The ninth Sunday of the NFL season is in the books so here are the different thoughts and opinions I have on various things I witnessed this past weekend. Had to wait for Monday Night Football to see my Cowboys this week. I hate that. I hate it even more because they lost. I wish they played all their games at 1 EST on Sunday. Then I could just get on with my day. Oh well. Just remember I am a Dallas Cowboys fan and I'm extremely biased. Feel free to agree or disagree about anything mentioned here. All comments are welcome.
They should've taken another bye
Titans 28 Cowboys 14. I had to wait an extra day to watch this mess. Ugh. I'm starting to think Jerry Jones has made it his personal mission in life to destroy my love of football.
For the first time all season I was confident Dallas was going to win this week. Coming off a bye, playing at home, finally a legitimate wide receiver, Titans aren't very good. It seemed to add up.
Then they played the game. I wish my power would have shut off so I didn't have to watch. The key to the Cowboys previous success at home was the lack of turnovers. None in their first three home games. Dak had two very costly ones Monday, one robbed them of a chance to score and the other set up a score for the Titans. Dallas had three trips to the red zone that ended with exactly zero points scored. Missed FG less than 40 yards, Interception, Turnover on downs. Embarrassing.
The offense is so bad. The line has completely fallen apart without Travis Frederick at center. The Cowboys fired their offensive line coach last week, new line coach Marc Colombo vowed the group would be nastier. If he meant nastier to watch he was right, Dak was sacked 5 times. Zeke only had 17 rushing attempts, mostly on first down when the whole universe knows what Dallas is going to do.
The play calling is just horrible. They never mix it up, way too conservative. You have to take some shots down the field whether they are successful or not just to let the defense know you will. Dallas rarely does, letting the other teams clamp down on defense to stop Zeke and the intermediate passing game.
The Cowboys defense was great on first and second down, but fell apart on third down allowing 11 conversions on 14 attempts. They put pressure on Mariota all night, but fell short when it mattered the most.
Such an incredibly awful effort at home coming off a bye shows how bad this Cowboys coaching staff is. Jerry needs to clean house, but who knows if he will. He is the worst general manager in football hands down.
The Cowboys have won 34 playoff games all time. The same as New England and Green Bay. Only the Steelers have more with 36 wins. Do you know how many playoff games they have won since 1996? TWO! Two freaking playoff wins in 22 years. And they came over the Eagles and Lions. Beating crappy franchises like that shouldn't even count.
OK, I'm done ranting over my Cowboys. It's too depressing.
Big game actually lives up to the hype
So often in the NFL big games fail to live up to the hype. That wasn't the case in New Orleans as the Saints hit the Rams with their first loss of the season 45-35.
Saints started out like a house on fire throwing up 35 points in the first half. It looked like a blowout was coming, but the Rams turned things around in the second half scoring 18 unanswered points to tie the game in the 4th quarter. But apparently they shot their wad in the comeback and the Saints recovered to score the last 10 points to win. Drew Brees refuses to be denied, I think he has a big chip on his shoulder after the Saints calamity in Minnesota last season.
Defenses just seem to die in the Superdome. The Rams had one three and out in the whole game, the Saints had none. It's not surprising the Saints D got lit up, but what the hell has happened to the once dominant Rams D? Marcus Peters is certainly one big culprit, that man is simply getting toasted by wide receivers. The Rams need Aqib Talib to get healthy in a hurry. If they can't sack the QB, big plays are being made.
Since the Rams were the last undefeated team in the league, I guess the 1972 Dolphins were popping corks after this game was over. They should shove those corks up their hind end. That team was 17-0. The Patriots went 18-0 in 2007 before losing the Super Bowl. They won more games in a single season before they were beaten. In my mind 17-0 was topped. Yeah, I know they lost the Super Bowl. Still topped the Dolphins single season record.
I blame the Cowboys for the Dolphins perfect record. If Dallas wouldn't have mysteriously choked big time in the NFC title game, a sub-par Redskins wouldn't have made it to the Super Bowl to be the Dolphins patsy. Dallas whooped Miami 24-3 the previous year, they could have done it again. Oh well. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.
