Phil Taylor and Ahtyba Rubin are a handful. They’re both surprisingly athletic for how big they are, and they seem to get good penetration on most downs. Jaabal Sheard has looked good as well (he should; he has to go against Joe Thomas in practice).
Really? You think a guy who did nothing wrong will take the blame and lie to the press to cover up for the refs? Maybe you’re absolutely right about things being so maddening to you, because I find that idea to be … mad.
Graham says he committed the offense early, when the gunner made a move to the inside. In the video, at second one, you can see the gunner moving back downfield, after his move, with Graham trailing with his hand clearly on the gunner. The video doesn’t show what you think it shows.
Here’s my half-baked non-football-expert hopes for tonight:
Dallas stuffs the Washington running game. This forces Rex to throw. Dallas gambles on Rex being worse than the Dallas secondary. The gamble pays off with a little help from D. Ware.
Dallas has a crappy running game so far, but has played against stout run defenses (Jets, 49ers). The Dallas running game will open up a bit compared to the past couple of weeks, which helps compensate for injuries on offense: Romo (ribs), a possibly slow Dez (thigh bruise). Austin is out, as is Dockery.
It’ll be ugly football. Dallas squeaks out a win at home with a louder than normal crowd (which isn’t saying much in Dallas), who will be pumped up for the Redskins as the home opener, welcoming home Romo as the new Dallas hero.
Only 28? What’s that in running back years?
Last season, on a team that was the best it’s been in years, he had his second most carries ever for a season, and both his yards per game and yards per carry were markedly lower. This year his sparkling 13.2 average is on six carries, with no receptions. He’s gained 79 yards in three games. That’s not all that useful.
Look, I could be wrong. I don’t think I am. Running backs in the NFL, even extremely good running backs, tend to have productive careers that are in single digits of years. I don’t see anything about Jackson that makes him an exception.
For sentimental reasons, I’ll keep an eye on it, but there’s a local baseball game with wild-card implications that will catch most of my attention tonight. I’ll be happy if the Skins win.
Is this matchup still what it used to be in Redskins country?
“79 yards in 3 games” is misleading … he’s been on the field for one series in one game, missed another, and was a backup in a third.
28 is not 25, but it’s also not 30. Jackson is clearly on the downside, but saying “he’s done” goes too far. He’s gonna lose a step and have nagging injuries, but he’s likely got another 2-3 years, moving from a true number 1 to a committee guy.
Sure. It’s equally as misleading as the bald statement that “Injured he is averaging 13.8 yards so far this year and averaged 5.8 in yesterday’s loss…”
It doesn’t matter how good he runs when he can run, if he can’t get out there and run. Look at the likes of Terrell Davis, the Broncos all-time leading rusher, who played only seven years, and got 85% of his production in only four years.
Full-time, productive running backs who last for more than five or six years are extremely rare.
His foot didn’t touch the marker before he went airborne, he was in the air when he touched the ball, Washington’s ball.
Backs of Jackson’s caliber who don’t last more than 5-6 years are rare. Davis tore his ACL and MCL toward the end of his career; hardly typical.
LaDanian Tomlinson had 8 great seasons. Edgerrin James had 6, with two years in the middle ruined by a torn ACL. Corey Dillon had 7 great years, with two near the end marred by injury. Curtis Martin had 10 1,000 yard seasons. Tiki Barber didn’t play much at the beginning of his career, and retired in his prime, but had 2,200 carries- 300 more than Jackson. Hell, even Clinton Portis had 7 seasons before hitting the wall, and Fragile Fred Taylor ran for 1200 yards in his 10th season.
Jackson has never had a serious injury. He’s missed a couple of games here and there every season with relatively minor injuries like pulled hamstrings. He’s only had 300 carries three times in his career - high-carry seasons are what kills running backs.
$20 says he rushes for 1000 yards two more times.
The Browns are 2-1 for the first time since 2002 (or 2001?) and probably should be 3-0, but they look pretty bad. They’ve beat two bad teams and lost to one. They’re not going anywhere this year - the schedule gets tougher down the stretch and while they may keep a winning record during midseason (maybe 4-3), they’ll finish a 6-7 win team, barring some major gelling on offense.
