6. Arizona ball, 6:42 left.
On the sideline, before they went out on the field, a teammate asked Carson Palmer: “We still each get the ball?”
No, Donovan McNabb. Sudden death now.
Beautiful first call. All night David Johnson was getting the ball, but on first down, Palmer play-actioned to Johnson and lofted a strike to young and invisible tight end Ifeanyi Momah for 27 yards. Palmer to Jimmy Nelson for 40 with a flailing Sherman in coverage, to the five-yard line.
And then a run left for Johnson—remember this; we’ll discuss later—that was stopped three inches shy of the goal line. We think. Obviously Bruce Arians doesn’t trust his kicking game (he shouldn’t) so he tried to have Johnson stick it in once more. Nope. But here is the easy field goal.
Clank. Left upright.
A helmet slammed the ground on the Cardinals sideline. Disbelief was on every face. Palmer met Catanzaro just before he left the field and got in his face with five seconds of encouragement.
Catanzaro came to the sideline. He stared up, saying nothing. He pierced the crowd on the sideline, then stood by himself for 60, 90, 120 seconds, arms crossed. No one else approached him. The loneliness of the long-distance kicker. Or short-distance, in this case.
Then, of course, Seattle got in position, with a beautiful Russell Wilson-to-Jermaine Kearse lofted strike for 31 yards, and then a Doug Baldwin catch-and-run to the Arizona 9-yard line. Field goal unit comes on. Game over.
Hauschka, wide left by a mile from 28. From 28!
An hour after the game: “I’m still trying to process what I just saw,” said Larry Fitzgerald.
Photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP
This game was a bad tie for Arizona. The Cardinals needed to win. They are 3-3-1. Seattle, atop the NFC West, is 4-1-1. Arizona is two games behind, essentially, with nine to play, and with two home games and five on the road in the final seven weeks. Seattle still has to play at New England and Green Bay but finishes with three of five at home.
I was going to say something to Bruce Arians as he walked off the field post-game, but he had that “not now” look in his eye and just shook his head in a disappointed way. The crowd didn’t know how to react either. The whole thing was weird. But Seattle benefited, without a doubt. Still two up in the loss column.
The Cardinals, the No. 1 offense in football last year with most of the same characters active Sunday night, possessed the ball for 46:19 and scored six points. Arizona had 14 possessions and scored two field goals. This one will hurt for a while. When this season is put to bed in Arizona, whatever happens short of an NFC title, the special teams will be the unit that doomed the franchise.
Seattle blocked a field goal on the acrobatic rush of Bobby Wagner, who leaped over the snapper, Aaron Brewer, to smother the kick. McEvoy’s blocked punt highlighted the weakness of the Arizona punt-block unit; he bowled over Kerwin Williams. And then the Catanzaro clank.
“I thought,” said Arians to the press, “that our football team, other than the three plays in the kicking game, was outstanding. Our kicking game let us down a little bit today. We left three field goals out there.”
Someone asked Arians what he said to Catanzaro after the miss.
“Make it,” Arians responded. “This ain’t high school.”
Larry Fitzgerald, with time to digest it: “I’ve been in this league 13 years. I’ve played in more than 200 games, regular season and playoffs. And this is the craziest game I’ve ever played in.”
The reaction in the locker room, he said, was “somber. If you’d have walked in, you’d have thought we lost the game. It was just a really, really weird feeling. It feels like you lost. But you didn’t lose. You didn’t win, but you didn’t lose. A perplexing feeling.”
Fitzgerald said the range of emotions was so big, going from Nelson sprinting down to the Seattle 5-yard line late in the fourth quarter (“I was sure he was going to score”) to lining up for the easy field goal, to then Catanzaro clanking the field goal try, to Seattle moving downfield with ease for the win, and then Hauschka missing ridiculously.
“The swing of emotions in two minutes … incredible. I thought J.J. was gonna score, and I dropped to my knee, so happy. Then he’s not in, and we miss the kick, it’s an extra point, it’s a foregone conclusion, and they miss the kick. Crazy.”
