Thursday
NYJ @ NE -9.5
Sunday early
ATL @ BAL -7
TEN @ WAS -5
SEA -7 @ STL
CLE -5.5 @ JAX
CIN @ IND -3
MIN @ BUF -5.5
MIA @ CHI -3
NO @ DET -2.5
CAR @ GB -7
Sunday late
KC @ SD -4
ARI - 3.5 @ OAK
NYG @ DAL -6.5
SNF
SF @ DEN -7
MNF
HOU @ PIT -3
My poor Panthers.
Bengals last week whom we fought to a tie on their home turf.
At Green Bay this week followed by Seattle, New Orleans and Philadelphia.
Does any team have a tougher 5 game stint than that? The only team on that schedule with a losing record is New Orleans, all others are at the top of their division.
I don’t think it’s crazy to see them coming out of that stretch 2-2. Green Bay’s defense is awful, so this could be a shootout. New Orleans is a winnable game too. Seattle is a different team on the road and the Panthers were a fumble away from beating them last year. Not saying they will win any of these, but it’s not that daunting.
What the hell are the Jets thinking? What the hell are the Seahawks thinking? Harvin addresses a relatively minor hole on the Jets roster and is due a base salary of eleventy billion dollars. After Harvin, the 'hawks receiving corps is bad.
As a Jermaine Kearse fantasy owner, this is probably good for me, but I don’t see what it does for them.
I count 3 de facto “pick 'em” games. Home team favored by 3, which is what home field is worth.
Seattle is not on top of their division. Yet. They are currently in 3rd, and not likely to advance, after SF pulls Peyton’s pants down around his ankles.
Sadly, my Saints are on the ropes. 2-3, with no defense, and a supposedly high octane offense that seems to have water in the gas line. Nobody can catch the ball other than Graham and Cooks, but Graham is out with a shoulder injury for another couple of games. Ingram was looking good before his injury, but he broke his hand and wasn’t exactly known for ball security before that happened.
Tough road game this week, desperately needing a win…
Want to see something crazy? FO’s team dvoa ratings through week 6 of this season.
The top 3 offenses in terms of their defense-adjusted value over average? Denver? Yep, of course, #1. Green Bay? Yep, #3.
Number 2? Kyle Shanahan and his whacky bunch of misfits. The Cleveland Browns have the 2nd best offense in the league by DVOA.
Their supposedly potentially elite defense is sitting at 29.
The leading quarterback, receiver, and rusher for the team are all UDFAs. The head coach is a rookie and a defensive specialist. It’s probably the worst WR corps in the NFL without Josh Gordon.
Hoyer the Destroyer actually has the best QB rating on deep passes this year and it’s utterly bizarre because everyone on that team is bad at deep passes. Hoyer can’t throw them with very good power, timing, or touch. He’s average at best on deep passes.
His receivers are a smurf UDFA, another smurf in his first year starting, a Miles Austin that can’t run crisp routes, and a speedster who craps his pants if another teammate is within 5 yards of him since he got his knee wrecked last year. None of them can fight for balls or have good deep ball skills.
So how is it all working? Kyle Shanahan is a motherfucking sorceror. He somehow schemes guys to be uncovered on a regular basis. In fact, a whole lot of Hoyer’s complete deep passes were when the coverage broke down and the receivers were wide open. Hoyer should actually have 4 more TDs this year on deep passes, but when he sees a guy is uncovered, he lobs the damn thing up there like a punt so there’s no chance he overthrows the receiver or something. It lets them get caught from behind on what would’ve been an easy touchdown with a normal pass.
They’ve had a very effective rushing attack with 3 pretty average talents at running back. The offensive line is probably the best in the league - perhaps Dallas is a little better at run blocking, but the Browns line is top 3 in both pass and run blocking, making them overall way better.
And they’re a very erratic team. They have halves that make them look worse than the Jags, and halves where they look like they could go undefeated if they keep playing like that.
Their next 3 games are against Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, and Oakland, teams that have a combined 1 win. I will be disappointed if they can’t go 3-0 against them, although in my heart I suspect they’re 2-1 at best. 3-0 would put them at 6-2, with their two losses coming on a combined 5 points, which would be amazing.
Then they’d get their only non-line offensive talent back soon after. If they’ve had the league’s most prolific deep passing game with the likes of Taylor Gabriel, 2014 Miles Austin, Travis Benjamin, and Andrew Hawkins, imagine what could happen with Gordon.
Or maybe they’ve been overachieving and that stops and they finish out the season like crap and it’s another 5 win season. Who knows.
I’m surprised to see the Bengals defense ranked at 14…thought they’d be much worse after the last two games, but I guess the first three throttlings account for that.
Bengals offense at number 5 with very little AJ Green, nothing from Gresham, no Eifert and no Marvin Jones is a happy surprise. They keep pounding the rock with Bernard and Hill while Dalton keeps his mistakes limited and the o-line keeping Dalton clean is accounting for that. I think Dalton has only been sacked 2-3 times total this season so far.
Well, that and Mohamed Sanu has turned out to be an top-flight possession receiver. They are going to have to keep feeding him the ball when Green and Jones come back.
You know what my problem with Teddy Bridgewater is? His face always made me uneasy. Now I know why: he’s Kananga from Live and Let Die.
Correction - the quarterback, leading rusher, and 3 leading receivers are all UDFAs.
Jacksonville’s defense is pretty fired up. This is actually the first time the Browns run game has been stopped significantly. I hope that just means Jacksonville is overachieving for a bit, and not that Mack being out is really dragging them down.
Refs in the Cleveland/Jacksonville game aren’t calling anything. Not that there’s been anything egregious, but man is football better when they just let the teams play instead of interrupting it every 2 minutes with some arbitrary bullshit calls.
The Panthers came to the shootout with no bullets… This looks like pro team playing a DII college team.
So NFL coaches are way too conservative, making the wrong call in 4th down situations constantly. And I hate it. It’s meant to deflect criticism from idiot football fans looking for the single mistake that lead to a team losing so they can lay blame.
Mike Pettine, though, may be too aggressive. I’m loathe to criticize any decision that errs on the side of aggression, because the NFL so clearly goes the other way, but he actually regularly makes 4th down calls that are probably so aggressive that they’re incorrect. Which makes him… probably the only guy in the NFL that does that.
I’m not sure whether I should support his reckless aggression. I have to say it’s a lot less frustrating to me than over caution.
But oh my god do idiot fans lay it on thick when an over-aggressive call ends up with a bad result.
If the shellacking by the Packers wasn’t enough, Luke Kuechly just got ejected over a BS call. Coming out of a scrum over a fumble, one of the refs grabbed his arm from behind and he shrugged him off. They called contact with the ref. No shit. The ref started it.
The Browns just ran a trick on 4th and 5 - they send the punting team out, and then all of the sudden the entire offense runs out and subs out to run a play. But the officials wouldn’t hand the ball over to the center until there was about 1 second left.
Is the official supposed to hold onto the ball until the defense has time to substitute?
Early game in the UK is Bengals-Colts and the Bengals are getting absolutely shellacked. Can’t quite work out whether it is Colts D being good or Dalton being terrible but the Bengals have done virtually nothing all day - though as I write they finally put together a long play to AJ Green. They may actually get on the board.
eTA not green. He is out. And they fail on fourth and goal so still no points for the Bengals.
Cinci’s offense can’t do anything without Green.
Literally, if this game is anything to go by. Very good chance they get blanked here.
The fake punt the Rams just ran took ONIONS! Onions I don’t have.