I was so far mostly wrong about Dick Jauron, his defense is doing a lot with what it has to work with. Joe Haden is badass - if he played for an NFC East team he’d be the talk of ESPN. He has been dominant. Phil Taylor is looking very good.
Colt McCoy mostly sucks. He decided to do the clutch thing and pull a great drive out of his ass to win the game this weekend, which is nice, but he has wasted so many plays with stupid shit. Doesn’t help that his only real receiving options are a rookie who’s played 1 year of college ball and some tight ends.
Owen Marecic is not doing half the job Vickers did and it shows pretty hugely in the running game. He’s been improving (going from awful to bad), but the running game simply isn’t nearly as good without Vickers. Why the hell would you try to save money when you can sign the best fullback in the league for pocket change? I hope for the sake of the competancy of the management that he just refused to sign in Cleveland again for whatever reason, because if they crippled the only thing we had on offense to save like 500k a year I’d be furious.
Anyway, the Browns have been the beneficiaries of an easy start of a schedule. The 2010 team which started 0-3 with tough losses to good teams was a significantly better team than the one that went 2-1 against shitty teams. On the plus side, at least the win over Indy was convincing, and they gave Pittsburgh a run, so maybe they’re not totally useless.
Vick’s hand isn’t broken and he may be able to play this coming week. That’s very good news.
The bad news is the LBs still stink. Asomugha hasn’t played well. The defensive coordinator seems overmatched. They can’t finish games.
Fortunately they have looked outright dominant at times, even with their sloppy, mistake-riddled play. In both losses they had leads going into the 4th and significant yardage advantage. Their own mistakes are crippling them and costing them games. I think they get it figured out. Hopefully they aren’t too far behind in the standings by that time.
The Giants led in yardage all day despite the Eagles having twice the time of possession.
I liked the stat last night on how the Eagles have gotten more roughing the passer calls than anyone in the NFC East since Vick took over the starting job.
Perhaps instead of crying to the refs to save him from taking a beating, he should be asking Andy Reid and Harvey Mudd why they put him behind such an inexperienced line.
Weird how things change so quickly in the NFL. Who’d have thought in the preseason that a sportswriter could write the following line without being sarcastic?
I’d like all the teams that cheap out on their O-lines in favor of QBs and the skill positions to STFU. If you refuse to address your line issues, then you should accept the risk of your star quarterback getting hurt. Don’t lobby the league to get the rules changed just to maintain your competitive advantage.
I agree. I’m glad the Cowboys are finally trying to develop some good, young linemen but it’s going to be a rough year for Tony and the rest of the team.
Posting from the AFCN basement…as soon as I figure out how to change my title…
How do you add text under where it says “member”?
You need to have paid for a title.
Our bet was complete, so there’s no need for you to do that, unless you just want to commit message board seppuku from the great shame.
SHAME.
Anyway, the officiating in the Browns/Dolphins game was some bullshit. There were the usual ticky tacky “fingertips brushed the QB’s helmet in a gentle caress” type things that killed Browns defensive stops several times, but at the end is where it really became epically bad.
Massaquoi catches the go ahead TD with like 45 seconds left on the clock to put the Browns up by 1. He falls to the ground as part of the catch. Ben Watson runs up to him, and slides down on the ground to hug his teammate that just scored the TD and celebrate in the most fucking mild and reasonable way possible, and they got an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for “multiple players going to the ground in celebration”, it was the most fucking retarded celebration call I’ve seen yet. They were doing nothing at all to showboat, it was just one teammate grabbing another one who just scored the potential game-winning TD, and they happened to be on the ground when they did it.
And it was a big deal - a one point lead with 45 seconds left on the clock and now the Browns had to kick off from the 20. Then there was a (mostly legit) horse collar tackle call on the return, which brought the Dolphins up to like the 50. They just needed to get another 10-15 yards to get in field goal range and win it at the last second.
So I was fully prepared for yet another screwjob, inexplicable, last second loss from the Browns. Figured there was roughly a 90% chance of it. And then… the defense held for 4 downs, and we won. Very strange.
It was set up exactly like so many screwjobs before, but just didn’t come to fruition. That’s different.