Photo: Norm Hall/Getty Images
We’ll end with Johnson. So much of him is antidote to what we’re seeing in the NFL in this young season. In the past three weeks, in prime time, we’ve had the Giants lay down in Minnesota on Monday night, Arizona pancake the Niners and the Bears no-show in Green Bay on Thursday. And then, the last two Mondays, the Bucs slog through a 17-14 sleep-inducer at Carolina and the Jets imitate a team of Ralph Kramdens trying to beat the Cardinals. And Thursday of this week, it’s Jacksonville-Tennessee. Football Fever! Catch it!
Johnson was big and a gumby character and tough as they come Sunday night. Rushes: 33. (Runs called back by penalty: two.) Targets: 13. Catches: eight, for 58 yards. Yards against the formidable Seattle defense: 171.
“I’m not tired,” Johnson said when it was over. “I’ll be sore tomorrow for sure. But I’m not tired.”
Johnson will be on my podcast this week. If he’s not tired after getting whacked around in that game like he was, well, he’s a lot tougher than he looks.
* * *
Photo: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
For the third straight Sunday, the Lions trailed at home in the fourth quarter. For the third straight Sunday, the Lions rallied to win behind a quarterback who has been at his career best without one of the best receivers of recent history.
Why, I asked Matthew Stafford on Sunday, have you survived so well without Johnson?
“Hard work,” he said from Detroit an hour after his perfectly placed 18-yard dart to Anquan Boldin beat Washington, to the delight of Ford Field gone mad. “Not only by myself, but by my receivers, my teammates. One player doesn’t make a team. Football’s such a great team game. These new guys have come in and worked and proven they’re pretty good football players.”
We’ll get to how good Stafford’s been in the clutch, and overall. But there’s something to what he says. Let’s look at the way human nature works. You have a superstar. He’s humble, he’s always good, he’s a great force, and he’s consistently productive. That’s what Calvin Johnson was.
But there’s also part of a team with a superstar, regardless whether he stomps his feet when he doesn’t get the ball or not, that is a bit burdensome. (Johnson didn’t stomp his feet, by the way.) A quarterback starts to think, Gotta get the ball to Calvin, instead of thinking only what he should be thinking: Hit the open guy.
So for proof, look at the receivers: Marvin Jones, 33 catches; Anquan Boldin, 32 catches; Golden Tate, 31 catches; Theo Riddick (hurt the past two weeks), 26 catches. Stafford’s been an equal-opportunity thrower, and therefore, the 4-3 Lions are in the pennant race with the season nearing the halfway point.
Stafford, who is still just 28, is having the best season of his life: a 105.7 rating, 68 percent completions, with a 15-to-4 touchdown-to-interception differential. Sunday was the 100th game of his career, and he sounded part exhilarated, part drained when it was over.
“Getting to 100 games in this league is pretty special for any player, and certainly for me, and winning it the way we did was pretty awesome,” he said. “Happy to come out a victor in such a big game, such an important game for us.”
When you watch the Lions now, you just expect Stafford to do very big things at the end. Look what he’s done on the three-game home stand that ended Sunday:
• Week 5 versus Philadelphia: Down 23-21 with 2:34 left in the fourth quarter. Stafford leads a 34-yard field goal drive to win, 24-23.
• Week 6 versus Los Angeles: Down 28-21 with 14 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Stafford leads an 84-yard touchdown drive and a 44-yard field goal drive to win, 31-28.
• Week 7 versus Washington: Down 17-13 with 1:05 left in the fourth quarter. Stafford leads a 65-yard drive, finishing with an 18-yard strike to Boldin to win, 20-17.
“At a point of the game like this one,” Stafford said, referring to the play that won Sunday’s game, “no one’s going to be open, really. Somebody’s gotta make a great play. It’s been interesting playing with Anquan. My parents both went to Florida State, so when I was a kid, I was a huge Florida State fan. And he’s got a few years on me, so I rooted for Florida State and I rooted for Anquan. But here, he just got vertical and made a great play on the ball.”
Stafford made a superb throw, too, inches from the fingertips of Washington linebacker Will Compton. With cornerback Kendall Fuller hanging onto him, Boldin caught the ball for the winner. “Somebody’s gotta make a great play,” Stafford said, “and he did. “We just went crazy. What’s been great about playing with him is he trusts me, and I trust him.”