Man this Dallas loss has me in a bad mood. Now I'm crapping on teams from 45 years ago.
Shut up Jerry.
Mayfield vs Mahomes II
Sequels rarely live up to the standards of the original and this was no exception. In case you didn't know Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes first squared off against each other in 2016 when they played for Oklahoma and Texas Tech respectively. The backstory was interesting, Mayfield had transferred from Tech to Oklahoma and helped recruit Mahomes during his stay in Lubbock.
Oklahoma prevailed in a 66-59 shootout that smashed NCAA records.
Mayfield stat line: 27-36 545 passing yards 21 rushing yards 7 TD passes
Mahomes stat line: 52-88 734 passing yards 85 rushing yards 5 TD passes
That my friends is a shootout. The story was a little different this time with Mahomes leading the offensive powerhouse Chiefs into Cleveland to face Mayfield and the hapless Browns. As expected the Chiefs prevailed 37-21. Mahomes put up his "usual" 375 passing yards and 3 TD passes while Mayfield "only" had 297 passing yards and 2 TD passes. To be fair Mahomes is surrounded by a ton of talent and Mayfield plays for Cleveland. Not every sequel can be Godfather II.
The most interesting play in this game occurred right before half-time. The Chiefs were trying to get in field goal range before the half ended when Mahomes hit Chris Conley with a 23-yard pass that left nine seconds on the clock. A flag was thrown on the play, offsides on Cleveland (of course). The Chiefs declined the penalty and raced up to the line to spike the ball. The problem was the clock was already stopped by the penalty, that doesn't change just because it was declined. Nobody thought to relay that piece of info to Mahomes I guess because he took the snap and spiked it.
Here is where it gets weird. The refs threw a flag on Mahomes for intentional grounding. What? Seriously WTF! According to the NFL rulebook, intentional grounding is called when the QB throws the ball away with no obvious receiver in the vicinity when facing an imminent loss of yardage because of pressure from the defense. Obviously Mahomes wasn't under any pressure from the defense.
Now according to the same NFL rulebook, it is only legal to spike the ball when the game clock is running. The clock was stopped so obviously Mahomes broke a rule, but it wasn't intentional grounding. I guess whoever wrote the NFL rules got lazy and forgot to designate a penalty for this situation so the refs just picked one to enforce.
This is just stupid. The intentional grounding penalty calls for a ten-yard loss and a loss of down. It also calls for a ten second runoff when under two minutes in the half, but the Chiefs had a timeout to stop that. That's a pretty serious penalty for a player who makes a mistake that only shoots himself in the foot. So in essence Mahomes made a dumb play that cost his team time off the clock and a loss of down, but the refs thought to add insult to injury by slapping the Chiefs with a ten-yard loss and forcing them to burn their last timeout.
In the end the the Chiefs never got to attempt a field goal, but it didn't matter since they won handily. Still waiting for the league to explain how they made up a rule and failed to determine what the penalty is for breaking it. I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.
Dr. Jekyll meet Mr. Hyde
The NFL often confuses the hell out of me because there are so many teams anymore that I just can't figure out.
A perfect example of this was the Falcons/Redskins game. Both teams are up & down every other week and you never know which team is going to show up. This week the Falcons showed up while the Redskins took a break. It was a blowout Falcons 38 Redskins 14.
Here is what confused me the most. In their previous three games the Skins held Christian McCaffrey to 20 rushing yards, Ezekiel Elliott to 33 rushing yards and Saquon Barkley to 38 rushing yards. Pretty impressive. So of course on Sunday they get blown up by Tevin Coleman for 88 rushing yards on 13 carries and Ito Smith for 60 rushing yards on 10 carries. Calvin Ridley tossed in a six yard rush as well. All told the Falcons rushed 24 times for 154 yards on 24 carries, a 6.4 yard per rush average.
Maybe the Skins concentrated too much on trying to stop Matt Ryan. Then again maybe they didn't since Ryan torched them for 350 yard and 4 TDs. All in all a bad day for the Redskins.
Despite the blowout, there was huge news from this game. You're probably going to think I'm drunk or the Cowboys have finally caused me to lose my mind, but I swear this next sentence is true.
Julio Jones scored a touchdown!
