The Patriots were completely shut down by the 49ers defense. No choking involved. They only started moving when the 49ers switched to zone coverage and lost their best defensive player. When it went back to man coverage, the Pats stalled out.
They lost Patrick Willis?
I agree. To me the key factor was the Patriots were playing a top-notch defense this game. The usual New England strategy has been to neglect defense - they just assume Brady will outscore however many points the other team gets. What was impressive about the 49ers wasn’t that they were able to score 31 points against the Patriots - two other teams have done that so far this season and nine teams have scored over twenty points against the Patriots. What was impressive was that the 49ers were able to hold the Patriots to only scoring three points for so long.
It was everyone. You must have missed the pre-game show. They announced they would be switching to cover the speech on NBC. Their game broadcast switched over to CNBC.
Was it just editing or did Ben Roethlisberger walk off the field at the end of the game and not go out to shake hands with Romo?
Justin Smith.
He didn’t. He bailed immediately (unless what I saw was somehow edited like you say). I’d be pissed if the NFL would edit something like that. Football IS my reality TV!
They broke out Tebow. Not looking good for the Jets.
Jesus Christ the Jets are terrible. How the hell did they win 6 games?
That may be the ugliest loss I’ve ever seen. Pathetic.
Is MNF broken? Seems like every year they try to guess what will be good and end up more than half garbage. They might as well roll dice to pick the games. Though, that GB/Sea game in week 3 was pretty, um, interesting.
I didn’t see it. The score apparently belies the game - it was still close. 14-10
And of course, I always like to see Coach Ryan lose.
It’s hard to describe how inept the Jets were. Sanchez threw four interceptions, I think, including one in the fourth quarter near the end zone that would have set up a score had it been completed.
Then after the Titans botched a punt from their own end zone and gave the Jets the ball around the Titans 30 yard line with 45 seconds left in the game, on their first play the Jets fumble the snap and lose the ball again. Game over.
They need to quit focusing on the NFC East (and East Coast teams in general) and start giving fans good lineups regardless of whether or not the teams are from fly-over country.
7 out of 32 NFL teams are in what I’d consider the Northeast: the Redskins, Ravens, Eagles, Giants, Jets, Bills, and Pats. 8 of the 32 slots in this season’s MNF went to those teams. (Add the Cowboys to the mix as part of the NFC East, and the numbers become 8 and 9, respectively.) So that’s a pretty slight overrepresentation, at least for this year.
Gotta wonder, though, why they gave the Jets and Eagles two appearances each. Sure, they’re both worse than last year, which may or may not have been foreseeable, but they were both only 8-8 last year.
Jets: Tebow. Everybody thought it was only a matter of time until Tebow Time.
Eagles: Possible deep playoff run. The Eagles were not an unreasonable pick to contend for the division. Good defense and tons of offensive playmakers. Their defense alone kept them in a lot of tight games early while Vick was giving the ball away, so that side of the ball was actually doing pretty good until they fired the DC, which is one of the top 5 boneheaded decisions of the season.
Hey, don’t go injecting reality into the misconception that the NFC East are the darlings. There are a couple of teams that perennially suck, and thus don’t get called up to prime time. Other than that, it’s all pretty even.
Actually, I’ve said before that there is a perfect way to handle MNF: There are 16 Monday nighters. Give all 32 teams one appearance, and make it a divisional game. All the games will be meaningful, and all surprisingly good teams will get showcased.
That’s a good idea. Unfortunately, it’s too good to work.
It’s even enough already. 24 teams play(ed) on MNF this season, and the repeated teams are Chicago (3), Houston (2), NY Jets (2), Philadelphia (2), 49ers (2), Denver (2), San Diego (2), and Detroit (2). Teams left out were the Vikings, Bucs, Rams, Dolphins, Bills, Colts, Browns, and Jaguars.
Could have done without multiple Jets, Eagles, Lions, and Chargers games, and didn’t need Chicago three times, but for snubs they only missed out on Minnesota and Indianapolis.
Michael Lombardi is leaving his job at the NFL network.
WHY GOD WHY
The Browns have fucking 13 years of suck where the only thing in common is the useless ownership, and they finally shed them to a guy who seems to really have his shit together. But apparently not!
If the team hires Mike Fucking Lombardi, that may be it for me. I don’t know if I can take another 15 years of retardation.
A few weeks ago someone wrote an e-mail to Haslam’s e-mail address about Lombardi and got a response of something like “blah blah blah, been receiving many passionate responses, but half the people who write are for it, and half are against it”
Yeah, because there’s a big fucking campaign of people passionately writing in about how the Browns should hire Mike Lombardi. Bullshit. They actually ran a forum poll after that, and on that forum you can get at least 20% of the vote for Hitler to be the QB, and it was like 400-2 against Lombardi. How in the fuck could they possibly think that’s a good idea?
I guess they just want an ass kissing yes man to do whatever they tell him.