That left Stafford, in his past 13 games, with 32 touchdowns and five interceptions. He’s efficient, not forcing the ball, and not relying on any single player. At 28, he’s never played better. “There’s a little left in the tank,” he said wearily. “I feel I’m doing all the the little things I need to do to get better, and I still have a ways to go to get better.”
Back-to-back road contests—at Houston, at Minnesota—the next two weeks will provide more chances for Stafford and the Lions to continue to improve.
My thoughts on Josh Brown
In the case of the NFL versus Josh Brown, there is one thing that stands above all after the hue and cry of the last four days: The NFL needs to make an absolutely uniform policy about domestic violence.
I believe the NFL needs to make the six-game suspension plateau in issues of domestic violence boilerplate. After the Ray Rice scandal two years ago, the league said cases of domestic violence would be subject to six-game suspensions for the abuser, unless there were extenuating or aggravating circumstances. This qualifying part has to go away.
When a player is found to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs, he is suspended for four games. Players are told that there is no excuse; they are responsible for what goes into their bodies. It is sometimes a very difficult policy, but it is the law of the land and prevents elicit PED use as a matter of course. Similarly, a six-game suspension for anything involving domestic violence will be clear and, hopefully, a deterrent for those who would ever lift a hand to harm a partner or a family member.
Some would say that the inflexibility of this blanket policy would punish those who are not the worst abusers. Too bad. And obviously the players would have the ability to file grievances and appeal their suspensions. That's fine. Let the justice system take its course. The NFL’s job should be to present the best case to be sure the player is suspended.
* * *
“The NFL wants their players to be dynamic individuals from the start of the whistle to the end of the whistle, stop exactly what they’re doing on a dime, go back to their huddle and then do it again. After being in the league office and now being on the outside looking in after being in the league office for 13 seasons, there is a real line of demarcation that the NFL product inherently harms itself when it devalues its characters, when it doesn’t live up to the entertainment entity that it itself claims it is . . .
Sportsmanship is a worthy goal. I’m not minimizing that. That’s the line the NFL is taking. But they are throwing out the baby with the bath water. They are stripping away what makes the league a must-watch event.’’
—Merton Hanks, who was the NFL’s vice president of football operations until last spring, to Tom Curran of Comcast Sports Net-New England. Hanks is now associate commissioner of Conference USA.
* * *
“[Jack] Lambert couldn’t get on the field as a backup linebacker. The kid in front of him was really their leader, kind of the heart-and-soul of the Kent State defense. Through a series of circumstances—that’s a long story, but we'll skip through all that—the kid dropped out of school and went to work for Mick Jagger; he was his security guy on tour with the Rolling Stones, and Lambert became the starting middle linebacker.
He probably would have never played had that not happened. And you have a Hall of Fame player. Sometimes things take a turn, and once some players get that opportunity and they get in there—the Tom Bradys of the world, or whoever—you can’t get them out of there. Lou Gehrig.”
—Bill Belichick, in the most pensive storytelling moment of his season, talking at his press conference the other day about the good fortune you sometimes need to excel in sports.
* * *
OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Jay Ajayi, running back, Miami. He became the fourth back in the 97-year history of the NFL to rush for 200 yards in successive games. Ajayi followed his 204-yard game at home in an upset of Pittsburgh with a 28-carry, 214-yard domination of Buffalo’s resurgent defense in a 28-25, fourth-quarter comeback win over the Bills. Now he’s in the same league—at least in the record book—as O.J. Simpson, Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams. If you called that nine days ago, you need to move to Vegas. Today.
Jeremy Hill, running back, Cincinnati. Pretty impressive when you average more in the running game than in the receiving game—particularly when you’re gaining 12 yards a clip in the air. But the Bengals finally got what they’d been waiting for from Hill in a rout of the Browns with a nine-carry, 168-yard rushing day (18.7 per touch), including a game-changing 74-yard touchdown gallop in the third quarter.
