Hmm, the actual rule governing the situation is apparently:
"An eligible receiver becomes ineligible if he goes out of bounds (prior to or during a pass) and remains ineligible until an eligible receiver or any defensive player touches the pass.
Exception: If the eligible receiver is forced out of bounds because of a foul by the defender, including illegal contact, defensive holding, or defensive pass interference, he will become eligible to legally touch the pass (without prior touching by another eligible receiver or defender) as soon as he legally returns in bounds".
Seems like he clearly “legally returns in bounds”… but I guess there may be another part of the rulebook the defines legally returning in bounds as having taken 2 steps inbounds.
A one-in-a-million play in the closing seconds of the first game of the year does not a season make. The offense’s issues can be addressed (Coles’ drops, penalties), our defensive play was excellent. Our linebackers are fucking studs.
It looked to me like the Bengals needed about 55 minutes to put a single point on the board against a team with a defense that was 29th in the league last year.
If your offense can only manage one score, you’re kind of leaving yourself vulnerable to losing by the fluke play.
The Bengals aren’t going to fuck around this year. Their offense was rusty, and kept shooting itself in the foot. Laverneus Coles alone had three drops on third downs that would have resulted in first downs. There were a couple other drops as well. Holding on Chad, holding on the line… Carson was behind some receivers at times. Penalties sucked. Botched FG snap.
The defense looks really good.
As much as people may say “Jeez, they can’t even beat the Broncos at home?”, I’d say that they aren’t in as much disarray as it would seem. They have one of the best olines in the NFL. They have two very good receivers in Marshall and Royal. Their RB’s are good (Buckhalter…it’s amazing the guy can still play!).
And for all the hoopla over Orton vs Cutler, it was the lowly Orton that had a better day under center than Cutler did…my, all those picks!
Why would you start a QB that barely played at all last season and only got a quarter’s worth of work in this preseason? Surely you could have started a second tier guy and done better. Palmer needs more work with his WR’s.
That defense looked pretty good to me at times. They have some talented players…Bailey, Dumervil, etc…
We were able to move the ball pretty much at will on them, we just kept having drives stall due to a variety of miscues, thereby not scoring. Fortunately they are all easily addressed with reps and coaching.
I sense that one fluke play will come back to bite me in the ass vis-a-vis my Bengals wild card prediction.
Packers’ offensive line looked good everywhere except right tackle, where it looked like they forgot to start anybody. How the hell did that Barbie guy win the job? Josh Sitton was excellent in pass protection, which is really, really surprising because all he did in college was run block.
Give Johnny Jolly a raise! That interception should be worth a million bucks by itself. The fact that the Packers totally dominated the line of scrimmage against the Bears’ running game is just a bonus.
Give Denver’s defense some credit; they had to massively underachieve last year to finish where they did. Talent-wise, they’re up there with anyone in the league (more so with the addition of not-done-yet Brian Dawkins.
I’ve got two words for Jay Cutler. Really it’s one word repeated twice, and it’s more of an onomatopoeia than a word, but the words are “Haw haw!”
The way he bitched his way out of Denver was really shitty. I usually don’t have anything in particular against the Bears, or for the Packers or Denver, but I enjoyed watching him bomb last night. And for that matter, Denver … talk about your karma! The Stokely tip was just unbelievable. Tons of laughing at shouting at my family’s house when that happened, mostly from me. Only the freaking Bengals, really.
I don’t really see how the Broncos should be on a karma upswing. They fired a head coach with more wins than any other active coach, tried to trade for a new quarterback despite having one of the league’s 5 or 10 best already and generally did everything they could to make it look like Al Davis was secretly running the team.
The Rams did more to help Seattle score then the Seahawks did most of the game. There was a really good defensive performancefor most of the game but they gave up some crucial plays and the offence just fell apart. The O-line needs A LOT of work. They were sloppy and undiciplined and some one needs to give Richie Incognito some Ritalin.
Because their talented but uneven QB punked out on them when they did the same thing every team does: look at other players even though they already had a good one at the position. He wouldn’t return calls from the owner and pouted as much as he could, and then appeared to take a swipe or two at Broncos fans when he got to Chicago. I was very surprised by the Shanahan firing and McDaniels didn’t handle himself very well in the offseason and preseason. But for me, that was outweighed by how much I disliked Cutler’s behavior.
Cris Collinsworth was really good last night. I was a fan of John Madden, but I think Collinsworth will be an improvement, especially once he and Michaels get into a rhythm.
The Giants don’t seem to have regressed from last season’s excellence; they really dominated the game, much more so than the score would indicate. If they’re smart, Manningham will take over the starting gig from Hixon at some point. How much time is Danny Ware going to miss, though (dislocated elbow)? With a starter in Jacobs who’s going to miss three games per season, the Giants are a little vulnerable at RB right now.
Tampa Bay will be better than most people thought. Not necessarily “NFC Champions” good, but quite possibly “9-7” good. And how fucking crazy is it that Cadillac Williams looked so good? I wonder if he might be on track for a Fred Taylor type of career: terrible injury problems for several years to start his career, than inexplicable longevity.
Thanks for paying attention. I’ve been talking about both points all offseason, though I think 9-7 is a bit optimistic in that division*. I’d pegged them at 8-8.
After all, we were 9-7 last season and only an all-but-mathematically impossible collapse at the end kept us from being 10-6 or better and in the playoffs. The team hasn’t really lost anything since last year, either- except in the secondary, which really showed yesterday. If the (admittedly depleted) secondary can’t play better we really will be 4-12. Still, I genuinely believe Leftwich is better than Garcia at this point in their respective careers, Derrick Ward adds big-play potential and more importantly needed depth at tailback, and Kellen Winslow should round out into the #2 pass-catcher we need.
*unless Carolina really are as bad as they looked yesterday.
What does it cost to go to a Dallas football game? I heard on talk radio that you need to buy a seat license, then pay a ton for tickets and then parking was said to be 50 to 75 bucks. Can that be true?
They will kill the goose if they keep that up. Probably 20 dollar beers and hot dogs too.
I heard on the radio that the average ticket price in Dallas is $160. And that doesn’t count having to pay for the ticket license as well as those damn pre-season games you’re forced to pay for. (Or the $60 pizzas.)
According to KFFL.com, Urlacher is out for the season:
“Vaughn McClure, of the Chicago Tribune, reports Chicago Bears LB Brian Urlacher (wrist) will likely miss the rest of the 2009 season with a dislocated right wrist. Although the team has not given the official word, head coach Lovie Smith is expected to address the issue during a press conference Monday, Sept. 14.”