While all four teams in the AFC North lost today, at least the Ravens can say they lost to a good team. Baltimore fell to Indianapolis, but Cincy lost to Oakland, Pittsburgh lost to Kansas City, and Cleveland lost to the lowly Detroit Lions.
The latter game was a barn-burner between two of the NFL’s worst teams, featuring 724 yards passing and 75 points of bottom-feeding offense. Matthew Stafford threw for 5 TD’s, including the game-winner with no time remaining, and perennial punchline Brady Quinn threw for four scores and over 300 yards. And that’s not all.
Matthew Stafford became the NFL’s youngest QB to throw for 5 TD’s in a game, surpassing Dan Marino and Joe Namath by a big margin. Conversely, Cleveland’s Brady Quinn came into Sunday’s game with only 3 career TD’s, which he matched in the first quarter. Over Cleveland’s last 15 games, they had only scored 5 offensive TD’s, and they scored 4 on Sunday, all through the air.
The display was punctuated by a dramatic finish for the ages – Detroit’s Stafford tossed up a prayer with no time remaining, and Cleveland giftwrapped a pass-interference penalty in the end zone, giving Detroit the ball at the Browns’ one with no time on the clock. Stafford was creamed on the play that set up the touchdown, injuring his shoulder, and to what extent is still unclear. But Cleveland called a timeout at the end of the play, giving Stafford enough time to gather himself for the final TD pass, which he completed to TE Brandon Pettigrew to ice the game. If you think that game was the only freak occurrence in the Brown’s division, you’d be wrong.
Flukes abounded in the Steelers-Chiefs game, where Ben Roethlisberger threw for the 3rd-highest yardage total of his career and three TD’s, but also threw two INT’s and was knocked out of the game in OT with a concussion. Ultimately it was Pittsburgh’s defense that gave up a huge pass play that sealed the game, and Kansas City broke a 10-game home losing streak against the World Champs, who gave up yet another special-teams return TD (the 8th straight game in which that has happened). The teams from Pennsylvania are hard to predict this season.
Following suit, the Cincinnati Bengals lost to Oakland in a game that featured a combined 8 fumbles and 5 lost. Cedric Benson missed the game and was replaced by Bernard Scott, who filled in admirably to the tune of 119 yards on 20 carries. But Cincy’s Andre Caldwell handed the ball and the game to the Raiders when he fumbled a kickoff return inside his own 25 with 33 seconds left in the game. Sebastian Janikowski (first time I’ve typed his name, I have to say it was quite enjoyable) nailed the chip-shot to win the game for Oakland, who has proved to be a pitfall for over-confident teams from the other side of the US.
The New York Giants got up off the mat today against Atlanta in another overtime thriller, with Eli Manning turning in arguably his best game of the season (384 yards and three TD’s). New York’s strong start provided quite a landing pad for their freefall in the last month, and the Giants now are still in great position to take the middling, mediocre, mundane NFC East.
BEARS HOMER SECTION
I went into this game watching for a variety of sequences that would prove several theories I hold about exactly why the Bears have been terrible this season – among those would have been the ratio of press coverage to soft coverage by the Bears’ defense; how many times they ran Matt Forte up the middle out of the I formation, or how many times Don McNabb was able to connect on easy slant routes for more than 5 yards. But it’s way easier to just say that the Bears are terrible.
While the Bears played with good effort at times, it is disappointing to repeatedly see a good effort by one unit be completely wasted by the opposite unit. A turnover forced on defense is squandered by the offense. A rare scoring drive by the offense is never reciprocated by a defensive stand that helps build momentum.
On top of that, at would seem that the Chicago offensive game plan for Jay Cutler has been whittled down to two steps:
Step 1: Throw a terrible pass, whether it be into heavy coverage or badly overthrowing a wide-open receiver
Step 2: Beg for a flag from the ref
That’s it. Fortunately for the Bears, if they plan on employing this particular kind of passing attack for the next decade, they have the best possible QB in the league to do it. On Sunday night vs. the Eagles, Cutler proved especially adept at overthrowing wide-open receivers that should have had TD’s. Cutler was under no pressure on the remarkably overthrown passes, a sure sign that he is more concerned with not throwing picks than he is with making completions. And he’s already drawn tens of thousands of dollars in fines for jawing at referees, so it looks like the Bears are all set for the future!
Jay Cutler is a cancer to a coaching staff. He got Mike Shannahan fired from Denver, and he’s about to get Lovie Smith fired too. He seems to be able to convince a front office that he isn’t the problem, and that the coaching staff and other personnel is. Shannahan won two Super Bowls in Denver before Cutler came along and got him canned. How long will Smith’s Super Bowl loss carry him with this front office (probably a while, actually, says Smith’s $10M buyout clause)?
Fact of the matter is that Jay Cutler, like the QB that took Chicago to the big game in 2006, can thrive if given ideal conditions. But to expect Cutler to lift a team out of mediocrity is expecting too much. If you know Cutler, you know that isn’t possible.
Likewise, Lovie Smith’s defense, predicated on not giving up the big play and creating turnovers/QB pressure, isn’t talented enough anymore to play the law of averages that says if they sit deep on routes and refuse to give up the home run, they’ll win. It just isn’t that simple. Teams have figured it out. It may require the patience to take what the Bears give you, but little study is required to realize that the Bears will give you a lot. Enough with this. The Bears suck ass, and that’s that.
contact email: nick.thomas@flyingpigskin.com
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