Melvin Gordon, running back, San Diego. After some idiot (me) questioned Gordon’s running ability recently, clearly Gordon was supremely motivated to dominate. He was crucial in the big San Diego upset at Atlanta on Sunday, rushing and receiving for 121 total yards. Gordon had two-yard and three-yard touchdown runs in the first half as the Chargers struggled to stay in the game. With six minutes left he caught a five-yard flip from Philip Rivers for a touchdown. This was a game the Chargers had no business winning, and Rivers and Gordon willed it.
DEFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Leonard Floyd, defensive end, Chicago. The great rookie hope of the Chicago front seven finally had a breakout game at Lambeau Field, with three tackles, two sacks, a forced fumble and a touchdown—the Bears’ only TD of the night. Floyd, late in the first half, stripped Aaron Rodgers for a 10-yard sack, recovered it in the end zone and helped the toothless Bears stay in the game. With Chicago down to Mike Tomczak at quarterback, Floyd and his mates will have to dominate for Chicago to salvage much of this season.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Bobby Wagner, linebacker, Seattle. Made the special teams play of the year, leaping over Arizona long-snapper Aaron Brewer like a high-hurdler. Wagner’s foot scraped the back of Brewer, which Arizona coach Bruce Arians screamed should have negated the play because of safety concerns with snappers, but he lost the argument. “Incidental contact is not necessarily a penalty,” Al Michaels said on TV.
Anyway, Wagner steamed ahead and blocked the 39-yard field-goal try, fair and square. As NFL VP of Officiating Dean Blandino tweeted a couple of minutes after the play: “In #SEAvsAZ you have to land on the player for it to be a foul. The block was legal.” Not only legal, but epic.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Sunday Night Football Kickers. How fitting, another tie. Chandler Catanzaro and Stephen Hauschka, two relatively reliable NFL kickers, traded yak jobs on game-winning gimmes and America went to bed without a victor.
COACH OF THE WEEK
Andy Reid, head coach, Kansas City. In his 300th career game (176-123-1), Reid’s Chiefs beat the Saints, and Reid moved two wins behind Jeff Fisher for second on the wins list among active coaches.
* * *
Things I Think I Think
1. I think these are my one-liners of analysis from Week 7:
Ten weeks shy of his 44th birthday, and perhaps 19 years shy of being fitted for his gold jacket in Canton, Adam Vinatieri set the NFL record with his 43rd consecutive field goal at Jacksonville.
Malcolm Butler’s a big-time cornerback, as evidenced by his athletic pick over Antonio Brown.
It feels like the beginning of the end for Gus Bradley—1-3 at home, two players ejected in ugly loss to Oakland, 14-40 career record—in Jacksonville.
The three-week stats for Tom Brady (75 percent accuracy, 9.94 yards per attempt, 8-0 TD-pick ratio, 132.6 rating) are video-game numbers and just prove one thing: The clock of regular age does not apply to this 39-year-old singular athlete.
We’re seven weeks in, and there’s a lot to love about the Vikings, but you’ve got to wonder if they’re going to score enough to win in January—and February.
2. I think the rise of Jay Ajayi in Miami is one of the best stories of this season. What you need to know about this truly international guy:
• He was born in England 23 years ago to Nigerian parents and lived in London until he was 10.
• He lived in Maryland for his middle-school years, and then the Ajayi family moved to Frisco, Texas, where he starred at running back and rushed for 2,240 yards as a high school senior.
• He got a full ride to Boise State and scored 50 touchdowns in three seasons as a 6-foot, 225-pound back.
• He skipped his senior year to enter the 2015 draft but was disappointed to go in the fifth round, 149th overall, the 13th running back chosen.
• Miami coach Adam Gase left Ajayi behind on the team’s first road trip of the year, the opener at Seattle, because Ajayi had a lousy attitude when he didn’t win the starting job after Lamar Miller left for Houston in free agency.
• No one, not even his parents, could have seen this coming. It is ridiculously fortuitous. His first four games: 14, 28, 33 and 42 rushing yards … 31 carries, with a long of 11. That’s before the Steelers came to Miami last week.
• Home against Pittsburgh last week: 25 carries, 204 yards. Home against Buffalo on Sunday: 28 carries, 214 yards. “We were trying to do the same thing, make it a shorter game for our defense,” said coach Adam Gase. “Anytime it happens early, it gets everybody’s confidence up knowing that, ‘Alright, we have a good rhythm,’ really before you anticipate it. He did a good job of running through arm tackles, and our line did a good job as far as sticking on guys and finishing blocks.”
