Six sacks by the same Buccaneer defense that had produced 11 sacks through its 7 previous games and had just traded its best pass rusher to Chicago. :eek:
That guy was their best pass rusher!!! Dear god…
Then again…
Hey now, there’s no shame in being beaten by the best. 
Well, he led the team in sacks last year. He did also lead the team in games where you wondered if he’d been mysteriously deactivated.
Wait until you see the team effort on the Bengals defense next Sunday. Mike Zimmer is going to have the boys ready to play.
I can’t believe I’m actually looking forward to a Bengals game. I haven’t given a shit about the Bengals outside of fantasy football since that playoff game against the Steelers where they were robbed (by Palmer’s knee injury), and before that when they broke KC’s 10-game winning streak in… 2003?
I know I mocked you (at least on the inside) for saying this last time, and look how that turned out. This one will be a test. Bengals or Bungles, we’ll just have to see about that on Sunday!
That’s all right, we’ve deserved the red-headed stepchild of the AFCN reputation for a long time.
But seriously…now my statement is even more relevant. The team defense I am seeing is the best I’ve ever seen, and a lot of it isn’t showing up on stat sheets. We don’t get a lot of sacks, for instance. But we also don’t give up a lot of points, either.
We lost our best pass rusher in Odom and then against Baltimore, a team reputed for it’s 3rd down conversion ability, didn’t get one on us until 2:30 left in the fourth quarter. These are the kinds of things I’m talking about.
The ability to generate turnovers when needed most. Getting just enough pressure on the Qb to make him uncomfortable (which unfortunately doesn’t happen with Ben, he doesn’t get flustered much unless he’s actually getting hit and sacked).
These guys have had a “we’re the castoffs of the NFL” mentality since training camp. Several of our starters are NFL castoffs or supposed also-rans. One of our biggest areas of improvement was replacing the revolving door center Eric Ghuichec with Kyle Cook, an UFA that somehow earned the starting job…and he’s nasty.
These are the things that I root for in my team. Fuck a bunch of the gaudy stats from 2005…this is a real team for the first time in as long as I can remember.
And blue-collar? Shit, outside of OchoLookAtMeO, we are the definition of blue-collar. We only have a handful of elitely talented players on our roster.
I’m not sure you have any, other than Och. Let’s face it - nobody would be surprised if Benson failed to rush for 1,000 yards in any season after this one. Palmer used to be really, really good, and might be again, but his stock has dropped and he’s not even in the top-5 conversation right now. Leon Hall and Jonathan Joseph are solid but unspectacular, and weren’t exactly reliable prior to this season. That Antwaan something guy - Odom? - started the season on fire, but 8 sacks in half a season does not an elite player make.
Did I miss anybody?
I think Palmer could easily still be a top-5 QB…if the offensive gameplan asked him to throw the ball more like he used to do for a lack of a running game or a defense that could get opposing offenses off the field once and awhile.
That’s another thing I like…he’s led some Elway-esque late game drives to win games this season, he’s had a 5TD passing game…but he’s not piling up the yards…because he doesn’t have to anymore.
Well, I’d say it’s also because he doesn’t have Whosyourmama anymore - Andre Caldwell and Chris Henry have combined for 41 catches, or three fewer than OC has by himself… and nobody else seems to be catching any.
In any case - it’s not as though the team didn’t have a good running game before. Rudi Johnson ran for 1,300 yards in three straight seasons. That’s not easy to do.
Yeah, but that was 04, 05 and 06. The oline was different (and good). Rudi was never a great RB. He was strictly an in-between the tackles guy. He ran behind a great pair of OT’s in their prime (Willie Anderson, Levi Jones). 07 and 08 were the decline years…bad oline, bad defense, bad or injured RB’s (and just about everyone else injured).
sigh
What could have been with Odell Thurman and David Pollack…
TJ didn’t make Carson Palmer…it was the other way around. Look at TJ’s relatively pitiful numbers with Matt Hasselbeck.
I’d say it was CJ who made Housh more than anything else.
Is anyone else surprised that Larry Johnson was 75 yards away from the Chiefs all-time mark with a pretty pedestrian 5996 yards? The Chiefs have been around quite a while and were pretty consistently good for a long time. They had a history of being a ball control, running team prior to Vermeil yet the most productive RB is Larry Johnson of the Herm Edwards era?
Weird.
Well, yeah, constantly drawing double coverage tends to get your other options open. As TJ is being made painfully aware of by a lack of a premier WR threat opposite him in Seattle.
Marcus Allen, Christian Okoye, Priest Holmes, yeah now that you mention it I am surprised. I probably would have thought Holmes had more but they show his numbers all the time during Steelers games to show where Willie Parker stands among UDFA running backs.
I would say Priest Holmes was a more productive back even if Johnson had broken the franchise rushing mark. He caught more passes and scored lots more touchdowns, remember.
Dug up this list after a quick Google. That’s a pretty shallow pool to choose from. I always particularly enjoyed Barry Word’s work.
The Chiefs have never held onto a running back for more than about 5 or 6 years. The result is that they don’t end up with any one running back with massive career yardage. And the Chiefs of the 60s and 70s were not ball-control teams, though they weren’t as pass-happy as, say, the Raiders.