I know, unbelievable but I saw it with my own two eyes. I had to slap myself in the face a few times to make sure I wasn't dreaming. Julio finally broke a 12 game scoreless streak. How a guy with that much ability can go that long without a score is mind boggling. Says a lot about the Falcons coaching staff and the teams struggles inside the redzone.
I'm a big fan of Julio Jones. In a league full of prima donnas (I'm looking at you Dez) Jones goes out every week busting his ass to help his team and doesn't care who gets the glory as long as his team wins. Refreshing.
Does it really matter who catches the ball as long as someone does?
The Bears could afford to rest Khalil Mack another week since Nathan Peterman was under center for the Bills on Sunday. Peterman has one specific talent, throwing interceptions, and he proved it once again by tossing 3 more against the Bears.
In his eight career games, Peterman has thrown 3 TD passes and 12 interceptions in only 130 pass attempts. He hit 11 INTs before he even had 100 pass attempts, a new NFL record. By comparison Tom Brady's favorite QB Aaron Rodgers has thrown 11 INTs in his last 938 pass attempts. Buffalo better pray another QB gets healthy in a hurry.
Or maybe they shouldn't. They face the Jets next week and Sam Darnold is coming off a 4 INT day against the Dolphins. Darnold now has 14 INTs on the season to comfortably lead the league. I've never seen a game before where the only scores came from pick sixes, it could be fun.
Random Stuff
You got to hand it to Bill O'Brien, he isn't afraid to let you know how he really feels. In the Texans/Broncos game, the Broncos attempted a 62-yard field goal with little time left in the first-half. The kick was no good and Houston had just enough time to gain some yards to kick their own field goal as time expired.
As he raced towards the locker room for half-time, O'Brien was caught on camera making a comment. I'm no lip reader, but the general consensus is that he said "Good job Vance you dumb f*ck." Vance Joseph is the Broncos head coach in case you don't know. I think O'Brien was speaking for most Bronco fans here. The Texans held on to win by one.
The NFL Network hosted part of their pre-game show Sunday in Baltimore. At least it was supposed to be Baltimore. The set was completely surround by fans in Steelers jerseys waving Terrible Towels. Geez Ravens fans, where the hell is your team pride?
Speaking of the Steelers, once again they managed to win a big game without the services of L'eveon Bell. Bell sent out some cryptic tweets yesterday that seem to hint he is finally ready to join the team. Will Pittsburgh activate him if he does? Things are going well, Bell's return could mess up some locker room chemistry.
For the record, I have no problem with Bell's refusal to report. He isn't under contract, the team slapped a franchise tag on him and he so far has refused to sign it. That's his prerogative. If the Steelers really wanted him they could have signed him to the long term deal he wants. If not, they could have let him become a free-agent and move on. If his return creates any team controversy the Steelers only have themselves to blame for playing the stupid tag game teams love to keep players under control. You reap what you sow.
Fitzmagic did his best with 4 TDs (and 2 INTs but why let the facts get in the way of a good story) against the Panthers, but ultimately it doesn't matter who is under center for the Bucs as long as their defense continues to stink it up this bad. The Redskins come to town next week so maybe they can outgun them. As long as Fitzpatrick starts.
Interim Browns head coach Gregg Williams claimed he was offered four separate head coaching gigs in the NFL without even having to bother to come in for an interview since he was fired by the Bills after the 2003 season. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Williams record in Buffalo was a stellar 17-31. You don't end up in Cleveland if any other team in the league will hire you.
Adam Thielen's record tying stretch of 100-yard receiving games was stopped by the Lions. In fact he only had 22 yards on 4 receptions. Yeesh, talk about missing by a mile.
The Packers/Patriots game was surprisingly close until the end. That's a testament to Aaron Rodgers since the Packers refuse to surround him with significant talent. Green Bay was lucky he was able to will them to one Super Bowl victory.
Man I thought I was long winded last week. This post is even longer! If (when) the Cowboys lose to the Eagles on Sunday night I might just end up writing a book. I think I'll call it "FU Jerry Jones: Fire The Ginger!" Catchy huh? Anyway if you are still reading I thank you once again. Let me know your thoughts on Week Nine.
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