• Can he make it three straight 200-yard games? After a bye in Week 8, the Dolphins return to host the Jets, who rank second in the NFL in rushing yards allowed, at just 74.1 per game.
3. I think some of the coaches we thought would never, ever make their living on the ground—Bruce Arians (in part), Adam Gase, Bill O’Brien (because of Brock Osweiler’s struggles)—are winning on the ground. Nothing’s forever in the NFL.
4. I think it’s hard to count how many offensive lines in the NFL stink, but a lot do. It’s the position group that’s the most subpar in the league right now. Did you see Sunday night, when four Seahawks (and I know the Seattle defense front is very good) met at Carson Palmer midway through the first quarter and combo-sacked him? Palmer never had a chance. So many quarterbacks feel that way right now.
5. I think I simply cannot believe the league fined Odell Beckham Jr. $24,309 for taking his helmet off as he was leaving the field at the end of a play. This is an inexcusable sanction. The average personal income for an American male with a bachelor’s degree in the United States today (according to Wikipedia) is $49,804. Odell Beckham Jr. was fined six months’ salary of the average American man with a college education for taking his helmet off in celebration as he left the field after scoring a touchdown. Give the man a 15-yard penalty and leave it there.
The NFL has the right to fine players for unsportsmanlike conduct fouls, but they don’t have to. Jon Runyan, the league’s first-year discipline czar, chose to fine Beckham that egregious amount. No wonder so many fans and media people flail away at the league endlessly. And don’t get me started on the Vernon Davis free throw fine ($12,154).
6. I think this is the way not to make a positive first impression, Knile Davis, with your new team in Green Bay: returning your first Packer kickoff from three yards deep in the end zone. Don’t do it. And not just because you only returned it to the 15-yard line, giving away 10 free yards. But simply because the average kickoff return in the NFL this year is about 22 yards, and you’d have had to return the kick 28 yards to get what the NFL gives you for free. Unless you’re Devin Hester or Gale Sayers in their prime, take a knee.
7. I think this happened last Monday: Big Jets fan Larry David attended the Jets-Cards game in Glendale. Carson Palmer loves Larry David; loves “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” (By golly, who doesn’t love that show?) Carson’s wife, Shaelynn, saw David at the game. She said her husband sometimes would come home from practice or a game all wound up and unable to go to sleep on schedule, and would sometimes use David’s show to relax him. So Shaelynn Palmer asked Larry David if she could record a greeting on her smart phone from David to her husband. David obliged. He said: “Hey Carson! Go to sleep, would ya!”
8. I think you’ll read a good story on the late Dennis Byrd from our Jenny Vrentas at The MMQB this week, but one postscript on Byrd that I don’t think got enough attention after his death in a two-vehicle crash in Oklahoma nine days ago: The guy was a really good player. As teammate Marvin Washington said, Byrd was comparable to standout three-technique tackles like Trevor Pryce and Bryant Young.
In the last games of the 1990 season, the Jets, 4-10, had nothing to play for as they finished up against the Patriots at home and Bucs on the road. Byrd had three sacks against the feeble Patriots, then sacked Vinny Testaverde twice in the finale in Tampa—one of them for a 23-yard loss. “I really want people to know what a good player he was,” said Washington, his roommate the night before games. “I don’t want that to be lost. When he was hurt, that was a huge football loss as well as huge personal loss.”
9. I think, from out here in the Valley of the Sun, I would like to provide this as a public service to every broadcaster or talk-show host or just real football fans who care about pronunciation, regarding Tyrann Mathieu, courtesy of Cardinals media man Mark Dalton: “It’s TY-run (rhymes with Byron) Matthew.”
The decline of Colin Kaepernick
- By Prime Time
- RAMS / NFL TALK
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/10/24/nfl-morning-after-the-decline-of-colin-kaepernick/
NFL morning after: The decline of Colin Kaepernick
Posted by Michael David Smith on October 24, 2016
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Colin Kaepernick is the NFL’s most significant player off the field, a player whose simple act of declining to stand during the national anthem has led to wide-ranging discussions across America about race, police brutality, free speech and the role of sport in society. That has been the subject of thousands of commentaries.
