What a finish to the Panthers - Chargers game! The Panthers actually dominated the game, although they blew a few red zone opportunities. When the Chargers scored late, after a fumble recovery, I thought it was over. But the Panthers stormed back and Delhomme hit Rosario in the end zone with no time left. Unreal. Great way to start the year!
Yahoo! is reporting that Tom Brady is out for the year with a torn ACL.
Ouch.
I didn’t get to see the Lions’ game, but that was probably better for my blood pressure than watching it.
I talked to my dad, who still lives in MI and watches the Lions every week, after the game. He said they looked terrible, and it’s going to be a long season.
Anyone able to fill me in a little on just how bad things were?
OTOH, my adopted team, (The Cardinals, aka the Lions-West), looked pretty good against the 49ers from what I saw.
Wow. That is going to devastate not just the Pats, but a ton of fantasy football players.
You know…as a Pats fan, I had a bad feeling going into this season. The team had to feel it, too. Coming off the Superbowl loss, the team seemed to go into the 2008 season with a sense of foreboding.
So it wasn’t bad enough for the Pats to blow their first possession with a fumble by Welker. It wasn’t enough for Moss to fumble a deep pass on the next possession. No, our worst nightmare came true as Brady took a hit to the knee on the same play, out for the game and possibly the season.
Fuck. :mad:
I’m just praying that the season-ending rumors aren’t true, and that the injury is not as bad as is being reported.
Very bad. Just about the only bright spot was the second quarter, when they actually looked halfway decent. The passing game, on 3 or 4 drives, looked promising, and Roy Williams’ TD was pretty sweet.
The worst part, though, was the defense. Utterly useless. The tackling was amazingly sloppy, Turner was just bouncing off defenders, who obligingly fell down to allow him an easy path to the endzone.
The much discussed running game was a failure. Smith didn’t look awful, but the blocking sure was.
They certainly have the talent on offense to test teams, but the consistency sucks. Sound familiar? Long season is right.
also: sucks about brady. I’m no fan of the Pats, but I was at UM while brady was there and so I’ve always been a fan of his.
Nope. The NFL is reporting that Brady is done for the season. While I generally don’t wish injury on people and I do feel bad for him, when I think about what this does to the Patriots’ chances I couldn’t be happier. Bellicheat doesn’t have his meal ticket anymore, now we get to see how good he really is.
Cassel played pretty well in relief. It will be interesting to see what things look like once teams get a full week to prepare for him and get more video on him.
I’m sick and tired of all the Pats talk over the last decade or so, so I won’t mind if this takes them off the front pages for most of this season, but unfortunately that just means a double helping of Favre-Jets talk which might be even worse.
I kind of got that Kurt Warner feeling about Brady going into this game. You know, league MVP with eye-popping numbers gets roughed up in a Superbowl and is never the same again. Only instead of a thumb it was a foot.
On an unrelated note, hey Omni, your boy Orton is looking good. Nice win!
A great day for the Arizona Cardinals. Cards win!
Nope. There hasn’t even been an MRI yet, they’re reporting speculation, which isn’t a report at all. It might end up being true, but not yet it isn’t.
Winning those Super Bowls with the junk on that team was pretty remarkable, Tom Brady or not. I hate the Pats as much as anyone, but come on.
Front page of NFL.com has the story. If that isn’t “the NFL reporting”, I don’t know what is.
As a Panthers fan who went to NC State (and thus roots part-time for the Chargers due to Philip Rivers loyalty), this was more or less the perfect outcome: Philip has a great game, and the Panthers win, even without Steve Smith.
It was good to see the Cowboys offense seem in midseason form and the defense looking better than last year, shutting down the Brown’s offense. Now if they could only cut back on all those penalties. I think that was the big reason that the Browns did get their sole TD. Now if we can get Newman back in a game or two I’ll feel even better.
I’m thrilled with the way the team played. It looked like a vintage Bears football game. However Orton was just average. Average will win you games when the defense and running games are playing lights out, but we’ll need to get more from him before I get too excited. The jury is clearly still out on the WR corps since Orton’s best plays all went to the TEs (who are very good thankfully).
But damn, the defense was just excellent. I was worried coming into this game because the D had looked very weak in the preseason. Part of it was that they essentially played a vanilla base D in exhibition but more troubling was the poor tackling and pursuit. None of that showed up here, we gang tackled and filled holes all day long. The Bears Coaches deserve a ton of credit, the D completely won the chess match against Peyton and all the last minute shifts and feints seemed to have them audibling right into negative plays.
Loved…loved!..what I saw out of Matt Forte. He’s the front runner for Rookie of the Year after week one. He ran hard and had great feet. So long as he’s putting up games like that it’ll take a ton of pressure off of Orton and force teams to start stacking the box. All in all I think I give Forte most of the credit for Orton’s success this week, you could tell that he got more effective after Forte burned them early in that game.
Still have some questions about the Offensive Line though. The Run Blocking was outstanding, Forte and Jones both were able to hit holes at speed and they kept defenders out of the backfield. This is clearly a good thing, but there are tons of issues with our Pass Blocking. Too many guys got into the backfield and Orton would never have a chance if we needed him to take a 7 step drop and go downfield.
On a side note, I liked the look of the Colts new diggs. Pretty cool little place they have there, it’ll be interesting to see how it effects the team since it seems to be much quieter than the old Dome.
Charger fan here:
Son of a bi*ch!
Derek Smith- you need to sit, because you suck something awful. And will somebody, for the love of god, TACKLE A GOD DAMN RUNNING BACK!
To disagree with the OP- I don’t think we got dominated the whole game. The first half for sure. We were very lucky to still be in the game at halftime. But the second half we played quite a bit better. If not for the Gates fumble- I’m pretty sure we win that game. Of course, that’s all shoulda coulda woulda- because we didn’t.
Despite the loss, and the expectations and all, there were a few positives. Hopefully we get the slow start out of the way faster than we did last year, but can still start playing our best ball come playoff time.
Gosh I love Bears fans…
Careful with that brush…
Forte looked good, but it was only one game. Let’s see him do it two or three more times before we get crazy. And the comparisons to Payton were annoying.
It looks likes there is a cure for Hester. We’ll see how many teams follow the Colt’s lead in the coming weeks.
As for Orton…why do have a sense of deja vu? Is this season going to be like a few years ago when the defense carried the team to the playoffs* despite Orton’s play? Or has Orton matured enough to carry the team himself? Once again it’s a wait and see thing.
Overall the Bears looked good–this game. Let’s talk after next week’s game and see if we feel the same.
*not that the Bears are going to the playoffs this year
Hester really had egg on his face with his attempted fake out on the kickoff after the half. I wonder if he was told to do that if they kicked it into the EZ. He was pretty much a non-issue in this game.
I liked what I saw of Forte. No rookie RB should be compared to Walter Payton in his first game. Hell, I dont’ think there should be comparisons in the first year to be honest. Forte really held it down though. Jones did alright too. Good riddance to Benson.
Manning definitely did NOT look comfortable at any point in the game though.
Go Bears!
(Poor NE. Losing TB like that. That has to suck the wind out of your sails for the season.)