But it’s not the subject of this commentary. Instead, I want to talk about why I also consider Kaepernick the most fascinating NFL player off the field. And the reason for that is simple: He has rapidly declined from a very good quarterback to a terrible quarterback, at an age when most quarterbacks are still getting better.
It was less than four years ago that Kaepernick took over for Alex Smith in the middle of the 2012 season and putting an absolute beating on the Bears in his first NFL start. Do you remember how good Kaepernick was that year? The game that sticks with me is when he went to New England in just his fifth NFL start.
Everyone said Bill Belichick would have the key to stopping this upstart young quarterback. Instead Kaepernick threw for four touchdown passes as the 49ers put up 41 points in a win over the Patriots. Quarterbacks making career start No. 5 aren’t supposed to shred Belichick’s defense. Kaepernick did.
That year Kaepernick led the 49ers to the Super Bowl, with a ridiculous 263-yard passing, 181-yard rushing playoff win over the Packers along the way. In the Super Bowl he threw for 302 yards, ran for 62 yards and came up just short of delivering the game-winning touchdown. If the 49ers had beaten the Ravens, Kaepernick would have been the Super Bowl MVP.
In his second year as a starter Kaepernick was just as good, again leading the 49ers to the playoffs and this time coming up just short in an NFC Championship Game loss to the Seahawks. That was the year when Ron Jaworski famously said, “I truly believe Colin Kaepernick could be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever.”
People enjoy needling Jaworski for that hyperbole, but here’s the thing: At the time, everyone was saying Kaepernick had the potential to be a Hall of Fame quarterback. It’s easy to find people who criticize Jaworski’s statement now; it’s hard to find people who disagreed with it on the merits at the time.
And then Kaepernick began to decline in 2014. In 2015, that decline reached such a depth that he was benched for Blaine Gabbert, of all people. This year Kaepernick. has finally taken the job back from Gabbert, but he isn’t very good: Yesterday he averaged a pathetic 4.2 yards per pass and completed less than 50 percent of his passes in an ugly loss to the Buccaneers.
So what happened to Kaepernick? I think it’s three things:
1. Jim Harbaugh left. Harbaugh is a singularly great coach, a coach who has proven everywhere he’s been that he can get the most out of his players. When 49ers owner Jed York and General Manager Trent Baalke foolishly decided they couldn’t get along with Harbaugh anymore, they lost a coach who could find ways to win with Kaepernick’s skill set.
2. Defenses figured him out. Kaepernick always had a strong arm, but he lacks touch on short passes. Defenses seem to be taking away the deep ball and forcing Kaepernick to throw short, and he just doesn’t do that very well. That’s why his average yards per pass has declined every season, from 8.3 in his first season as a starter, to 7.7 in his second year, 7.0 in his third year, 6.6 in his fourth year and now just 5.2 this year.
3. He doesn’t have a supporting cast. In Kaepernick’s first couple seasons, the 49ers were loaded. They’re now a worse team across the board: Worse receivers, worse offensive linemen, worse running backs and a worse defense, which means the 49ers’ offense often ends up having to throw more and run less.
4. He has physically declined. Just looking at Kaepernick, it’s obvious that he’s skinnier and less muscular than he used to be. He had three surgeries that severely limited his ability to work out this offseason, and he has also lost weight after radically changing his diet. He’s just not the big, imposing athlete he was three or four years ago.
Kaepernick may some day find himself playing with a better supporting cast, and it’s possible he’ll get bigger and stronger, but I’m skeptical that he’ll ever be the same player he once was. I don’t think he’s going to end up with another coach who understands his skill set as well as Harbaugh did, and I think the deficiencies opposing defenses have found in his game are going to follow him around.
Far from becoming “one of the greatest quarterbacks ever,” I don’t think Kaepernick is even going to be an above-average starter ever again. He had two incredible years, but the Colin Kaepernick of old isn’t coming back.
NFL morning after: The decline of Colin Kaepernick
Posted by Michael David Smith on October 24, 2016
Colin Kaepernick is the NFL’s most significant player off the field, a player whose simple act of declining to stand during the national anthem has led to wide-ranging discussions across America about race, police brutality, free speech and the role of sport in society. That has been the subject of thousands of commentaries.
But it’s not the subject of this commentary. Instead, I want to talk about why I also consider Kaepernick the most fascinating NFL player off the field. And the reason for that is simple: He has rapidly declined from a very good quarterback to a terrible quarterback, at an age when most quarterbacks are still getting better.
It was less than four years ago that Kaepernick took over for Alex Smith in the middle of the 2012 season and putting an absolute beating on the Bears in his first NFL start. Do you remember how good Kaepernick was that year? The game that sticks with me is when he went to New England in just his fifth NFL start.
Everyone said Bill Belichick would have the key to stopping this upstart young quarterback. Instead Kaepernick threw for four touchdown passes as the 49ers put up 41 points in a win over the Patriots. Quarterbacks making career start No. 5 aren’t supposed to shred Belichick’s defense. Kaepernick did.
That year Kaepernick led the 49ers to the Super Bowl, with a ridiculous 263-yard passing, 181-yard rushing playoff win over the Packers along the way. In the Super Bowl he threw for 302 yards, ran for 62 yards and came up just short of delivering the game-winning touchdown. If the 49ers had beaten the Ravens, Kaepernick would have been the Super Bowl MVP.
In his second year as a starter Kaepernick was just as good, again leading the 49ers to the playoffs and this time coming up just short in an NFC Championship Game loss to the Seahawks. That was the year when Ron Jaworski famously said, “I truly believe Colin Kaepernick could be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever.”
People enjoy needling Jaworski for that hyperbole, but here’s the thing: At the time, everyone was saying Kaepernick had the potential to be a Hall of Fame quarterback. It’s easy to find people who criticize Jaworski’s statement now; it’s hard to find people who disagreed with it on the merits at the time.
And then Kaepernick began to decline in 2014. In 2015, that decline reached such a depth that he was benched for Blaine Gabbert, of all people. This year Kaepernick. has finally taken the job back from Gabbert, but he isn’t very good: Yesterday he averaged a pathetic 4.2 yards per pass and completed less than 50 percent of his passes in an ugly loss to the Buccaneers.
So what happened to Kaepernick? I think it’s three things:
1. Jim Harbaugh left. Harbaugh is a singularly great coach, a coach who has proven everywhere he’s been that he can get the most out of his players. When 49ers owner Jed York and General Manager Trent Baalke foolishly decided they couldn’t get along with Harbaugh anymore, they lost a coach who could find ways to win with Kaepernick’s skill set.
2. Defenses figured him out. Kaepernick always had a strong arm, but he lacks touch on short passes. Defenses seem to be taking away the deep ball and forcing Kaepernick to throw short, and he just doesn’t do that very well. That’s why his average yards per pass has declined every season, from 8.3 in his first season as a starter, to 7.7 in his second year, 7.0 in his third year, 6.6 in his fourth year and now just 5.2 this year.
3. He doesn’t have a supporting cast. In Kaepernick’s first couple seasons, the 49ers were loaded. They’re now a worse team across the board: Worse receivers, worse offensive linemen, worse running backs and a worse defense, which means the 49ers’ offense often ends up having to throw more and run less.
4. He has physically declined. Just looking at Kaepernick, it’s obvious that he’s skinnier and less muscular than he used to be. He had three surgeries that severely limited his ability to work out this offseason, and he has also lost weight after radically changing his diet. He’s just not the big, imposing athlete he was three or four years ago.
Kaepernick may some day find himself playing with a better supporting cast, and it’s possible he’ll get bigger and stronger, but I’m skeptical that he’ll ever be the same player he once was. I don’t think he’s going to end up with another coach who understands his skill set as well as Harbaugh did, and I think the deficiencies opposing defenses have found in his game are going to follow him around.
Far from becoming “one of the greatest quarterbacks ever,” I don’t think Kaepernick is even going to be an above-average starter ever again. He had two incredible years, but the Colin Kaepernick of old isn’t coming back.
